The Bronx Warriors Trilogy

When movies like The Warriors (1979), Mad Max (1979) and Escape from New York (1981) hit gold at the box office, Italy was soon to answer the call for “post apocalyptic” movies. Enzo G. Castellari was the one who brought us this series here for what ever that's worth.

The Bronx Warriors (1982)

Well this movie is bad, but it's so bad it's actually not bad as it's so funny. The plot is pretty much nonsense, the idea is that in the near future, which was 1990, the Bronx has been turned into a free zone for the criminals where the gangs can roam free and the police rather stay out of there. One day a woman (Stefania Girolami) escapes from some corporate conspiracy into Bronx and ends up stirring things into an all out war between the different gangs. The main gang of this movie is The Riders, who are supposed to be this motorcycle gang and the ruling authority down there, but most of them look like your average office workers dressed in denim and leather. Apparently some of them were played by the real Hell's Angels and indeed some of the lesser characters look quite believable, but anyone with a few lines dialogue is most certainly not. Their leader is Trash (Mark Gregory). He's supposed to be this fearless leader, but he looks more like a gay kid who forgot the butt plug from last night still in his ass which makes him prance around like a fairy. And it didn't really help that he's also crying like a little girl. The other “gangs” are just as hilarious. There's the “gentlemen” gang, dressed in fancy clothing and who seem to be surprisingly wealthy for a slum like this. There's the roller skating hockey gang, which just leaves you wondering how do they get around this ruined city with their small skates. There's a tap dancing gang wearing flashy costumes and makeup who of course fight with only dance maneuvers. Then there's some pale faced zombie gang with with nothing but wooden planks as weapons. Not to forget the all leather wearing police forces in motorcycle helmets wielding flamethrowers while riding on horses. So yes, it's crazy. It's cheaply made which shows in many places, but then again that only adds to the camp values of it all. The acting is from crap to horrible and the fighting isn't much better. Luckily there were some nice gore effects to keep the entertainment values up. Even though I wasn't bored watching this as a campy fun ride, I must say it still wasn't a good movie. So as a proper post apocalyptic action movie it's just garbage and as a fun campy trash flick it's just ok.

52%

Escape from the Bronx (1983)

As the first part seemed to do a decent business on the box office, Castellari didn't waste time with the sequel and actually made two of them a year after the original. Even though the other one wasn't a direct sequel, it's still in the same category. Anyway, this time it's complete extermination as the corporate folk decide to clean up the Bronx, by killing everyone of course. Trash is unfortunately back, though this time he doesn't seem as feminine as in the first one, but it's not exactly a great improvement. His parents get killed so he decides to take revenge by kidnapping the president of the corporation tearing down the Bronx, in hopes of holding him hostage for the freedom of the Bronx. He's joined by a pre-school explosives expert and his dad. The story is ridiculous to say the least, but again that's not the main thing, it's the campy exploitative fun of it all. I must say the action was well in hand in this one, the body count must be close to 200 in this movie. So that combined with the horrible acting and the ridiculous plot ensure that the entertainment values are high with this one. The music was horribly 80's disco-like electronic beats which was rather annoying most of the time. Even though this was worse than the original I still enjoyed this more. Go figure...

63%

The New Barbarians (1983)

This is actually the only part which is post apocalyptic as in the previous two the “apocalypse” was merely a decay in the Bronx, but this one it's an actual nuclear winter aftermath. And to be honest it doesn't have much to do with the other two, except the general idea of ripping off these post apocalyptic box office hits. But as it's in The BronxWarriors Trilogy and done by Castellari, that's why it's here as well. The story in this one is like from any spaghetti western, the setting are just futuristic instead of the old west. A group of bandits, called Templars, are terrorizing the people who are trying to build another civilization after the nuclear apocalypse. Scorpion (Giancarlo Prete) is a lone wanderer with a righteous mind who gets mixed up in the mess and well you basically can guess the rest. But it's the little things that made me have a constant “what the fuck?” expression on my face. The costumes are ridiculous with their over the top shoulder toppings and especially the transparent armors were more than weird. The Templars, who are all men for obvious reasons, blame literature for the apocalypse and seemingly just want to kill everyone still alive. They also seem to be an openly gay society as raping a woman is not their ball park, but raping a man is a group event, good for them I guess. The props are just silly, the cars look like modified golf carts and the laser rifles are standard M-16's shooting fireballs. So it's clear the budget was small, luckily most of it went to the explosions and gore effects so the entertainment values are good. I must say I was quite disappointed in the soundtrack by Claudio Simonetti, usually his name is a guarantee for something good, but this time it was a miss. This movie has tons of unintentionally funny moments which made me laugh out loud. Especially the not so subtle hint at the end where the butt raped hero seemingly rejects a woman who fancies him but instead takes the hand of a young boy left me quite troubled. I really hope I misunderstood the meaning. I'd say this is the best out of the three, at least it's the funniest, though that doesn't mean it's a great movie no matter how you see it.

66%

Like always with these ripoffs, there's plenty of other unofficial sequels as well, like Endgame - Bronx lotta finale (1983), Bronx Executioner (1989) and others as well, but I'll leave those to another time, after all there's only so much I can take of bad movies at once.

Desecration of the shark

The Last Jaws (1981)

What better way to make some easy money with movies than to ride with the fame of one of the biggest horror hits ever made. At least that's most certainly what the producers of this movie were thinking. Spielberg's Jaws (1975) was such a huge hit with such a simple idea that spawned quite a few sequels of it's own. But this movie is not one of the original sequels, this is exploitation at it's finest, or worst, depending on how you see it. This basicly takes the story of the first two original Jaws, combines them and takes out all the nonsense drama in between. Now in an exploitation movie that's usually a good thing, you get more of what you loved about the original, but in this one it's not really. There's not really any blood and guts, not that much action and most surprisingly to the likes of it, no tits. So the entertainment values are quite low without any drama in it either. But it is somewhat goofy in how it's made so there's a few unintentional laughs in there, mostly involving bad acting, bad effects and a ridiculously predictable plot. So it's not a total failure on the campy department, but still didn't offer enough to keep me entertained. As a curiosity this is a nice movie, pretty much a perfect example of Italian exploitation on the success of Hollywood movies and from what I've read it did make some money also, so it surely worked despite a few lawsuits from the creators of the original.
39%

An apocalyptic spaghetti western

Keoma (1976)

Second movie from Enzo G. Castellari in a row and this time luckily it's a lot better than the first one I watched. This is a story about a half indian half pale face man called Keoma, who after the civil war returns to his home town. Of course the town is run by a criminal bunch and it's time for the returning hero to clean it up. Even though it seems kinda basic story of the spaghetti westerns, it's a bit more luckily. There are family ties as his three brothers are not exactly happy to see him back and would be happy to put a bullet in his head but their father keeps them from doing that. Also there's a black man who used to be Keoma's childhood hero, but now is just a poor old drunk who gets stepped over constantly. Add to that a pregnant lady who everyone thinks has the plague and tries to send her to the plague camp by the mines and you have a nice little mess to be sorted out. This is quite an apocalyptic tale, the war has left it's mark and the movie is surprisingly dark for a spaghetti western. The style of it is quite brilliant. Sure some of the slow motion work and some of the flashbacks were a bit cheesy at parts, but still it's fresh enough. The movie has a lot of biblical references and there's a constant spiritual feel looming around. That helps the mood even more and at parts it gets almost surreal. The music was quite nice but damn those lyrics were a bit too cheesy for my taste. The lyrics basically describe what's happening on screen and what's going through the head of the character. So if you can ignore the lyrics the music was great. All in all the movie is well worth the watch and nicely different from the others of it's genre.
81%

Sleepy eyes of fear

Cold Eyes Of Fear (1971)

Another World Entertainment has released this movie in their giallo series, but I'm not exactly sure if it really is a giallo. The beginning of the movie is a trademark giallo, but it turns out it was just a stage act. Rest of the movie is a small scale thriller about these two people held hostage and a sort of a mystery to be solved. The start promised a lot, but unfortunately it gets quite boring to watch these characters in the house and this judge pondering by his telephone. Even Ennio Morricone's score isn't enough to keep the interest up. There are a few odd scenes that were kind of nice, but all in all quite a waste of time.
30%