The post-nuclear wasteland (comes, as any good wasteland, complete with luscious woodland areas and competently maintained roads) is dominated by the worse-than-fascist-so-they-must-stand-in-for-communists uniformed goons of Prossor (Donald Pleasance, looking for all the world like frigging Doctor Evil and acting accordingly).
Fortunately, the smarmy and disgusting charismatic Professor McWayne (Harrison Muller) leads a resistance group against Prossor's evil. Too bad the Professor is held captive in Prossor's capital. His two or three co-resistance fighters, Fred Williamson in a cameo that doesn't afford him to do anything and the Professor's daughter (Persis Khambatta) aren't enough to rescue him, they desperately need a Chosen One.
As Destiny will have it, The Rider (Robert Ginty, with the kind of performance that lets me think wistfully of more charismatic leads in post-apocalyptic films. Like Mark "I can't talk or act but I sure can pout" Gregory. Ginty really is that disinterested.), some permanently bored looking and comatose sounding guy driving a "super sonic speed cycle" - featuring the most annoying computer voice ever (and again, letting me think wistfully of the witty banter in Knight Rider. It really is that painful) - crashes into the mountain where the rebels' allies are living.
Those guys are known as the Elders, are middle aged, ugly and run around in Ghandi's worn-out clothes. Oh, they also have magic powers and can heal wounds with the flashlights they have hidden in their sleeves. Anyway, the Rider is of course very excited to be the Chosen One to save the Professor, so it takes only the daughter's promise not to shoot him in the crotch if he goes to the rescue to convince him to be fulfill his destiny.
After some boring adventures (look, loud spiders! a snake! zombies/mutants!, Daughter and Rider rescue the Professor, but the insane incompetence of everyone involved (which presumably mirrors the things that happen behind the camera) gets Daughter kidnapped while her father goes free.
So Rider and Professor go to the meeting place of the local post-apocalyptic tribes (the Shirtless Kung Fu Dudes, the Guys in Nazi Uniforms, the Hitting Hookers, the New Wave Persons and the Redneck Truckers) to get themselves an army.
A little fistfighting and an annoying, stupid rousing speech of the Professor later, they have one. It's only consisting of about fifteen people, but hey, at least Rider is the Chosen One.
Off to the rescue they go. Will they save Daughter before Donald Pleasance has photocopied her whole body? Do I sound like I care?
I know, I know, all this sounds like the sort of film that should be right up my alley, what with its post-apocalyptic nonsense and Fred Williamson and Donald Pleasance cameos. The sad and tragic truth is that this might be the least fun post-apocalypse film our friends in the USA and Italy have ever made.
Director David Worth (who'd later go on to make the incredible Shark Attack 3: Megalodon) does everything in his power to make even the most awesome elements of his film terribly boring. I'm not sure how he does it, but he succeeds admirably. Is it Worth's inability to get anything even out of people like Pleasance and Williamson whose presence usually is enough to lift everything they appear in to the level of "at least watchable"? Is it the excellent way in which he keeps the action scenes completely unexciting through framing and editing exemplary in their boring ineptness (which you shouldn't confuse with fun ineptness)? Is it the fight scenes in which nobody ever seems to touch his foes? The toy weapons with the toy soundeffects? The fact that I wanted to punch the film's hero in the face whenever he opened his mouth and mumbled something?
Who knows?
So, let this be a warning not to delude yourself into a "with all this crap going on, this has to be awesome, right!?" state of mind concerning Warrior of the Lost World. Also keep in mind that the person who is warning you away here has been known to call Donald G. Jackson's post-apocalyptic roller skate epics "mandatory watching".
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