Three Films Make A Post: No man left behind.

Life After Fighting (2024): Lead actor/martial artist/director/producer Bren Foster’s directorial debut climaxes in forty minutes or so of incredibly impressive martial arts madness of the naturalistic, bone-crunching style, presented in a direct and visceral way. To get there, you have to work your way through eighty minutes or so of much too slow build-up, pointless side-plots, and scenes that – in classic indie tradition - never seem to want to end when they really should have ended minutes ago.

I do appreciate Foster’s willingness to go slow and actually ground his character emotionally – this certainly beats the “egomaniac martial arts asshole” you always fear in this kind of project – but there’s providing the ground for things, and then there’s scenes crawling by at a snail’s pace for no good reason.

The Heroin Busters aka La via della droga (1977): This Enzo G. Castellari joint with Fabio Testi (playing a character named Fabio in case he forgets) and David Hemmings as cops (well, Hemmings is playing an Interpol agent) on a rampage starts out pretty slow as well, but it doesn’t take more than half of its running time to gather its speed. Once it dies get going, there’s no holding its series of probably highly dangerous to stunt people action sequences back for even a second. There’s a manic, dangerous energy to Castellari’s action at its best, and here, he holds that level for the whole last act of the film, while doing much less feet-dragging than Foster’s movie before.

Land of Bad (2024): Despite the military-based version of the action film being my least favourite type – I dislike some of the sub-genre’s inherent assumptions even less so than those of vigilante films – it is difficult to find fault with the way William Eubank and a game bunch of actors (several Hemsworths, Ricky Whittle and Milo Ventimiglia in an actually good performance, as well Russell Crowe chewing scenery delightfully as the Man in the Chair) present a series of theoretically tired old clichés. In a style I find by now typical of Eubank, he leaves no cent of the budget not visible on screen, so there’s an always entertaining series of gunplay, explosions, unarmed combat and more explosions shown off in the most effective manner possible.

The character bits are clichéd but also just work, so there’s enough emotional backing to the violence. If you squint and look at the film in the right light, you might also see it as a mild critique of the detached ways of modern technological warfare in some scenes, of course in between the film milking modern technological warfare for the funnest possible action.

Kill Them All and Come Back Alone (1968)

Original title: Ammazzali tutti e torna solo

During the US Civil War. After demonstrating to the rather annoyed Confederate Captain Lynch (Frank Wolff) that his base security sucks in a fake sneak attack, mercenary Clyde McKay (Chuck Connors) and his gang of weird, violent men are hired to steal some gold belonging to the Union. As is usual in the man on a mission genre, McKay’s men (this is a film completely devoid of women in front of the camera, which on the plus side spares us the mandatory rape scene) are mainly characterized by the way they like to kill people, which can work, as it does here, when a filmmaker actually knows how to hone in on the right details about a killer that turn murder method into character. The best bet to get at said gold is apparently to somehow infiltrate a heavily secured fort and hope the dynamite it is hidden in doesn’t explode.

Further complicating the mission are the fact that McKay and his team are a bunch of backstabbers and cut-throats who can’t even wait with murdering each other until their mission is over, and that Captain Lynch may very well have an agenda all of its own.

Apart from crime movies, the great Enzo G. Castellari was particularly great at directing men on a mission style plots, may they take place during World War II or, like here, the US Civil War. So it’s no surprise that the perfectly appropriately titled Kill Them All makes for a pretty riveting watch, full of very exciting scenes of sweaty men with nasty dispositions first doing pretty unpleasant things only to their enemies but increasingly to their supposed partners too. Castellari’s great at staging the lighter, somewhat humorous action at the beginning, but he transitions just as well to the moment when things become seriously brutal, using the same vigour with which he portrays a brawl meant as a distraction when things step up to a jail break that turns into a massacre.

Speaking of massacres, more conservative critics have often tended to call the Italian Western “amoral” and “nihilistic”, a judgement that usually needs a healthy inability to understand the genre’s actual texts and subtexts. In the case of Kill Them All, that interpretation is for once actually applicable. Don’t get me wrong, Castellari isn’t exactly cheering the characters on, rather he never seems to judge the characters one way or the other, just showing the murderous nonsense they get up to without approving or disapproving. And make no mistake, these men are particularly nasty examples of their type, sacrificing bystanders and so-called friends alike for the tiniest advantage, and often in ways that actually must disadvantage them sooner or later. Which obviously makes perfect sense for the kind of people they are supposed to be.

In the very end, the film really earns the raised eyebrow of moral disapproval though, when it cheers on the final survivor’s acquisition of the gold, as if he hadn’t murdered friends and comrades, and killed hordes of people only for greed. That’s certainly one way to avoid the traditional ending where he’d end up alive and wiser but without gold, but really felt like one step too much for me.

Three Films Make A Post: The One...The Only KING OF MONSTERS as the new demon of the atomic age!

Tunnel 3D aka 터널 3D (2014): The only genuinely positive thing I can say about this South Korean mess is that it is one of the still too few horror films directed by a woman, one Park Gyoo-taek in this case. It also goes to show that women are just as good at making generic crap as men are. This is pretty much “I Know What You Did Last Bloody Valentine”, with a perfectly useless twist surrounding the identity of its killer, and way too little of interest going on to get away with keeping as low on blood and sleaze as it does. One and a half hours of boring characters doing boring things do not a slasher nor a thriller make.

Any Gun Can Play (1967): This Spaghetti Western by Enzo G. Castellari on the other hand is never boring. It concerns a gun-fighting banker (Edd Byrnes), a bounty hunter some versions call Django but the one I saw dubs the Stranger (George Hilton), and a Mexican bandit (Gilbert Roland) chasing after a bunch of gold the bandit stole and then let steal from him, with various other groups also showing – generally violent – interest.

It’s neither a particularly original nor a very deep entry in the genre. Castellari plays the usual series of betrayals and alliance shifts, the shoot-outs and punch-ups with a friendly grin. The film is, consequently, rather good fun that – for better or worse – lacks the mean-spiritedness as well as the political background of many other films of the genre.

Contraband (1940): This is the second movie in the fruitful partnership between Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. At this point in time, they were making pleasant, clever genre fare with a mild propagandistic bend. Consequently, this is a romantic spy movie about a Danish freighter captain played by Conrad Veidt who insinuates himself into the spy plots surrounding one of his passengers (Valerie Hobson). A smart and loveable, mildly exciting romp through black out London ensues, with some very fine moments of suspense, a fun central couple, and an air of off-handed sophistication that makes the whole affair pretty delightful.

Past Misdeeds: High Crime (1973)

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.
Please keep in mind these are the old posts without any re-writes or improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.
 
Genuan Commissioner Belli (Franco Nero) is one of those highly irascible cops movie Italy is full of, always screaming and raging about the terrors of corruption etc and etc.
Belli's unwillingness to play politics and his nearly comical impatience lead to frequent clashes between him and the chief of detectives, Commissioner Scavoni (James Whitmore), but the older cop obviously respects Belli's passion for justice a lot and treats the younger man with the patience one has for talented if absolutely mad little children.

Scavoni himself has a secret file full of information that he wishes to use to bring the whole network of corruption and crime that dominates his city to fall, yet he does not dare to use what he has too early out of fear that all his efforts might go to waste.
Life in Genua isn't going to get easier for the two. A new organisation tries to bust in on the turf of the city's aging crime lord Caffiero (Fernando Ray), and the new guys are even more brutal and reckless than the Mafia the police knows. A bunch of car chases and shoot-outs later, all tracks lead Belli to the highly respected industrialist clan of the Grivas, but witnesses have the sad habit of dying.
Belli is finally able to shout Scavoni into using the material he has on the Grivas, but the old cop is murdered and his files lost before he has even begun to make a ruckus.
Scavoni's death just intensifies Belli's crusade, a crusade that will in the end be very costly for everyone involved, especially Belli's loved ones.

Enzo G. Castellari's High Crime is one of the core films of the Italian police film genre of the 70s and to me, it is one of the best parts of it.
That the film is highly kinetic and racing from one brilliantly filmed action sequence to the next is par for the course in the genre, yet Castellari's action - always given a rhythm of its own by a hypnotic score by the de Angelis brothers -  feels somehow more driven and desperate than the action scenes in the films of his contemporaries. There's a special feeling of recklessness and wildness at High Crime's heart you won't find in European films, even other Italian cop movies, too often and that connects Castellari's work in my mind with the sheer madness of Hong Kong cinema of the 80s and early 90s.

But even here, the action is not all there is to the film. I remember more than one film of the genre I had difficulties to stomach on account of their unpleasant politics which usually just start with the supposedly heroic cops getting mightily pissed off by the fact that they have to keep to the laws they are sworn to protect. The longing for a police state is often quite strong in these films and makes me in cases like the films of Umberto Lenzi nearly physically uncomfortable. Now, I wouldn't call High Crime's politics pleasant, but they are a lot more complex than in some of the lesser films of the genre. It is very helpful that Belli may be overtly irascible and not exactly a stickler for human rights, but at least we never see him torture gay people or fake evidence. Basically, Belli comes over as a decent man in a society teetering on the edge of chaos, much more interested in getting the big fish than in kicking in the teeth of some junkie. Actually, one of the things the film seems to say the loudest is "look at the big picture to end corruption".

It does of course help quite a bit that Franco Nero plays Belli as highly sympathetic in his desperation for change, an impression that is strengthened further by the scenes he has with his girlfriend (Delia Boccardo) and his daughter. That a pleasant family life won't be in the card for Belli is obvious from the beginning, but the way Castellari handles the things that were bound to happen to the two is at once so ruthless and so right (in the context of the film, mind you) that I couldn't help but be impressed.

One of my pet theories about directors of action films is that the great ones can't be judged by the quality of their action sequences alone, but by the quality of the melodrama in their films and the way they use this melodrama to heighten the tension and meaning of their action. That's the reason why the American action cinema of the 80s does so little for me - they just didn't know what to do with their heroes' emotions, if they admitted to the existence of them at all.

Castellari knew.

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,cops,franco nero,enzo g. castellari,reviews,action,james whitmore,past misdeeds

Light Blast (1985)

Original title: Colpi di luce

Beautiful San Francisco is in trouble! Mad scientist Professor Soboda (director Enzo G. Castellari's brother Ennio Girolami) wants astounding amounts of money, or else, he will destroy the city - and he has the face-melting death ray and henchpeople to do it. Later, in his mandatory speech about his further plans, the good Professor will cast his blackmail attempt as only the first step in a highly optimistic plan for world domination.

Alas or fortunately, between Soboda and a lot of money (and later: the world!) stand two of San Francisco's finest policemen, Inspector Ronn Warren (Erik Estrada) and his partner Inspector Swann (Michael Pritchard) of the stupid hat. Ronn, with his ability to commandeer improbable and fast vehicles at the drop of a hat, his tough guy habits and his librarian wife/girlfriend (Peggy Rowe) is just the right man to chase, shoot, and punch his way to the safety of his hometown. Why, he'll even be doing a bit of investigating between the violence! However, even a manly man like Ronn might just not be able to get to his enemy before Things Get Personal™.

1985 sees Light Blast's director, the wonderful Enzo G. Castellari right at the end of the awesome phases of his career, before he stepped into the arena of desperately bad TV (believe you me, those Bud Spencer TV movies are even more painful when you think about the actual potential of the man directing them), but when already so little money came his way, even a man who never had high budgets to work with must have felt rather dispirited.

However, what Castellari still and always had was a great eye for pacing, for the visual and emotional rhythms of action cinema, an ability to use a silly set-up (Light Blast's final chase must be seen to be believed in this context) and just run with it. If you're like me, willing to accept the whole death ray business, and able to ignore that Estrada's chase and shooting actions generally put as many people into danger as they may save, then the experience of watching Light Blast is the movie equivalent of sinking in your comfiest of comfy chairs - at least, if your comfy chairs have a propensity to explode - or cuddling up to a lovely yet possibly dangerous and clearly mad kitten.

Apart from driving me into the arms of dubious metaphors, Castellari has two secret weapons, one of them obvious to anyone who has seen masterpieces like Warriors of the Wastelands, the other one quite particular to Light Blast. The latter secret weapon is - perhaps a bit surprisingly - Erik Estrada. Now, Estrada is clearly not on the acting level of other male leads Castellari worked with in the past, but then, we are talking about people like Franco Nero here, and Light Blast isn't really as subtextually complex as some of those films, so all Estrada needs to bring to the table is natural charisma and a believable physique for the fights. Both are things Estrada brings in spades; when it's needed, he's even helping the film's sillier moments (and boy, do they get silly) out with a bit of dignity.

Of course, and that's the not so secret weapon in Castellari's arsenal, the director's 80s work always showed a particular hand for taking the silly and turning it into the sublimely awesome. Case in point (and absolutely not the only example in the movie) is Ronn's introduction and declaration of badassitude. In that scene, our hero solves a hostage situation the old-fashioned way, by undressing down to his underpants and shooting a guy with a gun hidden inside a turkey. Wonderfully, both Castellari and Estrada play the scene perfectly straight, as if that sort of thing were a perfectly natural part of police work and reality.

Light Blast is full of this sort of thing, scenes which should be complete, probably even annoying, nonsense but that turn out exciting and delightful (in a bad face-melting special effect sort of way) through the sheer conviction of everyone involved.

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,reviews,action,enzo g. castellari,erik estrada,ennio girolami,michael pritchard,peggy rowe

Cold Eyes Of Fear (1971)

Original title: Gli occhi freddi della paura

Italian prostitute-in-London-exile Anna (Giovanna Ralli) did probably not expect going home with charming young solicitor Peter Flower (Gianni Garko) would end up to be quite as dangerous.

Soon after the couple has arrived at the home Peter shares with his uncle, Judge Flower (Fernando Rey), the corpse of the house's butler falls out of a cupboard, and they are threatened by a cockney with a gun (Julián Mateos). Quill, as the guy is called, doesn't actually seem to want anything from his victims right now, so a long, tense wait for something the criminal's victims are not sure of ensues.

Eventually, a cop (Frank Wolff) sent by the judge with a snarky "put away your strippers for a moment and look up some law for me" letter for Peter arrives. However, when Peter tries to clue the cop in on his plight, all he gets in return is a fist in his face, for the cop isn't really a cop, but Arthur Welt, the brain behind the whole strange criminal affair. Arthur has a plan that involves murdering the Judge for revenge and looting his house of certain files; his problem is that he doesn't know where the files are located, so he and Quill need to stay much longer at the Judge's villa than they'd like to. A cat-and-mouse game between them, Peter, and Anna begins that may turn deadly at any moment.

We who know and love the body of work of director Enzo G. Castellari mostly love him for his Eurocrime films, his handful of Spaghetti Western and his post-apocalyptic movies - all basically different kinds of action films - while ignoring his horrible TV action comedies (don't talk to me about the Extralarge films, maaan) as well as his more interesting sporadic expeditions into other genres. Often, that's pretty understandable, for the films Castellari took on outside of his core genres often aren't quite as exciting or complex as his action films are, even when they are not utter tripe.

Cold Eyes Of Fear is Castellari's contribution to the giallo. The film comes down heavily on the suspense-based thriller side of the genre, working with a plot thrillers have used at least since the time of the noir (I suspect since the beginning of time). Large parts of the film (with the big exception being the pretty random inclusion of a fight between bikers, what looks like fat karateka to me, and the police that might hint at the direction Castellari's post-apocalyptic movies would later take) take place inside of a few rooms inside of a villa, the Judge's office and a police call centre, therefore preventing Castellari from indulging in the awesome, largely movement-based action scenes he is so good at.

Instead the director uses fast, sometimes nervous cuts, his zoom lens, a bit of standard giallo stylishness and lots of close-ups on the faces of a fine cast doing fine work to bring a sometimes tight, sometimes flabby script to life. Castellari also indulges in moments of pop-art surrealism to illustrate his characters' inner lives, which clearly isn't playing to his strengths; these scenes work on a camp level, but aren't as good at fulfilling the function of fleshing out the characters as they are supped to do, especially when you keep in mind that an actor like Wolff really has no need for this sort of visual crutch to show that his character is losing it fastly.

Still, the film does work more often than not, and even finds time to ask questions about some of Castellari's pet themes - the difference between justice and the law, as well as the influence of class on the two - as ever without finding any satisfactory answers. In fact, there's an especially great, silent moment between Garko and Rey right at the film's end that probably says more about the nature of corruption than any long philosophical discussion ever could.

Yet even if it weren't for that moment or the performances of the cast throughout the film, it would be worth it getting through Cold Eyes of Fear's too slow moments for the fantastic climax that once again demonstrates Castellari's class as a director of physical violence, be it between hordes of thugs or just between four frightened and mad people in a dark house.

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,reviews,giallo,enzo g. castellari,giovanna ralli,frank wolff,fernando rey,gianni garko

In short: The Last Shark (1981)

aka Great White

aka The Last Jaws

Original title: L'ultimo squalo

Just a few days before a surfing regatta is supposed to be held there, the little US coastal town of Port Harbor is struck by a series of shark attacks. The local experts in such things - author and hobby sharkotologist Peter BenchleyBenton (James Franciscus) and "Scottish" sea bear Ron Hamer (Vic "Yup, it says here I'm from Scotland. This is how Scottish people talk, right?" Morrow) - deem the perpetrator to be an exceptionally large Great White. Their recommendation is to postpone the regatta until the shark problem has been solved. Unfortunately, the town's mayor William Wells (Joshua Sinclair) is trying to get himself elected state governor, and as we all know, that's not a position you can achieve when you are known as level-headed and putting the greater good before your private interests in an emergency, so Wells decides to go through with regatta anyway.

We're not in Amity here (no, honestly, please don't sue us!), though, and while Wells does his best to keep the shark killings out of the news, he still does try to protect the competitors in the regatta by surrounding the area of the competition with a net no normal shark could bite through. Additionally, Wells assigns Benton, Hamer and a bunch of fishermen (surely all experts in animals they don't usually meet) as his anti-shark crack troop.

Not surprisingly, none of Wells' ideas protects anyone, and Port Harbor's beach and the surrounding seas stay an all-you-can-eat buffet. That is, until Sharkie makes the capital mistake of nibbling off the leg of Benton's daughter.

In 1981, much beloved Italian action specialist Enzo G. Castellari must have been in desperate need of some fast money. At least, that's the only explanation I have for the director signing on for a project like this late-coming rip-off of Jaws at a point in his career when he otherwise seemed unable to make a bad film. But bad The Last Shark is, there's no doubt about it. Seldom has Castellari shown himself as indifferent towards making a watchable movie as here. The pacing is sloppy and slow, half of the film's scene are copied as closely from Spielberg's film or from its lamentable sequel as possible without getting sued (which didn't help Last Shark - there was a lawsuit by Universal, and the Italian film's producers lost it), and the other half just doesn't seem to have much of a reason to exist.

Castellari tries to pep things up a bit by adding utterly random slow motion shots and a bit of dynamic editing, but for about the first hour of the film's running time, nothing to get excited about happens. It sure doesn't help the film's excitement level during that phase that the shark is either represented by an adorably bad model or through library footage that doesn't fit what is supposed to be happening on screen at all, and very often doesn't even show a Great White (see the word "white" here, Enzo?).

Fortunately for people who have already wasted an hour of their lives at this point, the film gets sillier going into its final act, and begins to show scenes poor Spielberg would not have dreamt of. The shark munches on a helicopter, the shark kidnaps a bunch of people, the shark gets blown up by an inadvertently mined corpse and happiness returns to my living room. It's not enough to rescue the film, or even in the slightest what one would hope for from Castellari, yet it stills shows the film and its director willing to entertain the audience instead of inflicting pain to it.

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,enzo g. castellari,in short,vic morrow,james franciscus,horror

Hammerhead (1987)

Once, Hammer (Daniel Greene), Jose (Jorge Gil), Carlos and Greg (Jeff Moldovan) were "the Storm Riders", the most popular mercenaries in Jamaica, until one day Hammer just stole away to become a cop in the US, leaving behind his friends as well as his girlfriend Marta (Melonee Rodgers).

Six years after Hammer has left, a frightened Greg appears on the cop's turf, begging for Hammer's protection from some mighty dangerous people he has angered back in Jamaica. Before Greg can explain what is what, a hired killer (Frank Zagarino) drops a freight container on him. The following chase and a shoot-out in a well populated area end with the killer's escape and Hammer getting sent on holiday by his boss. It seems that wildly firing your gun in public place, without a care for the health of civilians, is against some obscure rules and regulations. Who knew?

Hammer decides to use his vacation time for a trip to Jamaica. Once there, he soon gets in contact with Jose - who is our odious comic relief for the evening, but is atypically useful in a fight - and Greg's girlfriend DD (Deanna Lund). Their old friend Carlos has disappeared. It is obvious to our brainy hero that he must be either in the hands of Greg's enemies or already dead. Together with Jose, Hammer begins to commit a series of crimes from reckless driving to torture to illegal entry to murder - all in the name of finding out who killed his old friend. Not surprisingly, the local authorities are a bit non-plussed by his actions, their scorn however is going to be the least of Hammer's problems, since Greg's mysterious killers don't take too kindly to random armed madmen trying to disturb their plans.

Somehow, Hammer still finds time to rekindle the affair with Marta and learn that he has a little daughter with her. It's a situation ripe for an abduction.

In 1987, the Italian genre movie industry was barely alive. Budgets were low, acting talent willing to work for the little money that was still there was scarce, and so even an old hand at making movies like Hammerhead's Enzo G. Castellari had to work with whomever he could get. In Castellari's case, this means he had gone from working with actors like Franco Nero and Maurizio Merli to dragging bodybuilders like Daniel Greene in front of the cameras. Unless you are very enthusiastic for men built like ruminants, that is not the sort of change it's easy to get behind.

While Greene is as dreadful an actor as his musclebag status threatens, he is not the worst of his kind. Where many of his colleagues usually don't even try to do any acting, Greene seems to throw himself into his role with a relish. The outcome isn't exactly pretty, but I find it difficult not to root at least a little for someone so obviously doing his best. Greene's not an actor, but at least he is likeable.

The less said about the rest of the cast the better. They are there, they mangle their lines, they die a bloody death, and mostly that's perfectly adequate for the film, unless you think a bit about the film's story and start to imagine it slightly re-written and re-cast with the competent and charismatic actors it would have been cast with ten years earlier. It is not difficult at all to imagine the film as a tense and slightly depressing crime and violence epic about trust and betrayal between four friends, deeply cynical and not ending well for anyone. All the elements for it are there, but Castellari is experienced enough not to go in this direction with the actors at hand.

This leaves the dramatic part of the film deeply unsatisfying, yet Castellari does try to put as little emphasis on this side of the movie as possible. Instead, he does what his talents and the talents of his actors are most suited for, and shows as much action and violence as possible.

Even at this point in his career, on a dwindling budget that prevents doing anything truly spectacular, Castellari knew how to deliver a riveting action set piece. There are car chases (of course including the sad end of a fruit stall), a human hood ornament scene, shoot-outs, as well as some raw and exciting punch-outs. The only things missing for the discerning friend of Italian action film of the decade are a helicopter and exploding bamboo huts, but the film does feature an exploding safety deposit box, so that's alright, too.

Since this are the 80s, the action has an higher cheese factor than that found in earlier Castellari movies. I was quite surprised to realize that the director's still 70s-gritty shooting style and the 80s silliness do work well together, producing a friction that's more riveting than I had expected.

Just four years after he had made this film, Castellari would find himself in TV hell, with everything still interesting about his work gone. That, however, is a different story, and one that shouldn't ruin the pleasures Hammerhead still can provide.

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,action,daniel greene,enzo g. castellari,reviews

High Crime (1973)

Today on WTF-Film I hold forth on Enzo G. Castellari's epochal High Crime with Franco Nero and admit to certain physical weaknesses when it comes to Italian crime movies.

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,cops,franco nero,enzo g. castellari,reviews,action,james whitmore,other places

1990: Bronx Warriors (1982)

In 1990, the New York government has given up on the Bronx. What order there is, is kept by the gangs now controlling the area. The prime force among them are the "Tigers", led by The Ogre (Fred Williamson), properly identifiable through their fashionable way of wearing classic pimp style clothing while driving around in hot rods. Below them on the ladder of success are the "Riders", clad in classic post-apocalyptic biker style, which would be much more convincing if their leader wasn't Trash (Mark Gregory) he of the Hairy Metal mop, the model looks and the negative acting chops. Of course, Trash is our designated hero.

Other pillars of the Bronx community are the "Zombies", name-defyingly sporting a combined roller-skater/hockey theme and the "Scavengers", a bunch of mad people best described as sociopathic and hebephrenic mimes.

The not always harmonious co-existence of these slightly improbable groups ends when Trash saves Ann (Stefania Girolami; daughter of the director and only slightly more talented than Gregory) from the dubious attentions of the Zombies' leader Golan (George Eastman in a very minor role). Little does he know that "his girl" is the heiress of the biggest weapon producing company in the world, whose owners will pay the sadistic cop Hammer (Vic Morrow) a lot of money if he brings them back their living property.

The man goes about it in a unique way - he has a dream you know. A dream of letting the Bronx burn so that he will never be forgotten.

Another post-apocalyptic nonsense-action piece by the great Enzo G. Castellari, The Bronx Warriors (which steals in equal measures from Escape from New York and The Warriors) lacks some of the charms of Warriors of the Wasteland aka The New Barbarians. Dardano Sachetti's script delivers his usual mixture of boredom, weird ideas and disinterest in the basics of time and space, while director of photography Salvati has not as many interesting sights to show as in his work with Lucio Fulci.

This doesn't mean there is nothing of interest to see here: Some of the action scenes are suitably outrageous (although nothing comes even close to Warriors), the gangs of New York are strange enough to be entertaining and the friend of ruined buildings will find many an interesting sight.

It's just a little disappointing that the plot never gets enough traction to make one forget the silliness of the proceedings. The remarkably bad performances our male and female leads deliver do not help the movie at all - whenever Trash opens his mouth one cannot help but wish for his slow and painful death. Or at least for the hitting and bleeding to start again.

But seeing a pimp-tastic Fred Williamson fighting with a cane sword is something I'm glad I didn't miss.

 

Technorati-Tags: post-apocalypse,action,italian movies,fred williamson,reviews,enzo g. castellari