{"id":21502,"date":"2024-01-22T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-22T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=21502"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:15:35","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:15:35","slug":"when-italian-postapoxploitation-came-to-criterion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/when-italian-postapoxploitation-came-to-criterion\/","title":{"rendered":"When Italian Postapoxploitation Came to Criterion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Italian film industry has a long history of taking successful international genre films and cranking out low-budget variants at a rapid clip until the audience for them is exhausted. (They did this with their homegrown genres, too. Witness the explosion of gialli<\/a> that littered the \u201970s in the wake of Dario Argento\u2019s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage<\/em> and the proliferation of pepla that rode the coattails of 1958\u2019s Hercules<\/em>.) So Star Wars<\/em> begat a slew of spaghetti space operas and Dawn of the Dead<\/em> sparked a zombie craze (and its gore-laden tributary, the cannibal film). That the Italians would hop aboard the post-apocalypse caravan in the early \u201980s was all but a given.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking inspiration (i.e. stealing) from George Miller\u2019s Mad Max<\/em> films and John Carpenter\u2019s Escape from New York<\/em> (among others), writer-director Enzo G. Castellari turned out three post-apocalyptic action films in two years. Released in 1982, the marginally futuristic 1990: The Bronx Warriors<\/em> immediately got the sequel treatment with 1983\u2019s Escape from the Bronx<\/em>. Completing the hat trick was the Road Warrior<\/em> riff The New Barbarians<\/em>, retitled Warriors of the Wasteland<\/em> when it reached US screens in early 1984. All three are part of the Criterion Channel\u2019s \u201cPostapocalyptic Sci-Fi\u201d program, where they\u2019re rubbing spiked shoulder pads with (among others) Mad Max<\/em> and Escape from New York <\/em>\u2013 a perfect opportunity to play compare and contrast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Best known nowadays for directing 1978\u2019s The Inglorious Bastards<\/em>, the title of which Quentin Tarantino bastardized for his own World War II \u201cmen on a mission\u201d film, Castellari got his start as an assistant director before making his directorial debut with a spaghetti western at the height of that genre\u2019s popularity in the mid-\u201960s. Other westerns followed, alongside detours into comedies, poliziotteschi<\/em> (gritty crime films in the mold of Dirty Harry<\/em> and The French Connection<\/em>), and horror. One of the latter is 1981\u2019s infamous The Last Shark<\/em>, which was such a brazen rip-off of Jaws<\/em> and Jaws 2<\/em> that Universal successfully brought an injunction against it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No such legal wrangling greeted 1990: The Bronx Warriors<\/em>, possibly because Castellari cast his net wider, catching not only Escape from New York<\/em>, but also Walter Hill\u2019s The Warriors<\/em>, from which sprang the distinctively costumed gangs that rule the Bronx, which has officially been declared \u201cno man\u2019s land\u201d by the authorities. One faction is the Riders, who look like your standard biker gang and whose motorcycles are adorned with light-up skulls. Their bitter rivals are the Tigers, who wear fancy clothes, drive vintage cars, and are led by Fred Williamson as The Ogre, the self-proclaimed \u201cKing of the Bronx\u201d (making him the equivalent of Isaac Hayes\u2019s Duke of New York).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The other gangs in play are the roller-skating Zombies (whose hockey gear makes them akin to the Baseball Furies), the Jackals (a troupe of Fosse-like dance fighters in metal bowlers), and the Scavengers (a tribe of primitive cannibal throwbacks), whose territories must be crossed when Trash, the leader of the Riders, sets out to forge an alliance with the Tigers. Their common enemy: the Manhattan Corporation and its lead enforcer Hammer (top-billed Vic Morrow, fresh off playing the Quint character in The Last Shark<\/em>), whose solution to the Bronx\u2019s gang problem \u2013 carried out by his personal, black-clad flamethrower-armed equestrian SWAT team \u2013 is literally called Operation Burnt Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it was reviewed in Variety<\/em>, 1990: The Bronx Warriors<\/em> was deemed \u201clikely to be laughed off the screen at all but the most marginal grindhouses,\u201d but it did well enough for Trash (and actor Mark Gregory, now promoted to leading-man status) to return in Escape from the Bronx<\/em>, which opens with scenes of the borough\u2019s residents being forcibly evacuated under the pretense of being relocated to New Mexico. In reality, they\u2019re being rounded up by the General Construction Corporation\u2019s Disinfestation Annihilation Squad, under the command of notorious mercenary Wrangler (second-billed Henry Silva). This time, Trash gets stuck with a journalist out to expose the genocide taking place in the Bronx, which has sent the gangs (including some holdovers from the first film) underground. As he did at the climax of The Bronx Warriors<\/em>, Castellari stages fire stunts galore, along with wanton machine gunning and plenty of slow motion as gang members and Wrangler\u2019s silver-suited shock troops alike are mowed down, blown up, and\/or fried to a crisp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Escape from the Bronx<\/em> escaped being panned by Variety<\/em>, it was roundly mocked one decade later on Mystery Science Theater 3000<\/em> under the title Escape 2000<\/em>. In The New Barbarians<\/em>, Castellari looked even further into the future, to the year 2019, nine years after a nuclear holocaust has destroyed civilization. Its few remnants are systematically hunted down by queer-coded fanatics in matching white uniforms and black bondage gear called the Templars, who roam the wasteland on tricked-out motorcycles and ATVs making \u201cothers pay for the crime of being alive,\u201d as their leader One (George Eastman, a genre vet returning from The Bronx Warriors<\/em>) puts it. Reluctantly drawn into the conflict is Mad Max-styled loner Scorpion, whose bacon is consistently saved by would-be traveling companion Nadir (Fred Williamson again) and his bottomless quiver of explosive arrows. If nothing else, The New Barbarians<\/em> demonstrates that along with the dregs of humanity, slow-motion stunts and fiery deaths also survived the apocalypse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although it\u2019s just as derivative as its predecessors, The New Barbarians<\/em> benefits from a relatively novel setting and a more charismatic lead in Giancarlo Prete (credited as Timothy Brent), who previously acted rings around Mark Gregory as a reclusive explosives expert in Escape from the Bronx<\/em>. Castellari also exposes Scorpion\u2019s vulnerability in a way that likely wouldn\u2019t have passed muster had he tried to cast an American actor in the part. (It\u2019s difficult to imagine Williamson enduring the same humiliation.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether he took Variety<\/em>\u2019s criticism about \u201cgoing to well once too often\u201d to heart, The New Barbarians<\/em> was Castellari\u2019s last word on postapoxploitation. (Before it burned itself out, the torch would be picked up in turn by his fellow countrymen Joe D\u2019Amato, Lucio Fulci, and Bruno Mattei.) That all three of Castellari\u2019s forays are on the Criterion Channel is an anomaly to be savored while it lasts. After all, even the most refined cinematic diet needs some junk food from time to time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The<\/em> \u201cPostapocalyptic Sci-Fi\u201d<\/em><\/a> series is now streaming on the Criterion Channel.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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