‘Once more into the breach, you mother grabbers!’
No rain has fallen after the nuclear war, and the world has become a wasteland. A group of settlers are running out of water, and their only hope lies with a lone renegade who cares nothing for anyone but himself…
Another slice of post-apocalyptic mayhem, with this week’s Road Warrior Robert Iannucci pulling on the leathers for director Giuliano Carnimeo. This cut-price Italian-Spanish co-production also stars Alicia Moro, Eduardo Fajardo and Luciano Pigozzi.
It’s one minute to midnight for the band of settlers led by Senator (Fajardo). No rain has fallen in the years since the nuclear holocaust, and their food supplies are almost exhausted, despite the care of hydroponics expert Linda (Anna Orso). Her husband has gone into the wilderness to look for water but has been gone too long, a likely victim of the psychotic Crazy Bull (Fernando Bilbao) and his gang of marauders. Refusing to give up hope, their pre-teen son Tommy (Luca Venantini) stows away on a follow-up expedition. However, they are attacked by Bilbao’s band, and he can only watch from hiding as all the adults are slaughtered.
Salvation arrives in the unlikely form of Alien (Iannucci), a lone wolf who drives a sophisticated, futuristic car called the Exterminator. He has no interest in helping the boy until Venantini reveals that he knows the secret location of a fantastic water supply. A dust-up with Bilbao ends with the reluctant partners taking refuge with crusty old mechanic Papillon (Pigozzi) and his daughter Trash (Moro). Circumstances and the need for water combine in the quartet joining forces, and as they battle Bilbao and head for the water, new loyalties begin to form.
Not much is ever certain in the film industry, but there were two things you could rely on in the second half of the 20th Century. The first was that Italian film producers were keeping a close eye on the international box office, and the second was that they had absolutely no qualms about rushing out cheap copies of whatever was selling tickets. These were often rushed out quickly without too much care and attention to detail, and those failings certainly apply to Carnimeo’s film.
Minimal effort is made at world-building here, the script by Elisa Briganti, Dardano Sacchetti, and José Truchado not being all that forthcoming regarding background details. All we’re told is that there’s been a nuclear war sometime or other, there are no clouds anymore, and no rain has fallen for…um, quite a while. As no timescales are mentioned, we can safely assume that the resulting nuclear winter has passed (although some scientists believe it may last thousands of years). There are no apparent effects of radioactive fallout either.
Curiously, there also seem to be some remnants of authority left as Iannucci encounters a couple of policemen on the road early on, conveniently allowing the film to riff briefly on the original ‘Mad Max’ (1979). No need to worry, though; we need to get to ripping off the sequel so they never appear again, and we never hear anything more about the pesky forces of law and order. It’s revealed later that the young Venantini has a bionic arm, which Iannucci sticks together with some duct tape when Bilbao’s men bloodlessly yank it off! No worries, though; mechanic Pigozzi can rebuild him, even though he doesn’t seem to have the technology or know how the hell it works. There’s no explanation about how Venantini got the arm, why, or what it does apart from allowing him to throw things really hard. Fortunately, despite the lack of water, there’s plenty of gas for all the vehicles. I guess it must have been left over from before the holocaust because you need water for cooling purposes when you refine petroleum, and there isn’t any of that around, is there?
It may seem harsh to highlight these issues, given that this is a ‘pedal to the metal’ action flick and not a serious attempt to depict a possible future. However, these shortcomings are reflected elsewhere in the production. The plot often feels like little more than an excuse to get our heroes from one scrape to another, and the characters are so one-dimensional that if they turned sideways to the camera, they would probably disappear. Iannucci is the typical outsider who has a late change of heart (his character arc, ladies and gentlemen!), Moro is the tough-as-nails spunky heroine, Venantini is the lovable little scamp who needs a father, and Bilbao is a deranged skinhead in semi-fetish gear. Nothing that happens to any of them is ever remotely original or surprising, and it’s unlikely that anyone will care when it does.
However, an enterprise like this is all about the stunts, car crashes and high-speed action, and despite the obviously limited budget, Carnimeo delivers to some extent. Sure, there are no big set pieces, but there are some excellent driving stunts and crashes that work well in slow motion. None of these are terribly sophisticated or spectacular, but they do tick all the necessary boxes. The hi-tech control room supposedly inside Iannucci’s ride, though, looks pretty silly and is completely mismatched with the exterior shots of the car. On the credit side, though, we get a leather-clad Beryl Cunningham as Bilbao’s chief lieutenant, wielding a piece of arm armour complete with spikes.
The film was shot in Andalusia in Spain, which may explain the presence of Fajardo, a veteran of many Spaghetti Westerns shot in the region. None of the acting is anything to write home about, although it is adequate, even if Iannucci is saddled with a headband and perm job that makes him look like he’s auditioning either for an early 1980s aerobics video or for a job in Barry Bostwick’s ‘Megaforce’ (1982). There is a fine, pounding electronic score from composer Detto Mariano, and director Carnimeo certainly gets the most out of his explosions budget.
Perhaps it’s not too surprising that Carnimeo is best known for Spaghetti Westerns himself, having directed most of the popular ‘Sartana’ series, beginning with ‘I Am Sartana, Your Angel of Death/Sono Sartana, il vostro becchino’ (1969), often working with leading man Gianni Garko. He usually hid behind the name Anthony Ascott, which was also the case for makeweight Giallo ‘The Case of the Bloody Iris/Perché quelle strane gocce di sangue sul corpo di Jennifer?/What Are Those Strange Drops of Blood Doing on Jennifer’s Body?’ (1972) and the mildly amusing knockabout comedy ‘Holy God, It’s the Passatore/Fuori uno… sotto un altro, arriva il Passatore’ (1973). His sole trip into the post-atomic wasteland came at the end of his career, and only three projects followed, including the cheesy slasher ‘Rat Man/Quella villa in fondo al parco’ (1988), which features a rat-monkey hybrid serial killer. He retired after one more film and passed away in 2016.
It’s cheap and cheerful, but lovers of post-apocalyptic action will probably get a kick out of it.
Mark David Welsh 