Movie Review: The New Barbarians (1983, Blu-ray)

The premise of this film sounded a lot like that stinker I reviewed a month or so ago - Escape from the Bronx. And what’s this? The same guys who wrote that wrote this? Which is also a dystopian future? And bad guys are running around killing people? And it’s filled with Italian actors and terribleness?

Way to raise the bar for yourselves, guys.

The New Barbarians (as opposed to the old kind?) takes place in 2019. A nuclear war has decimated the country and the population. Small bands of people try to survive on what they can scrounge in this wasteland while searching for signs that civilization still exists elsewhere via large and over-complicated ham radios.

Cue The Templars, a group of thieving Mad Max wannabes in Xanadu costumes. They believe the world is dead and any survivors they find deserve to die. You know, after taking all their shit. And they don’t just kill people. They have dirt bikes and sand rails equipped with bazookas, flamethrowers, and rotating blades! They will purify the world with blood! Just not their own…

We then meet Scorpion, a former Templar, now loner bad-ass. When he saves Alma, she of the thigh high boots and no pants (because Future Fashion sense) from a Templar attack, word gets back to their leader, One, who wants to take some serious revenge out on Scorpion’s hide. Alma just wants to give him her goodies in his light up inflatable bouncy house (aka tent).

Movie Review: 1990: The Bronx Warriors (1982; Deaf Internacional Film/Blue Underground)

...funny thing, about the passing of time; it has a way of affecting, re-affecting and de-affecting certain things. 'Certain things', as far as how the general masses see them. How one looks at a certain thing, one day, and then years later, see that very same thing in a different light. The old story of how time is kind to some things, and not so forgiving on others...the old adage of some things aging like fine wine, and for other things...well, they turn to vinegar. And so, considering the particular subject matter at hand, as the classic pop song lyric so succinctly goes, "...if you think you know where all this is heading..."...yeah, we're talking Italian trash cinema, with the moniker of 'trash' not only being poignantly applicable to this specific film review, but also, as an endearing token of affection, with regards to this rather eclectic brand of cinema...

...in as much as this reviewer has very much embraced and appreciated Italian cult film cinema, regardless of all of it's ever-shifting, ever-changing, even ever-mimicking incarnations, stemming back to the early '60's, and reaching up through the years, to...say, about the late '80's. The gothic-flavored horrors of the '60's...the tense, visceral giallos of the '70's...the gore-soaked zombie & cannibal buffets of the '80's. And all of the war-sploitation, shark-sploitation, prison-sploitation, Rambo-sploitation, Star Wars-sploitation and post-apocalyptic future-sploitation flicks, prolifically sprinkled amidst it all. And it's one of those latter categories, and a specific film therein, that we're gleefully jumping all over, in this focus...