Rating: *(*)
Review Date: 10/29/18
"Into battle, you mother grabbers!"
"Mother grabbers?" That's the preferred slang of Crazy Bull, the leader of a band of barbaric marauders that roams the post-apocalyptic landscape. A peaceful clan of farmers and scientists is dying from thirst, so they send some of their men into the barren wastelands to search for water, but they fall victim to Crazy Bull's ruthless warriors. A ten-year old boy with a pet hamster and a bionic arm decides to look for water in the desert as well, and runs across a lone warrior named Alien and a car thief named Trash. Together, they make their way to a spring that's protected by a weird cult, and after stealing some water they come face to face with Crazy Bull and his goons. Fortunately, the kid's got a great throwing arm and manages to blow up all the bad guys with some well-aimed dynamite. The confusing ending has Tommy, Alien, and Trash dancing around in an unexplained rain storm, while everyone else dies.
It's a really terrible low budget rip-off of "The Road Warrior" (1981) that's highlighted only by a handful of neat car stunts and explosions (hence the optional 2-star rating). Italian filmmakers were especially fond of slow motion in the 1980s, and the film features a couple of really nice slo-mo car crashes. Alien is an annoying and uninteresting anti-hero, and Trash isn't particularly compelling, either. And what's up with those names? Having a young kid as a focal point is never a good thing, but he's not as irritating as he could be. The story is baffling and the poorly dubbed dialog makes little sense. The simplistic electronic music score sets an interesting tone and is reminiscent of mid-80's video game music. Unlike most films of the genre, it contains no sex or nudity, which makes it slightly more family friendly than its peers, and "mother grabber" is as harsh as the language gets. That said, there are far better alternatives out there for satisfying a post-apocalyptic vehicular mayhem craving.