WARRIOR OF THE LOST WORLD(1983)
Hold on to your jumpsuits, it's post-apocalypse 1983 again. Filmed in Italy, and starting with possibly the most unnecessarily lengthy and confusing opening crawl ever - not to mention a synthesizer music score that sounds like the inspiration for Garth Marenghi's Darkplace - Warrior of the Lost World stars Robert (The Exterminator) Ginty riding a talking motorbike and fighting post-apocalyptic Nazis.
Ginty plays "The Rider" (also known as "that guy" by cast members who quite possibly forgot, or may not have actually known, his character's name), a nomadic mercenary type who rides around on a 250cc motorbike - sorry - SUPERSONIC SPEEDCYCLE - powered by something like an Atari onboard computer with an annoying computer voice. It's the '80s of course, so the bike is equipped with machine guns and rocket launchers, and says things like MAXIMUM PURSUIT. It also likes insulting bad guys by calling them "Very bad mothers", "Dorks", "Geeks", "Dickheads", and "Veg Outs".
Oh, and it also flies. Sort of. When stopped by a patrol of heavily armed Nazi future cops, The Rider simply rides forwards and then is somehow airborne, landing badly about twenty feet away in a field. After speaking to himself at length in a stream of highly macho one-liners, The Rider is confronted by some punks who use words from A Clockwork Orange to make themselves a bit more futuristic. Knocked off his SUPERSONIC SPEEDCYCLE, he whistles it like a sheepdog and it comes back over to rescue him. Nice trick tbf.
For no reason at all, The Rider crashes into a cliff and wakes up in a big white cave with Fred (From Dusk Till Dawn) Williamson, and some mystical eternal type psychic fella standing over him, cleverly healing his wounds by shining a torch on them. Trying to enlist The Rider to help defeat the evil, tyrannical dictator PROSSOR (An embarrassed Donald Pleasence still dressed like Bond villain Ernst Blofeld), Fred and the psychic chap give up when The Rider says no thanks. The Rider reverses his decision when Nastasia, a sassy, and incredibly good looking female character (Persis Khambatta - the bald one from Star Trek: The Motionless Picture) pops up and tells him to rescue her father, pointing a gun at his danglies just to make sure he complies.
The pair head into a spooky cave full of tarantulas, snakes, and some unfriendly mutants, where The Rider pulls out a handy, portable flamethrower and sets everything on fire. Although the pair clearly dislike each other, it's also just as clear that they already fancy each other, and after entering the nearby city where Nastasia's father is being held prisoner, they both walk into an S&M dance club where the cameraman seems to be on a mission to film as many crotch shots as possible.
Deciding not to rescue Nastasia's father because it looks a bit tricky, The Rider eventually changes his mind, watching a lengthy and obviously painful execution before finally deciding to pull his gun out and start shooting bad guys. Completely cocking up the rescue, The Rider escapes on a nearby helicopter with the father but leaves Nastasia behind, refusing to go back because it's probably a bit difficult. Actually, this Rider bloke is a pretty shit hero tbf.
Kidnapped by Not Blofeld, Nastasia is tortured while The Rider finally gets his shit together, sorts his motorbike out, and goes into the desert to get some help. Upon arriving in the desert, we find all the Kung-Fu in the 1980s is happening there, plus some crap wrestle-fighting, and the punks from earlier (are they meant to be the same ones who attacked The Rider earlier or new ones? Ah, who fucking cares at this point?) looking like they're getting ready to shoot a heavy metal video.
The next half an hour is basically an extended fight sequence featuring Nazi cops, a big truck with spikes, and extras overacting their death scenes as badly as possible. The Rider's bike is smashed to pieces and you're meant to feel sorry for it as it lies crying in the road. Oh fuck off, you just know it's going to be fixed again by the end. Anyway, The Rider and his gang of Kung-Fu Heavy Metal Wrestlers win the day as Pleasence is shot to death and after a full minute of some extras applauding, everyone gets to live happily ever after. Including - as entirely predicted - the talking Atari motorbike.
But wait.
What's this?
Fred Williamson from earlier is A BAD GUY?!
And in a further development, we have a ROBOT TWIST as we discover Pleasence wasn't human after all! Yes, the evil Prossor was just a clone, and the real one makes his escape - presumably into a hoped-for-by-the-producers-but-literally-nobody-else spin-off TV series which thankfully never materialised.
Supersonic Speedcycle/10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9Un8h9JeM8MEGAFORCE(1982)
Another film starring the now deceased former Miss India, Persis Khambatta (Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Warrior of the Lost World), Megaforce is another silly futuristic story about two fictional warring countries in the 1980s. The baddie country (Gamibia) is led by General Guerara (Henry Silva from Alligator, Buck Rogers) while the goodie Country (Sardun) is represented by an elite force of haircuts and fancy motorbikes called Megaforce, led by Guerara's one-time friend, wait for it... ACE HUNTER (Barry Bostwick from Spin City, The Rocky Horror Picture Show).
The film begins with Guerara invading Sardun by blowing up a model village. Two high ranking government officials (Khambatta and Edward Mulhare - better known as Devon Miles from Knight Rider) are sent to enlist the help of Megaforce. Megaforce HQ is basically a budget Bond villain headquarters with lots of ridiculous looking vehicles, machines with blinking lights, and people in the background randomly pushing buttons and twiddling knobs.
After Mulhare devises a pointlessly overly complicated plan, the sassy Khambatta is given a time-honoured "I may only be a woman but I can do everything a man can do... and
better" storyline but is told she can't go on the mission anyway. So, that last ten minute training with guns and parachutes montage was a waste of time then.
Wearing a snazzy looking silver jumpsuit, a headband and cheesy grin, Bostwick leads his team into battle where everything goes a bit tits up and all the wrong things explode, but then everything goes right, and with a flying motorbike and some embarrassingly cheap blue screen work, Megaforce eventually explode all the right things and (SPOILER) win the day.
Bad acting, sluggish direction, accidentally hilarious special effects, and a truly heroic music score which combines the best bits of Battlestar Galactica and The A-Team, Megaforce was actually touted to be the next big thing after Star Wars. It bombed tragically, and even a member of the catering staff has apologised for it on the Imdb.
/10
SHE-WOLVES OF THE WASTELANDaka Phoenix the Warrior
(1988)
Another sci-fi adventure starring Persis Khambatta, She-Wolves of the Wasteland promises plenty but delivers very little. Basically Mad Max with a virtually all female cast, the story about an old witch controlling the sex of babies so no more males can ever be born, on paper, could actually have legs. Unfortunately, on film, it really doesn't.
Essentially ninety minutes of bikinis, big hair, dune buggies and machine guns, the film just sort of plods along throwing in some gratuitous - but welcome - female nudity along the way. Annoyingly however, lead actress Kathleen Kinmont (Halloween 4, Bride of Re-Animator) keeps her loincloths on at all times. Pah!
Highlights include two women showering in a waterfall like they're posing for Playboy, some gloriously overacted death scenes, character names such as Riptide, Whiplash, Chainsaw, and Snapper, a baby suddenly being delivered without any warning whatsoever followed by the whole film flashing forwards five or six years but failing to even acknowledge it in the script, some of the worst (but bounciest) gladiatorial combat ever filmed, and an admittedly funny bunch of wasteland mutants who worship the almighty TV.
All the baddies have Stormtrooper Syndrome, unable to hit even those stood directly in front of them, the main villain is just an old lady in a wheelchair, and the whole thing just sort of...
happens.
4/10