Movie Spotlight: Warriors of the Wasteland (1983)

Enzo Castellari shot this entire film on the outskirts of Rome. On what he himself described as an "incredibly small" budget. With vehicles that one Letterboxd reviewer called "BattleBots made of papier-mache and aluminum foil." The villain gang wears puffy white uniforms with groin straps and boob bubbles. The hero drives what appears to be a modified Pontiac with a missile launcher in the trunk.

It is one of the greatest things ever committed to film.

The NFL Player Firing Exploding Arrows

Fred Williamson, former AFL/NFL defensive back nicknamed "The Hammer," plays Nadir. A nomadic warrior who rides around the post-nuclear wasteland shooting people with exploding arrows. Looking phenomenal while doing it.

How does an NFL player end up in Italian exploitation cinema? Williamson built connections by selling his own blaxploitation films at markets in Cannes and Milan. He proposed making movies directly with Italian distributors so both sides could profit. It worked. Throughout the 1980s he starred in a run of Italian B-movies: 1990: The Bronx Warriors, The New Gladiators, the Black Cobra series. In every single one, he has the time of his life.

Reviewers call his performance here "charm and sly fun" with a "knowing goofiness." He knows exactly what movie he's in. He's the only one who does.

Imperial Stormtroopers Designed by ABBA

The Templars are the villain gang, led by George Eastman (real name: Luigi Montefiori, most famous for playing a cannibal in one of the most notorious Video Nasties ever made). Their costumes defy rational description. White puffy suits. Plexiglas armor. Fabulous locks, bangs, bouffants with distinctive dye jobs. One member has a purple mohawk. Their leader wears what one reviewer described as looking like he "escaped from a fetish dungeon."

Their vehicles are worse. Or better. Modified golf carts, dune buggies outfitted with spinning decapitation blades, flamethrowers, what appears to be a giant screwdriver. They travel at approximately 15 miles per hour. The threat level is debatable.

The Goblin Connection

The score is by Claudio Simonetti, the keyboardist from Goblin. The band that scored Dario Argento's Suspiria and Dawn of the Dead. Rather than phone it in, Simonetti delivered what reviewers call "an astoundingly catchy synthesiser riff" backed by sparkling percussion, electric guitars, ambient beeping "as if from abandoned signal stations."

Death Waltz Recording Company released the soundtrack on limited edition gatefold vinyl. It sold out. Of course it did.

The Director Tarantino Gave a Cameo

Enzo G. Castellari is a legitimate action cinema legend. His 1978 war film The Inglorious Bastards was so beloved by Quentin Tarantino that he borrowed the title (deliberately misspelled), cast Castellari in a cameo as a German general, released a featurette of the two of them talking. Castellari's trademark slow-motion techniques directly influenced Tarantino's visual style.

Castellari filmed the action sequences in Warriors of the Wasteland at three different frame rates: 24fps, 55fps, 96fps. The variation changed the impact during editing. Same kinetic approach that made his spaghetti westerns work. Applied to golf carts with flamethrowers, the results are unique.

He also cast his own brother, Ennio Girolami, as the villain Shadow. Under the pseudonym "Thomas Moore," naturally.

The Mad Max Knockoff That Knows It's a Knockoff

This film exists because Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior made money. It belongs to the early-1980s Italian post-apocalyptic wave, a cycle of shameless knockoffs that included 1990: The Bronx Warriors, 2019: After the Fall of New York, Endgame. All shot cheaply in and around Rome. Most of them starred either Fred Williamson or George Eastman. Some starred both.

Variety criticized the slow-motion sequences for comparing unfavorably to George Miller's high-speed approach. They're not wrong. But they're missing the point. AllMovie captured it better: "Neither smart nor original, but a riot for anyone who gets off on Mad Max and all of its junky followers."

One Letterboxd reviewer put it more simply: "It's like watching Mr. Rogers Neighborhood go through a nuclear holocaust."

The Line That Explains Everything

The villain One delivers this line with absolute conviction: "We have been chosen to make others pay for the crime of being alive."

That's the energy. Stream it.

Drama

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Streaming now on Relay.