Warriors of the Wasteland

2019 A. D. The nuclear holocaust is over.

In a harsh post-apocalyptic world, all that’s left are a few starving groups wandering the wasteland, with only one man willing to protect them from a ruthless gang bent on wiping all of humanity from the face of the earth.

Warriors of the Wasteland popped up in one of my streaming queues. It was free to watch, and since I’ve always loved the Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland Warrior genre, a fact that has come up a couple of times recently, so I figured… why not? As I settled in to watch, in the wee hours of the morning, I was pleased to see that, like any good late-night-cable cheap piece of garbage, the warning list of possible offenses at the start of the film included: Nudity, violence, smoking, foul language, and sexual content.

So, there’s at least that to look forward to.

Filmed in Italy, most likely over one long coke-fueled weekend, Warriors of the Wasteland was originally titled: The New Barbarians. It’s the kind of film where you can clearly see that it’s not the sassy little kid sidekick or the hero’s sexy lady friend who are doing those stunts, but a giant male stuntman in a really bad wig.

Released two years after one of the greatest films of all time, The Roadwarrior, it’s painfully clear from the start that this film is basically the most uninspired and dirt cheap piece of European Mad Max fanfic that you could dare imagine. This is a film where a wild gang of Glam Rock-looking bad guys—all dressed like a cross between Stormtroopers, football players, and mummys,—called The Templars, intend to purge the wasteland of all the innocent dirty junkyard hippies who live there, because The Templars want nothing more than to destroy all human life, because of some vague evil reasons that are never really clearly stated.

They’re bad guys, basically.

But bad news for The Templars, there’s a hero who’s standing in their way, a man who drives the post-apocalyptic version of The Homer by Porcubimmer Motors.

That hero’s name is Scorpion, a Joe Namath-looking “bad ass” in a sheepskin jacket, whose best friend is a creepy little blonde child, purporting to be a mechanical genius, who is the one responsible for building Scorpion’s ridiculous car.

That dome lights up green at night, by the way…

Scorpion is a lone warrior, who is apparently just out there, driving around the wasteland aimlessly, and killing all the Templars he comes across.

The film begins nine years after a nuclear apocalypse happened in 2010 (thanks, Obama), as the dirty junkyard hippies are cavorting excitedly, because they’ve just discovered “The Signal,” a radio broadcast that supposedly originates in Earth’s last city. Unfortunately, before the dirty junkyard hippies can figure out where that city is located, they’re attacked by the Templars, who are all wearing big shoulder pads, and are riding on dirt bikes and armored go-carts. Even more unfortunately for the dirty junkyard hippies, those dirt bikes and armored go-carts have cannons, flamethrowers, ramming spears, and spinning saw-blades, all of which definitely look like they’re one hundred percent made out of metal, not tinfoil and plastic.

One hundred percent metal.

Then, after some of the slowest and most carefully set-up go-cart/dirt-bike-centric stunts that I’ve ever seen—so slow that I often expected the bombastically panicking dirty junkyard hippies to simply outrun the vehicles—the action switches to our hero, Scorpion, as he saves a seemingly perpetually confused woman, who is being menaced by other Templars. It’s at this point that we learn that Scorpion was once a member of the Templars as well, but he had a falling out with the rest of the group, and everyone involved is still a bit sore over it. In short, there’s a lot of hurt feelings there, and neither side is willing to say, “I’m sorry.”

This leads to more terribly choreographed car-fighting, so basically we all have to suffer due to Scorpion and the Templars’ refusal to hug it out, but in the end, Scorpion drives off with the still seemingly slightly perplexed young woman. He pulls over later, bandages her wound, and then she repays him by making sweet, sweet love to him.

Later, Scorpion is nearly killed during an ambush, but he is saved by Nadir, a headband-wearing, explosive-arrow-shooting frenemy, who also drives a big go-cart with a bubble dome. Nadir is being played by none other than Fred “The Hammer” Williamson, the film’s big name star import all the way from the United States. Mr. “The Hammer” Williamson is a former football player, as well as an actor, who had been forced to flee to Italy due to the shame of having once played a rollerskating bank robber on the TV show CHIPs, which I assume is the reason why his character is named Nadir, as being in this film makes it clear that he was at a very low point in not just his career, but in his life in general.

Eventually, the still generally baffled woman decides to join the last remaining caravan of dirty junkyard hippies in their search for The Signal’s source. Scorpion drives off, a little miffed, because it means the end of their sweet, sweet love-making, and he is almost immediately captured by the Templars, who then tie him up, so that the Templar’s leader can sexually assault him in a scene that looks like an outtake from the Duran Duran “Wild Boys” video.

I’d say that you have to see this scene to believe it, but I wouldn’t actually advise that anyone watch any part of this film.

Luckily, Nadir shows up and saves Scorpion once again, and the duo then have an extended training sequence to make Scorpion feel better about himself. Meanwhile, the dirty junkyard hippies are being slaughtered by the Templars. Upon hearing this, and now clad in see-through plastic armor that was built by his creepy little blonde kid best friend, a newly-focused Scorpion shows up on the scene just in time to save his somehow still-bewildered lady friend.

Warriors of the Wasteland is a terrible movie.

Just… flat out terrible. It is a completely inept and badly done film in every way. It’s the kind of movie that makes you wonder just how the hell it was ever made, or how anyone involved ever thought it was a good idea in the first place, or how any of them were ever allowed to work in the industry ever again. Every aspect, from the vehicles, to the costumes, to the action scenes, to the story, up to and including the entire world they put up there on the screen, it’s all so badly done.

Badly done, and so god damn bizarre.

As an odd relic of a bygone era of Hollywood, Warriors of the Wasteland is a genuine curiosity, albeit a malformed one, not to mention one that very quickly wears out it’s welcome, simply due to the fact that it is basically unwatchable.

Unwatchable.

This is one of those films where at first, if you didn’t google it, you maybe wouldn’t quite be able to put your finger on why it was so bad, and also so odd, and when you did finally look it up, you’d go: “Ah… of course, it’s Italian.”

Italian cinema in a nutshell…

Anyway, like The Golden Child, this is another film that, as I was watching it, I realized that I’d probably seen it before, probably during one of those brief times back when I was elementary school age, and we had cable, and even back then, in spite of my love of the Post-apocalyptic Warrior genre, I knew it was terrible, so I wiped it from my mind. I will not make such a mistake again.

Warriors of the Wasteland is so bad, it’s not even fun to watch and laugh at.

Just forget I mentioned it.