1990: The Bronx Warriors (1982)

Directed by Enzo G. Castellari. Starring Mark Gregory, Fred Williamson, Vic Morrow, John Loffredo, Stefania Girolami, Christopher Connelly, Betty Dessy, Ennio Girolami. [R]

In the not-too-distant future (1990, to be exact), society has all but collapsed, and the Bronx has become a desolate battleground for hideously-attired street gangs (and, in the background of one shot, children playing basketball?). To describe the story any further would be a cheat, since this incoherent disaster of a movie can’t decide how it even wants to tell it; the obvious distinction of being described as “The Warriors meets Escape from New York” will suffice. What doesn’t suffice is anything related to skill, technique or entertainment value. The acting and character work—especially from a young punk called Trash (Gregory), who walks like a woman with a wedgie, rear-end thrust out like he’s working it for catcalls—is pretty atrocious across the board (save for the nuanced effort from a bug that wanders onto the camera lens aimed at the helicopter during the climax). But who cares about personality or orderly storytelling in B-movie junk like this, right? What tanks this one completely are poorly-edited scenes that always either drag on forever or end abruptly, action choreography out of an unambitious high school stage performance, and bottom-of-the-barrel production values, even by Italian cheapie-exploitation standards (was the budget for the sets and costumes ₤ 8,000?). If you can’t even make flamethrower-wielding stormtroopers on horseback the least bit exciting, you shouldn’t try at all.

9/100