This time we decided to lighten the tone a bit and focus on two films that depict the END OF CIVILIZATION ON PLANET EARTH! The post-apocalyptic genre is one of our favorites, and it has produced some standout examples, including
Omega Man,
Planet of the Apes,
Road Warrior and countless others. We start off by looking at 1977's
Damnation Alley, loosely based on a novella by the great
Roger Zelazny, which has a band of survivors making a desperate trek across the ruined center of a post-world-war-three America. They make the trip inside the actual star of the film, the
Landmaster, a true engineering marvel and something which still impresses today, decades after it's creation. Starring
George Peppard and
Jan-Michael Vincent, with a top-notch supporting cast, this film delivers the goods, along with giant scorpions and killer cockroaches! Next we travel to Italy, for the 1983 epic from
Sergio Martino 2019: After the Fall of New York. In this lazy remake of the incredible
Escape from New York, we have a ruined America, split into two factions, the Euraks and the Federation. The radioactive fallout from a global nuclear war has rendered every female infertile. The federation's "Genetic Robot" determines there's a lone fertile woman in the ruins of New York, bastion of the Euraks, so they send in the hero Parsifal and two sidekicks to retrieve her for a rocket ride to Alpha Centauri to continue the human race...this movie is bad, really bad. Is it so bad that you should avoid it, or is it so bad that you should watch it instantly...? Tune in and hear what we thought of both of these beauties.
