1990: The Bronx Warriors
release year: 1982
genre: action/adventure
viewing setting: home Bluray 2/12/22
synopsis: Everything's great in the abandoned-to-gangs Bronx section of New York, until a rich woman wanders in there and everything gets crazy.
impressions: Many reviews tout this Italian B-movie as a combination of The Warriors, Escape From New York, and The Road Warrior (all of which were far better films.) The truth is, it's mostly the first two, and none of the third; there are no high-speed chase/battles to be found here. In fact, this is NOT a post-apocalyptic movie at all, and I don't know why people say it is. There was no nuclear war, no decline of civilization...as far as I could tell, the government just chose to start ignoring a section of New York. There are no walls, no armed guards - it's more that the police and such simply don't go there. And I don't blame them, because there's nothing to do there except join one of a number of distinctive gangs (bikers, pimps, roller-skating hockey players, underground dwellers with face paint, and even one gang that tap dances.) At one point, a meet between two of the gangs takes place with some random guy in the background jamming away on a drum set, which everyone just ignores. What the hell? Anyway, this rich soon-to-be-heiress flees into this place because she somehow thinks it will be a better life. Somehow, she doesn't get assaulted or killed, and instead becomes the girlfriend of the leader of the biker gang...which causes others to be suspicious, all of which happens in the context of a larger scheme to trick the gangs into fighting each other. And then the outside world (or at least its largest corporation) decides that they have to get her back at any cost, and sends a crazy cop/ex-con in to get that done. All of this is absurd, since it's hardly ignoring and forgetting about the Bronx. Anyhow, there are a number of pretty good fights, and some gunplay, and at the end there's a massive battle which includes flamethrowers (and the people hit by the fire grab their faces and scream.) This was bad, and watching it was tough at times. My wife, as she often does with bad movies, compared it to Sharkenstein, to which my response was "See, you can make fun of Sharkenstein because the people who made that didn't know what they were doing. But these people were actually competent...they just chose to make a bad movie." I think that about sums things up.
acting: Mark Gregory (real name Marco Di Gregorio) is the youthful, long-haired leader of the biker gang. I suspect his lines were dubbed, but either way, he walks around with this strange posture, like he's got an iron rod shoved up his butt. He's also - while lean and in shape - not quite as big as the guy on the cover of the movie that's supposed to be him. Vic Morrow is some sort of cop who ends up being a bad guy and cackling like a lunatic. Fred Williamson is the leader of the well-dressed, cultured pimp gang but doesn't bring enough backup when he joins the fray. Elisabetta Dessy is his main woman, who fights not only with a whip but also with sharp pointed fingertip-spikes. Stefania Girolami is the stupid rich girl. John Loffredo is a troublemaker within the biker gang. George Eatman is the tall, martial arts-using leader of the roller-skating gang.
final word: Barely watchable imitation of several superior movies.
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