Rating: 2.5/5
Cult Movie Challenge 2024 | 13/52 | Joe D’Amato
In the post-apocalyptic future of 2025, New York City is a nuclear wasteland.
The radio gives a regular radiation count like it’s the weather report. In the shambled subways, rats pick at the remains of an older woman. Someone recovers the body so he and his accomplice can eat what the rats didn’t.
A siren goes off. Officers in gas masks carry strange readers, scanning the ruins for mutants. Two people try to sneak past, but the officers turn and fire their automatic weapons. An officer kicks one over.
They're just pariahs — nothing to fear from them except contamination. It's the mutants we have to eliminate, or they'll take over.
Thanks, Officer Exposition!
Starting soon is Endgame, an annual tradition since 2012, in which elites choose a poor district for hunters to murder prey. Players can choose to be hunters or prey. Prey can surrender at a substantial financial loss. Otherwise, they must survive until the end to win.
If this sounds like The Running Man, you’re not wrong! However, this movie came out several years before The Running Man film adaptation. The setup of the first act suggests this may have influenced The Running Man movie. However, I prefer The Running Man to this.
The movie initially received more comparisons to Mad Max, although I’m having a hard time pinning down the similarities beyond “funny costumes in a futuristic hellscape.” Then again, Mad Max defined that genre.
No one has a personality beyond their face paint or hilarious costumes. The capitalism critique is present but shallow. The sets seem identical like they’re running through the same hallway from different angles.
The plot gets more fun when they move away from the Hunger Games shit and into Ron helping mutants escape the city. It’s not great, but it’s watchable.
** Stray Thoughts / Spoilers **
- The dojo where dudes are “practicing” killing each other is hilarious.
- The erotic sax music as a barrel rolls by like fucking Donkey Kong.
- Involution, de-evolution, just like the Super Mario Bros. movie! (the good one).
- The blind monks stumble around after they kill their seer.
- George Eastman rolls that dude’s head off his body.
- The kid going full Carrie/Magneto and taking out that army, thereby confirming the government’s fears about mutants.
- How is Ron going to safely navigate the wasteland with a crate full of gold?
- Rather than stage a knife fight, which would require choreography, they go to credits.