All Rise...

Appellate Judge Patrick Bromley is a semi-retired barbarian.

The Charge

Dealers in death—exterminators of the 21st century!

The Case

One of several Italian The Road Warrior rip-offs released quickly in the wake of the success of George Miller's landmark 1982 film, Enzo Castellari's The New Barbarians is garish and hyper violent and occasionally silly. It's also impossibly entertaining for fans of early '80s sci-fi. Like its cinematic brethren 1990: The Bronx Warriors, Escape From the Bronx and Exterminators of the Year 3000, The New Barbarians boils everything we love about these post-apocalyptic movies down to its bare essentials. It's light on plot but heavy on tacky production design, tricked out future cars and exploding bodies. Isn't that why we go to the movies?

It's the distant future of 2019: the nuclear apocalypse has hit and small bands of survivors have split off into different factions. One group, known as The Templars, seek to wipe out the plague of mankind by killing every last living person. Another group of religious colonists are in danger of being slaughtered until Scorpion (Giancarlo Prete, billed here as "Timothy Brent"), a former Templar who resembles a post-apocalyptic Eric Bogosian, takes it upon himself to protect them. With the help of the beautiful, big-haired Alma (Anna Kanakis, The Final Inquiry) and headband-wearing, bow-and-arrow-sporting Nadir (Fred Williamson, From Dusk Till Dawn), Scorpion takes on the Templars to make the wasteland safe for everyone.

In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, The New Barbarians (released in the US as Warriors of the Wasteland, because these movies rarely had just one title) would be just another dopey Road Warrior rip off in which a loner takes on a band of savages to protect a more peaceful people against the backdrop of the apocalypse. But Enzo Castellari knows his way around low-budget exploitation, meaning the movie delivers on an action set piece every couple of minutes and is colorfully over the top enough to stand on its own. The success is in the details, whether it's the reveal of some weird weapon on one of the vehicles or the clear plastic tent the characters use to shield themselves from radiation during sex (but at no other time in the movie). Fred Williamson is on hand just to be larger-than-life and wear a ridiculous costume while shooting exploding arrows at everyone and everything. There are so many scenes of Templars getting hit with an arrow, grabbing it and then exploding into hundreds of bloody chunks. It literally never stops being the best thing ever.

Though he has a tendency to overuse slow motion when emphasizing a stunt, Castellari shoots the kind of clean, straightforward action that's too rare in contemporary films. I don't know if it's because the movie is shot in Italy or because it's an independent effort, but there's a sense of recklessness and danger to the stunts that gives The New Barbarians an added thrill—we would ask ourselves "How did they do that?" if we didn't already know that the answer is "They launched a human being 30 feet into the air." Comparing the movie to something like The Road Warrior isn't necessarily fair, because George Miller was getting away with just as much crazy stuff in that movie as Castellari does here.

Blue Underground does their usual great work with the 1080p transfer on The New Barbarians. The colors pop, detail is plentiful in most scenes and there's a solid layer of grain that makes the image pleasantly film-like. The lossless mono track is a little on the thin side, but the dialogue (presented only in the English dub) is always audible and clear. Director Castellari is joined by his son and moderator David Gregory for a feature commentary that's as lively and fun as the one they recorded for 1990: The Bronx Warriors (out on Blu-ray the same day as this one), discussing the production and the cast. Part Two of the interview with Castellari and producer Fabrizio De Angelis (part one is on the Bronx Warriors disc) continues the engaging conversation, this time with a focus on New Barbarians and how they approached trying to add scope to the low-budget production. There's also a good interview with co-star Fred Williamson, who discusses his work not just in this movie but his career overall, including the story of how he came to be known as "The Hammer." Also included in the supplemental section is a gallery of marketing and production stills, as well as trailers for a couple of Castellari films.

I had such a crazy amount of fun with The New Barbarians. Despite being derivative and more than a little goofy, it delivers the goods in high eccentric fashion. It's the kind of movie that features a man in clear plastic bubble armor and Giovanni Frezzi ("Bob" from The House by the Cemetery) as a child mechanic. It's not for everyone, but if either of those things means anything to you, it's worth tracking down. Besides, if the movie is right, there are only four more years until the apocalypse. Consider The New Barbarians a learning tool.

The Verdict

Not Guilty.

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