Warriors of the Wasteland

Warriors of the Wasteland (i.e. The New Barbarians; I Nuvori Barbari) (1983)

Runtime: 91 minutes

Directed by: Enzo G. Castellari

Starring: Giancarlo Prete, Fred Williamson, George Eastman (RIP), Anna Kanakis, Ennio Girolami

From: Deaf International/Fulvia Film

RIP George Eastman. After Jack Taylor, another familiar face in European genre films passed away recently. I’ve only seen a few movies with the giant (6’9, i.e. 2.06 meters!) actor who also wrote some films but I know some mutuals would want to hear the news if they hadn’t already-he died on the 19th at the age of 83.

Don’t confuse this w/ 2019: After the Fall of New York, despite The New Barbarians/Warriors of the Wasteland also being set in 2019 “after the nuclear holocaust” and the film also featuring Eastman. This was rather blatantly “inspired” by Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior-OK, I can’t sugarcoat it, the film is a ripoff. Eastman leads a gang known as The Templars, who want to exterminate all of humanity as the world’s a wasteland anyhow. I suppose he supports the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement…

Our hero is Scorpion, portrayed by Italian actor Giancarlo Prete. He meets a woman named Alma, who sadly doesn’t do all that much besides look pretty. There’s also Bob from The House by the Cemetery, a Fulci I haven’t tackled yet but will later in the year and several mutuals were bemused by his presence. However, the highlight acting-wise was from Fred Williamson-as typical, he portrayed an Alpha Male who was a deus ex machina more than once & possessed much more swagger than Scorpion, to the degree that his character NADIR hooked up w/ a random supporting woman character. I’ve never viewed The House by the Cemetery-yet; that’ll change later in the year-but multiple mutuals found it funny that child actor Bob from the film has a memorable supporting role here.

Barbarians/Warriors was filmed on the cheap and is silly crap. At the same this, this was a cheesy fun time which gave what B-movie afficionados would want: explosions, decapitations, car chases-albeit rather slower than the ones you saw in George Miller’s films-fire, exploding arrows, bravado, pew pew laser guns, & more. It definitely gave me what I wanted: to me, THE highlight was the wild, on-fire synth score from the great Claudio Simonetti.

As Eastman played his villain role rather well, this was not only a satisfactory way to tip my cap, but also a nice experience. Once in awhile, I’m alright w/ experiencing such foolishness-it’ll never become more commonplace in my cinematic diet.