POST-APOCALYPSE MOVIE REVIEW
By James M Dakin
Copyright 2009
www.bisonpress.com
TIME OF THE WOLF
Rated R, 2003, subtitled in English
Isabelle Huppert and lots of other French dudes.
The movie starts off after a disaster. One can’t be sure but it seems the basic theme
throughout is lack of pure water and dying livestock so the disaster it most likely
contamination of the water supply throughout the country. A family pulls up in their
minivan to a vacation home. Gets out, starts unloading a few boxes of groceries. They
get inside and there is some other guy with his family and he is armed. This is where the
English subtitles come in pretty handy because the strange mother has a screaming kid
with her. If I had been trying to listen to the conversation I wouldn’t have been able to
hear much of anything. And they must have gotten the screaming baby soundtrack cheap
because you hear it a friggin lot through the movie. Sure, sure, we all know as soon as
people start toppling over dead from thirst things get all traumatic and kids seem to sense
that everything will get lots better if they start bawling. But, this irritation doesn’t start
until later. At first, you just think it’s as annoying as trying to read subtitles.
*
Dad and Mom and two ten to twelvish year old kids are the owners of the cabin. The
stranger inside with his wife is the one with the screaming kid. Keep this in mind for
what happens next. Dad, blah, blah, why are you here? What do you want? Let the kids
go outside. The kids are excused and Dad doesn’t get one more sentence out when, bam,
the stranger shoots him. You’re thinking, okay, he’s a novice at stealing others supplies
and was nervous so he fires the gun ( it isn’t explained how the civilian gets a gun in
socialist France, since I have nothing against Frogs, their saving our butts from the
British and all, but let’s face facts they didn’t learn a damn thing after the Nazi’s took
over and won’t allow the public to arm themselves ). No, I think that damn kid
screaming drove him over the edge and he went nuts. He tells the wife to take the kids
and leave and Mom is a bit smarter than her rapidly cooling husband who tried to
rationalize with the crazy armed guy while a baby was screaming and she hauls butt.
*
Now, I hate say this, but that’s pretty much it for excitement in this film. It was decently
budgeted, the acting was good, the story wasn’t full of holes until the end ( which I’ll get
too shortly ), but I guess being European it just has to be different. They decided that
different here was to go as slow as possible and say as little as possible. The movie lasts
almost two hours and you wonder why. Were they paid by the minute? They could have
easily wrapped in up in half the time. As I describe the rest of the film, just visualize it
all taking place at a very slow pace. I Could Have Gone And Pissed And Missed Nothing
slow. About as slow as this review. Mom and kids go walking down the road, knock on
a few doors of people they know ( I cleverly deduced this by their names being called out
) and no one will answer. They go into a barn to sleep and Mom tells the kids to stay put
as she visits another house where she finally gets a little help in the way of a few handfuls
of food ( “don’t come back, my husband mustn’t know. We have seven mouths to feed.
It’s because you’ve always been so nice, you see.” ). Finally, karmic payback. They
chow down and go to sleep. The middle of the night daughter wakes up Mom in a panic,
her brother has disappeared. They have no flashlight, so Mom the smoker uses her
lighter to get a handful of hay lit. Keep a fire going, I’m looking for the brother, don’t let
it go out so I can find you, I’m leaving now and coming back to the friggin barn on fire
you silly little twat. They go to sleep and in the morning wake up and there’s the kid.
With another kid, a stranger. The kid doesn’t say where he’s been. This kid, by the way,
turns out to be a lot of work. Oh, boo hoo, daddies dead and your parakeet died and life
so sucks for you just shut up already we all have issues. But of course you don’t really
start hating this little punk until later. He looks innocent and doesn’t say much but he
turns out to be pretty high maintenance. Okay, new kid is the girls age ( she’s the oldest )
and all glaring and full of attitude and right away we want to kick his ass. I don’t know
why Mom invited him along unless it was so her daughter and this guy could act all
terribly European teenaged angst and such.
*
Walk along, look for breakfast but all the dead sheep are dead long enough to have
maggots, swipe the clothes off the dead guy since it’s cold out ( the only sensible thing
this delinquent does the whole film). And then they come to a train station and things
really start slowing down. Young punk steal a pair of eyeglasses ( to start fires with ) and
the train station group tries to stop him and he hides in the woods and the daughter goes
out there to meet him once in awhile acting all hurt he’s ungrateful for the medicine or
food but what did she expect since he’s a punk but she’s probably mooning for him and
it’s all terrible French and sophisticated and stupendously boring. A group of traders
come along on horses with water to trade, some foreigner ( Polish? ) in the group all
weepy and screaming ( her screaming blending in with all the babies crying back at the
train station, let’s not forget that ) her baby needs water. The train station group is
always arguing about who’s in charge and how they need to work at blocking the track in
case a supply train comes along ( it seems all areas are suffering from the trains not
running and no supplies are getting through ) and other crap. Trying to show us how
selfish and greedy and unorganized everyone will be but just giving me a headache with
all the shouting. Shut up already, I’m trying to read the damn subtitles.
*
It just goes on and on and some crap about “the Just”. In all the world there are only 36
and if one dies the world ends and I wonder if the professed train station leader is one?
But I don’t think he acts like one of the Just. What the hell are they talking about. I guess
it’s a French thing, I wouldn’t understand. Then another guy is talking about how people
throw themselves into fires and burn up. Again, what is he talking about? But in the end,
after a whole lot of nothing happens, old neighbors fighting ( they seriously don’t like
Poles in France it seems ) and a search for a stolen goat ( by the punk of course ) and a
bunch of other crap, the brother tries to throw himself into the nighttime bonfire ( they
keep it going to alert that train that never comes ) but is stopped by the night time guard.
There, there, you’ll feel better after you cry, rock in my arms, blah, blah. And the next
scene is the view outside of a moving train but it never shows if this is the one picking up
the group or if it is just someone remembering how the trains used to run and then the
movie ends. Huh? That made no sense.
*
Okay, a few great lessons here. Your retreat could have the bad guys already in there, so
have a BOB buried nearby so you have a flashlight and don’t have to burn hay for light.
Crying kids kill. Don’t trust funny talking foreigners. And, French movies are really
weird.
*Genre Rating- Excellent. All action happens after the collapse, no phony last minute
rescue.
*Nudity Rating-Poor. Only one shot, and it was a corpse being prepared which has zero
appeal.
*Overall Rating- Fair to good. A well done movie only suffering from slow pacing. The
weirdness may have to do with the cultural differences.
END

EVER SINCE THE WORLD ENDED
Rated NR 2001
By Calum Grant and Joshua Litle
This movie uses a documentary style, the interviewer and cameraman recording
interviews of the survivors of a super plague. At first I had fears of Blair Witch BS, jerky
camera action and what not, but the whole thing was rather well done. Overall a very
good effort. Now, that said, the film does suffer from a severe California Lifestyle
outlook. I had forgotten how totally out of touch “those people” were, having
successfully escaped that mad house almost twenty years ago, but this movie definitely
brought that insanity back to life.
*
Twelve years after the plague started ( of unknown origins with no known cure ) and ten
years after the end which left only 186 people left in San Francisco, our two guys decided
to do the whole interview for prosperity shtick. Kind of the book Warday, but on video
and in the Bay Area and just north. It isn’t just talking heads, they show people actually
doing the things they are talking about such as fishing with spears and poles on the beach.
The pace is good and never lets up and they bounce back and forth in the interviews so it
doesn’t get boring. Plus, there is plenty of live video as the two travel with others. There
are shots of the Golden Gate bridge falling apart, clearly the CG budget buster here even
though the film never seems low budget or cheesy. But, good Christ the feel of the whole
thing.
*
Think of painfully hip young people. Now, picture painfully hip and young urban
Californians. All with lifetime indoctrination in politically correct thought. These people
are their own culture, and if Baby Jesus had any love for us they would be their own
country. Those people living in California, I’m sorry to hear that. Those Californians
cursing me right now, tough crap. I was born and raised there and I am qualified to
pronounce you friggin wacked. The whole thread this movie had was that with almost
total population decline everyone left had the abundant resources to do as they deemed
fit. You had a women’s commune. One of them was interviewing for a sperm donor.
She wanted a child, not a family. The women’s commune would all pitch in as the
family unit. Way to go, keep that PC brainwashing going. Another teenager was tired of
the reminiscing of the adults and had gone from foster parent to foster parent until he was
satisfied with a group of kids raising themselves. One guy was living up in the trees. He
only used a crossbow so he stayed silent and he had animal totems in his hat. The
ultimate groovy nature tree hugging lifestyle. Two guys were slackers, smoking weed all
the time. Their tip was to follow the wild dog packs to edible and abundant food ( just be
careful they don’t turn on you, dude ).
*
Every decision was made by arguing amongst themselves. One psycho guy had started
fires, endangered the city. He was run out of town. After “listening to the ghosts” in the
wilderness away from everybody he wanted to return to the city and be with other people.
Of course everyone was afraid he’d start fires again. Blah, blah, talk, talk, what do we do
about crazy dude? Kill him? Too barbaric, who are we to play God, yada, yada. The
guy ends up dead by an unknown executioner. Most of their reaction was that there were
too few people left and it was a tragedy. Morons. Any normal society after the crash a
sentry would have smoked him as he came back. Or, plenty of volunteers would have
stepped forward to off the silly twit. And been praised for the effort. Instead, these idiots
are talking about not allowing hate to become toxic or some such drivel. Hate is good,
dumbass. It keeps you focused and alive.
*
And then there was the conspiracy nut ( the plague was by the CIA/NSA/CDC- I don‘t
have proof yet, but I will! ). Portrayed as weak chinned and almost effeminate and
completely off his rocker. Okay, I will admit that most conspiracies are a bit much and
their devotees a bit too focused with almost no sense of humor. Although, let me just say
look at the hole in the Pentagon. It’s the size of a bunker buster rocket, far too small to
be the fuselage of an airliner. But that’s all I’ll say about that. My point here is that in
the movie this portrayal struck me as a bit pro-liberal PC big daddy government and a bit
anti-individual. Maybe I’m reading too much into it. But the conspiracy guy was a clear
bit of propaganda one way or another. Then, near the end, one of the traveling group was
shot by unknown assailants ( perhaps another negative portrayal, the evil unseen rural
dweller attacks the hip and cool city dude ) and still several days out they can’t get him
back since they’re almost out of water. And his wound is starting to smell a bit. Argue,
argue, what do we do, and then another guy shoots the wounded one. Okay, problem
solved. No more burden to carry.
*
To me this kind of goes along with the whole outlook so far. California is the ultimate
idea of personal freedom without any responsibilities ( which is why the Nanny State is
so popular there since it is the only safety net the juvenile society has ). I can’t see
beyond myself, so I’ll eliminate any problem to myself. Pathetic.
*Genre Rating-very good. Not perfect, the mass die off leaving massive supplies to the
survivors seems like a cop out to me. But everything stays consistent. The salvage of
materials to explain what they have is realistic. The lack of people translates into a
believable hunting existence. The gravity water system for the city is explained,
gardening is believable in their climate. Everyone is nicely dressed, explained by
salvage.
*Nudity Rating-piss poor. No skin.
*Overall Rating- very good. While the whole California Culture pollutes the film, there
is no denying it was well made and has a realistic feel to it. Even their sanitized
appearance is excused by youth and a relatively easy and less stressful lifestyle.

DOOMSDAY
Rated UR 2008
Malcolm McDowell and Bob Haskins
This movie was a lot of fun. Think of a mix of 28 Days Later, Mad Max, Escape From
New York and perhaps even Aliens thrown in for good measure. The acting, story,
effects, pacing and everything that makes an entertaining film were great. You might
argue the genre, being an isolated collapse, but that would be the only minor point of
contention.
*
Present day Britain sees a killer plague, starting in Glasgow. The action starts right away
with people being forced into quarantine rioting against the army troops. Troops firing
into the crowd when one of them is all bloody and obviously a plague victim pisses
everyone off when collateral damage from adjacent people being hit in the automatic fire
sets everyone off. One mother and her daughter nearby crouching behind a car. One of
the bullets hit’s the girl in the eye, she’s all messed up. By this time, once mom gets a
bandage on the daughter, the troops have fallen back and big steel doors are closed and
welded shut ( the walls had been set up as part of the quarantine). Mom runs to the last
chopper lifting off with troops and begs them to take the daughter. One troop jumps off
to allow her weight to be taken and off they go. Here comes the roaring crowd all pissed
so you just know those two are toast.
*
Forward thirty years. Daughter is now a saucy fem soldier. She’s with DDS, Department
of Domestic Security. Her and her unit are infiltrating a ship in London with a crime
boss/drug dealer dude to bust him as he makes a deal. They go all ninja inside, come
across some fool soaking in a tub, she sees them and grabs a shotgun and kills one. This
is regrettably the only nude scene of the movie, naked women in tub firing. Fem cop
kills her, but the shots alert drug dude, battle, blah blah. Ship is secured, and of course
what do they find there but, wait for it, plague victims in one of the holds ( full of slaves
drug dude was going to sell ). Now the guys in charge have to worry about another
plague. Okay, back up a little bit. After the Glasgow outbreak, the entire Scottish
country was sealed off. They built a wall the same spot the Romans did and quarantined
the whole area. Wall, sea patrols, no flights over. In effect, the whole country sealed off.
*
Fem cop is chosen by her boss ( played by Bob ) to be the one to lead a team into
Scotland to Glasgow to try to find a cure. A doctor left behind there at a hospital had
been in touch with England for a time after the wall was sealed. He had soldiers and they
had holed up as he attempted research. No word from him for some time, but it was a
place to start. Combat team is assembled, they go in in two big armored cars ( kind of
like Aliens, combat team sent in for search ). They are sweeping the hospital, looking for
papers ( they have a medical dude with them in the team ) or whatever and they are
attacked by Mad Max looking dudes, colored Mohawks and spiked clubs and what not.
One of females poses as a victim, goes Trojan Horse into one of the armored carriers.
Molotov cocktails go flying outside, inside wave attacks at the squad, everyone’s running
around spraying the place with fully automatic fire, great fun is had by all. The few
surviving troops make it back to the one surviving vehicles, they go tearing ass away.
Crossbow sniper shoots through the front windshield ( it had a hole from a previous blunt
object ) and kills the driver, the thing flips over and the last four bale. A sergeant, the
doctor, fem cop and one trooper are left. The first two escape, the trooper is
overwhelmed and fem cop is knocked out and captured. Wakes up, evil Mohawk ruler
questions her, where are you from, hit punch, wail, I’m from beyond the wall. He’s
pretty happy in a psychotic evil leader dude way, now they can escape the quarantine
zone. Fem cop is to kept alive to show them how to get back over the wall ( mines and
automatic machine guns and what not protect it ).
*
The one trooper left is set on fire and everyone tries to eat some of him, it’s a big
cannibal party. Fem cop escapes ( naturally, she’s super ninja fem warrior ), takes the
prisoner next door with her after she claims she’ll lead her to the long lost doctor. Fem
cop hooks back up with sergeant and young combat team doctor, narrow escape from
Mohawk leader dude who is totally pissed off because fem cop killed his main squeeze
who looks pretty rad in face tattoos and none to shabby in a leather S&M looking outfit
so she was obviously his favorite who never got kicked out of bed for eating crackers.
They escape on a handy steam locomotive after other fem prisoner meets up with archery
dude who had been waiting for her. Off they go to the country, looking for old doctor.
And they are captured by knight dudes on horses. Ninja fem cop could have taken them,
but she knew they would lead her to old doctor dude so she let them win that round. Old
doctor dude is now a king, set up in an old castle, commanding his new medieval
kingdom of naturally plague immune knight dudes. Satellites had been monitoring the
cities, he had gone undetected in the countryside.
*
Off with their heads, commands the king, fem cop goes single combat on an armored
knight dude with spear and mace. It’s close but in the end she kicks his butt. They
escape, go into an old military base under a mountain, find some cool looking British
sports car in storage, take tearing off in that. And who do they run into but the Mohawk
guys from the city, all Road Warrior like with crappy welded together vehicles. The car
chase, jumping off one vehicle to another, crashes, crushed bodies, bare knuckle fighting
in a speeding car, great fun is had by all. Evil Mohawk leader is killed after much effort.
Off they go down the road to meet up with a government chopper that will extract them.
Hand over the one girl, she’s immune, her blood sample will show you the cure. Evil
new British leader is along for the ride, fem cop tapes him admitting they waited for the
cure until after more of the population died off, gives tape to cop boss to expose him,
stays behind in Scotland and at the ending scene goes back to the crazy Mohawk dudes
and throws down the evils leaders head and assumes the new crown of crazy Mohawk
dudes queen. Cool.
*
Genre Rating- good to excellent. Even though the plague is localized to Scotland, the
rest of the world quarantines Britain itself so you get a sense of isolation, stagnation,
decay and other collapse type events. It feels like a doomer film.
Nudity Rating-poor to fair. Much more skin than the one fight scene was needed.
Overall Rating-excellent. Well done, with great fun. None stop action, all the over the
top stuff worked well, perhaps because the tone was not serious. You get a feeling that
the ideas gleamed from others was homage, not a rip off. The whole thing worked very
well together and was very enjoyable.
END

DAWN OF THE DEAD
Rated UR, 2004
Ving Rhames
A remake of the 1979 movie from George Romero. And quite a bit better than the
original. Often, when Hollywood drags out the corpse of an old movie they slap some
special effects make-up on and think it will be the next billion dollar box office hit, we all
end up disappointed. More often than not the original is better. Whether it was because
rewatching the old one floods you with nostalgia or simply that the acting and story was
sacrificed for action and flash, it is rare to get a better film the second time around. Look
at the Terminator movies. The first one was the best in story and the only one with a true
feel of a post apocalypse movie. Granted, the story took place before the nuclear war, but
the whole feel of the movie was impeding disaster. And the flashbacks to fighting the
machines was great. That one was done on a relatively tight budget. The next two
movies were kick ass. Wonderful sci-fi action films. But they had no apocalypse film
feel to them. The budgets were huge, and in and of themselves the stories were adequate.
But they didn’t compare to the first film. And the forth Terminator basically was all
explosions and firefights and no story and no feel of a post-collapse world. Even though
it was supposed to be set after the nuke war. That one was a terrible disappointment, it
should hang its head in shame claiming to be a Terminator. Well, Dawn Of The Dead
remake is a totally better upgrade.
*
The special effects are much better, and it has a much better story than the original. At
least the unrated directors cut does, I never saw it in the theatre. I don’t think I even was
aware when it did come out. Either way, I most likely still would have waited even if at
the time I was wallowing in extra cash. If you are going to the theatres you are in essence
supporting a quasi-monopoly. Either your town has only one theatre or most belong to
the same chain. They tend to screw you over on both the ticket and the snacks. I
understand why. At top line movies the studios can take up to 90% of the box office
take. So snacks are the only way to stay open. It certainly doesn’t go to salaries.
Anyway, if the studios would stop paying has been actors ten million a pop for name
recognition instead of making quality stories perhaps the cost would be lower. That
might get me in the friggin movies more often.
*
The movie starts with a nurse coming off shift. Her and hubby have a quickie in the
shower ( with no nudity ) and they go to sleep. To next be awoken by the little girl next
door opening their bedroom door with a bloody face and a look that says its snack time.
Husband goes over, all concerned and obviously his sleep befuddled brain isn’t
screaming out to him that this little bitch wants to take a big chunk out of your neck. Oh,
honey, what’s wrong…aaaargh!!! Munch, munch, bleed out into carpet, die, immediately
wake up and start going after wife to eat her, and not in a good way if you follow my
drift. She manages to escape through the bathroom window, which just goes to show you
that if you have bars on the windows you need to need to move to a safer city because the
bathroom window is always a good back up for escaping cannibals. She jumps in her
car, which she got the keys to right before she escaped to the crapper which shows you
this little gal is always on top of things so if you ever get eaten by cannibals because your
dumb ass didn’t take the bars off the windows she is the nurse you want to see. She goes
peeling out and crashes a bit down the road and awakens with Ving the cop wanting to
shoot her. She’s all cool about it and become almost best buddies. Not quite because
Ving is one of those guys that doesn’t open up a lot and share his feelings. They meet up
with TV sales guy and bald black dude with Prego Russian bride. They all go to the mall.
*
Now, when you break into the mall to escape hungry flesh eaters, and the security guard
upstairs tries to tell you stuff, listen to him. Especially if he is a redneck that knows what
it’s like trying to survive. Those boys know about fighting. And when he tells you not to
let in an arriving bunch of people because they could be contaminated, and he is right, but
you locked him up because he was a little prick and only cared about himself, well,
perhaps you should listen to him after that. Especially after most of the new arrivals
ended up contaminated and one bites the Prego Russian chick and she goes zombie and
pops a little zombie dude. Do you start to listen to the redneck then? No. You are too
much of a dumbass. And when the cynical Yuppie Guy that owns a boat at a nearby
harbor and just wants to stay drunk and boff the blondie, you should also listen to him.
He is selfish and afraid, and that will keep him alive. Hell, there is plenty of food in the
mall, and they have a generator. Just wait for the zombies to die. They can’t stay mobile
for too long if there are no more living flesh meals for them. But, no.
*
Ving stands up and screws his face up in concentration as he tries to think around all his
muscle and he says he is tired of waiting and everyone else thinks it’s a cool idea and
they hot rod up some mall buses and decide to drive out, then boat away. Terrible plan,
but they can’t figure out anything else. I saw a book store, and I’m not sure but I think
there was a movie house. Stay there, you idiots! But they have to leave. And bad things
happen.
*
I won’t spoil the whole thing for you. There are a lot of twists and turns. The whole two
hours goes by quickly. And, I’ve watched this one three times and haven’t gotten bored
yet. One of the best.
*Genre Rating- Top rate. Nothing to spoil it.
*Nudity Rating-Fair. Only two very brief glimpses of boob of medium size.
*Overall Rating-Very good, super. No complaints except not enough boob.

I AM LEGEND
Rated PG-13, 2007
Will Smith
Is it me, or do the best post-apocalypse films come around during the height of fear and
paranoia? Look at the ‘80’s, a gold mine for the genre. The times were very dark after a
near collapse in the 70’s and the fear of the Soviets was high. Look at Kevin Costner in
The Postman. That was a damn good movie yet it has generally always been out of
favor. The times were too good when it came out. Look at the present, a slew of pretty
darn good movies. I Am Legend is one fine post-collapse movie. I liked it when I first
saw it, of course. But watching it a second time it was far more enjoyable. I wasn’t
comparing it as much to Omega Man this time around ( the comparisons aren’t really
valid anyway, since each mirrors the current culture- but both are good in their own way
). I was simply enjoying the story. The second time around I could see how the special
effects really did add to the story. The overgrowth and collapse of the city are really
portrayed well. Also, I could start picking up on all the details I had missed the first time.
This is what computer animation is supposed to do- enhance the story, not substitute for
it.
*
And of course Will Smith is one of the this generations finest actors. I remember going
to see Independence Day twice in the theatres. And that is a first for me. First, I hate the
movie house price rip off. And second, I generally don’t get too excited about summer
mega-hit popcorn movies. But Will Smith ( and, granted, the others ) put out such an
enjoyable movie it was hard to resist. This is one of the few instances where the
independent actor pricing structure pays dividends for the viewer ( there was a lot to be
said about the studio contract actors and affordable movie making ). I would go see Will
Smith act as a melting turd. Of course, you also get a good story, good special effects.
The whole package is there.
*
In 2009 some idiot turned the cure for cancer into a virus. It worked, at first. Then it
mutated and got a little ugly. Over six billion people died. About twelve million folks
survived because of natural immunity. And about six hundred million turned into night
dwelling zombie dudes. Lt. Colonel Robert Neville is working in the army as a scientist
trying to work on the cure. He gets his family out just before the bridges to Manhattan (
ground zero for the disease ) are blown by the fly boys. Three years after that, he is the
only guy left on the island. Deer are everywhere, weeds grow between cars. He survives
quite nicely on venison, corn he grows in the park and food he gets by systematically
looting every building. All the dead cops and soldiers provide plenty of M-16’s and
ammunition. He manually pumps gas from underground tanks for his vehicles and his
generators. His house has lots of defenses and iron shutters and he always gets home
before dark so the zombie dudes ( who survive off of animal rather than human flesh )
don’t know where he is.
*
This existence is endangered by Dr. Neville’s hobby, which is finding the cure for the
disease. He is trying to cure infected mice. When one of those shows promise, he goes
out and captures a zombie dude to inject the serum in. Well, one day he captures a
female. Unknowingly, the zombie leader dude must be bumping uglies with her ( luckily
this is never explored, as zombie sex is gross, a combination of necrophilia and lepers
humping ) because he gets pretty darn pissed. All this time our good doctor thinks the
zombies are regressing and becoming less human and less intelligent. But zombie leader
dude must be the exception. Oh, he’ll scream like the rest of them and grunt a lot. He’s
not going to pick up a windblown Sunday addition of the New York Times and read the
editorial section ( let along wipe hiss ass with it ), or do anything too smart. But he does
hold a grudge and can copy the snaring techniques of the doctor. Yeh, Neville gets a
little crazy and gets caught by zombie dudes in one of their traps. He barely escapes
before zombie dogs attack him. His dog Sam, his only companion for three years, is
killed trying to defend him.
*
Now, while it is true that the whole reason for feeding a dog is so they act as guards and
protectors, Sam was his daughters puppy. His daughter handed daddy the puppy as she
was getting on the helicopter. So his last memory of his daughter is that dog. He pretty
much loses it and goes psycho. All through the movie, he is erecting coping mechanisms
for his isolation. He’s memorized the movie Shrek. He’s set up dummies in a video
store and rather than hoarding films at his house he goes to the store every time he wants
a movie so he can talk to the mannequins. He’s slightly crazy but he keeps himself busy
and mostly sane. As soon as the dog dies, he goes crazy and tears off into the night and
tries to kill all the roving zombies with his SUV, bowling for zombies. He’s trying to get
himself killed. But he is rescued by a chick that survived and heard his radio message (
his location, to any other survivors ). Unfortunately, it might have been better if he had
just done a suicide-by-zombie because he was taken home while it was still dark and now
the zombies know where he lives ( in the Omega Man, zombies try every night to get in.
Here, they are such vicious bad asses that they can get in by zombie wave assaults even
with Claymores planted all around- hence the need to stay secret ).
*
The final assault sees Neville die protecting the chick with a blood sample. That earlier
mentioned zombie chick actually started getting cured. Neville sees that, takes a blood
sample, puts the regular chick in a steel door hidey hole and then as the head zombie
makes it in, he detonates a grenade. Neville found the cure, and died to see it got to a
colony of survivors. Now it’s a win/win. No more zombies and only twelve million
people in the world. No more pollution of food shortages. See, the Greens are right. We
can treat Mother Earth kindly. Just unleash a zombie virus to kill most of us off.
*Genre Rating- Damn good. Even with the unrealistic happy ending ( and the cop out of
unlimited supplies available ) it is a kick ass post-apoc movie.
*Nudity Rating-Sucks bad. No nudity at all. The girls might appreciate Wills gleaming
torso as he exercises but it did nothing for me.
*Overall Rating- One of the best. Damn good.

THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW
Rated PG-13, 2004
Dennis Quaid
At first, I hated this movie. A modern, upgraded from the Seventies, disaster flick. Not a
post-collapse, living after the Apocalypse movie. They say that time heals all wounds.
Four years later, I’m saying to myself that perhaps I was being too harsh. Maybe I was
being unfair, or I just watched it on a bad day. So, I decided to try it again. The second
time around, it was even more worse than I remembered. What a giant hunk of crap this
thing is.
Okay, the acting is just fine. All professionals, no poor performances. The special
effects are really good. The choppers going down from freezing. The tornadoes in L.A.,
etc. They were actually the best part of the movie. The story, however, sucked huge
disproportionately large primate reproductive organs. As far as I can tell, this is a rip off
of the Art Bell book on a quack theory as to why the large mammals died off about
thirteen thousand years ago. Now, keep in mind the Art Bell might be a successful radio
talk show host. His book had a built in audience. I bought a copy, thinking this would be
a cool theory about another way in which we could meet our doom. But the man talks
about UFO’s and other crap. This isn’t even his theory, as I came across an obscure
thirty year old book trying to put forth the same thing, only with actual science. The only
thing unique with Bell’s book is that it threw in some advanced engineering on a tropical
island to keep the UFOologists happy. Same thing, you know, the huge land designs only
visible from satellite ( or flying saucer ). A much more reliable theory on the extinctions,
besides instant freezing which is what is used here and by Bell, is that a huge solar
radiation storm hit earth. Not the little solar flares that our sun belches out, a huge supernova
debris field.
Anyway, the idiots who wrote this took the Art Bell book, threw in some Al Gore
Approved global warming propaganda, got a big budget approved and turned out this
steaming turd. It is nothing more than, say, The Towering Inferno, but with up to date
liberal politics and ice instead of fire.
*Genre Rating-worse of the worse. No collapse, disaster only. The cardinal sin of a
huge rescue effort by the government in the end, even though three seconds of thought
would show it was an impossibility.
*Nudity Rating-worse of the worse. No skin at all, not even bosoms.
*Overall Rating-not a bad movie, certainly no stinker. It just isn’t what we are trying to
watch here. Fair to good as a movie, to be avoided even upon pain of death as an
Apocalypse movie.

28 DAYS LATER
Rated R, 2002
Various cheap English actors
This one is yet another zombie film, but done quit well and one of the best. First off,
there is a group of Greenpeace Birkenstock wearing Volvo driving Dead Head listening
tree hugging animal rights activists that break into a chimp testing lab. Now, considering
how pretty nasty their infection turned out, you would think that perhaps the place would
have been a little better guarded. But, leave it to the British, they are so busy installing a
surveillance camera on every corner in every town all over the nation they most likely
simply didn’t have the manpower. So, a squeaky little lab guy sees them breaking in and
says, wait, wait, danger Will Robinson, danger. They are infectious, oh my. Now, being
super green weenie types they should have immediately felt a kindred spirit with the
nerd, visions of school with bully athletes dancing in their head. But instead, they ignore
sensible cautions against playing around IN LABS with infections stuff. I mean, if it was
me I wouldn’t go near the place. Sorry chimps, you’re just going to have to die for the
cause. I don’t even trust the germs at a hospital, so there is no way I’m going in a
research lab. Look where AIDS and the Swine Flu came from, you know. Anyway, if
the film took that step it would have just been another two fags falling in love kind of
story which England has enough of, thank you. Although, they did pay phallic homage,
which I’ll get to later.
The dumb ass tree hugger chick opens the chimp door and then just looks all surprised
when Bonzo jumps on her face and starts to chew on it. Boom! First infection. This
stuff is super fast. One second you’re getting your flesh dined on cannibal style and in
less than a minute you are a zombie. Actually, you only need to get blood past your skin
to get infected. Just like AIDS, but better since you get to become a zombie. Yes,
zombies suck compared to vampires. Vampires are all regal and cool and get to be bad
ass. Zombies are just gross and decaying. But at least it is some kind of second lease on
life. Just with leprosy, kind of. Okay, 28 days later we visit a hospital were a brain
damaged coma patient wakes up. He is naked in bed with an empty IV in him so you
know its been awhile since he’s eaten. Not that you can usually tell with the Brits as they
are generally thin and pasty anyway. And get this. Full frontal nudity. His dingaling is
just hanging away. Gross. We don’t get to see any boobs most of the movie, and then it
is only zombie boob which is not very sexy and even if it was they showed it jerky
framed and not in great focus. I really felt cheated. And later, we have to see this same
guys butt in a shower scene. Do English like boobs, or not?
The room is locked, but a thoughtful doctor or nurse slid the key into the room before
they turned zombie. See, the coma dude can survive a little longer since there is no way
for anyone to get in ( presumably the door window is shatterproof ). Coma dude, name
of Jim, is a bit confused, wanders around. Thinks it might be an acid flashback or
something. He walks into a church ( after a bunch of wide shots of a deserted city ) and
calls out, hello! Oops, movement below. The priest is now a bloodsucker, which isn’t
much of a career change. He starts running towards Jim, acting all bugged eye and crazy.
Jim hit’s the priest to stun him, feeling bad the whole time because he’s been raised a
good little protestant. Then he hauls ass, the first sensible thing he’s done since he woke
up and scared us with his junk. Others zombies starts chasing him. Luckily for Jim, two
dudes pop out and start Molotov cocktailing the zombie which is way cool since they
keep running until they melt down into a pool of zombie juice. Run away, run away.
Holed up in a convenience store, blah, blah. My name is Jim, my name is big macho
dude, my name in Selena, I’m actually a hot chick as you can tell after I take off my
mask.
I must see my Mum, no it’s not safe. I must. OK, we’ll all go. Mum and Da are toast,
but they took sleeping pills and wine before they got eaten so it’s all cool. But, dumbass
Jim goes downstairs in the middle of the night and watches home movies because he’s all
sad and misses Mum. Zombies see light, attack, big fight, big macho dude gets bit,
Selena starts hacking him to pieces since you only have ten to twenty seconds before they
turn. Now, I wonder where she got her machete, it kicks ass. Plowing right through
bone. Mine won’t even cut the bushes. They haul butt until they see lights blinking in an
upstairs apartment building. Get up right ahead of yet more zombies, these guys are all
freeken over the place. Welcome, blah, blah. We’re out of water, no rain, must leave for
army checkpoint that is broadcasting a safe haven. Off they go, zombies following,
looting upscale markets for food, a wonderful road trip adventure. Until they get to the
checkpoint.
Long story short, the army leader dude is holed up in a nearby mansion with high walls
and barbed wire and he wants women for his soldier boys so they can rebuild the British
race. One assumes they ask the ladies to please keep their bras on so as not to be
offended by boobs. But, no one gets that chance. Jim escapes, comes back to rescue
ladies ( Selena plus the daughter from the apartment building ), turned zombies on the
soldiers. One assumes he was turned into the hero to please the pillow biters that must
love this film. Anyway, they escape and after another 28 days Jim recovers from a
gunshot wound he got while escaping and they try to contact a passing jet. So, as the
movie closes you know there is civilization elsewhere.
*Genre Rating- a damn good end of the world story. OK, again, it’s just on the island.
But it is a pretty darn good show. I even forgive the hint of a government rescue in the
end because it could be realistic. Plus, by portraying the existing military as evil
overlords instead of protectors they made things very realistic.
*Nudity Rating-very disappointing. Too much male nudity and only a brief glimpse of
any female parts. But those were zombie parts and thus hardly count.
*Overall Rating- damn good. Two thumbs up. Cool. It’s such a good movie I can
forgive the homoerotic nonsense. I’ve seen it at least four times. And I’m usually a new
release kind of movie watcher.

CHILDREN OF MEN
Rated R, 2006
Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine
First rate movie. Top acting, plenty of action, a unique take on the story. Unfortunately,
this is a dystopian movie rather than a post-apocalypse movie. The future in Britain
might entail more poverty, a bit of doing without, a larger police state ( directed against
foreigners ) and more pollution as more coal is used in place of oil, but it is nothing like
the end of civilization. It is more like the return of the Blitz, which never ends. There is
a lot of attention paid to detail. A lot of budget went into creating a realistic universe.
There are actually so many small details quickly glanced that you can’t get it all in one or
two viewings. When Clive goes to see a cousin ( or some such family member ) to ask
for official paperwork, check out the pink flying pig from Pink Floyd. But that was an
obvious bit, there are a lot more subdued moments.
Clive’s ex-wife, Julianne, contacts him that a resistance movement needs to smuggle a
girl down to the coast. He’s pretty much slipped into a semi-permanent alcoholic stupor
but eventually agrees. Probably still carrying a torch for her. As she knew he would.
Get papers from cousin, start driving, ambush by bandit dudes, escape, ex-wife shot, hole
up in farm, overhear some talk the ambush was a set up, want to kill leader, take girl and
keep her at farm rather than getting her to safety off island. It seems our wonder girl is in
the family way which is supposed to be impossible since a global infertility is what has
caused such widespread destruction. As hope was lost, the globe went to war with itself.
Except in Britain, which limps. That part of the story was a little weak to me, as North
Sea oil production is fading fast and they have to import a lot of their food. Perhaps there
are enough people voluntarily taking the suicide kit and getting imported that they can
barely get by with what they have.
Michael Caine is wonderful as an aging hippy who hides out in his little sanctuary in the
woods. Hiding his driveway, has solar panels and eats vegetarian. Trades his pot he
grows for the cash he needs. The place is full of books and old music. Just the kind of
retreat we all would like. As I said, a damn good film. A poor Apocalypse one.
*Genre Rating-poor. Not a collapse, just a general decline. No breakdown in order or
trade, at least not island wide.
*Nudity Rating-another piss poor nudity showing. One brief shot of boobs. Only a tease.
*Overall Rating- despite the poor genre rating, this is very good movie. Recommended,
if nothing else for Caine’s appearance or the glimpses into a long descent future.

RESIDENT EVIL:APOCALYPSE
Rated R, 2004
Milla Jovovich
Okay, I originally avoided these movies since I’m not a big video game or comics fan. I
talked myself into going to the last of the trilogy, Extinction, because it sounded like a
pretty good post-apocalypse movie ( it was- reviewed next ) and because it was only a
dollar at one of the few buck theatres left anywhere in the country after hundreds of
millions of Yuppie Scum sucked up all the gasoline into their SUV’s and the only way to
get anymore from Saudi Arabia was to turn up the currency printing presses to Ultra
Danger Super Overload levels and so everything is going up in price including movies.
Luckily I got in to see Extinction before they closed the place down for good and all we
were left with was one theatre in town that belonged to the casino which normally would
be fine but all the young punks and gangsta wannabes hang out there and to pay for the
new place you have spend ten bucks for a ticket. So, I said to myself, Self, why don’t
you try out the one before Extinction since you liked the last one so well.
*
Well, let me tell you, never listen to a guy named Self because Apocalypse sucked a giant
squishy steaming puddle of dog vomit through a large straw. Not because it was too
hideous of a movie. If you like comics and video games it decent enough. Because it
had nothing to do with any apocalypse and it certainly wasn’t end of the world stuff like
the Extinction movie was. It was non stop action, and we got to see boob three times.
Once, two zombie hookers with way over the top silicon jobs and at the end of the movie
we get to see Milla’s twice. Now, granted, they were two BB’s on a bread board but I’m
all about proportion rather than simply large size so it works on her, being the radical fem
warrior and such. Other than that, the movie pretty much sucked. The lines were
delivered rather woodenly. The script was mediocre. All the acting sucked except Milla
and the black pimp character, who was pretty good at providing the comic relief.
*Genre Rating-sucks hard. Nothing to do with end of the world, the apocalypse, social
collapse, survival or anything else. Avoid unless a fan boy of comics.
*Nudity Rating-not bad at all, almost best part of the movie.
*Overall Rating-best to skip it. Not much more than action/comic.

RESIDENT EVIL:EXTINCTION
Rated R, 2007
Milla Jovovich
Okay, this is more like it. Not just some gay fan boy comic book masturbation fantasy
with zombie boobs and firefights with fully automatic weapons, but all that plus a solid
backdrop of end of the world. Well, actually, no zombie boobs in this one and Milla is
strangely modest in this one, showing no nudity. But it was a kick ass post apocalypse
flick. We still have to go through all the Vast Evil Super Duper Corporation intrigues
and a little bit of zombie action, but it is still solidly in the post collapse genre. I’ll skip
all the first and just concentrate more on the apocalypse aspects.
*
The few survivors pretty much stay on the move, as it seems zombies can sense them out
after a time and move in for some tasty human snacks. Alice ( that’s Milla’s character,
the mutated human with super duper powers like psi ability and lots of strength and
dexterity so she can be the super warrior princess- kind of like Xena but more along the
lines of a east European fem terrorist instead of an amazon with a sword ) is puttering
along on her motorcycle which still runs great on five year old gasoline which might be
pushing the realm of possibility, but we are after all talking about the living dead here so
we can take those kinds of things with a grain of salt. She gets a distress signal from a
Salt Lake City radio station. Help, our poor little children need assistance. Now, Alice is
still all super warrior princess wary but she’s also a chick so you know she’s going to get
soft and answer. Well, guys would too, but you would think that a super warrior princess
with psi powers would do a better job. But then, we learn later that her abilities are
mutated at a geometric rate so maybe they just haven’t kicked in yet. Although why it
took five years…
*
Anyway, she walks into the building and an ugly old bitch is in a chair holding a baby.
Now, even without psi powers you could kind of deduce that this fugly bitch is too old to
pop a kid and even if it were possible who in the hell would force themselves to procreate
with this sow. I mean, sure, people are few and far between and you take what you can
get but I’d be beating on the bitch with a two by four trying to abort any fetus. Imagine
trying to love something that ugly. Well, it’s a trap and they take her prisoner. She’s tied
up and one of the guys tries to get a little too fresh, if you know what I mean, and Alice
does a hum dinger of a goal kick on his head and he’s DOA. The others get in a huff
over this and toss her down a hole into the basement where there are zombie dogs in
cages. Take a mean ass dog like a Rott and feed him human flesh for breakfast everyday
and beat him for every lunch, and then after all that get them pissed off and that doesn’t
come close to how mad the zombie dogs are. Of course, she gets all medieval on their
asses and ties them up and anchors them on the floor support beams and they yank the
beams down and Alice runs up the ramp of the collapsed floor with the dogs in pursuit
and the zombie canine eats all the redneck cannibals ( there were human bone litter in the
basement and why else would they lure her in ) as Alice jumps up to the ceiling rafters to
stay out of harms way. Wow, that was a close one!
*
Meanwhile there is a convoy ( put the pedal to the metal Rubber Ducky, and that’s a big
10-4 ) tearing ass around Nevada. You got the big rig hauling a tank full of gas, a
Hummer command vehicle, school bus full of kids, etc. The commander has the butt
hugger cargo pants, pony tail hair, sunglasses and military style cap a’la Linda Hamilton.
But not as nice of a rack and definitely not as mean and kick ass. Only Milla has that
look, she is made to order for female dominance fantasy. There is the two returning
characters from the last movie, the black pimp dude and the soldier dude. The gas hauler
is a Texan ( who else? ) that drawls and oozes cowboyness. Some real life rap bitch
plays a small part, being pimp boys main squeeze. Of course, early on at a hotel stop to
search for gas and food and ammo pimp daddy gets bit by a zombie as they are clearing
out rooms. Soon afterwards rap bitch gets pecked by hundreds of zombie crows. So, true
to Hollywood by-laws, the African-Americans are some of the first to die. Don’t ask me
how they allowed him to survive for a sequel.
*
The convoy is attacked the next morning by all those crows. Since they have been
chowing down on infected flesh they are now zombie crows, and there are hundreds of
them. In a really cool scene, crossing Hitchcock with an acid dream gone wrong, the
crows attack the vehicles. We want your flesh! Peck, peck, fly into window screen, etc.
This is when Alice shows up and does her super duper power thing and creates a huge
fireball and cooks all the crows. You, go, girl! Way to show up after the darkies are
dead. Well, pimp daddy is still hanging on, but you know his time is running out. It is
only a matter of time before he goes zombie berserker. They head for Las Vegas as the
only place left for gas and supplies, but Evil Umbrella Corporation is tracking her ( from
the disturbances in The Force, okay only kidding- in a detected disturbance from her Psi
Powers ). They fly in a cargo container chock full of Corporate Stoolie Zombies. The
convoy stops, deass the vehicles, zombies burst from the container. I mean, there are a
crap load of these dudes. They must have been stacked three deep. Big firefight, Milla
kick boxing and doing some chop suey stuff with her two Super Machetes, great zombie
slaughtering fun. Most of the convoy dudes are dead, the few left track the corporate suit
as he hauls ass away from the zombie crate ambush. They crash his compound with a
driver going jihad with dynamite ( its okay to suicide bomb if you are Christian ), steal
the chopper and the last convoy dudes and kids go flying off into the sunset towards a
hypothetical safe zone. Again, a bit unrealistic, expecting the gas tank to go from Vegas
to Alaska, but after so much mayhem and destruction you can let it slide. From then on
it’s just underground super zombie hunting action and then a happy ending to the trilogy.
*Genre Rating-very good. Total end of the world with foraging for the only supplies.
*Nudity Rating-pretty damn poor. Just teasing swift glimpses. Disappointing
*Overall Rating- recommended. Much better than its predecessors. A very good
apocalypse flick with minimal fantasy/video game interruptions. Enjoyable for repeated
viewings.

REIGN OF FIRE
Rated PG-13, 2002
Matthew McConaughey, Christian Bale
When I first saw this I was mildly impressed. Set in post-apocalypse England after
hibernating dragons are awoken and start to burn and eat everything. Dragons are no
more believable than zombies. It doesn’t really matter how the world dies, just that it
does and we can follow all the juicy details of people trying to survive afterwards. As I
watched this again, I was less impressed the second time around. In six or seven years
my barometer of what constitutes an acceptable post-collapse movie has gotten much
more sensitive. This is not a bad movie. Matthew does a great job playing a total nut job
of an American soldier trying to kill all of the dragons. I’m talking crazier than a sewer
rat here. For this movie, gone is the loveable, free spirited frat boy he usually plays. The
problem is that this simply doesn’t have the “vibe” of a post-apocalypse movie. I know
this is arbitrary and no two people will agree on it. But since I’m the idiot spending the
money to rent all these movies, I give it a thumbs down genre wise.
*
This is more along the lines of a monster hunt. The good guys save the world. It is only
incidentally placed in a post-apocalypse world. It really isn’t about people trying to
survive in a world where all trade has ended and no surplus resources are available. Oh,
they worry about growing food since they are running out of it. But that is secondary to
trying to escape the monsters. It is the Towering Inferno with the disaster victims stuck
in an old castle. So, it has the feel more of a disaster flick than a post-apocalypse film. It
is very good for a monster/horror or disaster film, but not good enough to belong to any
other genre. To summarize, boy traumatized by dragon. Grows up as mighty leader
trying to keep a group alive as they hide in an old castle ( stone being non flammable and
such ). American soldier with tanks and copter comes along and wants for everyone to
get cracking and slay all evil dragons. Most of the film is tanks and copter running
around on ten year old gas, spraying the countryside with machine gun fire. At the end,
most soldiers and equipment are destroyed and leader dude, American and copter pilot go
all ninja into London to ferret out the big kahuna dragon with axes and crossbows.
*Genre Rating-piss poor. Doesn’t feel correct even if set in post-apocalypse setting.
*Nudity Rating-the worse. No nudity at all, not even a peek.
*Overall Rating-not bad for a horror or disaster film. Good acting, good special effects.

TOOTH AND NAIL
Rated R, 2007
Michael Madsen
Most horror films are incidentally post-apocalypse films. This one is a post-apocalypse
film that is incidentally a horror film. It bills itself as a horror film, but of course they
have to. Mention post-apocalypse and most viewers go screaming in the opposite
direction. Oh no, please don’t remind us that we are consuming our resources much
faster than we are finding new ones. How depressing is that? Just a hint of it and I’ll
have to go to a multiplex heated with carbon fuels and consume gobs of popcorn grown
in infertile soil for a little bit of escapism entertainment. Like ax murdering. That’s a fun
way to pass the time until the apocalypse. This film is on the lower end of the budget
spectrum, so you certainly don’t see bullets flying or cars racing or multistory explosions.
But that actually works in its favor. By staying insanely low budget you focus on story
instead of effects and you get a better flavor of life after resource depletion. Only a
couple of guns, almost no ammunition and the majority have returned to blade weapons.
The only lighting is from fire or pump up florescent lanterns.
*
The introduction describes how nothing major brought the end. No nuclear war, no
overpopulation. Simply, they ran out of oil in 2012. Within a year all reserves were
gone. This isn’t that implausible, since populations in exporting nations have exploded
and as more and more oil is used domestically less is sent to the industrial nations. And
at the same time all super giant oil fields have been in production over forty years and are
in decline globally. Serious decline, as in eight to ten percent a year. In the end, a huge
population of users suddenly sees the threshold where oil use falls below what is needed
to keep civilization running. It’s more likely we will not see that serious of consequences
in just one year, but it is not impossible. And, as the movie points out, you need oil for
coal production. Within three years two thirds of the global population is wiped out from
hunger, cold and fighting. Too many people headed south the first winter and
overwhelmed the resource base there.
*
The movie goes on after the intro introducing us to a band scaring off a guy hovering
over a dead body, with a wounded girl near by. They take the girl home, which is a
hospital. Here is our first hint that The Professor is, while revered by the others that
follow his leadership, actually quite the idiot. A hospital fits in with his Rise Of The
Phoenix plan, plenty of room to take in survivors and rebuild a civilization. He spends
most of his time doodling designs of PV panels and such. He reminds me of Uncle
Obammy, dreaming of a glorious solar future as our country goes down in flame ( I don’t
actually think Obammy stands for anything other than Business As Usual-Full Speed
Ahead On Petroleum, but his crap dream he sells to the gullible is what I refer to ). One
dissenting vote says, hello!, Mr. Dickhead, let’s work on defense. Nonsense, puffs our
Bearded and Bespectacled Liberal Professor, we are quite safe here. One wonders how
the hell he made it through for the last three years. Dissenting voice, Viper, leaves the
group. Which reminds me, Viper? And Dakota and Dodge, etc? Give me a break! Yes,
in time the survivors descendants will look at cars and the names of them as wondrous
and awe inspiring, but first generation survivors won’t rename themselves from the
equipment that symbolized their destruction. About my only quibble with the movie.
*
Well, Juju is served up in a nice heaping dish, the Professor is one of the first to die in the
hospital. He isn’t sleeping well, toss, turn, oh, my, everyone hates me because while I
appear weak to have not stood up to Viper, in reality I’m afraid they will discover what a
blooming idiot I am. He goes to the bathroom to splash water on his face and gets a meat
cleaver across his throat. Cool! His carcass is drug off for tasty cannibal consumption.
But the rest don’t know this. They are all confused and dazed. Oh, we are merely
worthless and weak teeny bopper idiots, we need direction, tell use what to do! Let’s go
look for the professor! Good idea! No, junior idiots in training, this is a bad idea. First,
you went alone and weaponless. Then, you had an unguarded building. So, the cannibal
dudes just waltz in and start ax murdering folks. This is where Michael Madsen makes
an appearance. This ain’t your lucky day, he informs the wounded and crawling outsidedude-
that-was-wounded. He uses a two sided ax to give our boy a few whacks. Right in
the spine! That’s got to hurt. Michael doesn’t do too many scenes after that. One
doesn’t know if their big budget for name brand actors had just been exhausted or if
everyone was just sort of embarrassed that ‘ol Mike has gotten a bit bloated and fat.
Been hitting the sauce, there? Not that I would say it to his face, that guy still is
imposing and a bit spooky.
*
Well, it goes on for awhile, one being killed after another. The new girl tells them about
this band of cannibals. She and now dead boyfriend were fleeing from them. They kill
one a night to keep the meat fresh. New plan, let’s all bug out tonight. That works as
well as looking for the professor. They are hunted through the hospital. I’m not going to
reveal a few key plot twists, which are pretty cool. It doesn’t spoil the movie, as I
enjoyed it just as much the second time. But I’m feeling nice. I will tell you the main
chick and the little girl survive in the end.
*Genre Rating- damn good. One of the better ones, in fact.
*Nudity Rating-damn poor. No nudity at all.
*Overall Rating-highly recommended as a realistic look at our future. You could easily
imagine a prison gang turning cannibal and being as sadistic and bad ass as these guys.

CLOVERFIELD
Rated PG-13, 2007
Mike Vogel, Lizzy Caplan
From the guy who did “Alias” and “Lost” on TV, JJ Abrams. This was a pretty good
film. A giant something is attacking New York and a group of friends tries to escape.
You see the whole thing from a hand held camcorder, which rather than giving it a look
like a couple of friends on crack made a “Blair Witch” remake gives it a frenzied, chaotic
panicked look about the whole situation. Alas, this is not a post-apocalypse film. It is
merely a disaster film. A disaster that was unique, granted. And a well done story. You
are doing little more than witnessing four Young Yuppies In Training flee Manhattan for
their lives. Yet the film moves along well, the special effects are good and it is quite a
thrill ride.
*
One YYIT is going to Japan for his job, so his friends throw him a party. One guy is
given the task of filming well wishes from everybody. Blah, blah, yadda, he slept with
her, I want to sleep him that one, typical party. Get slushed and then get schtupt.
Suddenly, a giant jolt which is thought to be an earthquake. Going up on the roof seems
like a good idea until they witness an explosion and debris started falling on them. They
run down the stairs out into the street, only to have the head of the Statue Of Liberty land
next to them. Panic, yelling, move along, move along. Off to a bridge to get the heck out
of Dodge. As they are crossing the bridge Big Monster Dude whacks it with his tail and
Brooklyn Bridges falling down. One down in the party. Yell, scream, dazed and
confused. Call old girlfriend, must go save her, running towards the monster instead of
away from it. He’s young, good looking, and has a video camera of this action for fame
and riches. He’ll find another babe in the future. But, Nooooo! He wants this one so
into the face of danger they go.
*
Meanwhile the BMD is dropping Little Monster Dude’s from itself. You see BMD a
mile away and avoid it, but as soon as he starts dropping the LMD’s like dandruff things
get a lot more hairy. They are like Aliens monster dudes, all legs for fast moving and
huge teeth for eating you. Our pack of Yuppies goes down to the subway to escape
BMD, are trapped, decide to go underground to old girlfriends apartment. They are
jumped by LMD’s. Which sucked, since one of them gets bite which later causes her to
explode, like the LMD bites you and its saliva is a time release bomb. Old Girlfriend is
saved, They get on the last chopper out, in route BMD whacks them out of the air. Crash,
trapped as Army commences bombing the whole island. “I love you” is the last thing
heard. Kind of a rip off of “Miracle Mile” where they find true love right before they get
nuked.
*Genre Rating-piss poor. Disaster/monster movie, not post-apocalypse.
*Nudity Rating-piss poor, no skin.
*Overall Rating- for what it is, a darn fine movie. Just don’t go in expecting something
else.

28 WEEKS LATER
Rated R, 2007
Robert Carlyle
The sequel to “28 Days Later”. This is a fine enough horror or horror/action film, but it
is not a good post-apocalypse film like the first one was. It has none of the “everyone is
dying and I’m all alone and the survivors are trying to kill and eat me” feel to it. Here’s
your basic post-apocalypse script. Something horrid and hideously dangerous happens to
Earth. Nuclear war, asteroid impact, plague, famine, running out of energy. The few that
survive the initial cause of destruction must combat hunger and exposure and attacks
from fellow survivors. This is a post-apocalypse story. It doesn’t matter what caused the
collapse of civilization, or what/who is trying to eat you afterwards. When you have a
quarantined area that is left alone it might be an isolated collapse but you still have the
same story. But when you bring in outside forces to Save The Day Like The Friggin
Cavalry you no longer have the end of civilization but a disaster. This film veers
dangerously close to a simple disaster film.
*
It isn’t a bad movie, but it is a piss poor post-apocalypse movie. I can’t recommend it as
such. Okay, the movie starts out good. A married couple is holed up with a retired
couple and a few singles. They are barricaded indoors. Now, this is where living in
England sucks. Oh, it’s all very well and good to be sipping afternoon tea and munching
a crumpet, watching cricket on the telley and keeping a stiff upper lip as the last of the
Empire sends its impoverished ghetto dwellers, but then the fun stops as you realize
without firearms it is really hard to ward off zombie dudes. And without a strong
environment of armed carjackers and home invasions, not only do you lack the tools for
zombie fighting but you also lack the practice. I’m not talking about Yuppie’s getting
robbed in San Francisco or London, but actually being able to arm yourself against such
attacks and fighting back. Most of California can be lumped together with England as a
Nanny Welfare State where you aren’t allowed to defend yourself. Those of us living in
a saner locale can practice our defense so we are ready for the zombies.
*
Okay, the zombies crash into the cottage and start dining on the slower ones. The
husband does all right defending against the first flesh eater with a crowbar, but then too
many attack and he gets out of there in a hurry. So much of a hurry he kind of ditches the
wife. They are like three feet away from her and he’s at the window. I mean, what
would you do? I know,most of you would open your safe and show ten thousand dollars
worth of assault rifles and magazines. Okay, you are good to go, but this poor guy just
lost his only weapon. I’d ditch the bitch too. He gets out safe and sound. Next we see
that the US Army has landed and set up a neat civilian camp comprised of a small island
in London. There is armed dudes all over the place, checkpoints, helicopters flying
overhead and snipers on a lot of roofs. Now, initially I was highly skeptical. I would
believe in zombies before I would believe we would help out a non-oil exporting country
or install a camp with buildings already there. Where is the profit for Halliburton? Then
I reminded myself there could be the “Shawn Of The Dead” plan for zombie slave labor
which would make any CEO worth his golden parachute bribe the politicians to send in
the military.
*
After five weeks, all the zombies are supposed to be dead from starvation. So you would
think everything was cool again. But, no. The wife bit at the farm manages to survive
because she has a mutant gene making her a carrier but unaffected. Hubby and her are
reunited, which is a bit embarrassing for the guy and all. What can say to your bride you
abandoned to zombies? Sorry just doesn’t seem to cut it. It is a tad bit worse than
infidelity. But, she’s all cool and they start sucking face ( after hubby improbably gets
into her secure quarantined area ). Her saliva is infected of course, so how long does it
take for the guy to go bug out? Twenty seconds or so. Now, when I first watched this
film I wasn’t sure if this was malicious on the wives part, kind of a kamikaze pay back.
Because as soon as he turned he ate the wife. But on second viewing I think she just
watched way too many soap operas and really believes in true love. Which either melts
your heart or makes you want to vomit. Love conquers all, unless you are a flesh eating
zombie and then it ain’t worth squat.
*
It doesn’t take long for everyone to get infected, civilians screaming, snipers shooting,
explosions blasting. A bit of running around and panic and then the jets napalm and
chemical weapons and flamethrowers are employed. It quickly turns into a typical action
film, but with zombies dying instead of fuzzy foreigners. And of course in the end one of
the cute kids of the mom also is a carrier and they escape and before you know it all the
French dudes are zombies. And all of that could have been avoided if the sniper had
originally just blasted the kid as ordered instead of going down to save him. It wasn’t
like they asking him to waterboard the kid, just to shoot him before he became infected
and turned zombie. How hard is that?
*Genre Rating-piss poor, not even close.
*Nudity Rating-okay, I’m watching on a small TV. Sometimes you get a second and a
half of side boob and I don’t see it. The R rating is supposed to show nudity. I didn’t see
any. It’s really getting frustrating here, soon I’ll forget what the choice parts look likedamn
all the prudes! I need my T&A!
*Overall Rating-not a bad flick, just not post-apocalypse. Just action.

THE HAPPENING
Rated R, 2008
Nark Wahlberg
The Happening in the title is rather misleading. The Nothing Friggin Happening is more
like it. This movie started out great, it really seemed to capture the incomprehension and
panic of people facing the unknown and not knowing how to react. It then quickly
stalled, the engine got no fuel, a few sputters and coughs, then MAYDAY, MAYDAY
we are going down, Houston! The thing gets done and your first reaction is not, cool, or
okay, or wow, but simply lame.
*
I’m going to save you the mystery of the whole thing, because it wasn’t really all that
spellbinding. It was friggin plants. The plants are all threatened. Oh, you’re going to
kill us with pollution and global warming and we must fight back with a super plant toxin
to kill all people. I wanted to vomit blood. Come on! Insects, okay I can see that. They
die off quick enough they can evolve pretty quick. Relatively quick. I don’t know about
two hundred years quick. Watch out! It’s the attack of the evolved killer gnats who are
trying to prevent humans from causing Gore Warming ( oh, sorry, I mean global warming
). But plants evolve much slower. They use the algae red tide as an example, but the
trees and grass grow a lot slower than algae now don’t they. And, hello M Night
Shyamalan, why didn’t the plants do something ten thousand years ago when mankind
started changing his whole environment with rice paddies and forest clearing and burning
plants for fertilizer? Dumb ass. Just another idiot parroting what sounds good from
fellow idiots with less intelligence than them. I’m not even debating the causes of global
warming here, and I’m saying your non-science hurts my brain.
*
As I said, the first half is pretty good. Just seeing the construction workers doing the
1929 Swan Dive from the skyscraper was pretty awesome. And the panic and terror of
everyone seemed well done. The parents being separated, the daughter being looked
after by the friend, the fleeing of cities before the “terrorist virus” spread. All good.
Once they stopped the train and headed out on foot, it pretty much took a slow turn for
the worse. It got really bad at the end, oh true love prevailed ( with a couple that didn’t
seem to care much for each other ) I can’t live without you I’m coming outside with the
killer tree virus because I can’t be separated from you my true love oh wait the virus that
just killed the crazy bitch here five minutes ago has gone and we are reunited and we love
each other and we’re going to raise this dead friends kid because evidently the child
protective services people are all dead and now gloomy hateful bitch wife is Prego and
now everyone is so super duper happy.
*
Oh, wait, not for the dudes that just died in Paris so we are all going to die. Vomit.
*Genre Rating-pretty lame ass and weak.
*Nudity Rating-no skin at all, not even cleavage.
*Overall Rating-sucks my engorged member the second half, not to bad to start, so just
avoid the whole thing.

WAR OF THE WORLDS
Rated PG-13, 2005
Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning
Perhaps I would hate this movie more if I had watched the 1953 version, or had even read
the book. I didn’t do either, and still have enough to dislike about this film.
Remembering it from my first viewing, I recalled Cruise being all wrong for the part.
Which is true. He radiates Lady Eye Candy, and does a good serious bad boy role. He
does not project any family feelings or parental care. He should have been the last to be
cast as a concerned father trying to save his family. Some actors just shouldn’t do certain
roles. Like Harrison Ford. He’s, what, like a hundred years old? And they have him as
the love interest for some twenties chick in a film about crashing on a deserted island.
She’s like three generations younger than him. Plus, talk about miscasting, she kind of
radiates the lesbo carpet licker type. I mean, I would have believed Carrot Top could
have put in a better father figure. But now that I’ve watched this again, I think I was
much more irritated by all the damn screaming Dakota does through the whole movie.
*
Steven Spielberg directs this. You don’t expect literature from the man, but usually you
like his movies. One of his talents has almost always being in tune with what movie
goers like. Can you tell me they like a little girl screaming all the time in a high pitch?
Am I that divorced from the general publics taste? Perhaps, or perhaps Steve thought she
was cute enough to get away with it. Or, perhaps he had run out of Viagra and had an
unsatisfactory night before he approved casting. The special effects were good, the basic
story had already been written by a science fiction genius ( all you need to do is not
deviate from the damn story ), so why did they have the whole “failed father makes good
by the end of the movie” thing added to it? Leave well enough alone. Without Cruise,
without the screaming, without the divorced irresponsible guilty dad trip, this would have
been a decent popcorn film. But they had to try to pimp it up, the stupid bastards.
*
Now, besides all that, I really took exception to the Tim Robbins character. He played a
survivalist, and did it very unfavorably. They overdid the paranoia, they overdid his
panic under pressure, they overdid the desire to shoot everything, they made him a fat
alcoholic and they even hinted around at a child molester. I know, I know, we can’t
expect anything less from liberals. They are in a constant huff that we have a
Constitution and we won’t vote a Commissar into office. Even with a half breed Muslim
in office they complain we don’t have enough tax and spend welfare state politics. At
first I was surprised they even had Tom’s character armed, this being the Peoples
Republic Of New Jersey and all, but soon they used it as a morality point that guns in
civilians hands are evil. Guns in the hands of handsome liberal actors are evil. In the
hands of survivalists they are much worse. Child molester worse. Of course, another
Hollywood favorite that just died was a molester, but I guess they made an exception for
one of the inside Beautiful People.
*Genre Rating-poor. More of a disaster type.
*Nudity Rating-none. Thank goodness, I might have had to see Tom’s junk.
*Overall Rating-poor to mediocre, depending on your tolerance for screaming.

THE POSTMAN
Rated R, 1997
Kevin Costner, Will Patton
When this movie first came out, everyone was all bitching and moaning. Oh, gracious
me oh my, this isn’t anything like the book. The book was oh so much better. Which
causes two reactions from me, one being anger and the other being a question. You are
simple moron that needs to pull your wide nappy head out of your anal orifice, jag off.
What in the hell ever made you form such an opinion? Are you simply repeating some
stupid crap you read, or has it been twenty years since you read the book and you have
zero memory about what you encountered there? It wasn’t that the book was totally bad,
it really wasn’t any worse than, say, a couple of guys zooming around in a motor home
amongst giant mutant insects. It wasn’t bad until the end when the character goes to a
state university and encounters killer robots, a sentient computer and other crap. Totally
unrealistic to expect that kind of technology to appear in the first place, or to survive after
the end of civilization. Of course, even with that kind of ending it was a tolerable book.
But to say it was better than the movie is just plain wrong.
*
This movie had problems, it wasn’t perfect. But it made fewer unforgivable mistakes
than the book did, and I thought it was far more detailed. “The Postman” is three hours
long. I like that. They don’t make enough epics. Everyone wants to make quick and
easy eye candy. One and a half hours, and lots of explosions and a few boobs. Hey,
nothing wrong with any of that, but once in awhile it is nice to get in depth with a story.
Kevin Costner understood that with “Dances With Wolves”, and I think he paid the same
attention to this one, which he also directed. I don’t think Hollywood gives audiences
enough credit, but sometimes they screw up and deliver an actual quality product. I think
“The Postman” is the “Lawrence Of Arabia” of post-apocalypse movies. It might not be
the best ever, although certainly it should be at the top of anyone’s list. And it is the only
one that took time in exploring this kind of alternate world. It doesn’t matter that it only
took the bare bones of the book, what matters is that it created a very believable world
after a collapse. And gave it texture.
*
As I said, it isn’t perfect. Almost no one ever pays sufficient attention to logistics, it is
the forest that no one sees for the trees of Petroleum Land. People seem to think National
Guard units will contain treasure troves of ammunition to supply a post-apocalypse army
for all eternity. Hollywood is no different. They pay brief attention to food shortage,
since a world ravaged by Gore Warming obviously means crop failures. But they can’t
grasp how quickly ammunition will be used up. Hell, most survivalists seem to think it
will last forever and supposedly we have done much more extensive research. At one
point, a village mayor complained they couldn’t fight since they only had a few rifles and
only twenty rounds of ammo. Yet, the evil army dudes have ammunition to spare. They
spray on semi-auto all the time. They are stealing food from towns in their territory, but
obviously that is not where they get the ammo. Hence, back we go to the National Guard
armory with the magical ammo urn. That must be the same place that is going to spew
out the unending petroleum and natural gas that everyone thinks is going to heat their
homes and power their SUV’s forever. The Magical Government Building Of Eternal
Resources ( to include welfare checks that are going to buy our groceries after the oil runs
out ).
*
And the end, God how the end sucked ass. Everyone is back into Magical Resource
Land. They have machine made clothing, every male has shaved, endless hot water to
clean with. Okay, the end is total Bull Feces. But it only lasted a few minutes, and the
rest of the movie was in general strong enough to compensate for that. The movie is full
of depopulation, food supplies so precarious that strangers can’t be fed, patched and
homemade clothing, defensive walls around every town and the strong preying on the
weak. In other words, it is portraying realistically how things are going to be. The only
happy ending any of us can face is to die before the collapse. Otherwise, we are in a crap
world of hurt. At least this movie comes close to portraying that. It also portrays hope
and a struggle for better things. That is also realistic. Humans need hope of a better
future for their children to excel and strive for better things. With no hope, there isn’t
much more than mere survival. I know we are in for a worse future, but by preparing for
it I am keeping some kind of hope alive. That me and mine will have a hope of living
above mere survival. Ignoring a future storm is hope, but the kind that will get you
killed.
*
The Postman, before he becomes such, is The Wandering Minstrel. He and his mule
provide Shakespeare plays for food. While performing for a local group of yokels, evil
army dudes come into the town on a recruiting drive. We’ll take our food quota, and
three conscripts to go please. Now he is part of a wack jobs army. The abandoned mine
pit was a cool military base, but it did seem a bit strategically unsound to me. Most
personnel and equipment were located down in the pit, easy targets as in shooting fish in
a barrel. And no shade, or wood around. Perhaps he was unafraid of attack since he kept
up patrols and was offensive. Anyway, our boy escapes one day and manages to get
away. That night, almost freezing to death, he stumbles on an abandoned Postal truck in
a ravine. He puts on the uniform which is toasty warm and decides to deliver the mail
from the truck, in exchange for food and shelter. At first it is all a scam but over time he
comes around to the noble purpose of it, of giving hope of a restored Union and a way to
defeat the evil army dudes. Of course, ask Katrina survivors how noble the Blackwater
Mercenaries were. Yes, they did represent a restored Union 150 years later. But I won’t
go into a tirade now. Simple truths, black and white, no reality please. At times, it was a
bit too propaganda like. And there were a few repeats of “Dances With Wolves” such as
the slow mo turn back to take the letter or the showing of his “8” brand to claim the right
to Article 7 leadership contest. But all in all this was a great movie with the few flaws
easily forgiven.
Genre Rating-a bit weak at the end but overall a very good post-apoc flick, one of the
very best.
Nudity Rating-not great, but not too bad. The love interest gave a few good flashes when
they spent the night together. Of course, that scene was a bit unrealistic. You don’t have
a women for years and you can last THAT long? Too much candles and music but good
boobage.
*Overall Rating- far better than most punk asses give it credit for. Damn fine movie, four
stars, I’ll watch it another three or four times.

WATERWORLD
Rated PG-13, 1995
Dennis Hopper, Kevin Costner
The other day, I was visiting Al Gore’s palatial spread. Let me tell you, that guy has a
huge place. Just imagine the pollution his air conditioning requires. Anyway, I promised
him I wouldn’t talk politics, him being a little sensitive about getting caught taking bribes
to throw the Florida hanging chad scandal to the wolves in the Supreme Court. We fired
up the BBQ, had some corn fed beef. Al says the range fed taste like wet cardboard and
without the hormones the meat is a little stringy. We started drinking Chinese political
dissident made beer which was flown in to the embassy about the same time the Cuban
cigars come in. I got a little sloshed, excused myself to go to the bathroom. I snuck past
the guest bathroom to the master suite, just to see if the sink faucet has ivory handles on it
( yep ) and as I was going through his medicine cabinet for free codeine I saw his porno
stash behind the mirror. I thought I was going to find some Euro homo pics but instead I
found the DVD of “Waterworld” and the paperback adaptation. Funny thing was, it had
all the middle pages ripped out. The only part left was the world covered with water and
the end where a tropical paradise is an unspoiled wilderness, unsullied by man.
*
I think this is one of Dennis Hopper’s best movies. He simple plays the cool as a
cucumber psycho better than anyone. You can’t beat it, the machine gun boat is being
turned towards his command vessel and he is asking why it is happening. Who is firing?
It is Chuck. Call for Chuck to stop, still calm, cool and collected. And the classic,
“Maybe he doesn’t go by Chuck, call him Charles”. All in a deadpan delivery. It fits
Hopper, almost as if they wrote the part for him. “Waterworld” got a lot of bad press for
its out of control budget. I think some times it was even compared to “Heavens Gate” On
The Water. Not totally unfair, but neither was a bad movie. They were simply more
costly than usual. Just as computers generated more paper instead of less, they seem to
have made movies more expensive rather than saving money ( although no one ever
questions if perhaps the expense is due to Unions and being in California ).
*
“Waterworld” really isn’t much of a post-apocalypse film. It takes place hundreds of
years after the deluge, which almost automatically disqualifies it ( not technically, but I
think coping with the collapse is usually part of the genre ). And it is choke full of bad
logic. You’re telling me any metal is useable after all this time? Anything underwater is
salvageable, even plastics, with centuries of salt water corrosion? That any mutations
occurred in higher animals in such a short time? That men had time to construct floating
atolls but didn’t bring any soil along? That no one brought along simple materials for
solar water stills? Without fiber plants, were do the sails come from? Etcetera. I think
where the film is so enjoyable is that it is offered in the same spirit as “Raiders Of The
Lost Ark”. You aren’t supposed to base this on reality as much as you are comic books (
I know, the Costner gills should have been a tip off ).
*Genre Rating-not hopeless, but a bit poor.
*Nudity Rating-a nice butt, however that is it.
*Overall Rating-an enjoyable, action/comic flick. Hopper’s character is great in
understated humor.

STEEL DAWN
Rated R, 1987
Patrick Swayze
Oh, joy, another super turd. This train wreck was painful to sit through. I only did it for
my loyal minions. And I should be seeing immense profits or at least a big shiny award.
But I won’t. I’ve sat through mutated rats biting people and they turn into big rat boys.
I’ve sat through rip offs of Omega Man with wooden acting chop suey dudes. I’ve
endured Third World TV movies about alien invasions ( inevitably the village is saved by
chop suey dudes on various motorized vehicles ). I haven’t even listed all the offal I’ve
watched, fearing you would elect to rent them even against my strongest
recommendation. I am saving your sanity. But some are well known and must be
watched the whole way through so I can warn you away. And here was another crapfest
to sit through, gritting my teeth until blood spurted from all my orifices. Let me run you
through this embarrassment.
*
Patrick is standing on his head meditating. Because we all know from watching the half
million martial arts movies released each year from Hong Kong ( clearly an oriental plot
against western civilization ) that super ninja chop suey guys meditate to be one with the
force and kill thirty assailants at one time. So, our boy is meditating in the desert and
suddenly sandmen pop out of the sand and attack him. Now, these appear to be mutants
of the Third World War nuclear exchange. How else do you describe the magical ability
to burrow into sand instantly, escaping your foes in a matter of seconds. If in doubt, try
going head first into the sandbox and see how long it takes you. And what did they have?
Sand gills? Anyway, Super Ninja Patrick Swayze ( SNPS, or snaps ) disposes of them
promptly, then you don’t see them the rest of the movie. So I kind of never figured out
their point in the first place. SNPS then goes wandering through the desert. Kind of like
Kung Fu but with no purpose, a really bad looking beard and a gay head band and 80’s
Tina Turner hair. Then up pops a genuine oriental super ninja dude ( GOSND, or
godsend ). It turns out they used to be pupil and master. They do the typical bantering,
but no pebbles are snatched from any hands.
*
Snaps and Godsend are now in a bar that just happened to be nearby. In comes assassin
dude with simply dreadful hair and accent ( ADWSDHAA, or adwasdhaa, but now
referred to as BHA, bad hair assassin ). The bartender Micky’s Snaps drink and he gets
all loopy and is paralyzed as godsend is killed by BHA after much sword play. Let me
interject here by noting that although the budget on this one was low, it works to the
advantage of a story with no other saving graces. The ammo will eventually run out,
right? So lots of swords might be used. Of course, a sword is a one time prop expense
which might explain why you never saw any bows since they use very expensive arrows
that keep getting lost. And the desert location is cheap to shoot in, but it turned out that
they were decades ahead on the global warming thing. Al Gore was busy right about
then inventing the Internet and hadn’t gotten around to Gore Warming yet. Anyway,
godsend was a pretty crappy chop suey dude if this white boy could kick his ass. And let
me add that these boys really needed to shave off their beards. Some men look gay in
them. Here’s a hint- they look like a vagina. Especially if you have no chin. Hint, hint,
unnamed actor that plays a Texas Ranger.
*
Now snaps is really pissed off. He goes searching for BHA and stumbles across a farm in
a valley. Super Hot Chick With Eighties Hair ( or, HB, hair bitch ) and son and worker
farmer dudes. Snaps doesn’t drool over her, pretty much ignoring her which of course
gets her all hot and twitchy ( that and snaps running around in butt hugging pants ). They
eventually rut, but it is a bare side show. The main action is the long running
“showdown” with all the evil landlord dudes ( ELD ) minions strutting around so snaps
can chop suey them. Lest you think this is action packed fun and excitement, let me tell
you it is little more than boring Hong Kong chop suey with white guys dressed in sheets.
Blah, blah and then the movie ends with snaps killing BHA and ELD and leaving HB to
go back wandering the wasteland. He was already living in the friggin wasteland! The
idiots were farming in sand with little patches of veggies! How did they get compost?
How did they get seeds? How did they get the wells dug in the first place? There was an
idiot underground spring reminiscent of Dune at HB’s place, so water was going to save
the valley. But that was for later. The story had huge holes in it. Like the wind powered
land wagons with knives on the wheels. The sound effect for the wind hitting these
impossibly small sails was a piece of sheet metal being vibrated. The ninja dudes wore
swords without scabbards ( that were pointed up! ). The new looking clothes ( in a
landscape with beached rusted supertankers and railroad crossties with no metal rails left
). You run out of ammo but the clothes stay sharp and new.
*
Altogether, a really bad movie.
*Genre Rating-very bad. Just ninjas and dirt scratchers, no explanation of the war or
realistic survival methods described.
*Nudity Rating-not great but at least one scene with boob. It was side boob in shadow,
but at least they threw us a crumb.
*Overall Rating- putrid turd to be avoided at all cost.

THE TRIGGER EFFECT
Rated R, 1996
Elisabeth Shue, Kyle MacLachlan
This wasn’t a post-apocalypse movie, not by any stretch of the imagination. It wasn’t
even really a disaster movie in the conventional sense. It was also a hit-you-over-thehead-
with-our-message movie. And yet, this was a darn good movie. I’ve seen it three
or four times. What this film does is point out how ill prepared people are, and how the
great unwashed masses will react when their comfortable life is disrupted. By example it
highlights what mistakes to avoid. So, while not a post collapse movie it is a great
preparedness movie and thus worthy of your time and money.
*
Here we have your typical suburban Yuppie couple. At the movies a ghetto member (
unfortunately they let anyone into the movie theatre ) is talking trash to them and they
desperately avoid a scene. Not unreasonable, but sad. Their remodeling contractor is
selling them shoddy service. They are totally dependant on their doctor answering the
phone in the middle of the night, and calling in a prescription. In short, totally dependant
on the system and money. No self sufficiency, no family nearby to help. No clue what to
do when the lights go out. I think the genius in this movie as portraying this couple as
completely normal, everyday people. They aren’t sad sacks, losers, uneducated. They
are successful middle class surviving the only way they know how in today’s consumer
society. The dad isn’t portrayed so much as a wimp as more constrained by social mores.
The wife isn’t so much a ball buster as an equal partner and having an equal vote. In
short, their only sin is not being aware they should be worried, they should prepare.
*
The lights go out over the weekend. Three or four days and all hell breaks loose. Before
the lights go out, their baby needs medicine. The doctor will call it in in the morning.
But the electricity is cut first. And the phones are down, as are the radios. It seems like
total grid down ( remember, this was way before the Y2K scare profiteering ). Dad can’t
get the medicine, and as the kid keeps screaming and carrying on he decides to steal it.
This is greeted by delight by mom, who it seems has a bad girl past ( read-slut ) and likes
the new criminal that her meek and mild husband turned into for a moment. She is fixing
to give it up when dad’s friend comes sneaking around and scaring them. Blah, blah,
they talk about the power being out, exchange rumors. Nothing known. It is decided that
the next day the two guys are going to go to the gun store for defense. Neither knows spit
about guns and wife is totally against it. They both feel guns are ooky. But at least the
need for macho posturing pushes dad into some sane thinking. They go to the store,
which has a long line. No handguns, 15 day wait ( this must have been written before
California made long gun purchases included in the wait ). Idiot dad trades a $600 watch
for a $100 shotgun and a box of shells. Then plays around with it like a toy. Then they
all get drunk and the two guys are pissed at each other because of the whole unspoken
sense that the bitch is thinking about hooking up with the stronger male if this is real end
of the earth stuff. Bitches have no loyalty. Take your money then leave you.
*
Then the bitch throws the shotgun into the pool ( with the ammo ). Now, E is a pretty hot
babe and I wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eating crackers. But throwing the $600
shotgun into the pool? I’d seriously consider wife abuse. Because after the drunk bitch
did that they are awoken by a burglar rooting around downstairs. No shotgun, thanks a
lot stupid bitch ( not that any of them are too bright- between the three of them they
carried $60 in cash for all emergency purchases ). So one has the butcher knife and the
other a baseball bat ( the friend had stayed over ). They let the dude get out of the house
and then trip the car alarm and tell him to drop the loot and leave. The next door
neighbor comes over and sees the criminal with a switchblade and drops him with his
rifle. Does dad act happy or grateful? Hell, no. Acts all butt hurt. At least he lies to the
cops about the drop gun the neighbor plants on the corpse. But they are never buddies
after that ( when normalcy improbably returns at the movies end ).
*
They decide things are too hairy so they decide to leave for Colorado and wife’s parents
house. Of course, they take off without enough gas to finish the trip. And with a wet
shotgun and soggy shells. A slightly irrational dude on the road steals their car after
shooting the friend. Dad runs back to the farmhouse for help. Stranger doesn’t trust him,
he runs back to the disabled car the stranger had left, then back to the house with the
shotgun ( way to leave the wife and child unprotected so you can go steal the guys car ).
And then it pretty much ends happy. Guy ends up being helpful and not shooting him.
Ambulance shows up to save friend ( who survives despite a huge ass bullet, blood lose
for hours and shock ). Lights come back on. Everything is normal. And the message is
hit over your head. Trust other people. Don’t take the law into your own hands. The
government has got your back, yo ( this was before Katrina ). All total crap, but you can
forgive the happy ending.
*Genre Rating-piss poor.
*Nudity Rating-piss poor.
*Overall Rating-damn fine. A valuable lesson in how the sheep will act and justify
themselves.

MIRACLE MILE
Rated R, 1989
Anthony Edwards, Mare Winningham
Uber Nerd Harry ( for Gods sake, he plays a trombone in a old school swing band ) meets
Uber Coyote Ugly Julie and they are smitten. They’re going to meet up that night at her
work at a Big Boy type diner, so Harry takes a nap to be refreshed for the night of
dancing. He wants to get together with her at the end of the shift. Well, a bird nest on
the power pole catches fire and the electricity goes out and Harry doesn’t get an alarm
wake up. Julie must have realized that no sane or straight man would plow her ugly ass
so she gets all depressed and cries on grandmas shoulder and takes a Valium (
grandparents have all the cool drugs, even if most of them regulate their bowels or
prostates ). But Harry rushes down to the diner after he realizes what happened, realizing
full well that he has only one last chance in life to get some, and so be it if she looks like
an infected boil on a wrinkled ass. He is only four hours late, so he has to make the
effort. He orders breakfast and coffee and goes out to the phone booth after getting the
number from a fellow waitress. He calls CU and leaves a message about how all sorry he
is and sucks ass. Grabs a newspaper and heads back inside. But wait!
*
The phone rings ( this was before crack so pay phones could be dialed to ) and a
hysterical son in a North Dakota silo is calling his dad in a panic. They have launched
and the missiles will hit in fifty minutes. Return missiles shortly after that. Full scale
nuclear war. UN goes inside all weirded out ( the phone call was interrupted by the caller
being shot ). Listen, everybody, we have a problem. Now, nobody wants to believe him
because lets face it, four a.m. in a diner is crazy as a crap house rat time. But after the
cook threatens to shoot him if he is lying, they get religion. Can I have an Amen,
brother? Everyone is panicking and throwing cans into the catering truck and a Wall
Street trader type is calling political connections on her cell phone the size of a shoe box,
finding out that all her contacts are on plane flights. Hmmm. Definitely panic central
now. Race off to the heliport for a trip to the airport. Trader chick is throwing money
around to de-ass the country. Wait, I must get to my CU! Too bad kid, jump off as I take
the freeway ramp.
*
UN tucks and rolls and is almost hit by a car. He had swiped the diner cooks revolver
trying to get him to stop. The on ramp car does stop. The trunk is full of stolen stereos (
this was before China churned them out by the cargo containers so they were still high
dollar ). He jacks the car, telling the crook to drive ( this was before it was politically
incorrect to portray blacks as crooks ). Stop for gas, bribe attendant, cops pull up,
firefight, run away. Get to CU’s apartment, crook takes off, they are on foot to heliport
building. Blah, blah, as they are approaching the building a few residents have gotten
word, the news is blabbing about it, mass panic, street fights, traffic jams, looting, etc., all
at five in the morning. Then everyone dies in the atomic attack.
*
This wasn’t a post-apocalyptic movie. It was about an attack leading up to the
apocalypse. More than that it was a love story. You know, we meet and then die
together, how romantic. But despite that, this movie really has a certain feel to it. You
really feel the build up and suspense, even having watched it previously knowing how it
ends. It isn’t a romanticized version of reality, even if it is a love story. In the end they
are all wiped out. And treat each other badly before it happens. Realistic. And a great
scare about nuke war. It is different in that it isn’t a sanitized version of the threats we
face ( don’t think we are in any less danger twenty years later, even with the Cold War
over ). I love it not because it tells us what happens to us after the collapse, but that it
asks, “what if the attack is the end”. Cool. Also cool is the soundtrack by Tangerine
Dream ( they did “Risky Business” if you don’t remember them ). And I could swear
that one of the traders sidekick helpers in fedora and with an Uzi was the gal that played
the Latino bad ass in “Aliens”. I like her. Plus, of course, a ride back in the time
machine to the Eighties.
*Genre Rating-not post-apoc but I give it top rating anyway. They have the feel of doom
and realism like few others.
*Nudity Rating-nothing, I can’t understand the R rating unless they felt this was scarier
than Friday The 13th. At least we didn’t have to see CU’s body.
*Overall Rating-damn fine, one of the best, four stars.

MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME
Rated PG-13, 1985
Mel Gibson, Tina Turner
Mad Max, the original, was pretty much a dud. At least post-apocalypse wise. Mel did a
great job, but the only real good part of the movie was the last five minutes. The Road
Warrior was the best of the three, and any reference to a Mad Max Future should include
the understanding that it was the character referred to, not the first or third movie. There
is nothing wrong with being second or third best in a trilogy, unless you’ve raised
expectations higher than they should be. I think Beyond Thunderdome barely scrapes by
as an acceptable post-collapse movie. It is basically going off the triumph of number
two, it’s star power and a big budget. The story, however, leaves a bit to be desired.
Okay, Road Warrior wasn’t going to win any literature prizes, but it was original and
captured the heart of the future. Thunderdome is more of a silly romp. Enjoyable, but
not ready to take its place amongst the stars of the genre. Middle of the road.
*
Max is riding along on a camel led wagon, presumably to Bartertown to conduct
business. The crazy dude in the airplane comes along and jacks the wagon to profit from
himself ( his son flies and dad jumps on to drive ). Max walks to town, in a pretty foul
mood. He gets sucked in a palace intrigue with Aunty Entity, who wants to consolidate
power. It actually sounds like she built the thing up and then the brains behind the power
generation tries to share leadership. Anyway, all he has to do is challenge that power
grab, kill the giant dude protecting the brains, make it look like a legitimate dispute, and
he gets his wagon and goods back. Master Blaster is his challenge. Master is a midget
ridding on the shoulders of Blaster, a retarded giant. Without Master, the power goes off,
machines break, etc. Kind of like Enron. Now, I have a hard time understanding this
whole arrangement. You haul in feed across the desert. And water. You feed pigs to
generate manure to make methane. First, who has a surplus of grain? How do they
safely transport it? Is the water hauled, or do they pump it with methane power? Why is
the methane even needed to run a barter post? You can conduct business mostly in the
day, and use torches at night. Or, more realistically, illumination is provided by human
waste methane. Why do you need neon lights at Bartertown? How is each transaction
taxed to pay to haul the feed into the desert? Wouldn’t the merchants rather pay less rent
and not conduct business during the night? Why is the town even in the desert? Why not
next to the grain growing region? Bartertown is a logistical nightmare that has no real
reason for existing.
*
Max and Blaster go into a dome that has nifty killing devices hanging from the ceiling.
They are strapped into bungee cords to bounce around while fighting. Well, Mel decides
against killing the retard in the end and Aunty gets mad after he spills the beans about
their deal. So, on a technicality she punishes him ( if “you bust a deal, you spin the
wheel” of fortune full of different punishments ). He gets banished out in the desert. Just
as he is about to become a greasy hot smear in the sand, a bunch of kids save him. Now,
this is another part where I had a really hard time suspending belief. A group of kids on
an airline that went down are now the Aussie equivalent of Cargo Cult New Guinea
tribesmen? They are waiting for the return of the airline captain to save them, as when
the adults left for help they promised to return. So every night the kids chant all this crap
straight from an anthropology textbook. Cave panting chronicle the crash, etc. It was a
bit hard to swallow that in such a short time the kids went from First World educated to
totem worshiping heathens. But, that is the main thrust of the movie. Educated white
kids go native. That, and the Bartertown thing. In the end they have the obligatory hot
rod junker vehicle race and Max surviving against all odds because he is one crazy dude.
They even left it open for another film ( thank goodness they quit while ahead somewhat
). But the kids were the main point in this movie. And as soon as you apply any logic to
it it becomes unrealistic and simplistic. If they were trying to time compress the process
of reverting culturally, they did a piss poor job in my opinion.
*
Now, you might observe that it is a bit unfair to be judging these films on their adherence
to realism. As if any of us have lived through a oil age collapse. But I think that physics,
history, economics and logistics are unchanged regardless. I sure as hell know what
seems unreal and what has a good chance of happening. And I think the premise here
was flawed. Not a bad movie, just not exactly one that will require your thinking cap.
Genre Rating-adequate, but not great.
Nudity Rating-sucks. None at all.
Overall Rating-as long as you don’t expect much, not a bad entertaining two hours.

THE TERMINATOR
Rated R, 1984
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton
This is the best of the four Terminators. Number four was a vile piece of crap. A great
action movie, a terrible Terminator movie. No realistic post-apocalypse premise, despite
the setting. It was also full of other holes story wise. Number three was okay. A kick
butt action film throughout with a little post-apoc tie in at the end with John getting to a
fall out shelter. Number two was another excellent action flick, but no post-apocalypse.
Number one had a total post apocalypse feeling and mood to it, despite 95% of the movie
being set in modern pre-attack America. I think a lot of that had to do with the time
period it was made. The early 80’s was a pretty scary time as far as tensions with the
Soviets. And we had just come off a near Depression economy. Doom and gloom hung
in the air and this movie reflected that. Also, in relative terms the budget was a lot lower.
You were dazzled by the story rather than special effects. The other three movies got
progressively more expensive, with less and less story and more and more FX ( two and
three got away with less story, it wasn’t until #4 that it totally went to crap with all effects
and no plausible story ). Of course, it would have been even cheaper to make if that puke
Harlan Ellison hadn’t let loose his attack lawyers. Oh, look at me, I’m a washed up
writer that could only churn out a few stories and now I have to sue everyone for story
infringement to make any money. How about writing another friggin story, jerk? How
hard is it to read copyright law? You can’t steal the presentation of an idea, but ideas
themselves are not copyright protected. All these Hollywood fights over ideas are BS.
Asshats.
*
Anyway, as I was saying before I got all worked up about scum sucking litigation bottom
feeders ( I hate it when someone borrows my ideas, but I only bitch about it, I don’t feed
the parasites and drive up the cost of doing business ), the best movie of the series was
the least larded with expensive special effects. Story, people. Story. It makes you want
to rewatch the movie. Which I’ve done. I love this film and have watched it over and
over again. It never gets old. I tried to watch “Cyborg” with Jean Claude the other day.
It was a total blob of crap. All it was was a chop suey movie with window dressing of
end of the world. The Terminator uses a cyborg and only shows a few scenes of after a
total nuclear war yet had a much better understanding/presentation of the genre. The
story has to have a logic of its own. Arnold is sent back from the future to eliminate the
future mother of the resistance movement. John sends back his boy Kyle to protect mom,
then destroys the time travel unit. One way trip. Kill the cyborg and then get stuck back
in the eighties. Talk about your sacrifices. Well, okay, it was a far better time then any
after it, but it did have its issues.
*
I don’t think there is anyone out there that hasn’t watched this movie. Do yourself a
favor and watch it again. Before you go to the theatre and see “The Road” or “2012”,
remember what it is like to watch one of the best post-collapse movies ever. I rate this
one even higher than “The Postman”, even though that is almost a apple and oranges
comparison. One was only after the collapse, and was basically cheery and optimistic.
The other was mostly prelude to the collapse, and definitely morose and gloomy. Myself,
I can’t imagine why anyone thinks there will be hope after the collapse. Let’s reintroduce
famine and plague! But we still are basically decent people under it all, even if we are
forced to put each other in the stew pot. People, when the glass is half empty, it means
you are going to die of dehydration. Not that the water fairy is going to materialize and
fill it for you. Christ on a pogo stick!
Genre Rating-one of the best, super duper.
Nudity Rating-Linda’s boobies! Yee-haw!
Overall Rating-one of the best movies, post-apoc or otherwise.

NIGHT OF THE COMET
Rated NR, 1984
Catherine Mary Stewart, Kelli Maroney
I wasn’t sure about watching this, but they did promise widespread death and Eighties
hair and music. I didn’t expect too much but I still walked away disappointed. This was
simply too bad of a movie. Oh, it wasn’t bad compared to TV movies. But not up to
theatre movie quality, even considering a lot of low budget competition. Nothing really
happened, and what did had “low quality” stamped all over it. The acting was mediocre,
the music was crap, the story was marginal and the pacing was nap inspiring. It looked
like everybody tried pretty hard, but nothing really meshed. What should have been a
bad story saved by a sense of fun was just a bad story. It was a good idea. A comet only
seen once before 65 million years ago when it wiped out the dinosaurs comes to Earth.
The tail end of it kills everyone ( we are assuming magic space dust here ) except those in
metal structures ( semi trailer, garden shed, movie projector room ). Those partially
exposed turned into zombies instead of dying outright. Then, evil scientist dudes need to
round up the survivors and drain their blood to keep themselves alive.
*
Now, few zombie flicks make much sense scientifically because they are, after all, about
zombies. You do need to suspend disbelief about certain aspects of it. Yet, even in the
zombie film universe, this story made no sense. How is it that the scientists in their
underground lair are exposed to zombie dust? They are in a steel structure so the comet
rays don’t effect them, just like the three civilian survivors that the story focuses on. But
they are slowly turning into zombies because they left the ventilation system on without
filtering the air. Yet, why didn’t the civilians have the same problems? They only had
metal structures shielding them, with free air flow. See what I mean? And the rest of the
story was pretty slow moving. Essentially, comet hits, they figure out they are alone.
They go to the mall to shop ( yeah, we get it, consumerism is bad as pointed out in Dawn
Of The Dead ), fight off stock boy zombies, scientists find them to drain their blood. A
Mexican Cowboy they are both drooling over as the last non zombie man alive comes to
the rescue ( even though the non cheerleader character is portrayed as super-fem ). The
end. But even though the movie was a mere hour and a half it seemed to take forever to
get there. A campy cult classic, they say. I say, another turd to avoid.
*Genre Rating-terrible. The electricity stayed on, very few hungry zombies tried to eat
them, no sense of disaster, no panic.
*Nudity Rating-bad. Only a few cleavage shots.
*Overall Rating-not bad if judged as a made-for-television movie, avoid otherwise.

THE QUIET EARTH
Rated R, 1985
Bruno Lawrence, Pete Smith
An Australian movie based on the book by Craig Harrison. A scientist wakes up one
morning to discover that he is the last man on earth ( which quickly becomes The Quiet
Earth after the power finely gives out ). You would think that while this is inconvenient
it at least removes the source of any number of irritating people. But he doesn’t seem
pleased. He wonders around and pokes through things and finds strange things. Like the
bathroom at the filling station which locks from the inside but no one is there. The
crashed airplane with no one in the seats even as the seatbelts are still buckled. Please
don’t let it be a rapture film I prayed religiously over and over again. Well, it wasn’t quit
that bad but it was pretty close. It seems that the Bad Bad Yanks were holding back
critical facts about a global experiment ( trying to skim free energy from the magnetic
field or some such ) that went haywire and all the people disappeared. Except those that
died right as the sun went into a weird fluctuation.
*
Well, after we do the stupid “Help, I’m lonely and bound to go completely craphouse rat
crazy” shtick that has already been overdone a few times ( although the life size
Hitler/Nixon/Queen Elizabeth Evil Persons Audience listening to him rant was pretty
good ) he pulls his head out of his butt and starts normal things like starting a garden and
cleaning himself up ( one of the worst things to do after the Apocalypse is to stop
shaving- you need to feel crisp and clean to help keep your sanity ). And then, he meets a
chick ( Alison Routledge that looks like a red head version of the sarcastic brunette
daughter on “Roseanne” ) who at first plays a bit hard to get, not wanting to be the last
girl on earth and getting the reputation of being a slut, but then figures even though this
guy is a bit bald and old it’s the best its going to get. So they bump uglies and have a
grand time until another guy shows up. Bummer. Now the babe is starting to get doe
eyes for the stranger because he is buff and a bad boy and as we all know after the
apocalypse the girls want the biggest baddest warrior king out there to protect them.
Being a smart techie nerd only works in the money economy.
*
Scientist dude notices that the sun fluctuations are increasing and is worried the “effect”
will happen again. The new plan is to get a tractor trailer full of explosives and blast his
old work site to bits. The big ass dish used to communicate with a chain of similar
research stations and the theory is that taking one out of the link will negate the
fluctuations from then on. So, he crashed the truck in and detonates and that is the end.
It seems that he knew the bitch actually was a slut and would pick the other guy, and who
wants to live with the only available primo tail just out of reach? Too depressing, much
more than if he had been the only person alive.
Genre Rating-very poor. The end of the world and very little Bad Things happen.
Nudity Rating-one boob at the end. A nice boob, but hardly worth waiting for.
Overall Rating-surprisingly, after a too-long start of a sun rising scene, not a bad movie at
all. It isn’t post-apocalypse as much as it is a Seventies Hippy Dippy look at reality and
its perception.

DAY OF THE DEAD
Rated NR, 1985
Director George Romero
The first Romero zombie film showed what story over budget could do. The premise was
good, surviving an attack on your rural retreat. The second one ( Dawn ) was more of the
same old flesh tearing zombie fun, with a bit of counter-culture/anti-consumerism thrown
in, but not worth watching. Its remake was actually a lot better, post-apocalypse wise.
The remake of “Day” was a horrid affair and unworthy of mention ( it came across as
teeny-boppers horror story, part 486 ). But the original “Day”, this one, was pretty darn
good. Oh, there was plenty of flesh consumption. A lot of running from zombie dudes.
Plenty of gunfire, a better budget. But the main thing that surprised me, the trait that
made this flick a good genre film, was the sense of post collapse shelter mayhem. Let’s
go back to the seventies and eighties when the Evil Empire was running amok and good
little capitalists were soiling their whitey tighties in fear and loathing. For the love of
God, we’re all going to die! The Russkie pukes are going to lob a few thousand nukes at
our butts and we are going to die a horrible and elongated death!
*
Back then, fallout shelters were a pretty warm and fuzzy piece of equipment to own. If
you had your shelter, or were thinking about crowding into a public shelter ( if you could
find one still operational ), you stood a pretty good chance of living through the Commie
attack. Of course, there was one big problem with shelters. They were very small. That
was a lot of reinforced concrete and air filtration equipment you needed to finance. Even
the government couldn’t be extravagant with the things ( this was before when they
actually taxed and spent rather than just printed and spent, and before we sent our whole
economy over to China ). There was a real problem of shelter psychological behavior.
How would Joe Six-Pack handle the idleness, enclosed space, and prospect of his wife
blowing around outside as radioactive dust? In layman’s terms, how do you keep
everyone from going batcrap crazy? American’s have little ability to live in crowded
conditions, under a starvation diet, with no prospects outside other than a dirt scraping
primitive existence. And that is what I loved about this movie. It really captured that
sense of isolation and mental breakdown that goes along with living underground as
civilization ends.
*
I vaguely recognized a few of the actors. I don’t know if that because they had generic
pretty-boy features or if I’d seen them in other B-movies. But I didn’t notice any
household name types. They did a very good job. There was no hackneyed acting. The
story, while taking its time to explain and explore, moved along at a reasonable clip. The
zombie action was scaled back until the end attack, so that didn’t get in the way of the
group dynamics. In essence, a last ditch effort ( as the world is zombie overrun ) by the
government to put together a science team protected by a squad of soldiers is hampered
by the lack of planning. The scientists have a lack of good equipment, and all the efforts
at finding a cure are too hampered to do much. The lead scientist just wants to
domesticate the zombies. The soldiers just want to kill all the flesh eaters. And everyone
is at each others throats as they slowly go nuts. It doesn’t portray people at their worse (
although that pretty much happens ) so much as making their descent into madness very
believable. It is very easy to replace zombies with world wide thermonuclear was and the
danger of fallout.
Genre Rating- damn good. I think one of the better ones.
Nudity Rating-a very disappointing lack of any skin.
Overall Rating-perhaps a bit dated, but still much better than a lot of crap they are putting
out today. Still enjoyable, and highly recommended.

THE SURVIVORS
Rated R, 1983
Robin Williams, Walter Matthau, Jerry Reed
You might wonder why I’m including this movie, which is basically just a spoof on the
survivalist movement. True, it has nothing to do with the post-apocalypse movie genre.
But it has such a wonderful sense of humor about the whole thing it is a must see. Yes,
the movie is poking fun at preppers and survivalists. It was part of the whole media
movement to discredit the idea. If you still bought into the whole mass culture, lemming
movement of jingoism and consumerism you hung your head in shame and shot off your
ammunition, sold your guns and threw away your cans of freeze dried food. Even after
Y2K, there were plenty of folks that were secretly shamed into having panicked again
and reentered polite society after disposing of the incriminating evidence. Time and time
again, you see the mass panic due to a certain problem ( Soviet nuclear weapons, famine
and drought, economic depression, computer failure grid down, hurricanes destroying
entire cities and states, etc. ), followed by a feeling of idiocy when the threat petered out.
*
This is unfortunate, as preparedness should be a continuous state of affairs rather than
event specific. But most folks need to belong to the dominant group, being a survival
trait in itself, and will easily be goaded into behavior that benefit’s the group rather than
themselves. While mass consumption of preparedness products does help the economy,
it is far more important for each worker drone to invest all their wealth in the banking
industry. When the worker pays taxes, pays into retirement, buys stocks and opens a
savings account for whatever is left over from perpetual auto loans and thirty year
mortgages, that really keeps the finance sector humming. A few measly bucks of guns
and storage food just stimulates the economy when a recession hits. So the mass media is
the whore for the banks, and the survival writers that panic and implore the middle class
to once again panic over a brand new collapse or threat are also whores for the bankers.
Just not as well paid except for a few select super stars. Yet, even knowing all this one
can’t help but really enjoy a movie that makes fun of the survivalist movement. Just
because I take it all seriously enough to alter my life in no way means I don’t like to
laugh over the absurdity of it all.
*
The Survivors spares no laughs over the absurdity of preparing. Donald ( Williams )is a
upper manager for a corporation. He is fired by a parrot ( the boss trained the parrot to
fire them, then went on vacation ). Sonny ( Matthau ) is a gas station owner that loses his
business due to the company suspending gasoline deliveries. They are together in a diner
when it is robbed by a hit man ( he is also affected by the economy and must stoop to
petty crime ). When Sonny fights back ( he’s not wearing any underwear and doesn’t
want to disrobe as instructed ) and Donald is shot, they become friends. Don goes on
television to tape his rebuke to an editorial decrying victim self defense and manages to
name both of them in his bumbling way, which of course the hit man sees on the news
and finds out where Sonny lives. He is about to shoot him but Don comes over and also
manages to bumble his way into subduing the hit man ( Jerry Reed ). They turn him over
to the police and on the way home Don wants to stop by a gun store to arm himself for
protection. We can forget the fact that NYC doesn’t just sell guns to any Joe Blow off
the block, that would just spoil the story, wouldn’t it? The gun store is full of crazies.
John Goodman plays a very short role as the on spot salesman for a survival training
school. There is a four foot little old lady going for the biggest revolver she can find (
she needs two hands for it ). Of course, Donald sees a .308 battle rifle with bipod,
bayonet and fifty round magazine and simply must have it. He arrives home with his
purchases and his fiancée freaks out about it. More so when she finds out he has already
enrolled both of them in the course.
*
Donald goes off to learn how to be one of the new Warrior Kings, and Sonny is still
around when the hit man is released on bail. The new deal is that he won’t kill them both
if Donald agrees he won’t say anything about the Jimmy Hoffman hit ( the hit man claims
to have hit him, and the two think his confessing to them means they too will be
assassinated ). Sonny goes upstate to ask Don to agree with this, but Donald goads him
on so they can fight to the death. This, in the end, involves the whole survivalist camp.
But meantime the “in-jokes” about the movement come fast and thick. It is nice to see
the writer did his research. And it really is quite funny. Even your own sacred cows
being slaughtered is funny if you manage to keep your sense of humor.
Genre Rating-not post apocalypse, just poking fun at survivalists.
Nudity Rating-none, other than a fast shot at Williams junk as he moons the TV news.
Overall Rating-excellent, a damn good comedy.

TESTAMENT
Rated PG, 1983
Jane Alexander
Well, this has got to be one of the most depressing films ever. Early in the movie, a
nuclear war wipes out pretty much everything. From then on it is just watching as one
after another in a family dies off from radiation poisoning. I mean, the thing is so
depressing that I can’t even take any joy in the fact that these are Californians that are
shown falling like flies. It is probably about as good as it gets showing the helplessness
and futility of surviving after a big enough war ( “The Day After” might be a contender,
see that review next ).
*
I first saw this film in 1986, right after I got out of the military. As with most military
training, we only received a sanitary, dumb version of nuclear war. It was cursory at
best. You can’t scare the troops with that sort of thing. I went to visit my sister in
Oregon on my way back home where she was going through college. She took me to a
showing on campus of this movie. I imagine it was thought to be the proper, liberal
version of a possible war. Look, children, we must suck up to the Soviets and kiss their
ass and become part of the One World Government so this sort of thing never happens.
Sigh. Well, be that as it may, whatever the intentions of this movie were, it really seems
to nail the thing. At least, the sort of ending for those unprepared. Unlike now with a lot
more useless mouth breathers eating and polluting my air, back twenty years ago grocery
stores still had a stockpile of food and didn’t rely on Just In Time inventory. So with
rationing and an equal distribution, the food stocks were enough to feed everybody for
several months. Those that didn’t die of radiation.
*
But it was a long battle with helplessness. You just tried to carry on as best you could
and waited for your loved ones to die. There was no fighting for resources, no attempts
at sheltering. Realistic, in that a lot of communities would have been cohesive at first,
then simply resigned to fate. Plus, although it was never addressed in the film, the more
that died meant more food was freed up. Why risk a fight when the neighbor is going to
die and leave you his rations? And sadly, twenty years ago there was a lot more civility.
Can you imagine today’s crack heads behaving themselves like that? Despite being little
more than mom being helpless as two of her three kids ( plus an orphan they took in ) die
and then her almost committing suicide but at the last minute deciding to survive as long
as possible, this was a very good movie. It really captured the mood correctly. Just
prepare for it to be a real downer.
*Genre Rating-one of the best, one of the most realistic. The kid crapping blood before
he dies will stick with you.
*Nudity Rating-no skin, it’s rated PG.
*Overall Rating- excellent.

THE DAY AFTER
Rated NR, 1983
Jason Robards, John Lithgow
Well, this one didn’t age well at all. What used to be a pretty good guess at the horror of
a full blown nuclear exchange now pretty much just looks like what it is- a TV turd. One
lowers ones expectations for TV movies. But this still is not all that hot. First off, simply
discount the first hour right off the bat. It isn’t anything more than the growing tensions
as Soviet forces gather at the East German border, then their invasion, then eventually
someone goes nuclear. You have the good old boy farmer ( this is in Kansas ), a college
student, a city doctor and a couple about to get married. There isn’t enough time to
properly portray them as characters, but the first hour is wasted doing so anyway. Then,
the last hour is all of them eventually dying of radiation poisoning ( or the majority
anyway ). And all the possible problems crammed into that same hour. Hospital
overcrowding, no power, no hope for replanting, looting and crime. No place to shelter
out of the fallout. Triage. If this had been a mini-series with enough time for character
development where you could actually care about the people, and enough time to explore
each problem in better detail, then they would have been on to something.
*
As it was, everything is given short shift and it seems star power alone was expected to
make the movie. I’m not saying this was a terrible movie, merely that after two and a
half decades and a lot more apocalypse movies this one isn’t any where near as good as it
used to be. You can easily see the flaws now. Good for its time, hopelessly outdated
now. Like a musical with the guys having greasy hair and the gals wearing torpedo bras.
Genre Rating- low end of the list. Too dated. Too Made For TV.
Nudity Rating-too Made For TV.
Overall Rating-too Made For TV.

THE ROAD WARRIOR
Rated R, 1981
Mel Gibson
The sequel to “Mad Max”, and a much better post-apocalypse film. Max took place as
criminals were terrorizing the roads and he was a cop fighting them. As such, it took
place during the collapse but not after. Warrior takes place after the collapse of
civilization. It is never spelled out, but one gets the impression from the beginning
narrative that Australia wasn’t involved in the global war that shut down the oil supply.
No radioactivity or direct attack, just a slow collapse as the Oil Age dissolved.
Throughout there is talk of safe places far away on the continent, but even if they aren’t
preyed on it would still be a more primitive existence. In the Wasteland where Max
wanders, he must scrounge gasoline and fight the gangs there that also search for remains
from the industrial past. This might be a particular Aussie viewpoint where cities are safe
places and the rural desert is dangerous. Here it is the cities that are killing grounds, even
before the collapse. This is what I consider almost the best apocalypse movie ever, even
with a few gaps in their logic. The scene of Max eating a can of dog food explains how
he eats through scavenging, but it doesn’t explain how the large compound feeds itself,
or even how cans of any food survived the die-off. But that is a minor complaint. I
really like the depiction of ammunition shortages. Crossbows are the preferred weapon,
and firearms are rare. Even rarer is the ammunition for them. That is how the industrial
age collapsing effects self-defense. Unlike the crap from books like The Survivalist or
Out Of The Ashes where magic ammunition trees shed little shiny cartridges at the feet of
the righteous super warriors.
*
The bad guys are attracted to a lone compound ( this was when it was called an
encampment rather than a compound- before the Feds called any plywood shack full of
Constitutionalists a compound ) that is pumping oil and refining gasoline. Max happens
on it when the crazy Gyro Captain tries to steal Max’s gas and confesses to its location to
save his life when his theft is foiled. Max sees them send out several scouts who are
looking for a semi engine. Of course they are all captured, including nubile females (
providing a few quick nude scenes ). Max saves one of the guys who promises gas if he
is returned to the compound. Of course, the guys wounds are too great and he dies once
inside, so Max doesn’t get his gas. However, The Humongous ( a great feature for the
DVD is that you can keep the dialog caption on- do so as you pick up lots of previously
unheard shouting from this guy- “attack, my vermin“ and “attack my gayboy berserkers“
and other cool commands ), evil masked leader of the bad guys, tells the compound to
surrender or die, so max gets a new deal of a semi for gas for his own vehicle, the
Interceptor V-8. He strikes off on foot, goes to the semi crash he saw days ago and gets it
started. He then battles his way back into the compound. He is paid in gas and takes off,
but is attacked and crashes and loses his car and dog ( there is a booby trap on the gas
tank ). The Gyro Captain comes looking for him and saves him. Then, Max agrees to
drive the semi out as a decoy as the rest of the compound goes the other way and escapes.
*
In the end, after much chasing and crashing and big crossbow battles, the semi crashes
and Max escapes. The bad guys leader is killed and his men leave, as the tank was filled
with sand. All the compound guys escape. Of course, it was a lot more exciting than I
made it sound. This is one of those great post-apocalypse movies you can watch time
and again. It is somewhat realistic, great fun, fast paced and one of the best. It is the best
of the trilogy, really the only one to watch repeatedly. They all tie in together, but it isn’t
really necessary to view the other two. This is the classic.
*Genre Rating- one of top picks. You don’t do a whole lot better
*Nudity Rating- could be better, but adequate with a few long views of biguns.
*Overall Rating- kick butt movie. Excellent.

DEADLY HARVEST
Rated NR, 1974
Clint Walker, Kim Cattrall
If you go looking for this movie at Netflix, you need to rent “Classic Disaster Movies”.
It is one of three movies on the disc. The only good one in fact. Not that it doesn’t show
its age. It is a TV movie, with cheesy music ( possibly one of the first synthesizers ) and
bad looking blood and more than a few takes that looked like they were rushed due to
budget. But that is not why you should watch this movie. This film actually is so much
more topical now than it was 35 years ago. The opening has the narrator talking about
overpopulation and pollution and freak weather and the oil crisis and losing arable land
leading up to first one failed harvest which is cured by opening up the grain reserves.
However, a second early winter wipes out the next crop and eminent starvation looms.
Those were very real potential problems in the early seventies, added to the fears of a war
with the Soviets and a nuclear exchange. However, in hindsight it is easy to see what
saved our butts. While the US peaked in its continental oil production a few years before
this film, resulting in all problems that followed, we still had largely unexploited Saudi
production and brand new North Sea, Alaska and Gulf of Mexico oil. We have none of
that oil now, and nothing to replace it. All the old problems will come back to haunt us
with no magic cavalry charge to rescue us.
*
As previously stated, a budget does not a good film. It can make a better film, but it can’t
save a turd. Despite a very limited budget, which is very evident, this is a darn good
movie. It highlights what is to come and does very little to gloss over them. The ending
dialog has the son asking his father if the fighting is over. While dad gave a cheery “we
must persevere” speech, he also admitted that more bad things were to come. My kind of
line! Reality, not BS, not smoke blown up my butt. Okay, after the beginning narrative
talking about why things were falling apart, and then after a cabinet meeting where
politicians were shown agreeing to lie to the public to avoid immediate panic, we move
in to the family farm. A big wedding is planned for tomorrow, which a big to-do. The
government had already confiscated all excess grains from the farms, and the ceremony
was going to be a respite from problems and an excuse to eat lots. Now we cut to the city
with a big wig playing on his computer ( this was hot stuff for the time ) and his elderly
father telling him to go get food in the country for his sick daughter. They both go, they
beg farmer guy for some food, blah blah. Leave the farm to drive back, the town idiot
who is selling protection intercepts them and takes food, grandpa dies from lame ticker.
Business nerd vows revenge.
*
Back to town, nerd tries to buy food on the black market. Evil guy laughs at his stack of
stock certificates. Nerd offers a map to the farm. Big wedding, lots of food, all farmers
occupied so easy to attack. Nerd blames farmer for dads death, and he needs food. Evil
dudes attack, farmers wife and groom killed. Big weepy to-do. More revenge vowed,
final battle between the forces of good and evil. Now, there is a bit more involved than
that, but there is the gist of it. The plot line isn’t very important. It is the general theme
that is important, that plenty of urban folks will quickly run out of rationed food and the
crowds will ravage the countryside. And it does a fairly decent job pointing out how
folks will rationalize theft and murder. Another important point to keep in mind are the
differences three decades make. Back then, besides the difference in the oil supply, there
actually was a government stockpiled grain reserve. Today, none whatsoever. Back
then, we were still overpopulated, but it is far worse today. Back then, the government
actually could plan national disaster relief. Today, it can’t save a city. The lessons in this
movie are needed more than ever.
*
I realize that a lot of survivalists won’t like this movie. There was plenty of gunfire, but
only a few AR-15’s. And those did not turn the tide of any battle. Most weapons were
bolt or pump, and most battles were not military fantasies but more a confused melee of
unprofessional men banging away at close range with pathetic results. Closer to reality.
It actually surprises me this movie ever got aired. No sickly sweet message of hope,
surprisingly realistic.
Genre Rating-within limits, one of the better collapse movies. Things getting worse
rather than better, no government rescue.
Nudity Rating-no skin, normal for TV where violence is okay, but nudity, or even
acknowledgement of private parts existing or sex being a body function is strictly
forbidden.
Overall Rating-if you can sit through the very bad music and special effects, and don’t
mind an occasional bad bit of dialog, darn good movie.

A BOY AND HIS DOG
Rated R, 1975
Don Johnson
An outlandish premise with a man and dog communicating telepathically. The dog can
smell out females, who are quite rare, and Screamers, who are green glowing
underground dwellers that kill you with a touch. Now add in hippy dippy music from the
early seventies. And yet, despite all that, oddly enough this movie works wonderfully.
Something about it says, welcome to the wasteland. If there had been testosterone laden
grunting for dialog and lots of chop suey battles it would have just been another crap
budget post apocalypse romp in the desert. But it was mostly a grumbling dog and his
buddy kicking around the place stealing canned food and looking for sex. A fun romp, in
other words. You probably couldn’t get away with something like this today, after the
legions of FemiNazis have entrenched themselves everywhere and suddenly being a male
chauvinist pig has been outlawed. In other words, the fun police have taken over ( kind
of like the underground Topeka depicted in this film ).
*
Vic is just a randy young lad looking to have his way with any female he can find,
willing or not. Along the way he steals food to eat. His dog helps him. From the
opening narrative and the scenery, it seems a sea of mud has covered the place and you
have to dig down to find the treasures from the lost civilization. One group blasts a hole
and then starts digging down by hand, uncovering cans of food along the way. Vic waits
for a chance and then runs in and grabs some. Thus sated, his dog agrees to find a female
for him. At the neighborhood cinema showing God awful old and grainy soft porn films
( its an outdoor walk in that takes cans of food for admittance ) the dog smells out a
female. Vic follows her back to an underground gym/school and peeks at her undressing
( pretty much the only nudity, teasingly revealed through cob webs and shadow ) and
jumps her bones. Or tries to, as a group aboveground attacks. After the battle, they hole
up in the boiler room and go at it all night long, much to the dogs continued disgust.
Then, the female knocks Vic out and disappears. He is all butt hurt and wants to follow
her underground ( the real underground shelters, not the mostly buried former above
ground dwellings ). Dog warns him but of course he got a taste of the good stuff and
wants some more. Conveniently, the female has left her passkey card behind which he
uses to access the sealed door to the bunker.
*
The underground shelter is a bit strange. The access tube going down is brightly lit, kind
of a white shiny NASA ship with tubes and wiring all over the place. But when he gets
to the inhabited area it is in perpetual night with lights in the building. They have
“outdoor” parks with just ground lighting. So why have bright support rooms and dingy
living areas? Why not grow lamps high overhead for UV light? Anyway, the committee
is a cheerless bunch that condemns everyone to The Farm for bad attitude. One gets the
idea it recycles humans for fertilizer. They assign Vic to impregnate all the females since
living underground leads to sterilization. He is all for this, until he discovers that he is
put on a milking machine rather than doing it the old fashion way. The female that lured
him down frees him and they try to escape. She had agreed to trick him because she
wanted a chair on the committee. They blew her off so she got pissed and is now trying
to get Vic to kill off the committee so she can be in charge. He just wants to get back up
to the surface. She gets mad at him for not being her assassin. Sure, she’s got a nice
body, but come on. The committee has Michael the robot as its protection. Vic shoots
the damn thing several times before it malfunctions ( it was chasing then during the
escape ), so of course he doesn’t want to get through the robot to kill the committee.
Plus, he just wants out of that nut house.
*
They get to the surface, where the dog had been left. It is almost dead, Vic having been
gone for some time. To go on, Vic must kill the girl to feed the dog. And she deserved it
too. Conniving, deceitful bitch. Can you imagine if Vic had helped her overthrow the
government? He would have been poisoned in no time, palace intrigue style. This is
why you want a balance in the gender of the population. Too few females and they have
too much power. A surplus and they are interchangeable parts. Vic was right to do her
in. He wouldn’t eat her, having lost his appetite, but it was the right thing to do. Keep
the dog, he’ll find another female. Plus, they are buddies. The bitch was just evil.
Genre Rating-one of the few over the top/fantasy type stories that works well. Good
show on post-apocalypse survival ( normally, the scavenged can for food shtick turns me
off, but it works here ).
Nudity Rating-only a tease, but at least it’s something.
Overall Rating-a fun film, unique, different, very good for low budget.

SOYLENT GREEN
Rated PG, 1973
Charlton Heston
You sit through an hour and a half movie in order to find out that “Soylent Green Is
People!!”. Okay, way back when this film came out, you went for the shock/unique
factor. It was cool that they were making human food from humans. Of course, the
slightest bit of reflection would show that humans are a terrible feed to meat ratio. If it
takes years rather than months of feeding livestock, you have spent far too much grain to
grow meat. Chickens are most efficient, and it still takes something like three or so (
going by memory here, forgive me if I’m slightly off ) pounds of grain to get one pound
of meat. Humans would be hundreds or thousands of pounds of grain per pound of meat.
Thus, when a dying Charlie screams out that “soon they’ll be breeding us like cattle” it is
a bit over the top. No self respecting rancher would advocate humans as a meat source.
Now, when the movie was showing the dead being disposed into the vat for forming
Soylent Green squares, that isn’t too inefficient. You simply aren’t wasting the meat
then. But efficient disposal is far different than breeding.
*
SOYbeans and LENTils are the bulk of the food fed to a huge overpopulation of people.
New York City alone has 40 million by 2022. The people are crammed into cities and
farm land is off limits and guarded. As are the food factories. Soylent corporation feeds
half the worlds population. Supposedly they are using ocean plankton as a supplemental
protein source in their wafers. The color codes used tell you what the ingredients are and
what day of the week they are rationed out. Green is the highest energy one, but always
in short supply. No wonder, right? There are only so many people voluntarily showing
up for euthanasia ( after a calming light and picture show with views of long unseen
nature ) or being killed in riots ( the “scoops are coming” means get the hell out of the
way because those bad boys scoop your ass up and crush you ). The dirty little secret is
that the ocean is dead from pollution. The only animal protein available is dead people.
*
That secret is what causes a big high level muckeemuck to be eliminated by the
corporation. They make it look like a bungled burglary but our boy Robert Thorn (
Charlie ) quickly figures out it was a disguised assassination. As he is investigating the
crime, he makes no attempt to hide his pilfering of the rich guys apartment. Running
water! Air Conditioning! Room to move! Large bars of soap! And the big wonder, an
actual slice of real beef with some vegetables! He just walks out of the building with a
bulging pillowcase, than cuts his Lieutenant in for a share. Thorns apartment is cramped
and the light supplied by a bicycle generator. Water is rationed and he has to pick his
way up and the stairs packed with sleeping homeless. It is always summer, with a heat
wave.
*
The great part of this movie isn’t the “surprise” ending. You can actually watch this
movie again and again and enjoy it, because the portrayal of the future full of people with
limited resources is so spot on. Gore Warming had yet to become big business, and the
oil shocks had just happened. This movie was really ahead of its time. Of course, “Make
Room, Make Room” was the book the movie was based on ( and pretty faithful too ), so
taking that time frame into account, the only real scare the concept was based on was
pollution. Overpopulation awareness had yet to make a big splash in the public
awareness. Since the movie seems even more topical than when first released, this seems
like a darn good peek into a crystal ball. Society and its future condition as portrayed
here is the main attraction. Not the twist at the end. Watch it to enjoy how close they
came to guessing our problems 35 years ago. Huge population increases, food scarcity,
warming trends, dying ocean, etc.
Genre Rating- a bit poor. Not really post-apocalypse as much as during the collapse.
Nudity Rating- no good parts.
Overall rating- a damn good movie.

PANIC IN YEAR ZERO
Rated NR, 1962
Frankie Avalon
This was actually one of the better nuclear war survival films, as long as you keep its
limitations in mind. For all the little irritants with this film, it was pretty good at laying
the foundation for today’s preppers ( or, it crystallized those thoughts already out there,
but in mass culture form, depending on how you look at it ). First off, this movie is from
the early sixties. Frankie Avalon, for Christ’s sake. The music that went along with it
was overly dramatic, as was the presentation of dialog. Also, the auto porn of the time
saw to it there were lots of mighty engines and close up of spinning wheels. And yet,
forgiving this as a creature of its time, this was still Beaver Cleaver Meets The Bomb. I
imagine it was quite daring for its day. Death, crime, rape. It was all enough to make
June blush.
*
Dad is pretty excited, because it’s a fine day to pull the family trailer up to a fine fishing
hole out of the hustle and bustle of LA. And one look at dad could tell you, dad doesn’t
get too excited too often. One of those big, corn and bacon fed silent and gruff types.
The type that if they shoved a bag of lemons up their ass, their sour facial expression
wouldn’t get any worse. They get going and an hour or so out of the LA basin, they
notice bright lights. It takes a few minutes, but there it is. Mushroom cloud. Mom, a
total insecure proto-Yuppie housewife, gets all panicky about her mother, who is still
down there in the city. So they turn back. Already, traffic is getting crazy with everyone
and his brother tearing butt out of the basin and in to the mountains. Here it is,
Armageddon, and these idiots are gunning their ten miles to the gallon Detroit land
cruisers around each other trying to get to be first in line in the informal convoy. Idiots.
Dad stops at a roadside diner to get a bite to eat and have the wife call her mother. All
this time, he is calmly and rationally explaining to the freaking bitch why he is doing all
this stuff. Upon finding out the phones aren’t connecting and the diner is rapidly running
out of food, dad decides the first impulse to leave his mother in law was the correct one.
Hell, the crotchety old bag of bones is up in the stratosphere by now anyway. They turn
off the main road into a side county road, hopping to get to a undisturbed town.
*
They pull up to the town grocer and dad gets him to open up early, promising to spend
the same amount the owner usually gets in a day. $200 in groceries, and this was back
when gas was a quarter a gallon. About $2500 in today’s money ( about $5,000 in food a
few years back before inflation and ethanol doubled food prices- but even accounting for
rural small store prices, still three grand in food at the least ). They fill the trailer with
food. They get the guy to have his buddy open the hardware store and buy two hundred
in supplies plus $200 in guns. Dad only has half that in cash and wants to pay by check
for the rest, but the owner needs to hold the pistol until the commie pukes from the state
to clear the sale ( amazing they were panicking about gun sales even back then ). Well,
dad says piss on this crap and decks the guy. His son helps in the fight and they leave the
guy with an IOU for the rest. In other words, civilized robbery. Next, they go tooling
down the freeway but are accosted by punks. Glory, Cleaver! Not punks! They shoot
one, but only wound him. Okay, the drama of driving and supply procurement takes up
about half the movie. The second half is tearing down the bridge into the fishing area,
setting up camp in a cave, burying supplies in case of theft, and playing super camper.
The hardware store owner shows up, but they give him the cold shoulder. Briefly,
survival of the family only is disguised, but by and large they have the guns so they look
after themselves first. They won’t even spare the guy they owe for the guns some food.
Then, the punks from the road come around and rape the daughter ( as dad and son are
burying the hardware store guy and his wife that the punks kill ). Finally, dad gets pissed
and goes and kills the punks. Two out of three, anyway. The farm house they hole up in
has the previous occupants daughter as a sex slave locked in her room. The dad is nice
this time and allows her to come camp out with them. Soon, son and slut are making
goo-goo eyes at each other and they are so busy with that ( while Frankie is cutting wood
like a girl, by the way ) they don’t see the third punk sneak up on them and shoot the son
in the leg before the girl kills him.
*
Well, they had just heard that relocation camps had opened, and even though dad had
refused to leave, now they had to drive to get bleeding son to doctors. It ends with them
arriving safe, under army protection. A bit hokey, but the war had been of a limited
exchange so it wasn’t totally unrealistic. Despite the happy ending, a lot of thought
provoking ground had been covered. How urban folks would panic. The stores being
stripped. Gasoline prices going up ten times. Exploding crime. The morality of helping
( or not helping ) others. The inability of people to accept the new realities. Strategies to
deal with supply theft. Etc. That made this film worthwhile, even if the cultural aspect
of it are hopelessly outdated.
Genre Rating- despite a syrup sweet happy ending, damn good portrayal of reactions to
and strategies dealing with nuclear war.
Nudity Rating- nothing. No bosoms, no cleavage, no leg above the knee. Cloth up to the
neck. Damnit.
Overall Rating- Annoying at times, but well worth dealing with it. Pretty good despite
flaws.

THIS IS NOT A TEST
Rated NR, 1962
B cast
This wasn’t so much a bad movie as it was a bad trip back into the past of early sixties
Hollywood. Overacting, cheesey music and a desire to cash in on the latest trend. In this
case the hip culture of the fifties Beats. This was pre-Summer Of Love so instead of Man
and Groovy it is Bird and Square. It was actually painful to watch. The film starts with a
graveyard State Trooper told to go set up a roadblock. He isn’t told exactly what is going
on until the last minute, which goes from stop motorists to Yellow Alert to Clear Traffic
For Evacuation to the very last Missiles Incoming. The movie is 73 minutes long, and
while I’m not sure that was meant to correspond to the 75 minute launch alert to impact
time mentioned, it did seem to be in “real time”.
*
It starts with cars being pulled over at the road block. Arguing, idiots, party animals, con
men from Reno, the truck driver carrying a hitchhiker that turns out to be a wanted
murderer. One wife gets the hots for the truck driver and switches allegiance to him ( the
husband then kills himself instead of them ). The murderer is lurking in the woods. The
cop is heavy handed and demanding. Three people split off and go for a nearby cave,
they are going to grab canned food from a cabin to survive. The rest decide to stay in the
back of the semi truck trailer, turning it into a bomb shelter. At the end, one gal tries to
escape the trailer ( Oh Golly Gosh Gee Wiz, it’s too friggin hot in here ) and as they
struggle an outside group of thugs hears them and stays to rush the cop. They steal his
keys and try to escape in his cruiser. The group locks him outside as he is unconscious.
He is beating on the door as the bombs explode. At which point the movie ends. We
don’t know for sure if the trailer is incinerated along with people outside, but it is a good
guess.
*
Too drama queenish at times, then it all leaves you hanging. It seems the whole point
was to point out how mean people can be. I suppose at the time, this was an exciting and
thrilling suspense film. Today it just seems almost like a bit of a turd. Almost boring. I
have mixed reservations about this one. Not bad enough to hate, not good enough to
recommend. Proceed at your own risk.
Genre Rating-mediocre. Only covers the panic up to the attack.
Nudity Rating-worst. No skin at all.
Overall Rating-a casualty of its time, it hasn’t aged well. Yet, it had potential to be great.
This will be a gamble of money and time. If either can’t be wasted, skip this one.

THIS IS NOT A TEST
Rated R, 2008
Hill Harper, Tom Arnold
There are only two things this movie has in common with the 1960’s original. The name
and ending the thing right at a nuclear explosion so you don’t know what happens
afterward. Out of the two, I would definitely recommend this one over the original, but
there are certain things I didn’t like about this movie. First, it started off as a satirical
comedy but near the end it started taking itself too seriously and the whole tone of it
changed ( not that it was very funny or satirical to start with, but you still noticed a
difference ). Second, it become a blatant anti-survivalist propaganda turd. “The
Survivors” with Robin Williams had a good sense of fun about itself and even if the
message was in essence “don’t waste your life worrying about disaster” at least it was
shining a light on the absurdities of the survivalist movement rather than trying to
discredit it. Self parody is okay, active propaganda trying to vilify is quite another. This
movie is actively in the later category.
*
The ending was not about Carl taking off and leaving Viv after she refused to leave for
safety but him staying by her side in the heart of danger. Because he LOVED her. Oh -
My -Friggin -God!!!. Hey, love is all fine and dandy and it’s a good gig if you can find
it. But it gets you killed quicker than crap. Carl was waking up, becoming aware of the
increasing dangers all around him. He tried to include his wife in his preparations
towards safety. He LOVED her and wanted her safe. He was having nightmares about
her dying. So as a responsible husband, he tried to take care of her. Because he LOVED
her. He wanted to provide financial security with gold. He wanted to protect her
physically with a firearm. He wanted her safe from crime and terror targeting by moving
out of L.A. And how does she repay that LOVE? By dissing on our hero. By fighting
him every step of the way. By being an impediment. By refusing to even hear him with
reason. No, he was sent to a shrink. The gun had to be locked up where it was useless.
Her job is more important than safety because like 99% of the other idiots out there she
equates cash with security. That’s right, sucker. That’s what the bankers want you to
think, because they control it all up and down the board. They create it out of thin air,
loan it out, charge interest on it and then devalue it by creating inflation by creating more
of it. And you think it is a store of value!! Ha!!
*
So the overpowering message in this movie is that, 1) you are a paranoid freak to be
fearful, and 2) pursue love and keep your spouse happy by being in debt and fighting for
more paper currency, and perhaps even 3) living in a shit hole, crap bucket, hellhole of a
city so you can love spouses that love money. Although 2 and 3 are about the same
thing. But number one was quite apparent. More than likely in the last second of the
clock counting down on the nuke bomb, when the disposal expect needed to clip the
correct wire and may or may not have ( remember, the movie ends right there ), the
message should have been “see, I told you so”. But it wasn’t. It was some BS crap about
being happy because you were with the one you love. Don’t be an idiot. You can fall out
of love and then fall right back in. For the guys, getting laid again will see to it that you
fall back in love. For the ladies, as long as their security is provided for, they will fall
back in love. You can try to fool Mother Nature, but it never works for long. Love is
lubricant to make biological necessity more palatable. Dump the stupid ass bitch and get
a spouse that is aware of the need to escape and survive. Christ! Like this is a problem
for a rocket scientist.
Genre Rating- terrible post-apocalypse. But a good school on how to prepare.
Nudity Rating- rated R and no skin. Cheap bastards.
Overall Rating- If you go in expecting the propaganda, and keep in mind to draw your
own conclusions, not a bad “preparedness” movie. And not really a comedy. The
funniest part was the little dog named Mr. Cracker ( he was white, the couple was black ).

ON THE BEACH
Rated NR, 1959, 2000
Gregory Peck, Armond Assante
I didn’t like this movie for the simple fact that it was bad science and quite unrealistic. I
can see the long slow controlled collapse in Australia. It doesn’t necessarily mean total
breakdown of society as things run out. Everyone was being fed as they waited for the
fallout. The only shortage was petrol, as coal was still available for power generation.
But I don’t believe that everyone in the northern hemisphere was killed. That seems like
a statistical impossibility. Or that everyone in Australia would be killed. I never got
around to reading the book, but at least in the film it seems that this was a straight
propaganda piece agitating for nuclear disarmament. The other thing I disliked about the
film was that there was no social breakdown. No one acting badly. Now, it is possible as
I just said, but when you have people just sitting around waiting to die, it becomes more
of a disaster movie ( giant ants take over the planet until the government develops a
poison ) rather than a post-apocalypse movie ( we are all going to die horribly ).
*
Generally I am not a huge fan of ancient movies. Anything before the 60’s is quaint and
outdated and a totally different culture. To me. I’m sure that to the legions of Depends
wearing geriatrics who watch DVD’s with a dance band song in their heart and a twinkle
in their bifocals every time that they revisit that magical Beaver Clever land of an over
abundant resource rich happy place. But I’m definitely going to vote for the older
version with Gregory Peck. The new version is too optimistic, Armond has always
rubbed me raw with his “acting” and the sister in law character in the original was more
of a happy fatalistic drunk than a dark brooding depressing type like in the remake. The
original is a good bit over two hours and seems to go quickly, whereas the newer one is
ten minutes shy of two hours and seems to drag on.
*
The old film definitely had the far better acting. I did enjoy the new version character of
the one scientist who thought they were all going to die, bucking the conventional
wisdom that was full of happy talk and other fairy tales. He was played by the bloke that
stared in the movie “FX”. And he did a great job in this one. But most of the other
actors were forgettable or annoying. Now, when I tell you the original was acted better,
keep in mind I usually cringe at the over the top type of acting in the older movies. It
wasn’t that the new actors were so much bad as just flat with little personality. The story
was much better in the original. I didn’t like the whole concept of the movie, but the first
one was better written despite that general flaw. The new version was lame, with the war
being blamed on the Chinese blockade of Taiwan. Come on, give me a break. First, the
Chinese are much better strategic planners than that. Look at our current economic state
of affairs. The Chinese are going to win, just by doing nothing. They would never wage
a losing nuclear war when they can sit back and wait for us to implode ourselves. It
might have modernized the story, but it doesn’t work like the original Cold War setting
did. All in all, there is very little reason to watch the remake. The original, while a poor
post-apocalypse movie, was a decent film otherwise.
Genre Rating-poor. More of a disaster film than a post-apoc one.
Nudity Rating-poor. No skin.
Overall Rating-old one, a pretty decent film. New one, pretty crappy.


FIVE
Rated NR, 1951
William Phipps, Susan Douglas
Regarded as the first film to deal with a nuclear war aftermath. While certainly dated,
and with a blood vomiting end, it really isn’t too bad at all. Much better than a lot of crap
masquerading under the post apocalypse genre that came along afterwards. Five people
are left alive after a nuclear war. The woman was behind lead walls getting an X-ray, the
banker and doorman ( the doorman is the token black in the movie, just in case you are
under any rap star or politician induced delusions- this movie came out a bit before civil
rights ) were down in a bank vault. The mountaineer ( the snootie foreign sounding dude
) was so high up on Everest that he escaped the radiation. It was never explained how the
poet dude lived without that kind of protection. Now, granted, the whole world dying of
radiation poisoning except for a mere half dozen is improbable ( we know everyone is
dead, if we believe the foreigner who claimed to have seen no one going through Asia to
get a boat to get to Hawaii, then flew to California ) but remember at the time that nuclear
war was new and frightening with little knowledge about what could happen.
Remember, one scientist was rather frightened before the first bomb test that the
atmosphere might catch fire.
*
At the start, the lone female is staggering along trying to reach a relatives house. This is
our first clue that she is your typical “I believe I’m having a case of the vapors” type of
female. Yes, we all liked them when they were weak and helpless, but she sure seems
high maintenance. Of all the women to be left alive, and we are stuck with this neurotic
bitch… Anyway, she gets to the house, up in the hills all alone with a stream running
through it and there is already a guy there. Obviously we can tell he is a poet, a beat, a
non organizational man, because he wears a BEARD. Shocking. She is all shocked and
non communicative and he is all tender and caring. Barf. Hell, he tries to force himself
on her and then gives up the fight when she struggles too much. How gentlemanly.
There is your fifties sentimentalities, with the over protection of women. If the film was
from the seventies he would have just knocked her ass out and had his way with her. In
the end she would have stood protectively by his side in possessiveness. Straight out of a
sexploitation book or a female romance. In the nineties film, she would have turn lesbian
and adopted a baby from China.
*
A short time later, up pulls a jeep ( a real one from one of the wars, not like the crap they
turn out today from bailed out Chrysler ) and the banker and door boy are in it. The old
banker is quite delusional, talking about going on vacation. The black guy just goes
alone playing the shucking and jiving role, it’s okay boss, yous a good boss, yous not
crazy as a crap house rat you honky mo fo. Banker dude starts getting sick fast, it can
only be radiation poisoning, his last wish is to see the ocean so down they go.
Remember, this was an unspoiled California with great beauty and very uncrowded.
Putting all the scenery into the film must have helped with the box office draw. Then
everyone thought California was real swell and moved there and totally screwed up the
place and we can only hope for a huge sudden earthquake that smites all their illegal
asses. While the old dude is busy dying, the mountaineer dude washes up on the beach.
His plane had run out of gas. They pulled him out. But, grandpa dying made it a group
of four rather than five. Luckily for the movie title, the bitch had been pregnant prior to
the war so she pops out the kid el pronto. Back to five. Well, the fuzzy foreigner doesn’t
like the colored, they all want to plow the psycho bitch ( who by now has one of the first
recorded cases of post natal stress syndrome- not that it never happened before but mom
just got the crap slapped out of her and snapped out of it but this is Leave It To Beaver
country and in a gentler time where its okay to coddle the mother and ignore the baby ), it
is nothing but problems in this little paradise.
*
Even with that tension throughout the movie, it did tend to drag a bit. Finally, the black
guy gets killed, the foreign guy tricks the broad into going into town under false
pretenses, he sees he has radiation sickness and freaks ( right after looting a jewelry store
), the gal walks back to the house from town ( remember, those delicate things couldn’t
drive-the roads were much safer back then other than the semi-legal practice of drunk
driving ), her baby dies and suddenly, just the two of them, they suddenly fall in love and
the movie ends. Only in Hollywood can the entire world population be wiped out and the
last crazy bitch fall in love with the last long hair hippie freak. And if that wasn’t bad
enough, the start of the movie had to flash the commie propaganda message about lack of
world peace causing tensions. Oh, well. Like I said, despite some issues, not that bad of
a movie.
Genre Rating- pretty good. Perhaps not one of the best, but well done for the time it
came out.
Nudity Rating- no skin.
Overall Rating- surprisingly, doesn’t date too badly outside of scientific knowledge. It
isn’t campy and over the top like a lot of old movies tend to be. Shut up, gramps. Go
change your Depends. Some of the old movies are quite horrid affairs to subject yourself
to. Not this one.

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