Tonino Ricci was a madman who would direct anything placed in front of him, and this time he got his hands on a script by the legendary Tito Carpi (Warriors of the Wasteland and Escape from the Bronx). Here, he’s basically taking the DNA of Max Rockatansky and mixing it with John Rambo to make a tasty cocktail of Italian end-of-the-world fun.
Our hero is Rush, played by the ultimate Italian genre workhorse, Bruno Minniti. The world has gone to pot, nukes have ruined the party, and the surface is supposedly a death trap. But here’s the rub: Rush—a guy who looks like he wandered off the set of a more expensive production—discovers that the land is actually healing, the plants are growing again, and the air is breathable.
The problem? Yor — no relation to Reb Brown; this is Gordon Mitchell — is running a subterranean empire where he’s hoarding all the water and resources. He’s keeping the masses terrified, telling them it’s radioactive death outside so he can play God in his bunker. Rush isn’t exactly a saint, though—he’s a one-man wrecking crew who decides to start a revolution. He’s essentially acting like a disgruntled Vietnam vet taking on a corrupt police force, except in this case, the police are Yor’s Untouchables.
This is the kind of end-of-the-world movie where Gordon Mitchell has the most obvious stuntman ever, and the soundtrack isn’t afraid to play a sax solo over the non-stop death and destruction. Speaking of Yor — the real Yor — Rush is nearly as bad a hero as that prehistoric dude, because he gets nearly everyone but himself killed.
You can watch this on YouTube.
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