anxietyresister Yep, you guessed it, it's the end of the world again. Must be time to dust off the leathers and bring out the dodgy motorbikes. But get this.. the main character here is a LADY. And she can fend for herself! But just in case she can't, she finds an injured Calvin-Klein model to watch over her. How novel, eh? The planet is a wasteland, survivors are mostly plague-infested psychos or Ewok-resembling dwarfs.. isn't it fortunate that the two most attractive members of each sex alive find each other? Now they can start the human race anew and make lots of lovely babies together that are just as pretty as they are.. but first, there's the small matter of a mad gang to defeat. You know the sort: attacking the few settlements that are remaining, setting all the buildings on fire, indiscriminately killing the men while assaulting the women, spraying gunfire everywhere while riding on their souped-up Harleys.. you get the picture. The leader of this rabble is a guy with a really DEEP VOICE who wears a mask all the time. Is it a symbol of his power, or maybe he has an embarrassing birthmark underneath it? We never find out. Against such odds, our heroes can't help but get captured, but just as it seems things are at their bleakest.. an eccentric old man, who has a whole pound full of dogs, enters the film out of left field.. and promptly gets busy with a flamethrower. Can the three desperadoes escape the clutches of these maniacs with appalling body odour and no fashion sense whatsoever? All will be revealed..Well actually no it won't, because the ending doesn't resolve anything. Perhaps a sequel was in the pipeline? Some hope, there isn't much here to give the likes of Mad Max a run for its money. True, there are a lot of bizarre elements here that make the film almost strangely compelling, but then you pull back and realise how shoddy the action scenes are and the lack of anything approaching clear plot direction. True, I wasn't expecting a masterpiece, but I did at least hope for a little more entertainment. You may have a few laughs out of pure incredulity while its on, but is it really worth investing 90 minutes of your life for a few small pleasures like that? I say it is not. A 3/10 from me.

Danny Land of Doom definitely has one of the better titles going for it in recent cinematic history, but that's about all it can muster.Take your normal plot. Let's use some symbolism, and have it be a puppy. During the movie, you watch the puppy grow. There are exciting parts, like when the puppy chases some squirrels around, or sad parts, where the puppy whizzes on your favorite Duran Duran album. By the end of the movie, the puppy has become an adult dog, hopefully soon to spawn other puppies, AKA sequels.Land of Doom, unlike a normally aging dog, is basically a set of drunk dogs, wandering aimlessly, bumping into walls, and not only whizzing on your Duran Duran albums, but also the Mona Lisa and all vestiges of modern civilization. By the end, instead of a healthy, happy dog whom you love, you're stuck with a brain dead puppy who is busy chewing off its own tail. Pathetic, yes. But that's Land of Doom.Don't see this movie. Seriously, it just wants your soul. I mean, it doesn't even actually end. You know how a movie reaches the point where you know the big climatic fight is about to begin? In Land of Doom, that moment arrives, the heroes run away, roll credits. Thanks, movie!Slight redeeming factor: Jawas. There are Jawas in this film. Also, the end theme is so the exact opposite of a titular song for this movie that it has to be heard to be believed. Rating 1/10 - My eyes! My poor eyes!

nutsy I'm a longtime fan of cheezy foreign knock-offs of THE ROAD WARRIOR and such. Often times that kind of exploitive, badly dubbed, low budget trash makes for high entertainment. Sadly, LAND OF DOOM brings no such entertainment. It's the future again, and it's post-apocalyptic. The world is ravaged by plague and evil bandits (sound familiar?). A woman named Harmony and her rugged hero partner (she won't let him touch her) try to escape from the Land of Doom to a fabled paradise. Some overlord villain type, who wears a lot of fake chromed armor and studded leather, tries to stop them. The best part of the whole movie is the opening shot of a dawn over a bleak looking landscape, accompanied by some appropriate music- Harmony's explanatory narration begins and it's all down hill from there. Some creatures that look suspiciously like the Jawas from STAR WARS appear and some things explode. LAND OF DOOM is oddly short on the over-customized junk cars that usually roam the post-apocalyptic wastelands of these pictures. Naturally, all the dialogue is awful as are the attempts at sexual tension between our two heroes. Plague victims sport painted on sores and behave like zombies. Much more frightening is the ineptness of the production and the performances. The ending is left wide open for a sequel that never came. Over the end credits runs a horrid tune called "Harmony's Land of Doom" which tries to sound like a modern pop song, but is just as dull and low key as the movie. In short: skip it and rent 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS instead.

Leofwine_draca A low budget but good-looking US/Turkish MAD MAX 2 rip-off in which the hero this time is a woman who has a pathological hatred of all men - that is until she meets the charming and courageous male lead Anderson, who of course comes to make her love him. It's cheesy stuff to be sure, and although it follows very closely in the steps of MAD MAX 2 it cannot come close because the budget and cast and crew just aren't skilled enough. Although lacking, this American production (making a change from the usual slew of Italian imitations) has its moments and offers up plenty of action fun for undemanding fans.Director Peter Maris (who incredibly also directed the PHANTASMAGORIA horror video game back in the mid-'90s which was pretty popular) knows his roots but his direction, although he tries, is nothing above average. At least the film is in focus and well-lit at all moments, something that can't be said for those B-movies at the lower end of the spectrum. When somebody can create a near-professional look out of an almost-amateur production, they deserve credit.We're off to a good start with a well-choreographed attack on a small village by a gang of pillaging outlaws, who proceed to murder all the men and rape all the women. The only person to escape is Harmony, a man-hating female warrior armed with a nifty crossbow (which I don't think she actually shoots anybody with). Harmony is played by Deborah Rennard (A.W.O.L.), although it's clear her future lies more in the likes of American soap operas such as DALLAS. However, Rennard invests Harmony with a feisty hard edge, and is definitely someone you wouldn't want to mess with. It's good to see such a strong female role in a world in which the women are most often helpless victims (cf. any number of slasher films from the past two decades).At this point we are introduced to the myriad of villains, who all like to wear black hockey masks in the style of Jason Voorhees and who quite possibly have cornered the market in studded leather, as seemingly each and every one of them is dressed in this particular style of homoerotic outfit - sounds familiar huh? The chief villain is Slater, and we know he's the boss and not somebody to be messed with as he's got a mask on his face and a bionic arm to boot. Sadly the acting of these delinquents is pretty bad, but not the worst I've seen. The bad guys ride around on modified bikes with huge plastic fins at the front, vehicles also ripped from MAD MAX 2 except on a much smaller, cheaper scale.Harmony escapes from their clutches and makes her way to a cave in the mountains where she discovers the mortally wounded Anderson. He teams up with her for a long trek across the mountains in search of a new land, and soon forget about his apparently serious injuries! Anderson is played by Bruce Campbell look-alike Garrick Dowhen, and although he's not up to the jolly charm charisma that Campbell would bring to the role, Dowhen does fine as a low-rate imitation. Thus begin the many adventures that the pair have, forming a close bond all the while.Oh, and did I mention that the Jawas from STAR WARS make a surprise appearance too? What this film has to recommend it are mainly the authentic mountainous locations - filmed in Turkey no less! - which really give it a nice background on which the action can play out. Obviously this was shot out in the desert outskirts somewhere, and the frequently wonderful scenery adds a lot to the enjoyment of this movie. It's particularly impressive in a scene in which Rennard senses that she's being watched, and that eerie feeling successfully transfers to the viewer as well. There's plenty of light action to pass the time too; none of it is particularly violent (apart from those head-smashings!) or stylish but it's fun enough in a limited way.Sadly, where this film also lacks is in the special effects department - there aren't any. Most of the effects are limited to bloody make-up jobs on the various injured parties or gun-shot victims. One memorable scene shows a village exploding many times in which the explosions are repeated and shown from different angles. I guess it's pretty cheap to buy explosives and blow the heck out of a run down shack somewhere, but still at least this gives the impression of a big budget. The biggest example of this film's lack of budget comes at a scene where Anderson and Harmony are captured by the villains, who knock them off their bike by stretching a rope across the road. Obviously stunt actors couldn't be found for this stunt so we simply hear the sound effects instead.The movie is gore-free, apart from a singular brief moment of somebody having his fingers chopped off with an axe. The biggest disappointment of all comes in the anti-climactic ending, though, so steel yourselves for it. It very much looks like either things were left intentionally open for a sequel (which never happened) or that they just ran out of money filming suddenly and had to finish it quickly. I have to say that it's unforgivable to end a movie in such a way, with most of the bad guys surviving and the good guys making a hasty getaway. Surprising too, but in a bad way. However, I am an undisclosed fan of these MAD MAX 2 rip-offs, so LAND OF DOOM will nonetheless get the thumbs up from me, as I enjoyed it in a mindlessly watchable way, although it's far from the best of this particular genre.