Die Wächter von Atlantis

What do a Russian nuclear waste laden submarine, the lost continent of Atlantis, a gang of violent post-apocalyptic biker thugs and two interracial Vietnam War buddies have in common? Well, I'm not exactly sure, but Italian cult director Ruggero Deodato nevertheless managed to deliver a fun and exciting exploitation movie featuring ALL of the above elements, and a heck of a lot more. "The Atlantis Interceptors" is an extremely entertaining time-waster, as long as you leave all your sense of intellect at the front door and just enjoy the show. The film exclusively offers plenty of testosterone-packed action, macho characters who swing around large machine guns, silly humor & cheesy dialogs ("If you were an island, where would you hide?") and costume designs that are directly stolen from John Carpenter's classic "Escape From N.Y". The leader of the "Interceptors" hides his face behind a crystal skull and drives a cool car tuned with sharp weapons. The music is pretty awesome, as usual in Italian exploitation treasures, and there a few familiar faces to be found in the cast. It was nice to see George Hilton again, although he aged rather badly since he was the star of copious amounts of Gialli and Spaghetti Western favorites of mine in the late 60's and early 70's. Ruggero Deodato directs with a solid sense of professionalism, but he clearly also realizes this isn't another fundamental effort like his notorious "Cannibal Holocaust". Hey, it's no masterpiece whatsoever but rest assured it deserves a much better rating that the lousy 2.8/10 that currently parades the main page. Just bring your sense of adventure and bad taste. Oh, and whatever you do … remember the valuable moral of this movie: Do NOT dump nuclear waste in the oceans, because before you know it, Atlantis emerges to the surface again and mankind will be overrun by aggressive biker punks. Mmmkay, got that?

This is one of the dumbest Italian films I've ever watched, but don't let that put you off – It's brilliant! The plot, what there is of it, concerns the ancient lost island of Atlantis somehow being brought up from the sea bed by the radiation from a sunken nuclear sub, causing either the Atlaneans or local humans to turn into Mad Max style killers and before you know it you've got everything being destroyed and everyone being killed – but don't worry. We've got a list of Italian exploitation vets out there willing to pick up a machine gun and blow these mental sub-aquatic upstarts to hell.

You've got mercenaries Christopher Connolly (Strike Commando) and Tony King (The Last Hunter), professor George Hilton (Devil with Seven Faces), pilot Ivan Rassimov (Eaten Alive) dubbed by Nick Alexander (every Italian movie ever) in a double whammy of greatness, Michele Soavi (Blade in the Dark) and even Mike Monty (Zombi 3). These are the folks I'd be calling if the apocalypse loomed (even though at least four of them are no longer with us)! The head bad guy? Bruce Baron of The Ultimate Ninja fame! I'm getting faint just typing all that out.

After meeting up on Connolly's boat after some lab is destroyed in a storm, our heroes head for the mainland and from then on it's a toe to toe battle with our ridiculous looking antagonists involving shotguns, loads of petrol bombs, machine guns and even some electrical wire (which chops off some guy's head).

I love the way that Connolly and co lay waste to hundreds of Atlanteans over the course of the last hour of the film. Sure, he's no good at protecting people, especially when he promises three scared people they'll be fine shortly before they're all killed, but I reckon he was just fobbing them off anyway as they were distracting him from mowing down dozens of bad guys. There's a slim plot about a lady who can decipher all these languages getting drawn to Atlantis in some plot to free the Atlanteans (which confused me regarding who all the bad guys were), but just strap yourself in a let the contant sound of gunfire roll over you.

I said this film was dumb, and I mean it. Soavi's character states at one point, when they're all trapped in a building, that he's going to scout around for a way out, then he walks out the front door and gets captured. Check out the Atlanteans – their costumes are like rejects from the Bronx Warriors! And what's with the echoey voices? And what purpose does it serve to have Tony King's character as a recent convert to Islam? It's this kind of stuff that draws me back to Italian films again and again.

It's a Ruggero Deodato film, so there are fleeting bits of gore (decapitations, a woman being shot through the mouth with an arrow etc), and this is so much more a guilty free pleasure than Cannibal Holocaust – no animal cruelty here, thankfully. Get in! I loved this one.

Some scientists team up with a duo of Vietnam vets to fight make-up wearing biker punks from the lost city of Atlantis which reemerges from under the water due to a sunken Russian submarine's radioactive missiles. Just typing that previous sentence makes my brain hurt and I haven't even gotten to the more nonsensical stuff. Ha.

OK, the plot is ridiculous and the film itself doesn't make a lick of sense, but this b-movie is amazingly fun and doesn't let up on the action. Think of it as a cross between Assualt on Precint 13, and mad max. If you loved those films, are willing to keep and open mind, and can turn your brain off for the duration of the film, you'll like this one a lot as well.

My Grade: A-

Side note: This movie can be found on side A of Disc 2 of the Grindhouse Experience 2 four DVD set, alas it's from an old VHS dub and the picture is far from optimal. Hopefully this unsung b-movie classic will be re-released in a remastered form (ok, probably not, but one can hope)

The Raiders of Atlantis is really something special, i have watched a lot of strange, bizzare and trashy movies, especially from the 80s but this one beats em all. It has the most bizzare story that Atlanteans are Biker Punk Gang and they want to wipe out whole humanity, this story can only be written in the 80s. the whole movie is like you take some hallucinogenic drug and had a trip. A lot of action, explosions, gore, killings and with great synthisizer driven music in the background. The soundtrack is one of the best from the b-movies, total proto-synthwave stuff. Charachters are enjoyable Christopher Connelly and Tony King does the great job as main protagonist, also supporting cast has done solid job. I would say that the movie looks like a strange mixture of Assault On Prectinct 13, Big Trouble In Little China (note that Big Trouble is filmed three year later maybe Carpenter got some ideas watching this one) and Mad Max with some Italian twist and humour. This is must watch for all fans of cheesy and bizzare 80's stuff, definetely one of the best.

Raiders of the Lost Ark ripoff, crossed with a Mad Max ripoff, and a disaster/ horror movie ripoff, with sunken artifacts ripped off and thrown in for added randomness.

An incomprehensible mish mash of strange ideas and action vignettes, this has a sudden hurricane(?) sinking the oil rig carrying scientists who are attempting raise a Russian sub from the ocean floor. After being picked up by a trio of thieves on a boat, they stumble onto the mythical island of Atlantis (raised by the radiation of the Russian nuclear sub(? again)) and its violent, biker gang inhabitants. Who even knew there were bikers on Atlantis? After being attacked by said violent biker gang inhabitants, the group breaks into the island's conveniently heavily armed, abandoned police force, and declare war.

Things get even more confusing after that, but that's irrelevant. There's no sense in even trying to decipher the story, because it's obvious that there isn't one, they were just making it up as they go along. The purpose of this movie was clearly just the action, and there's plenty of that: they're making their getaway on a stolen bus when a helicopter filled with Atlantis' biker gang launch an attack. But our heros don't bother to shoot the helicopter. Instead, they let the thugs jump out of it and onto the roof of the van, where a fistfight ensues not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES, before they climb out of the windows and onto the roof of this moving bus to shoot the helicopter. The bus crashes though a barricade and barely makes contact with two other cars, but they immediately explode and burst into a ball of flames.

And there's that stone statue thingie that shoots lasers out of its glowing red eyes.

This can actually be fun, if you turn your mind completely off, and enjoy its absurdities, hilariously awful (and completely nonsensical) dialogue, and overly dramatic death scenes; many of the deaths are accompanied by yells of "Ay ayeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

A disclaimer in the closing credits reads: "All events and characters depicted in this photoplay are imaginary and any resemblance to actual persons and events is unintentional and purely coincidental". Imaginary?