Bad Raiders

My review was written in August 1986 after watching the movie on Lightning video cassette.

"Land of Doom" is an uneventful U. S. imitation of the popular Aussie hit "The Road Warrior", second of the Mad Max adventures. Film was shot in 1984 and recently released (sans a theatrical run) on video cassette.

Set typically after a "final war", picture is one long trek by tough girl Harmony (Deborah Rennard) and idealistic Anderson (Garrick Dowhen) who is trying to get the nihilistic band of raiders to get serious and start rebuilding the world. Leader of the marauding raiders, Slater (Daniel Radell), has a grudge against Anderson and has his henchmen trying to kill him.

Though duo is vaguely searching for a fabled, faraway place where people already have banded together to recreate civilization, they accomplish nothing during this trek and are left a film's end with a bad case of sequelitis, ready to trek on.

Lacking special effects or any science fiction content, "Doom" is just an excuse to watch guys dressed up like "Mad Max" villains, riding around on motorcycles and souped-up vehicles. Absence of any nudity makes it of little interest to exploitation film fans. Stark locations are atmospheric, looking as if it were filmed in Turkey or some other exotic locale.

In a sort of Sweeded version of the Mad Max films, Harmony (who really dislikes being touched) and Anderson roam the Turkey landscape chased by an insipid ragtag group of post-apocalyptic 'ruffians' . Longing to have a budget as big as say a 'Hell comes to Frogtown' sequel this film is marginal more silly/awful than any such film(s). The bikes alone are utterly ridiculous, not to mention the do-it-yourself make-up, the worst Frenchman impersonation since Holy Grail (but unintentional this time) and make-shift Star Wars-esque creatures.

If I'm making this film sound good in any way, shape or film, I'm sincerely sorry. It's not even good as a drunken guilty pleasure film. And this was somehow based on a book, how??

Yes there are a lot of bad films like this. Yet this still stands tall as a bad film even in bad company.

This is a junior high school level Mad Max/Star Wars rip off. This kind of hybrid rip off/inspired pulp filmmaking was done my Turkish filmmakers for years with a crazy energy to equal some of the most mondo of Japanese and Italian movies. Sadly, though this features at least one Turkish star in a minor supporting role, this movie's "creative" force Maris doesn't have much of a clue about how to choose or direct actors or how to stage a fight scene or do action. The two leads both have U.S. TV credits and can't sustain any interest in a feature, the stunts could mostly be performed by your grandmother and done just as well. The pacing is lifeless the costumes and almost everything about it seems fake and thrown to together at the last minute. There are some large scale explosions--most of which seem to be big gas explosions and they hold off the shots long enough that you can see the explosion didn't really blow anything up.

There is at least one scene of a bad guy screaming the hero's name in rage, so they don't forget to include that. The main villain is pretty skinny for a guy who is supposed to be a muscle man. He had a sort of Phantom of the Opera mask on half of his face and in his longest dialogue scene speaks with a lisp. Sadly this type of funny bad moment doesn't happen enough to make the film a guilty pleasure.

The real life locations in Turkey's Capodocia are fascinating and only occasionally seen on film, but besides that this is a wasteland on all other levels. Best so-bad-it's-good element is the hilarious end title song and generally awful music score. How director Maris managed to keep making films after this I don't know, I'd hope he got better, but I haven't seen any of the rest to say for sure. But this is really badly done.

I suppose the only other way to describe this film is to say it's the type of film CANNON did too often, only much worse than even the worst of those.

It's a waste because if he had just gotten some better actors and then let some real Turkish directors make the film it could have been fun.

Turkish pulp cinema is a vanished thing and this does give just a very small taste of what the world is missing. If you can only imagine this film done with energy and lots of stolen music from other films and even occasionally stolen footage you'd have some hint. Seek out the few remaining real Turkish pulp cinema. Sadly most of the films were destroyed to reclaim the silver used in the prints, at a time when pop culture films stopped being popular in Turkey

Deborah Rennard and Garrick Dowhen make their way across a nuclear-war-devastated landscape as they search for a rumored paradise. There are rapists, cannibals and evil motorcyclists who wear black leather studded with shiny metal, as well as the odd Venetian mask for them to encounter. Why is it that leather-clad motorcyclists always survive, and there's plenty of gasoline?

It's shot amidst the weird, weathered, rocky deserts of Eastern Turkey, which certainly has the look of a devastated landscape. It's odd to think this was once prime farming land, fought over by conquerors for three thousand years... which is why it looks that way.

It's a pretty bad movie, but TCM added a bit of humor by noting that Miss Renard is a man, and Dowhen is a woman.

Plenty of reviews to the quality of the movie already that are pretty accurate.

One classic part was where the guy drove the motorcycle off the cliff. He makes a face like "oh no" and you see him jump off and the bike goes over... to explode of course. But the the shot back up and he has fallen over the cliff and is just hanging on, where he was on the ground several feet behind it.....

And no one has commented on the pants the star wears. What's with the giant black V think that looks like a big thong on the outside? It made her backside look pretty big.. And then there was the cave girls. The villain has four women in slightly skimpy clothes we only see briefly.... but they really needed MORE clothes. Obviously someone doesn't understand the idea of background scenery in sci-fi.

A few people knocked the music, but the last 15 minutes or so during all the fight scenes the music was very inspired, if you like cheesy action stuff. Bit of batman, intro to baywatch, maybe a little A-team or incredible hulk fight scenes. The composer did a good job ramping it up to try to give it some energy, needed since much of the fight scenes were dumb at best.

And then there's the theme song that plays at the end. It has lyrics including: "talkin' bout, warriors of rape, of death and hate, killing for fun" "cannibalists, living amidst, are hunting man" How can you not give that a thumbs up. If you search it's available on u tube with a whopping 8 comments. Maybe go there and add one...

Anyway, have to upgrade this from a 1 to a 2 for the music in the last 15 or 20 minutes. The music achieved the fun cheese that the rest of the movie was never able to...