City Limits

It's the future for the year it was released. Society has crumbled, and a bunch of handsome young people are living in a broken down part of the city, dressing in cast-off clothes, riding around on their perfectly maintained motorcycles, reading comic books and holding competitions where they try to kill each other. For some reason, adults wish to interfere with this utopian existence, offering them things like food and medicine. The nerve of some people!

It's a chaotically organized movie, filled with performers available on the cheap, -- James Earl Jones does intro and extro in voice-over, and there's Rae Dawn Chong, Kim Cattrell, and for that Star Turn, Robbie Benson in a brief bit. There are motorcycles aplenty, and plenty of signs of a functioning society, including a scene where some of the principals break into a schoolroom to shoot each other. In sum, none of it makes any sense.

I'm so mad at this movie. The plot was absent. The acting was awful. The sound was unintelligible. I can't believe that this came out the same year as Back to the Future! Poor James Earl Jones! Poor me! There was a montage in the middle of the thing that referred back to things that were apparently cut out of the film. The costumes were cheesy, and the hair--don't get me started on the hair! You know, I do kind of enjoy a B movie, but I need something to chew on. Some fixed reference point--like a character name or something. I mean, even the credits were inept...they lasted for about 15 minutes and were filmed in irritate-o-rama--a cheesy stop-frame thing. I've had more enjoyable infections.

Though I enjoy the post-apocalypse genre, even I'm hard pressed to mention anything that I liked in this dung heap. Well...some of the music wasn't bad, though it got repetitive eventually. The rest of the movie I was simply amazed at how lame the action and story were, and how cheap everything looked. This actually got released to theaters? Amazing. I hope James Earl Jones and Robby Benson only accepted their (tiny) roles for the money.

Maybe this is fun to watch in the MST3K version - but it's certainly a chore to watch in the original version.

Well, once again, I'm the only person in the world that liked this movie. From reading all of the terrible reviews, I almost changed my mind about that. City Limits is about rival biker gangs feuding in a post plague-ridden America (you know, poor man's Road Warrior). It's a good B-movie written by Don Keith Opper from The Critters movies. The only thing that no one could deny was the great cast. John Stockwell, James Earl Jones, Kim Cattrall, Rae Dawn Chong, John Diehl, Robby Benson, Don Keith Opper, and even Kane Hodder are all running around in this movie. The best part is that the gangs use comic books to make major decisions. That's classic. City Limits is absolutely nothing special, but that's why I love it. I suppose B-movies are somewhat of an acquired taste nowadays. So, if you enjoyed the Road Warrior...you probably won't enjoy City Limits. But if you like post-apocalyptic films that are B-movie treasures (garbage to most) along the lines of Def-Con 4, Cyborg, and Fist of the North Star, you should like City Limits.

A bunch of teens on bikes living in a post-apocalyptic city? That sounds like the premise for a pretty fun movie to me but sadly it just wasn't to be.

The costumes are nothing short of ridiculous even allowing for the fact that this was the 80's and although that sounds petty it constantly reminds you that this film has just been flung together much like the actors costumes. There's no plot, no characters, absolutely nothing to cling on to so the film just rolls along with not much happening. At one point I thought the film had given up and started again but it was just a bit of footage reused. Or maybe it just looked the same because honestly ten minutes after this film ends you won't be able to remember a single significant scene.

It's a shame because every once in a while you catch sight of something in the distance that looks a bit like a plot and the film perks up slightly. I can't recommend this film but I like the setting so it gets an extra point for that and it does have curiosity value because of the unusual cast.

It's a dud though, even for fans of bad movies.