Le Gladiateur du futur

My review was written in January 1986 after watching the movie on Cinemax.

"Endgame" is a rather weak entry in the crowded post-WW III series of Italian action films made circa 1983. Emanating from the Helen Sarlui pic stable (though she does not take a screen credit), item was mulled for a while as a New Line theatrical release but went instead to pay-tv and home video.

Misleading opening reel establishes a tv game in the year 2012 called "Endgame", quite similar to Robert Sheckley's concept used in the classic "The Tenth Victim" (and recently updated in another Italian pic, "The Final Executioner"). Al Cliver toplines as a successful warrior in the killing game who is recruited by a telepathic mutant Lilith (Laura Gemser) to help her band of mutants leave the city (where they are subject to extermination by storm trooper-styled soldiers) to set up a new community.

The tv game is over in 20 minutes, with the remainder of the film given over to fights en route to delivering the mutants. Action scenes are perfunctory, with none of the thrills to the model for this genre, "The Road Warrior".

Given the poor dubbing of these pictures, "Endgame" benefits from its telepathy gimmick, which allows many dialog scenes to have staring faces with no lips moving as the thoughts are voiced-over on the soundtrack. Acting is stilted, with the ubiquitous husband-and-wife team of Laura Gemser and Gabriele Tinti both credited with different "real" names, Moira Chen and Gus Stone, respectively. Freeze-frame non-ending is poor.

I really don't like using the word "cheesy", but it seems to be the one that applies best here. "Endgame" is likely to be picked up only by post-apocalyptic fantasy fans, or Joe D'Amato completists. So what do they have to look forward to? Some good ideas (the hero at one point acknowledges that men like him, living by their fists and guns are "the past"), some cliched ideas (the hunting game that's the most popular show on TV, the "Magnificent Seven"-type enlisting of the hero's sidekicks), and some weird ideas about telepathy: apparently the hero is not telepathic, and he can't read people's minds, yet he can communicate telepathically with a "gifted" woman. Get it? (*1/2)

Wow, this is italian exploitation flicks at it's best. Guess this one came because of the post-apocalyptic hype after "Escape from New York" and "Mad Max", and got stuff like "Rollerball" also in it. Of course it's an awful movie full of missing links. But here is simply no need for explanations, this question would be stupid. It's the full atmosphere of 80ies italo exploitation thrash: good explosions (gas!gas!gas! - nothing digital! I reminisce in nostalgica), crazy overacted characters, some bare breasts, a setting full of cheap dirt. Those movies are so honest in their cheasiness and roughness, I love 'em. - And the eighties were best! Italy full ahead! A pitty the video-market got down and what is left is filled by the majors with hollywood-cheapos exploiting themselves with their own cheap ripp-offs which have no life of it's own; a pity, no good exploitation-scene nowadays...

And hey, wow, this one has them all in it: Joe d'Amato, Al Cliver, Laura Gemser, Michele Soavi and George Eastmen. - A Fest! Gets a nerdish 7 out of 10!

In the year 2025, a nuclear holocaust has left New York City ruined, inhabited by persecuted telepathic mutants. Keeping the people pacified is the reality television program Endgame, where a new hero must save a group of people and fight to the death.

Directed by Joe D'Amato (under the pseudonym Steven Benson) Endgame (Bronx lotta finale) is one of the better executed Italian post apocalyptic B-films. The action seems endless especially in the closing act as scavenger packs and telepathic mutants fight it out with hunters, gladiators and military elite. There's an unnecessary rape scene, this aside the majority of D'Amato's Max Road Warrior meets Beneath the Planet of the Apes is very watchable especially if you enjoy the likes of Rats: Night of Terror, Warriors of the Wasteland and Bronx Warriors.

The locations and costumes deserve a mention. Carlo Maria Cordio's music working best when it's borrowing cues from Vangelis' Blade Runner score.

Interestingly, the TV game concept (even though not fully explored) predates The Running Man a good four years before Arnold Schwarzenegger's scifi romp and was made around the same time Stephen King's pseudonym book was published.

Overall, not too shabby at all.

This was not as bad I expected...

The first half of this film is very boring and it is suitable to use the fast forwarding on your remote, because the last half is so much better. You can see easily that the budget for this film has been very low, but the action scenes actually work rather well. The post-WW3 vehicles are creatively constructed from existing cars and motorbikes. The car with no doors is my favorite. I wonder where they get all the gas and spare parts for those things in a destroyed world?

The acting isn't so bad. The telepath girl looks good and carries her role very well. The only scene of her I laughed out loud was that where a telepath makes a big stone floating up. You can easily spot the wire holding the styrofoam-stone in the air, it's just so goofy.

I gave this 5/10.