Les nouveaux conquérants

My review was written in January 1989 after watching the film on Vestron video cassette.

From the rash of look alike adventure features on video emerges a winner: "Future Hunters", in which prolific Filipino helmer Cirio H. Santiago outdoes himself in fresh and entertaining fashion.

Lengthy pic unfolds as a virtual homage to the high adventure movies of George Lucas yet moves beyond mere imitation into its own successful territory.

Prolog is set in the year 2025 with regular Santiago hero Richard Norton chased around by baddies in "Mad Max"-style cars and outfits. In a remote temple in the desert he finds the head of a spear, said by legend to have pierced the body of Christ on the cross and to hold spectacular powers.

Back in present time (1986, when pic was shot under the moniker "The Spear (of Destiny)"), statuesque blonde Linda Carol plays a college anthropology student who, with boyfriend Robert Patrick, visits the same temple Norton visited. Norton has traveled back in time via the spear's power, and helps the 1986 duo fight off a gang of mean bikers (who at first think futuristic Norton is a kindred biker, given his "Mad Max" leather garb).

Complicated plot, punctuated constantly by action sequences, has Norton expiring but setting the young couple on his mission, to unite the spearhead with its lost shaft, and use the resulting object's power tgo head off an imminent world holocaust and thus change the future from whence he came.

Elements of both "Indiana Jones" films plus a healthy sprinkling of "Romancing the Stone" are pleasantly arranged, with pic steadily put across by heroine Carol, an American beauty closely resembling Greta Scacchi. Her willingness to get her hair mussed and enter enthusiastically into the action is a big plus.

Patrick is merely okay as the hero and the villains are nondescript; more upscale casting might have earned this laudable little film some theatrical attention.

WTF was that? I watched the first few minutes of this awful film then I had to watch the rest in fast-forward just to see what others are talking about. They are most correct! This film "borrows" very heavily from some of the greatest films of the time era: It really does open up with the look and feel of The Road Warrior/Mad Max but the dude looks similar to and acts like Chuck Norris not Mel Gibson. I swear the is a "glimpse" of Star Wars in the background car chase looking like Tatooine and when he grabbed the spearhead it reminded me of Conan for a second or two. Keep fast-forwarding then I see Bruce Li (not LEE) doing some Kung-Fu fighting. Then it looks to be "borrowing" from Raiders of the Lost Ark then on into Rambo/Romancing the Stone in the jungle. Next we have pygmies and Amazon Women! Lots of guns firing off, car chases and crashes, explosions yep this is stereotypical 1980s action film trash that is a wannabe good action film but it falls very far away from good into the crappy category with all of it's very cheap wannabe ripoff sets, action, costumes etc... an awful film to my tastebuds.

1/10

You can say a lot of harsh and unfriendly things about director Cirio H. Santiago (and most of them will still be too gentle), but he definitely was responsible for some nice footnotes in B-movie history as well. For example, did you know that he single-handedly launched the career of Robert Patrick? Half a decade before he became an immortal cult icon with his role as the stoic liquid-metal cyborg in "Terminator II: Judgment Day", Robert Patrick starred in no less than four Santiago flicks, including the horrible dud "Equalizer 2000" and this debut feature "Future Hunters". I'm not too sure if Robert still likes to be remembered of his collaborations with the late Cirio H. Santiago, though. Here, he walks around in tidy white underpants an awful lot and gets his ass kicked several times during the first half of the film (but mostly kicks other ass during the second half). Many of my fellow reviewers around here apparently consider "Future Hunters" to be pure B-movie Walhalla, but yours truly politely disagrees… The film is a rip-off potpourri of numerous great classics, but it isn't half as exhilarating and entertaining as it should have been. Cheap & exploitative rip-offs ought to surpass their role model movies in terms of over-the-top action, absurd situations, sleaze, violence and flamboyance – like several Italian flicks do, for example "Hunters of the Golden Cobra" or "Atlantis Interceptors" – but this one fails. The ideas are there, since the script steals aspects from monumental franchises like "Mad Max", "Indiana Jones" and "Star Wars", but they are all just very random and unprocessed. The story opens in the year 2025; with the brave warrior Matthew tracking down a Christian artifact in a devastated post-apocalyptic landscape. This particular artifact – a spear – holds the power to prevent the cataclysm from happening and its mere touch transports Matthew back to 1989. There he immediately gets shot by biker thugs (how about that, he's supposed to be strongest warrior of the future but he can't even survive 10 minutes in the 80's) and desperately begs a young couple to take custody over the spear and bring it to the place where it belongs. Michelle (lovely Linda Carol) and Slade (Robert Patrick) promptly find themselves pursued by Nazis, Asian mobsters and whatnot and they all want to possess the spear. How do they even know that this young couple has the spear? The race ends – after a lot of lousy martial arts fights and cheesy helicopter explosions – on a small island inhabited by midget Mongols and Amazon women. "Future Hunters" is allegedly co-scripted by the respectable director J. Lee Thompson, but I think he has very little to do with the finished product, since it carries all the inept trademarks of Cirio H. Santiago. This means a total absence of logic, suspense or continuity, poorly staged action sequences and a ridiculously high amount of cast members giving away horrible performances. "Future Hunters" is boring, stupid and it can't hold a candle to the rip-off exploitation flicks that were made in Italy around the same period.

This movie is a mix of Kung-fu movies. Rambo,Raiders and other influences? the plot is about a Sword from the future and it must get to some tribe of Amazonian Women to make everything ok. I watched this movie and tried to figure out why i was watching it.

I saw this movie last night on TNT's Monstervision with Joe Bob Briggs, and, considering myself to be a fairly good b-movie buff, I was quite surprised I had never come across this movie before. It has to go down as one of the better third rate action movies of the 80's (think Gymkata, and so on); highly ridiculous plot, cheap production, cardboard acting, but a whole Hell of a lot of fun and consistently entertaining.

To explain the plot would take a forever, and there are so many holes in it any way I would wear out my ? key. But, roughly, here is what the movie has to offer- A magic spear, time traveler, biker gang, Nazis, kung fu tour guide, kung fu master, Asian mobsters, Mongol warriors, cave dwelling midget Mongols, Amazon women, a Pit of Death, earthquakes with Styrofoam boulder tossing, a car chase that is at night one minute then during the day the next, improbable helicopter sabotage, two people one parachute parachuting, Bonehead Nazi henchmen, four midgets pound a Nazi to death, a whole lot of spear chucking, alligators chomping on Amazons, a very decent kung fu fight, and even more.

Highly, HIGHLY, recommended for the b-movie fan. I could watch it over and over again it is so gloriously bad.