Stryker

I only write reviews of movies with low rating, which actually are not that bad. Give them a chance!

I love movies about apocalypse and post-apocalypse and that is why I wanted to watch this one, too. It is a bad movie, but it is so bad that is actually watchable! Yup, I enjoyed it at the end. It is funny, though it was not suppose to be, and you can say that some action scenes are solid, too, as well as vehicles and costumes. Acting is fine for some characters, but nothing special. It is a Mad Max wannabe, and now while I am browsing IMDb I can see that director Cirio H. Santiago made several more Mad Max wannabes! Wow, he was really persistent! He made Wheels Of Fire two years after Stryker, and I think that it is a best bad Mad Max wannabe of all, but you can read about it more in my other review.

So, about Stryker, you may enjoy it if you like apocalypse and post- apocalypse. Or if you want to watch something bad with friends so you can laugh - then, Stryker is the movie for you. You need to look at it that way so that you can watch it to the end, like I did. I can say I enjoyed watching it, it was so bad and unintentionally funny that I liked it.

5/10

Yes, it is a blatant Road Warrior ripoff, yes, much of it is shot in a gravelpit, yes, it is poorly acted. Yet it is entertaining, not a bad post apocalyptic story, water shortage and lots of heat, same thing as in the underrated, but much higher budgetted "Solarbabies". Violence, nude babes and a decent score graces this flick, this is a drive-in classic. If you feel like slumming, you can do much worse than this. 5/10

Every once in a while, these cheesy grindhouse movies show good movie-making constrained by a non-existent budget. Well, this isn't one of those movies. Script, dialogue and acting ar all way substandard, although the camera-work is good enough. Nice scenery and the young men and women in this can't act, but they are very pleasant to look at in their ripped shirts and leather panties. But the whole thing is clearly a Mad Max rip-off and you can't look at it for more than, oh, half a minute without figuring it out.

But after a while you start to wonder about the basic premise of the movie: a nuclear war has destroyed all the water in the world. Uh, OK. So why does everyone have clean clothes, hair and tanks? Obviously these people know why civilization needs water.

In a post-apocalyptic world the world's water supply has dried up, but woman holds the location of the last springs being guarded by a group of female warriors. Stryker and company, along with the warriors go about stopping a warlord and his 'Road Warrior' gang.

Director Cirio H. Santiago's Stryker is another Mad Max 2 copy but with an American Western feel than most of the post apocalyptic films of 1983 including the similar, Escape from the Bronx, The New Barbarians, Exterminators of the Year 3000, End Game, 2019: After the Fall of New York to name a few.

The late TV actor Steve Sandor (with a handful of film screen credits, also the excellent voice of Darkwolf in Fire and Ice (1983)) looks the part as rugged, gun toting, cowboy hat wearing Stryker. Bandanna sporting William Ostrander is notable (incidentally also the voices Taro / Larn in Fire and Ice) as Bandit. Warrior women wearing old football shoulder pads and leather knickers, including Julie Gray, Monique St. Pierre and Andria Savio are all notable. Mike Lane's villain Kardis with hook hand is menacing but his minions have more interaction with the hero.

Howard R. Cohen's sparse script and Santiago's story is packed with slow motion shots, there's little people, 'Amazon' women, gangs, a tank, a tanker, cars, motorcycle chases, smoke grenades and shootouts across rugged terrain. The writers also pop in some flashback for good measure to try and flesh-out Stryker. The editing is disjointed and Ed Gatchalian's score, is more classical than synth, mostly piano and drums which is used sparingly throughout. Even though Sandor and Ostrander along with some of the female cast are highly watchable, in terms of production this probably on the lower end of scale of the post apocalyptic offerings.

Overall, if you enjoyed the aforementioned there's no reason not to indulge.

Steve Sandor ("Bonnie's Kids") is the title character in this routine "Mad Max" & "Road Warrior" inspired post-nuke sci-fi action flick. Teaming up with another hunky hero, Bandit (William Ostrander, "Christine"), he decides to help out a lovely young woman, Dielha (Andrea Savio), with knowledge of a plentiful water source. You see, in this world of the future, landscapes often consist of deserts, and water is hard to come by. The villain who stands in everybody's way is a snarling despot named Kardis (wrestler / actor Mike Lane, "The Harder They Fall").

This was the first of *seven* movies that Filipino exploitation icon Cirio H. Santiago ("TNT Jackson") made with similar themes and stories. It's not particularly distinguished, and you soon see that the "story", such as it is, is often incoherent. At first it seems as if we won't ever get to know the characters very well, but Santiago does save that stuff for the second half of the picture, when things slow down for a bit. We even get a bit of romance.

Santiago mostly concentrates on action and pace, and shows his audience a reasonably good time, with sex and violence aplenty. The music, credited to Ed Gatchalian and Susan Justin, is occasionally hilariously bad, but mostly it's good, atmospheric stuff, with a heavy accent on percussion. Costumes and vehicles are decent looking, but where the movie really works is the use of locations and the art direction.

Sandor is not a bad actor, but he's just sort of taking up space here. His character is generic and lacks personality. Ostrander also does what he can with an under written role. Lane is an effective, amusing villain, and the supporting cast includes Monique St. Pierre ("Motel Hell") and Filipino exploitation mainstay Ken Metcalfe, who was also the casting director on this show.

Not a terrible way to kill an hour and 24 minutes, but some people may prefer to just revisit the works of George Miller instead.

Six out of 10.