The Aftermath

I saw this on Amazon after an especially hard day at work. I needed some dumb escapism. But you know what? This move is not lame enough to be really funny, nor good enough to be in any way entertaining.

The set up is simple. Three astronauts return to earth after some sort of mission to, well, somewhere. They land their craft just off the coast of Los Angeles, but the two survivors find dead bodies on the beach, the city devastated, and a band of mutant humans threatening them.

They make their way to a mansion in the Hollywood Hills, while encountering a young boy, Chris (Christopher Barkett, the producer's son), and Sarah (Lynne Margulies) an attractive 20ish woman fleeing what looks to be an amped up motorcycle gang / Mad Max cult. Along the way our two astronauts learn that most of mankind has been wiped out by nuclear war or biological warfare. The rest of the film is about their navigating and trying to survive in the dangerous post armageddon L. A.

Negatives?

-Wooden acting. Steve Barkett is the producer, director, writer, and star so this is clearly a vanity project. He is pretty deficient in each category. And fails to get much more from the other actors. Margulies tries her best, but is mostly relegated to being the helpless female, always in peril.

-Exploitive. There are gratuitous scenes of poor Sarah bouncing, jiggling about, on the run from what looks to be a biker gang gone berserk, her nipples plainly showing beneath her tight tank top. She's at the center of several disturbing rape / sexual assault scenes that are way over the top for violence. While no one was prosecuted for obscenity, this was the early Thatcher years in Britain. The film was seized and confiscated in the UK under Section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act.

-A blaring, intrusive, off-the-VU meter musical score. The composer, John Morgan, used a full orchestra and got every dollars worth. Trumpets blast. Flutes riff. Snare drums snare. French horns warn. No one makes a move without the music overwhelming the scene. And it's usually inappropriate. Happy music, say, for an abduction scene.

-Looks cheap, but the budget in 2023 dollars is just under $500,000. Today that would make for a pretty good indie film. Maybe the money went for the score?

Positives?

+A for effort. The cast looks like they are having a good time, especially the senior Barkett.

Clearly this movie needs the RiffTrax, MSTK3 treatment.

A fabulous music score evocative of the Great Bernard Herrman films. It has a full symphonic original music score on a low budget movie!Landmark effects by the soon to be famous Skotak Brothers(3 time Academy Award Winners for ALIENS, ABYSS and TERMINATOR 2). This low budget film transcends the usual genre limitations, and deals with its subject matter on an emotional as well as visual level. That may be one of the reasons it is so disturbing to some, and so misunderstood by others. At a recent international sci fi convention it was voted among the best "end of the world movies" ever made. I saw it on laser and highly recommend it.

After knowing it "inspired" DEFCON-4, I went in search for this film, since I'm addicted to PA (Post-Apocalyptic) movies. I don't care about budget and technical limitations. I'd rather focus on the feel and the honesty of the work. And in this field, The Aftermath really shines. The history and characters easily overlook the obvious low budget restrictions and put to shame many hi budget counterparts.

The premise is: 3 astronauts come back to Earth after a long space mission, just to find it destroyed by nuclear war. One of them die on the spaceship forced landing, and the other two must find their way through the new and haunting reality of a nuked world, facing radiation, mutants, marauders and the lack of hope for the future.

The dialog, acting and the action scenes are somewhat laughable, but no one can deny the fact that there's an obvious labor of love beneath each take. OTOH, inventive (altough simplistic) visual effects, a huge and loud soundtrack and the voice-over only adds to the bleak atmosphere. There are effective sequences like the radioactive rain, the dead city landscapes and the corpses on the beach. Surely they're the film highlights.

A great movie despite the low budget restraints, and much better than the most contemporary (and some newer) PA movies.

As a very early entry into the post-nuke game, this one was kind of a genre-defining film for what would follow. Yes, it was insanely low budget, and corny at times, but what really makes it work is Steve Barkett. You know he wasn't a pro, but his amount of enthusiasm for the project more than made up for his lack of skills. He's rolling, jumping, kicking, driving, shooting; no stuntmen here! Flicks like this probably inspired others to get into movie making. It just looks like they had a hell of a lot of fun doing it. This was a movie with a lot of spirit- something the 150 million dollar pictures can't say.

A group of astronauts is in space when WWIII goes down, and they return to earth of find a burnt-out, zombie-infested, wasteland. Criminals run loose, raping and pillaging at will. This film was blatantly copied by Def Con 4 several years later, which was good also. Sid Haig is great as Cutter, the ruthless leader of the filthbags. There is a good amount of decent gore and some nudity to keep you going, but the main plot is the good vs. evil and the battle with Cutter and his band of evil-doers. One thing: this movie will be hard to find. It took me a couple years to find it. UPDATE: I just saw that they have now released this on DVD as Zombie Aftermath! I need to go upgrade my old VHS copy at once!!

If you like B-movies and the post-nuke genre, you will not be disappointed. You may even want to go out and try to make you own movie! This one is a slice of tasty cheese. Recommended. Also, check out Survival Zone (another rare bird).

This is my favorite bad movie of all times. When the video store was selling off it's stock of movies that were not renting, I bought it. I had rented it two or three times previously.

I love Sci Fi, having grown up in the 50's and 60's where things like a nuclear attack were more apt to happen, so watching this was a combination of relief that we avoided this, and laughing at the seriousness of the production.

Over all, this is the yardstick by which all other good creative "Bad" movies MUST be measured against.

If you can find it, watch it.