Il giustiziere del Bronx

Being some one who likes to catch a movie that features Woody Strode I decided to get this movie out. Well I could be forgiven for thinking that this was a sequel to THE FINAL EXECUTIONER (1984) that featured William Mang and Harrison Muller and also Margit Evelyn Newton. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085540/ The reason for this looking to like a sequel is because this movie , THE BRONX ECCUTIONER seems to start where THE FINAL EXECUTIONER finishes. But thats not the case at all ! What it is , is actually is footage from THE FINAL EXCECUTIONER has been put into this movie. I have to admit that this is pretty clever how they did it. If someone never saw THE FINAL EXCECUTIONER they probably wouldn't notice it. This in part is due to the storyline being pretty basic and confusing at times. Also with the dubbing you lose a bit of the plot too.

When The Final Excecutioner was released when Woody Strode would have been about 69 or 70 years old. The Bronx Excecutioner was released when Woody was 75 years old. But as I mentioned the footage was taken from The Final Excecutioner so Woody Strode didn't actually take part in this movie in actual terms. Never mind !

The scene where Woody Strode takes on some guys is fairly good and I have to say that for a man of his age probably 69 at the time , Woody could do all of the stuff and go through the motions. He also did his own stunts in the film too. I have to mention again that it was pretty clever how they inserted Woody Strode into the film but thats the main reason that this movie has any sort of worth. Other than that well there is some passable action and a story line thats pretty much senseless but with an occasional surprise . But besides that I have to say that I'd be flat out trying to find anything else good about this film.

Why ?? Why ?? Why ?? This movie starts out bad and ends up bad. It is bad all around. The first 5 minutes of the movie is saturated with images... images of video editing equipment. This is followed by the stock footage Circle Line tour of New York complete with narration (notice the Queensborough bridge panoramic pole shot - classic). There is no reason to watch this movie .. unless it is late night and you can't sleep, or your are completely wasted and want to lose some more brain cells. If this is not enough for you, how about the addition of veteran movie actor Woody Stode (aka black man - in this movie thats what he is referred to) to improve the movie. WRONG !!! It only gets worse. Woody was a pro-football star in his days, too bad he was 70+ years old in this movie. Not only that, but he does his own stunts. I have not seen fight scenes this bad since I watched a Jean-Claude van Damme movie. Truly horrific action. Action so boring, you may want to break out the coffee to stay awake through them. This movie was so cheaply done that they could not even afford fake blood for the death scenes. The sound effects are horrible. The Atari 2600 had better and the soundtrack sounds like it was ripped from a bad porn movie. This movie is so boring, "Margie" actually watches a scene from the movie (Spaceballs - save me). So in that scene we are watching the actors watch their own movie. There are endless scenes of "Dakar" driving and whining on his 2-way radio. There is a 2-second fully-clothed rape scene. And no thats how long it actually lasts - 2 seconds. Incidentally, that is the scene that "Margie" watches later. There are 2 scenes which stand out in my mind - the training of the new sheriff (which involves "white man" shooting at a film projection on a wall) and the sheriff shooting through the castle at the end (think Wild Gunmen for the Nintendo). If you want to watch a better movie ... try just about anything. If you want to see a post apocalyptic Italian exploitation movie about New York .. watch 2019: After the Fall of New York.

-Celluloid Rehab

In the land of bad movies, this movie would be at least a duke. First of all, it is very clear that half of this movie is from stock footage. It is also clear that they used multiple takes of the same scene (or maybe it was actually the same take) a few different times in the movie. Good guy rounds the corner, shoots two bad guy. Same good guy, same corner, two minutes later, shoots two more bad guys. Same corner a few minutes later... Then there are the scenes where you see someone shooting on one set, and blowing someone up on a different set entirely.

Then there was the acting. Even without the movie being dubbed the acting was terrible. It is like watching the first earliest rehearsals of an elementary school play. The only people who don't entirely underact are the ones who entirely overact!

How about the set? With a name like Bronx Executioner, taking place (supposedly) in the south Bronx in the relatively new future, you would expect to see a city. Or at least a run down city. Or at least the ruins of a city. Nope. There are beat up looking factories in the middle of dirt fields. A castle in the middle of the woods. Another scene seems to take place in a quarry... No cities anywhere, a couple of country roads through he middle of nowhere, and a couple of beat up looking factories, that's it.

Also, going to the plot of the movie... This is a movie about the humanoids fighting the androids. Both humanoids and androids are factory reject robots. So of course when they get shot they bled. Okay, some of them spark a little bit, but that is more muzzle flash than anything. Basically they all look human, and act human (alright they act like bad actors trying to act like robots trying to act human) and there is no way to tell they aren't human in the movie. Well, one guy does die and reveal some circuits where the gaping hole in his neck appeared. Of course, you couldn't see a head or a body in that one shot, so it is hard to tell. Also they were really fragile robots. I mean when a human can kill a robot with a couple of karate chops you know they are weak. Also in all the slaughter scenes, there are never any wounded. They are all either dead, or escaped. The only robot to even last a few seconds after they got fatally wounded was a "good guy" robot who got to say something "human".

Personally I hate MST3K, but this movie is perfect for that sort of treatment. Or better yet, redub the whole movie to be a comedy instead. Some of the stuff that happens in this movie is just too funny not to be made fun of. Like the good guy robot goes to the sheriff for help. The sheriff says that he is staying out of it. Both actors just stand there waiting while the earlier soundbite that says he has to help those who ask gets played back. Then he immediately apologizes and agrees to help. "No I can't help you, i can't get involved.... [pause for soundbite]... I'm sorry, I will help you."

This movie is truly spectacularly bad.

THE BRONX EXECUTIONER begins with lots of electronic / computer stuff going on, letting us know that we're in "the future".

This movie is a conglomeration of elements and particles from other movies that were actual hits, unlike this misbegotten stew of misery. There are bits of ROBOCOP, BLADE RUNNER, and THE TERMINATOR, with a pinch of THE ROAD WARROR tossed in for the hell of it.

How could this not be the most exciting movie ever made?

A woman named Margie (Margie Newton) is head of an army of killer-biker androids. They lead an assault on mankind that is sheer, chunky cheddar ballet! Bullets fly as people flip, flop, and twist about in slow-motion! All while Margie runs around in her red, leatherette mini-dress and dog collar!

The dialogue is poetically pathetic, and constitutes the greatest strength of this cinematic smegma..

Enter Warren (Woody Strode), who's in this movie for reasons unknown. Fights occur. More people fly around. Motorcycles ride through a blasted landscape. There are musclemen. A rape / murder scene exists only to show pointless nudity, and to give the viewer something to be angry about other than the emptiness of this nonsense. A battle takes place. Margie decides to shed her clothes as well. Etc.

A stupendously skull-flattening experience...

I spotted this gem while browsing the dollar isle at my local discount grocery store. It was between some Smurf air fresheners left over from the 80's and an assortment of kitchen magnets that claimed to be guaranteed for life. After pondering the scenario under which one might possibly send a kitchen magnet back for repairs, I was enticed into picking up this DVD. I was surprised that given the captivating description of a battle between humans and "Robotic Replicants" in a future New York, the price would only be one dollar. "They must be crazy" I muttered, and dashed off to the cashier with my prize. All the way home I envisioned cyborg warriors clashing amidst blood and guts of the weaker humans as they dominated futuristic city landscapes littered with tell-tale trademarks of the once proud NYC. My dream was shattered in the opening scene and never recovered. After a barrage of stock footage that looked like it was designed to lure nerds into joining the audio-video club in high school, my senses were assaulted by what seemed to me to be a typical sunny day in The Big Apple complete with WTC shots and vacation-like panning of NYC architecture. Where were the futuristic landscapes? Shouldn't the city be an apocalyptic shell of itself? Just when I thought things couldn't seem further from the morbid vision of the future I was led to believe I would see, I was switched to a bad video of two guys running through some bushes with all the seriousness of a weekend paint ball tournament.

As the "plot" developed I began wondering if there was any possibility that Smurf air fresheners might one day come back in vogue and if perchance I may have purchased the wrong item. After trudging through scenes of bad actors doing what they do best ... acting badly, I realized that this movie may have been made simply to show off Margit Evelyn Newton's thighs as she sported her seemingly futuristic shiny leather suit. More bad acting was accentuated by action scenes that make Walker Texas Ranger fight scenes look like high-tech special effect wizardly. Then came one of the most grueling and monotonous scenes this side of an Andy Warhol film ... black man (is that really the most inventive name the writers could come up with?) begins training the new sheriff using such futuristic techniques as running through potato sacks and banging a pipe on a railing for what seemed like an eternity while spewing insults that wouldn't motivate a boy scout to rub two sticks together. On to the target practice scene where the new guy shoots at a slide show. More special effect pyrotechnics from the high school AV club!

Eventually I yawned my way through to the rape scene. Yes rape is still a crime in the future and robots are in on the act. For the first time the movie seems to want the viewers attention! Sure they have to resort to the gratuitous naked breast shot and "woman with lustful look of pleasure on her face" shot but after all they know what the public wants. Why would a grubby biker-robot want to rape a human woman? And why would a sexily clad female robot get her rocks off watching it? These and many other questions such as "How does one break a refrigerator magnet anyhow? Can a refrigerator magnet actually wear out?" kept rolling through my head as I stared blankly into the glowing screen before me. More scenes of guys using walkie-talkies that look like shoe boxes with lightning rods attached. Obviously at some point in the future miniaturization of electronic components becomes lame and everyone goes in for the retro look of the 50's. Suddenly everyone is running Willy-nilly through abandon factories with a lot of rusty machine stuff around. Rusty machine stuff is a must-have for any futuristic movie worth its salt so I guess the producers figured they might as well throw it in to take up time in the least expensive way.

The next scene involves bad robots behaving badly by watching a video tape of the rape scene again. Sort of a cyborg porno group type thing that gives Margit Evelyn Newton a reason to heave her breasts wanting and toss a few more "woman with lustful look of pleasure on her face" shots in ... just in case anyone was still watching. Hitch that to a scene of her undressing, then dressing for bed, then being undressed by a male robot, and you have about the most intense 2 minutes that this movie can pull off

... if you pardon the expression.

It never gets any better, bad gun fight scenes and poorly choreographed fight scenes pepper their way through this mish mash of cinematic slop until I was left begging for it to end and wishing I bought the refrigerator magnets.