Duelos Mortais

Despite the slow-going and uninteresting first half, ENDGAME really picks up when a group of telepaths and mercenaries hired to guard them leave in a caravan to escape the city. The group's adventures in the wasteland are quite entertaining, beginning with an exciting low-budget battle sequence when a huge force of blind cultists with a vast array of odd weapons attack. Naturally, these blind types aren't the best at aim (or tactics) and are summarily mown town in waves much like ZULU or THE ALAMO. However, this scene alone is quite funny and stands out as a reason to see this movie above most of the rest of Post-apocalyptic dirge the Italians flooded out in the early 80's to capitalize off of MAD MAX 2.

Lots of cool shootouts, lots of cheesy gore and makeup, and a lot of silly dialog make this movie a winner for fans of Italian C-movies. On top of that, the cast is hard to beat with an odd assortment of Spaghetti Western, Polizioteschi, and Sexploitation movie veterans not seeming too out of their element wearing goofy costumes and fighting each other in the same abandoned rock quarry. Massacessi, who began and ended his career making smut, had a brief period in the 80's where he really tried hard to make non-lowest-common-denominator-type movies largely on his own under his Filmirage company (of which this film is one of the first and best examples). Eventually though the law of diminishing returns took hold and one of the company's final productions would be the legendarily noxious TROLL 2.

This film is pretty hard to find though, which is a bit of a shame, as with a cleaned up transfer may play a little better than the gritty old VHS tape.

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.

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!

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)

Like, i went in with zero in mind and this movie was a well made sci fi post apocalypse b movie. For little budget they had they still created very nice scenery and environments.

It's still the 80s b feeling it it but this was like way better then the 5 people give it here.