L'ultimo guerriero

My review was written in December 1985 after watching the movie on MGM/UA video cassette.

"The Final Executioner", also known as "The Last Warrior", is a subpar 1983 Italian science fiction film set after a nuclear holocaust (represented by lowercase stock footage of volcanic eruptions and bombed out neighborhoods). Cannon pickup wisely bypassed U. S. theaters in favor of home video release.

Story vaguely borrows from classics such as "The Most Dangerous Game" and "The Tenth Victim", postulating humanity divided into two groups, the rich, privileged few and the radiation contaminated masses. The rich olk hunt down teh contaminated population for sport.

Cybernetics expert Alan (top billed William Mang) discovers that after 80,000,000 people have been killed in hunts there are no more contaminated folks to shoot down. To keep their privileges, however, the rich class continues to designate people as "target material" and kill off healthy folks, perpetuating the system.

Alan teams up with a tough, excop Sam (Woody Strode) to launch an assault on a hunters' headquarters. It takes many reels of filler, punctuated by extraneous sex scenes, until the good guys make some headway.

With no special effects, little atmosphere and a one-joke script, pic is science fiction in name only. Poor dubbing negates the cast's efforts, though Strode is an impressive screen presence convincingly beating up multiple young guys in hand-to-hand combat.

Perhaps I should state first that I'm an incurable sucker for the trashy Italian exploitation & rip-off cinema of the 1980s. I have seen all those "Mad Max" and "Escape from New York" imitations, and I can list several examples of titles that I enjoyed even massively more than the originals they are inspired by, like "Atlantis Interceptors", "2019: After the Fall of New York", "Fists of Steel", "Fighting Centurions 2072", "Endgame", etc. Most of these films are generally considered as worthless and irredeemable junk, but yours truly adores them! So, when I say that a certain title in this genre, say "The Final Executioner" is dull and forgettable, you can rest assured that practically nobody will enjoy it.

"The Final Executioner" combines the contemporary overused post-apocalyptic concept with the (also numerously recycled) idea of hunting human beings for sheer entertainment value. In the apocalyptic wasteland that remained after an all-destructive nuclear explosion, direly illustrated through the same old stock-footage, there are basically just two types of people left alive. The uninfected elite and the infected trash. The elite permit themselves to rape, humiliate, hunt down and kill the infected survivors simply for fun and games. One man fights back, however, and when the elite viciously gang-rape and murder his girl right in front of him, he enlists the help of a former cop for his ultimate plan of revenge. I realize this sound cheesy and cliched enough to be entertaining, but for some incomprehensible reason Romolo Guerrieri ("Young, Violent & Dangerous", "The Sweet Body of Deborah") managed to make it very boring! There are too many long parts of sheer dullness, the lead villains aren't nearly freaky or maniacal enough and the supportive role of Woody Strode is sad and pathetic. The violence and bloodshed are tame and brief, whereas the rape sequence is too long and utterly provocative. There aren't any cool post-apocalyptic set-pieces, vehicles or gimmicks and hero William Mang tries too damn hard to look like Kurt Russell.

At the bottom end of the apocalypse movie scale is this piece of pish called 'The Final Executioner'.. at least where I come from. A bloke is trained by an ex-cop to seek vengeance on those that killed his woman and friends in cold blood.. and that's about it. Lots of fake explosions and repetitive shootings ensue. Has one of the weirdest array of costumes I've seen in a film for a while, and a massive fortress which is apparently only run by 7 people. GREAT job on the dubbing too guys(!) Best moment: when our hero loses a swordfight and is about to be skewered through the neck, he just gets out his gun and BANG! Why not do that earlier? It's a mystery. As is why anyone would want to sit through this in the first place. I'm still puzzling over that one myself now.. 2/10

This film is absolutely appalling and awful. It's not low budget, it's a no budget film that makes Ed Wood's movies look like art. The acting is abysmal but sets and props are worse then anything I have ever seen. An ordinary subway train is used to transport people to the evil zone of killer mutants, Woddy Strode has one bullet and the fight scenes are shot in a disused gravel pit. There is sadism as you would expect from an 80s Italian video nasty. No talent was used to make this film. And the female love interest has a huge bhind- Italian taste maybe. Even for 80s Italian standards this film is pretty damn awful but I guess it came out at a time when there weren't so many films available on video or viewers weren't really discerning. This piece of crap has no entertainment value whatsoever and it's not even funny, just boring and extremely cheap. It's actually and insult to the most stupid audience. I just wonder how on earth an actor like Woody Strode ended up ia a turkey like this?

Following a nuclear holocaust the upper class hunt the expendable contaminated.

Director Romolo Guerrieri offers a choppy late in the game Mad Max 2 and Escape from New York (1981) cash in, akin to Escape from the Bronx (1983), The Exterminators of the Year 3000 (1983) to name a few. Compared to the other B-movie Italian film around at the same time this one is pacer than most.

The Final Executioner has all the clunkiness you'd expect from these low budget and Italian productions. Guerrieri delivers a little motorcycle and car action, shootouts, fights, an electronic field with codes, even a training montage. To writer Roberto Leoni's credit it tries to to be a little different borrowing The Most Dangerous (1932) concept of human hunting humans. It also has a hint of The Prize of Peril (1983), predating the Running Man (1987). Cheesy, intruding and odd drum beats aside, Carlo de Nonno's synthesiser score is at times on the money.

Stubbly lead William Mang does his best Kurt Russell and Clint Eastwood impression as Tanner as he picks off the bad guys one by one. The male supporting cast wrestle with the script more than the fight scenes. With a number of actresses, including stunning Maria Romano (Thor the Conqueror's Ina) as Magda doing their best with the thin dialogue, Margit Evelyn Newton (Zombie Creeping Flesh (1980)) appears as Diane and gets naked as the screenplay dictates. Bearded sword wielding Harrison Muller as hunter Erasmus is notable along with memorable Marina Costa as mean sharpshooter Edra. With limited screen time Woody Strode steals every scene as Sam, a hard-nosed mentor type character.

Overall, far from the bottom of the barrel addition to the genre, worth checking out thanks to the concept, cast and score.