Le Gladiateur du futur

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.