The New Barbarians

• Also known as Warriors of the Wasteland
• Directed by Enzo G. Castellari
• April 7, 1983

In the far-off year of 2019 one man stands against a crazed gang bent on the extermination of humanity. One man, his buddy, a random girl, and a kid mechanic anyway.

The New Barbarians (aka Warriors of the Wasteland) is one of many Mad Max rip offs that came out in the wake of the groundbreaking series. Some of those just took and borrowed from it in broad strokes while others such as this film were much more direct in plot elements that they ripped off. This movie is essentially a barely changed version of Mad Max 2 whose differences are due largely to its limited budget.

The plot here involves our hero saving a group of settlers much like in Mad Max 2. Where it deviates is that it makes the gang threatening the settlers, here called The Templars, doing so because they wish to eliminate humanity. What led them to this? Do you have to ask? The nuclear apocalypse of course! We humans suck and need to be expunged.

One thing that goes unsaid about The Templars for quite some time is that they are all gay. In fact it is never said but rather implied (eventually) with all the subtlety of a bee sting. You can be forgiven for not picking up on it at first as it looks like Alma (Anna Kanakis), the woman that gets rescued by our hero Scorpion (Giancarlo Prete as Timothy Brent) early on, is a member of the gang. I really thought she was. A member who had somehow gotten on the outs with them but as the movie goes on, they make it clear that she is not. Or they change their minds and make her not a member. This movie is not well done.

There’s no real clear indication the Templars are all gay until a scene mid film when Scorpion who is a former member of the gang is about to be raped in the butt by the gang’s leader One (Luigi Montefiori as George Eastman). Yep. Pants get dropped as Scorpion is restrained in a contraption out in the open for all to see. Is this some weird sci-fi Deliverance?!

Luigi Montefiori as George Eastman as One is rather scene chewing. He is hamming it up from the beginning to the end. Whoever dubbed him certainly held nothing back as well. I haven’t seen this much ham since William Shatner. But he was a good ham. This guy is just bad. It is not even a guilty pleasure to watch.

Giancarlo Prete as Timothy Brent as Scorpion is doing his best to rip-off Mel Gibson in look but is generic action hero in character in everything else. Scorpion attempts witty one liners and beds Alma shortly after saving her. Which considering the later revelation would imply he left The Templars because he was straight. This movie brings up so much weirdness or stuff you could not even allude to as a plot element today. But they do not dig into any of it.

Young Mechanic (Giovanni Frezza)-not even sure if he gets called that in the movie-kinda lives with Scorpion and fixes his car with no explanation. This movie just gets weirder. He fixes Scorpion’s ride that looks suspiciously close but not identical to Mad Max’s car. Speaking of that ride, it looks like the only moving vehicle in this movie not painted silver or that’s not some barebones machine.

Scorpion has a pal named Nadir (Fred Williamson sporting no other names). Given his dislike for The Templars (implied to be because of their sexuality) their closeness is confusing. How did they meet? What is their connection? How did he befriend this former Templar?

Nadir is presented as a stealthy warrior but he has some of the most reflective stuff in the entire movie. He has a gold-colored gauntlet with random exploding arrowheads on it and some of the shiniest chrome accoutrements of anybody there. And speaking of those arrowheads, why does he carefully choose one if they all blow up pretty much to the same extent?

What the Mad Max films got correct was naming. The characters names, though codenames, connected to what the characters were. You got an idea of what they were to the story. Even Max who stood for all people with his regular and almost generic name. He was angry (mad). Here they are just whatever sounds cool.

You cannot help but notice the amount of silver in this film. After the bombs dropped there was apparently a great deal of silver paint available. That along with the clean white clothing of the villains gives a great deal of unintentional hilarity to things. That is in addition to the random crap just stuck on to Nadir’s clothing.

In a post-apocalyptic world I think they were using ray guns. I’m not sure if they couldn’t afford blanks in this film or if they had planned on using energy weapons of some type but decided to skip the special effects to save on the budget.

And they certainly do love slow-motion here. For every explosion or kill it is shown in slow motion. Honestly it was probably to stretch out the run time. But given the number of slow-motion moments they have in this movie it becomes unintentionally funny. By the third or fourth one I was just laughing.

The New Barbarians (aka Warriors of the Wasteland) is bad. Intentionally or not, there is not very much good here. Yet you have to watch it once you start. It’s like driving past a car accident. You slow down and need to look. You need to take all the destruction in. And it certainly doesn’t let you down.

The New Barbarians is a truly terrible movie. It’s a bad rip off in general of Mad Max and specifically of Mad Max 2. There is virtually no reason to seek this out and watch unless you wanna watch something bad. If you’re looking for something good just keep moving.