Just look at the freakin’ cover for this film and tell me it doesn’t look amazing! Having now seen it, I can say that it does live up to the amazingness promised by the cover, although whether it’s amazing in a legit good film kind of way or amazing in a really bad and weird kind of way remains the question.
Made in the ‘80s, 1990: The Bronx Warriors (1982) presents us a look at the post-apocalyptic future of 1990, where the Bronx has become “no man’s land” featuring gangs of motorcycle riders, roller skaters, and tap dancers with all kinds of crazy wardrobes. Characters have names such as Ogre (Fred Williamson), Hot Dog (Christopher Connelly), and Trash (Mark Gregory/Marco De Gregorio)! 17 year old Ann (Stefania Girolami Goodwin) doesn’t have a cool name, but she does decide she would rather run away to the dangerous Bronx than stay and inherit her family’s “morally questionable” weapon manufacturing company. Her family hires mercenary Hammer (Vic Morrow) to go into the Bronx and drag Ann back to her familial duties. Hammer, described as “a little risky” turns out to be a lot risky, causing all manners of hell to break loose in the Bronx.
That plot synopsis doesn’t do justice to how much weird there is to digest in this little film. When Ann first shows up to the Bronx, she’s attacked by a gang called the Zombies, but they look like a hockey team on roller skates, with their white Darth Vader helmets and busted-ass hockey sticks. Then we meet our hero, Trash (Marco De Gregorio), leader of the motorcycle gang called the Riders. And Jesus Christ, Ann looks like she’s masturbating in the corner while watching him fight off the Zombies. When Trash approaches Ann to figure out why the hell she’s in the lawless Bronx he says “Nothing’s worse than this hell hole.” To which she responds, “That’s what you think.” I guess Hell really is relative.
Despite the many, many oddball gangs in 1990: The Bronx Warriors, the action scenes are pretty sparse. When the action does happen, the scenes tend to be either moments of cool creativity, like having two blades pop out on each side of a motorcycle and driving in between two baddies to slice their legs, or slow, mechanical brawls.
All of this makes more sense after reading an interview with writer/director Enzo Castellari in which he reports Marco De Gregorio was discovered in a gym and this was his first film. Massimo Vanni, who plays one of the gang members in the Riders, confirms this in a different interview. Baby-faced De Gregorio was only 17 years old when tapped to be the leading man of an action film. He had no fighting or acting experience, according to Vanni, who was given the task of teaching him some stunts. “Well,” said Vanni, “he worked at it but he was not a star.” That may seem a little harsh but after watching the film it’s hard to argue otherwise! De Gregorio’s inexperience does add to the “so bad it’s good” vibes, though, so honestly I’d count it as a boon.
1990: The Bronx Warriors is the first of an Italian action trilogy by Castellari. Although The Bronx Warriors films are presented as a trilogy, the stories exist separately with no mention of the others. In the interview with Castellari he states, “the only things in common are the actors and the place.” Part of the oddity of these films is seeing the same actors playing different characters but in the same setting (although Marco De Gregorio plays the same character in the first two films). The three films were all shot in about 6 months, with The New Barbarians (1983) being filmed before the second film of the series, Escape from the Bronx (1983). The stories for all three are a mishmashed pastiche of everything popular at the time— post-apocalyptic setting, wild gangs a la The Warriors, rebels versus an evil empire, and so on.
Also, not all the actors could speak English, despite it being filmed for an English-speaking audience, so it’s all dubbed with odd lines like “You got your gray matter in your butt.” Mistranslation? Overly literal translation? Or were the writers of these three movies just full of that kind of wacky shit?
Despite the low action score, the weird, wild fun of 1990: The Bronx Warriors creates the perfect atmosphere for a group of friends looking for something wild.
Time Until Action: ~ 4 minutes
Best Line: “You fuck, look it could be a pile of shit out of somebody’s asshole.” -Trash
Action Rating: 1.5 scenes of a funeral that lasts 20 minutes for characters we don’t even know the name of, out of 5
Disclaimer: Just because I am the Action Flick Chick and love action movies does not mean I condone real life violence in any way. Everyone has their own shit to deal with, be nice to each other.
