The New Barbarians

Get ready for hot fun in the summertime (but it’s a dry heat!) at DESERT DISASTERS Month at Mondo Mondays, featuring cheesy, sun-baked B-movies set in the deserts of your dreams … and nightmares!

“Exterminators of the 21st Century!” It’s the future of 2019 and the world’s gone to hell – devastated by nuclear war, blasted into a desert wasteland, and turned into an insanely gory, massively cheesy Italian Road Warrior rip-off! In The New Barbarians (aka Warriors of the Wasteland), a handful of survivors desperately try to reach sanctuary in a distant land, only to constantly be thwarted by brutal attacks from The Templars, a psychotic cult decked out in New Wave white jumpsuits with enormous shoulder pads, and dedicated to killing everyone unlucky enough to survive this long. When lone wolf warrior Scorpio rescues a maiden named Alma from the clutches of the Templars, they join up with a ragtag group of survivors in a furious fight to the finish against the ruthless exterminators, while many things blow up – cars, buildings, people – repeatedly. Thrown in decapitations, graphic impalings, exploding heads, rickety death vehicles, -and a shockingly high body count, not to mention wooden acting, terrible dubbing, groovy synth music, and Fred “The Hammer” Williamson (Black Caesar) as a leather-clad archer with exploding arrows, and you’ve got yourself a post-apocalyptic party that always laughable but never dull! From the director of 1990: The Bronx Warriors and Great White. (Dir. by Enzo Castellari, 1983, Italy, 91 mins., Rated R)