The 80’s Post-Apocalyptic Film Fest
This is a bit of an obsession of mine. I love this entire class of film. The more B-grade the better. You’ve got your blasted nuclear landscape (that usually looks suspiciously like southern California or the Australian Outback). You’ve got hordes of roaming mutants. Motorcycles, sawed-off shotguns, leather jackets and hotpants. And the 80’s hair! The cheesy pop ballads! I love it!
Mad Max, The Road Warrior
These are the granddaddies of them all, the films by which all others are measured and found lacking. Leather jackets, big guns, and souped-up cars. What else do you need?
Radioactive Dreams
When the bombs fall in 1996, two boys are stuck in a bomb shelter with nothing to read but 1940s hard-boiled detective novels. Fifteen years later, Phillip and Marlowe (get it?) dig their way out and emerge into a chaotic, barbarous world, where the various tribes of people are identified by the decade they stole their clothes from (there’s the punks, the greasers, the hippies…it’s actually kind of cute). Then they come into possession of the keys that will launch the last MX missile. As if one apocalypse weren’t enough. The main theme of the film: fedoras never go out of style.
This is where I confess that I had a huge crush on Michael Dudikoff (better known from the American Ninja films) when I was 15.
Cherry 2000
To find replacement parts for his beloved sex bot, Sam hires a tracker (Melanie Griffith, no less!) to guide him into The Zone, the apocalyptic wasteland where the old factory for the — as it turns out — obsolete android is located. Many adventures are had during which Sam realizes that maybe the real woman is better than the malfunctioning robot. Maybe.
Slipstream
This is a must-see in any case because Bill Paxton (”Game over, man!”) stars as the hero and Mark Hamill is his rival. This leaves us with no doubts that Mark Hamill plays awesome villains. Global climate change has caused massive, constant winds to sweep over the land. People use the slipstream to travel along canyons and valleys, where remnants of humanity cling to existence. The story is actually interesting: Paxton plays a scavenger, Hamill is a bounty hunter, and his prey is a mysterious man with a dark secret. The whole thing becomes a commentary, not only on whether humanity will survive, but how it ought to survive. What constitutes the new human culture?
Hardware
The only one of these films that isn’t a road trip. It’s also probably my favorite on the list. It’s about a lot of things — a nefarious government plot, a blasted landscape where a big part of the economy involves scavengers combing the desert for useful items they can sell. But it’s mostly about Jill and whether or not she’ll survive when her soldier boyfriend brings home a piece from a killer robot. The robot rebuilds itself, and chaos ensues. The story owes a debt to Ripley and Alien, of course. But that only means it borrowed from the best.
There are, of course, lots more films than this. These are just my favorites. You want to relive the culture anxieties of the 80’s when we all really were convinced that the bombs would drop tomorrow? This is the ticket.
