The late '70s and early '80s were a glorious time for genre movies. The success of huge movies like Jaws and Star Wars opened up the floodgates for every studio to begin cranking out horror and sci-fi and fantasy, and while major studios were releasing both A-level and B-level genre movies, the independents were going nuts cranking out knock-offs and cheap imitations, many of which have an immediacy and energy that surpasses even their more expensive counterparts.
These are not movies particularly interested in exploring themes or enlightening the human condition. They are about pushing buttons and activating the pleasure centers in the brains of those of us who love these movies. They are pure cinema. That's an apt description for 1983's post-apocalyptic sci-fi actioner Exterminators of the Year 3000 (aka Death Warriors), an Italian Road Warrior knock-off new on Blu-ray from the good people at Scream Factory.
It is the year 3000, and Earth has been decimated by nuclear war. Water is the most precious commodity. When a group of survivors runs out of it, a search party is sent out for more, including a young boy named Tommy (Luca Ventantini) with a robotic arm and a dream. Out in the desert he meets Alien (Robert Iannuci), a loner and drifter who would have been named “Mad Max” if the filmmakers weren't afraid of being sued. Alien and Tommy and Alien's Old Lady, Trash (Alicia Moro), go to war with a murderous motorcycle gang led by Crazy Bull (Fernando Bilbao), who may or may not look a whole lot like Vernon Wells in The Road Warrior. It's going to be a fight to the death! A fight over water! In the year 3000! Also, “exterminators” are cars.
One advantage that cheap European exploitation has over its American studio counterpart is a sense of danger -- a reckless desire to "top" that which has come before and a team of stuntmen willing to put themselves in harm's way to pull off the craziest stuff you've ever seen. There is a chase sequence near the beginning of Exterminators that perfectly fits such a bill: high energy, violent and genuinely exciting in no small part because it pushes the limits of practical stunt work and driving. It's easily the best set piece in the film. The problem is that it's just ripping off The Road Warrior, a movie to which all the same qualifications apply. The stunts in Road Warrior feel every bit as dangerous and energetic -- more so, actually, since George Miller doesn't feel the need to play everything out in slow motion the way director Giulano Carnimeo (credited here as “Jules Harrison”) does. It's a rare case in which the minors can't out-crazy the majors.
That the movie is getting a Blu-ray upgrade at all is further evidence of what fun work Scream Factory is doing, rescuing obscure and forgotten horror and sci-fi and bringing them to new eyes — in high def, no less. Because the source elements were likely never in great shape to begin with, Exterminators of the Year 3000 neither looks nor sounds as good as most of Scream Factory’s efforts but still better than it ever has. And while it doesn’t come as packed with bonus content as their special editions, the film is accompanied by both a commentary and an interview with its star, Robert Iannucci. Though there is some overlap in what is shared, Iannucci is game to talk about the film and understands what kind of movie he made. Also included is the original theatrical trailer and a television spot.
Almost everything about Exterminators -- save for the amazing chase sequence and the entertainingly lunatic dialogue of its villain Crazy Bull (“Onward, my merry mother-grabbers!”) -- is generic for this type of movie, which is to say it’s a great deal of uninspired fun. Sometimes these Italian knock-offs push so far in their own weird directions that they transcend their own limitations and even their own "source material" to really stand on their own as true art. Exterminators of the Year 3000 is incredibly entertaining, but hardly transcendent. It’s not The Road Warrior, but it moves well, boasts some great action and has enough of its own personality to be well worth seeking out for fans of this kind of movie.
Movie Score: 3/5, Disc Score: 3/5
Patrick lives in Chicago, where he has been writing about film since 2004. A member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Online Film Critics Society, Patrick's writing also appears on About.com, DVDVerdict.com and fthismovie.net, the site he runs and hosts a weekly podcast.
He has been an obsessive fan of horror and genre films his entire life, watching, re-watching and studying everything from the Universal Monsters of the '30s and '40s to the modern explosion of indie horror. Some of his favorites include Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1931), Dawn of the Dead (1978), John Carpenter's The Thing and The Funhouse. He is a lover of Tobe Hooper and his favorite Halloween film is part 4. He knows how you feel about that. He has a great wife and two cool kids, who he hopes to raise as horror nerds.
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