Blackmoor Vituperative

Today’s Saturday matinee is “Battletruck” (1982), also known as “Warlords Of The 21st Century”. This is not a great movie, but it is interesting for a number of reasons.

The late 1970s and early 1980s were the golden age of vehicle-based adventure movies. “Death Race 2000” (1975) was the vanguard of the genre, leading to “Blue Thunder” (1983), “Megaforce” (1982), “Deathsport” (1978), and so on.

The 1980s were also the golden age of post-apocalypse movies. “Mad Max” (1979) was the vanguard of the genre, leading to “Road Warrior” (1981), “Warrior And The Sorceress” (1984), “Cherry 2000” (1987), and so on.

“Battletruck” (1982) combines these elements. Unlike most films of both genres, it is not filmed in Argentina, nor does it feature David Carradine. It was filmed in New Zealand, and the cast includes Michael Beck (best known for “Warriors” (1979) and “Xanadu” (1980), and who also appeared in “Megaforce”), Annie McEnroe (who appeared in “Snowbeast” (1977), a weird intersection of the 1970s crazes for ski resort movies and Bigfoot movies), and James Wainwright (who has been in a number of fairly good films, but I know him as Dutch from 1974’s “Killdozer”). John Ratzenberger, who would make his appearance as Cliff Clavin on the show “Cheers” later the same year, has a small but memorable part as Rusty, the mechanic and weaponsmith. (Fun fact! Ratzenberger is one of the most successful actors of all time in terms of box-office receipts.)

As a vehicle-based post-apocalypse film, “Battletruck” doesn’t quite measure up to classics like “Damnation Alley” (1977), but it’s a sincere film with sympathetic characters, and it tells its story without the outlandish nonsense of “Warriors Of The Wasteland”, aka “New Barbarians” (1983) and without the sexual assaults of movies like “Road Warrior” (1981) and “Postman” (which came out in 1997, but which is very much a throwback to the post-apocalypse films of the 1980s).