Thursday, November 6, 2008

Dune Warriors (1990)

Whew. I feel good about this one. Judging by a complete lack of interverse knowledge on this shiner, I'm guessing that not many people have seen Dune Warriors recently. Granted, this was before the brief rekindling of David Carradine lust that graced the Kill Bill movies, so maybe this was fated for a dying martial arts genre. But wait, there are no martial arts in this movie (wuuuu)!! There's just about everything else you can think of, but no martial arts. Example given. This movie contains: swordfighting, machine guns, horses, a band of little people, grenades, a water war, naked women bathing each other (thank god for the Philippines!), sophisticated bows and arrows, a faux fortress, a sort of New-Age sensei theme (this one's thanks to Caradine of course [what is with the white pajamas and hippie jewelry?]), a couple of Jeeps, motorcycle jousting, jaunty Medieval tunes and the ever popular political uprising. One of the two comments on imdb suggests that this film is just a "chintzy and dull rip-off of Mad Max." Well, let me tell you, Mad Max is way way way better than this. And not just because this movie looks like it was made by some of my over-achieving high school friends back in the day (the "houses" barely look 3 dimensional. And why are all swords three inches thick and one solid color? None of the audio even matches up!). They are both set in post-apocalyptic United States (Dune Warriors claims 2040, California). But, I'm pretty sure Mad Max doesn't march to the tune of a fucking lute. None of these things mean that Dune Warriors is not worth watching. The nudity alone makes it worth it. Also, the sight of Carradine in some sort of loin cloth, open-shirted, pants suit at the end of the film, if it doesn't scar you terribly, has the potential to lift you to some bizarre state of enlightenment (that's what I'm feeling....right?). Trust me, I looked everywhere for that sacred screen shot, but to no avail. For some other screen shots, feel free to peruse this fine site. Oh, and I managed to find this awesome trailer that I highly suggest you watch. You can thank me later...


I deem it: "A 80's-turning-into-the-90's punk rawker Renassiance fair turned horribly, horribly wrong."

THIS JUST IN (okay, so it's a month and a half late...): Cirio Santiago, the beloved director of this very film, as well as many other bizarro sci-fi cult clips, is dead! But don't worry, he will live on in memory, as well as through the post-humous release of a new Michael Madsen pic called, in a bout of originality, Road Warriors. Ah, Cirio.







1 comment:

Tesla said...

Man, I totally forgot the most awesome part!! The title track that ran during the end credits embarrassed itself and the editors when the LP slowed down for about a second, creating that characteristic slur. Ha. Pathetic.