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Post-Apocalypse Movies

Those mad max ripoffs used to have me roflmao. After the apocalypse there is always a shortage of petrol, food, water and other important things, but never a shortage of studded leather :madeyes:
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
Those mad max ripoffs used to have me roflmao. After the apocalypse there is always a shortage of petrol, food, water and other important things, but never a shortage of studded leather :madeyes:

Must be a macho thing, as they say in that other post-apocalypse movie Can't Stop the Music: "Leathermen don't get nervous!"

Of course you can go too far in these things, as baddie George Eastman in The New Barbarians rapes the hero to prove his dominance over him. Meant to be be disturbing, but is just stupid.
 
The retro cinema bandwagon just keeps rolling along with Turbo Kid:


Looks like a cross between Italian post-apocalypse and, er, BMX Bandits, which isn't post-apocalypse as far as I know. Looks fun, though, and dig the theme tune.
 
The chick with the bronze breast plate looks good, but hardly practical. I bet she gets moany and pissed off quite regularly.
 
Zombie Killers: Elephant's Graveyard. Not a great Zombie film, maybe not even a good Zombie film. But its a fair one. Watchable. Small community, 6 - 7 years after the Fall. Army sergeant trains the youth, meanwhile theres also a christian cult in the compound. Are there dark secrets? What will they do when they find out that hordes of Zombies are headed this way? Ending suggests a sequel may be planned.

It is a lot better than the low IMDB rating suggests.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2908090/
 
Road Wars: A Mad Max/Zombiesque hybrid. A Rabies type Virus has devastated the Earth, the cities have fallen. Small bands of survivors eke out an existence in the badlands, But the Road Gangs are also in operation, vehicles and outfits just as outlandish as in any MM film.

An amnesiac Road Warrior (even dressed like MM) emerges from the desert, he brings hope as he may be immune to the virus.

The infected, are day-walkers and night-runners, but mostly come out at night, seeking blood. they'll tear out your throat to get it. The film owes a death to I Am Legend as well as MM, though the infected are blood drinkers they are more akin to Zomboid Vampires of IAL.

Makes good use of a low budget. 6/10

http://bmovieshelf.blogspot.ie/2015/05/early-review-road-wars-2015.html
 
German, rather than French, but could it be Until the End of the World Wim Wenders 1991.

Civilization gets zapped by a falling nuclear powered satellite.

Quite a good sound-track, but a bit confused narrative wise possibly due to being severely hacked around in the editing....
One of those films that got right under my skin on release - saw it in 1992 on video and loved the guts out of it. I now see it as a pivotal moment in my life seeing this film at age 21. I became somewhat obsessed with the film and its themes for yeasr afterwards.

Not really a post-apocalyptic but a vision of the world in 1999 featuring the later stages in the decline of western civilisation. The earth did not actually get zapped.
The satelite was shot down and was expected to doom humanity but in the end didn't hurt the earth.
Yes it was sliced poorly in the edit but still fascinated me and expanded my consciousness. The director's original cut of the film has three co-existing plots that the 160min cinema release didn't allow enough time to develop. I have the full 300 minute 3-part trilogy safely tucked away on my external hard drive and have only seen it through once. I actually like the cinema release edit. The focus on dream recording technologies becoming all-consuming and as addictive as heroin is now realised in part as social media - the sony screens featured previsioning the smartphone. I've probably seen it over 20 times I think, which is 19.5 times more than most people who tried. I saw it before I knew who Wenders was and discovered his other work subsequently. Very glad to have been introduced to filmography of the creator of Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire.

As mentioned, UtEotW has an outstanding rock soundtrack too. The album did not feature the song by Peter Gabriel which is used at one of the most important points in the film. The song is Blood of Eden. I cry every time I watch the scene associated with this music and am amazed it isn't on the album. I'm posting a version on the What Music? thread right now.

From the wiki:
Soundtrack
Main article: Until the End of the World (soundtrack)
Music From the Motion Picture Soundtrack Until The End of the World was released January 1991, and includes the following tracks:

  1. "Opening Title" – Graeme Revell
  2. "Sax And Violins" – Talking Heads
  3. "Summer Kisses, Winter Tears" – Julee Cruise
  4. "Move with Me (Dub)" – Neneh Cherry
  5. "The Adversary" – Crime & the City Solution
  6. "What's Good" – Lou Reed
  7. "Last Night Sleep" – Can
  8. "Fretless" – R.E.M.
  9. "Days" – Elvis Costello
  10. "Claire's Theme" – Graeme Revell
  11. "(I'll Love You) Till The End Of The World" – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
  12. "It Takes Time" – Patti Smith (With Fred Smith)
  13. "Death's Door" – Depeche Mode
  14. "Love Theme" – Graeme Revell
  15. "Calling All Angels" (Remix Version) – Jane Siberry with k.d. lang
  16. "Humans from Earth" – T-Bone Burnett
  17. "Sleeping in the Devil's Bed" – Daniel Lanois
  18. "Until the End of the World" – U2
  19. "Finale" – Graeme Revell

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Until_the_End_of_the_World
Here's an article about the writer's expereince viewing the film at a recent MOMA retrospective on Wenders' work.
http://www.jukeboxgraduate.com/2015/03/until-the-end-of-the-world-the-directors-cut/
 
The Last Survivors aka The Well: Ten years without rain, civilsation has broken down. At least it has in a valley in Oregon. A young woman and her boyfriend (who has damaged kidneys) hide in the attic of a ruined house, depending on a well for survival.

A rancher is using the drought to seize the land of other farmers he drives out and has a hunter/killer force to exterminate refugeees. This could be Shane or even Heaven's Gate, set in the 21st Century.

Good PA Thriller. 7/10.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2558318/
 
One of those films that got right under my skin on release - saw it in 1992 on video and loved the guts out of it. I now see it as a pivotal moment in my life seeing this film at age 21. I became somewhat obsessed with the film and its themes for yeasr afterwards.

I was part of a small group of friends from college when it came out who had the same reaction. We were all hugely into film (we had planned to make a slasher movie but beyond the script (which I wrote) and a couple of effects try outs it never went anywhere) and adored Wim Wenders. The sound track album which I taped off the CD (home taping is killing music) was permanently in my car stereo for about a year.

Oddly I was just thinking about this movie the other day when I was looking at a Sat-nav on the dash of a car I was in and thinking how hopelessly futuristic that looked in 1991 when the film featured one (in a Rover of all things!).
 
Turbo Kid: This one is quirky alright, really off the wall. Tropes of Mad Max, A boy And His Dog (without the dog), Ex Machina, Power Rangers, BMX Bandits and Terminator all compete for space and time here.

Its 1997 but not our Timeline. this is a Post-Apocalyptic era with the final wars ans fall of civilisation occuring in the 1980s. A teenage boy exists as a scavenger and his life changes when he meets an odd, well, batshit crazy but beautiful girl. There's a local Immortal Joe named Zeus and the Road Wariors and Road Gangs ride bicycles. The teenager models himself on a comic book hero so when Zeus kidnaps his girlfriend he sets off to rescue her.

A low budget affair with gruesomely gory special effects, this is a homage to Mad Max rather than a parody.

An expansion of the T Is For Turbo segment of The ABCs Of Death.

Great fun. 7/10.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3672742/
 
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If you get the Turbo Kid Blu-ray you get extra gore (!). I think it's more an homage to all those Mad Max hangers on rather than Mad Max itself, it's truly disarming to watch a much maligned genre treated with such love. Apple the companion robot dedicated to her purpose was the best character, but it was also great to see Michael Ironside as the baddie, seeing as how he was no stranger to 80s sci-fi way back when. Not the greatest film ever, but it has a puppy dog charm that makes it easy to like (even if the puppy is ripping off people's heads).
 
Gavin Rothery's The Last Man

In Gavin Rothery’s new short film, The Last Man, an anonymous soldier is awoken from hibernation, only to discover that the world he knew is gone. The film is a haunting, post-apocalyptic look at what will drive him forward.


(via io9)
 
Gavin Rothery's The Last Man

In Gavin Rothery’s new short film, The Last Man, an anonymous soldier is awoken from hibernation, only to discover that the world he knew is gone. The film is a haunting, post-apocalyptic look at what will drive him forward.


(via io9)

Worth watching.
 
Gavin Rothery's The Last Man

In Gavin Rothery’s new short film, The Last Man, an anonymous soldier is awoken from hibernation, only to discover that the world he knew is gone. The film is a haunting, post-apocalyptic look at what will drive him forward.


(via io9)
Loved it! Where do they get the money to make a short film that good?
 
Just watched the 1970 No Blade Of Grass, based on the novel by John Christopher The Death of Grass. Has Nigel Davenport and a young Wendy Richard. Also a younger lynne Fredrick who would become the hypnotically beautiful actress who married Peter Sellers. She was a bit of a bitch to his kids (allegedly), and died mysteriously at the age of 39 cause undetermined, although drugs and alcohol are suspected.

She appeared in some other horror/SF films as well. Phase IV and Vampire Circus for examples.

picture-0.png


The film is a product of the "sexy70's" with violence and nudity. Set in England.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066154/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Grass - Love John Christopher.
 
Gets a 6 from me, it's a bit over the top in a silly way, but I really like the rural scenery with the mayhem set against it. The Lynne Frederick story is a very sad one, I wonder if she would have coped better if she'd never met Peter Sellers? And the fact her daughter and not his children gets his fortune, never having met Sellers, is an unlovely quirk of the legal system.
 
OzLand: Two men wander across a post-apocalyptic landscape, mostly rural and flat. it is reminiscent of Kansas and the US Mid-West. It is a dryer world where water is more difficult to source. One of the men is about 20 the other in his 30s, the younger,Leif, can read but the older, Emri, sent years isolated in a forest with his father ans is illiterate. Leif finds a copy of The Wizard Of Oz but cannot differentiate between fiction and fact.

As they proceed along the dusty road they have encounters which Leif interprets as signs pointing to the truth of the Oz story. We discover some hints about the nature of the apocalypse from this.

A moving film. Will have you thinking about it long after the credits go up. 8/10.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3924144/
 
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There is the 1994 American Broadcasting Company mini-series The Stand. Stephen King was the executive producer and while I loved it, not everyone does. Some folks hated it.

There is also the 1959 Stanley Kramer film On the Beach. While OTB is a very good movie, I seriously question the central premise, the extermination of all animal life due to an atomic holocaust.

World Without End is a 1956 movie from Allied Artists, that is very low-budget, but is nonetheless a surprisingly good movie.

I am surprised that nobody mentioned these.
 
Weird, I was mentioning Coke on another thread just there and a bottle of the stuff has an important role in On the Beach. Though the most horrible bit of that film is arguably the Australian Grand Prix where nobody cares if they crash and die - they actually encourage it.
 
There is the 1994 American Broadcasting Company mini-series The Stand. Stephen King was the executive producer and while I loved it, not everyone does. Some folks hated it.

There is also the 1959 Stanley Kramer film On the Beach. While OTB is a very good movie, I seriously question the central premise, the extermination of all animal life due to an atomic holocaust.

World Without End is a 1956 movie from Allied Artists, that is very low-budget, but is nonetheless a surprisingly good movie.

I am surprised that nobody mentioned these.

A two part tv mini-series of the Beach was made in 2000, updated to the current day. Just as unremitting in the devastation of animal life.
 
A two part tv mini-series of the Beach was made in 2000, updated to the current day. Just as unremitting in the devastation of animal life.
Yes; that one had Armand Assante in the role of Dwight Towers. I haven't see it but I do have the 1959 Kramer effort and while it was a good movie, the central premise--the extermination through radioactivity of all animal life--is the weak point. Such a scenario, as depicted in this otherwise excellent story, is almost impossible.
 
I saw Snowpiercer yesterday. Set on a non stop train, post global freezing apocalypse after governments sprayed particles in the sky as an anti global warming measure. All life outside is extinct.

Ruthless class disinction rules, with the elite at the front protected by armed guards & plebs at the back. Rebellion is planned. Must be one of John Hurt's last films & Tilda Swinton is unrecognisable.

A rip-roaring first ¾ with some fairly gruesome action & a twist at the end. Pretty good.
 
Does anyone have any clues as to why the Apocalyptic/Post-apocalyptic genre is so popular? It's something I find really fascinating - ever since the book of Daniel, people have been into depictions of the end of the world, but why? Is there some kind of religious need which needs to be fulfilled by thinking that the world's always teetering on the edge of collapse?
Admittedly, this is a somewhat late response to the question, but the answer is really simple: PA stories are fun to read, and they are also fun to write. Most of them take the form of adventure stories, and it might be said that they serve as a substitute for the reader's own humdrum life. As far as that goes, the writer's life as well. The person is able (provided he or she survives) to imagine themselves as living the adventures that they have not had up to then.

That's my theory anyway.
 
EPIDEMIC (AKA Here Alone): An epidemic has wiped out most of humanity, and Ann has been forced to hide in the woods. Accustomed to isolation and a wild environment, she does not know how to react when Chris and Olivia meet in their path. For Ann, killing infected and fleeing permanently is much easier than relating to someone again.

 
Would like to hear from anyone who has seen the Australian film The Rover (David Michôd 2014).'
the-rover.png


Amazon blurb:
10 years after a global economic collapse, a hardened loner pursues the men who stole his only possession, his car. Along the way, he captures one of the thieves' brother, and the duo form an uneasy bond during the dangerous journey.

It was panned for poor plot scripting on release but I anticipate something of a cult status to come. I viewed it in the very small cinema it had been alloted with about 12 other people, and when I laughed right out loud at the final scene, they all turned and stared at me aghast. It wasn't a mockery, I found the blackest humour of that scene genuinely funny.

I've watched it about 5 times. Still enjoy it. One of the better PA films around. I'm very biased towards its cinematography as it was filmed where I go camping 3 times a year. That landscape does have a very haunted atmosphere.

Once you know the punchline of that final scene, the rest of the film takes on an even darker sensibility the next time you watch it. There isn't anything left for the main character to care about.

This is a genuinely distopian story. 5/5



Here's a reviewer who gave it what it deserved.
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/...ximum-madness-in-the-aussie-outback-1.1896846
Most others completely missed the point, but that's hack reviewers eh. Rates 66% on RT.
 
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