Endgame

source: Endgame

ENDGAME is a highly entertaining slice of Italian cheese, served at least ten weeks past its sell by date. Just one of a rash of post-apocalyptic films which emerged from Italy (usually amid nuclear blasts) in the early '80s, it's a fun-filled action adventure film all the way. The Italians certainly had a sense of style - and fun - that their American counterparts lacked. Take the film's American version, for instance, Schwarzenegger's much better-known THE RUNNING MAN. Does it have innocent blind men being gunned down? The heck it does. America is too restricted to make really good films any more, but you can't say that about the Italians. They sure know how to make a film, and who cares who they offend? It comes as no surprise that the film was directed by Joe D'Amato. Joe, God rest his soul, was never really renowned for making brilliant films. But whether his films were enjoyable… well, it depends on the viewer. I for one am impressed. What makes ENDGAME such a masterpiece - however odd that may seem - is the absurdity of it. It could have just been a typical gladiator film, but no. There are 'regressive mutants' who are supposed to have become half-fish (hmm, sounds like something Lovecraft might have thought of). To show this, they have those little shiny discs stuck all over their faces. And when they die they bleed water. Or blue paint in this case. The other 'regressive mutants' look very much like rejects from PLANET OF THE APES. To add to the fun, mix in a cast of European 'stars' such as Laura Gemser (famed for her role in the BLACK EMANUELLE films of the 1970s) as the love interest who inevitably loses her top halfway through, George Eastman (ANTHROPOPHAGUS THE BEAST) as a psycho, shotgun-armed warrior (very good role here folks) and even Bobby Rhodes, the star of DEMONS and its sequel, wearing a robe and carrying a big spiked club thing! Rhodes is really the icing on the cake. Italian peplum fans will be delighted to spot former muscleman Gordon Mitchell in a small role as a baddie. What else is there? An almost constant stream of action, from the single punch-ups in the first half to the full-scale wars in the second. People kick either other when they're down, punch, and there's even a warrior called Ninja (who breaks the neck of a poor guy asked to attack him in class) who jumps around and kicks people in the face (I thought that was just something Jean Claude Van Damme did). The action is very second rate but this makes it all the more entertaining. There's lots of gore around as well as plenty of nudity for enthusiasts of that variety. Cliver is excellent in his Mad Max type role. ENDGAME is not a well made film by any means but it's a heck of a lot of fun and highly entertaining. So much so that I'm giving it a high rating for effort. A highly underrated cheesy classic.

Joe D'Amato's "Endgame - Bronx lotta finale" (simply called "Endgame" in English) is an exercise in unabashed exploitation, and a fun one at that. Post-apocalyptic settings are a common theme in cinema, but this is one of those movies that looks really prescient in retrospect. Set in an irradiated New York in 2025, people are forced to fight to the death to entertain the elites (a bit like "The Hunger Games"). And this movie came out over a decade before there was reality TV! I view these sorts of movies as a latter-day manifestation of Franz Kafka's parable of the leopards: what used to be shocking becomes routine (whether the types of movies or what they portray happening in real life). "Endgame" is a pretty slipshod movie, but it makes no pretense about what kind of a movie it is: a B movie and proud of it. And Laura Gemser sure is hot.

A grizzled veteran of a futuristic battle game who is undefeated for 22 matches, is hired by a group of telepathic humans to take them to a safer location out of New York where they won't be persecuted. He gets together a band of five skilled warriors to act as their bodyguards, and they set out on the trail. Along the way, they have various encounters with perverted mutants and blind warriors, along with a army general and his platoon who is determined to find out just what the hell is going on. Can anyone save these poor bedraggled creatures from a life in a laboratory? Their saviour may yet turn out to be (surprise, surprise) a five year old boy with an extraordinary talent. You can either take 'Endgame' one of two ways: as a reasonably effective post-nuke thriller with passable action scenes and a half-decent plot, or as a laugh a minute B-movie filled to the brim with laughable dialogue and bad special effects. Either way, it works. Me? I sit somewhere in the middle, there were some moments where I got quite involved in the action, and others where I could have almost slapped my forehead at the cheesiness of the whole affair. (Best moment: Our hero says goodbye to his sort-of girlfriend at the end with a true howler of a line: "Lillith, look inside me. You are the future, I am the past!" YUCK! Suddenly he doesn't seem to tough..) It certainly isn't a masterpiece but if you take the film for what it is I'll bet you'll find it quite enjoyable. There is just one thing that confuses me though.. One battalion of mutants that accost our protagonists on their way deserves further discussion. To all intents and purposes, they look the same as any other bunch of freaks: tattered clothing, old-fashioned weapons, inability to speak proper English. But check this out: mounted on their leader's tank like a couple of war trophies is TWO TOPLESS GIRLS. Now, usually this wouldn't be a problem, I love a bit of random nudity. But these ladies are UGLY. The kind that originated the phrase Coyote Ugly. (You know, when you'd chew your own leg off to get out of bed with them..) You'd think being the boss of these mutants he would have his pick out of a million pretty ladies, and he chooses those two trollops. Unbelievable. The radiation from his mutation must have fried his brain. Anyway, just thought I'd get that off my chest. What? You're wondering why I bothered wasting a whole paragraph on that? Listen sister, this is my review, and if I wanted to discuss the Stock Exchange while discussing the finer points of E.T, it's my decision. SO THERE! *Blows raspberry at invisible critic and walks off in a huff* 5/10

Okay, this mix of "Escape from New York" and "Le prix du danger" could have been better, especially if they chose a better actor as the "hero" But. there is the typical appeal of Italian B-movie and the physical presence of George Eastman. Michele Soavi plays a doctor at the end. Saw this in France when I was young (!) and again at the Paris cinémathèque, though some bits of film were missing. Not as good as Sergio Martino's "2019 Dopo la caputa di New York", but worth a look.

This was not as bad I expected... The first half of this film is very boring and it is suitable to use the fast forwarding on your remote, because the last half is so much better. You can see easily that the budget for this film has been very low, but the action scenes actually work rather well. The post-WW3 vehicles are creatively constructed from existing cars and motorbikes. The car with no doors is my favorite. I wonder where they get all the gas and spare parts for those things in a destroyed world? The acting isn't so bad. The telepath girl looks good and carries her role very well. The only scene of her I laughed out loud was that where a telepath makes a big stone floating up. You can easily spot the wire holding the styrofoam-stone in the air, it's just so goofy. I gave this 5/10.

It has been a while since I saw this movie but I still remember it quite well. I know that some people discard it as a cheesy and pathetic attempt at a movie but I cannot help but hold it dear to my heart. Of course, I am a sucker for low budget Italian apocalypse movies... Anyhoo, I enjoyed it because of the anti-commercialism theme, colorful characters, and overall obnoxious attempt to be serious. I mean, who couldn't love George Eastman as Karnak? He has to be one of the coolest arch nemesis' that I have seen in a while! Half of the time I was rooting for him! And what about the mutants? I know that it was made in 1983 but I thought that they did a pretty damn good job with what they had to work with. I was somewhat torn by the ending because while I did like the clashing freeze-frame, it left you hanging with quite a cliffhanger. As a final word, it was corny as hell but strangely entertaining. I only hope that I can still find it on VHS or god forbid, DVD...

Based on the reputation of director Joe D'Amato, who's primarily known for an endless number of * movies and perverted exploitation flicks, and a shallow first look at the VHS cover and stills, I was expecting "Endgame" to be an extremely low-keyed and virtually worthless piece of Italian 80's trash but I'm glad to announce that it actually is a pleasantly engaging Post-Apocalyptically themed Sci-Fi experience. It's a piece of 80's trash nevertheless, of course, but one of the most enjoyable kinds. "Endgame" belongs in the extended category of Italian produced "Escape from NY" knockoffs and it can easily compete with the most successful and notorious accomplishments in there, like Sergio Martino's "After the Fall of New York", Ruggero Deodato's "The Atlantis Interceptors", Lucio Fulci's "The Fighting Centurions" and Enzo G. Castellari's "The New Barbarians". These titles probably don't mean anything to 'normal' film lovers, but to true fans of Italian exploitation cinema they form an excellent source of comparison. The main story lines are very familiar and D'Amato isn't too ashamed to add in one clichéd plot twist after the other, but the film is extremely fast-paced, spectacular and indescribably violent, so who really cares about originality? Al Cliver plays a terrific Snake Plissken clone, but the show is obviously stolen by the almighty George Eastman as the arch enemy. It's the years 2025 and everybody eagerly awaits the new edition of a popular TV show, called "Endgame", in which a couple of bloodthirsty hunters go after a human prey. Ron Shannon wins the game, but only thanks to the help of the telepathically gifted mutant Lilith (D'Amato muse Laura Gemser). The government systematically exterminates all the mutants, and thus Shannon swears to help Lilith and her other mutant friends flee out of the city. Along with a troop of recruited mercenaries, Shannon guides them out of town but the group successively encounters hugely challenging ordeals like a community of blind cannibalistic monks (a splendid homage to "The Omega Man" perhaps?), an army of bewildered mutants and Nazi-like government soldiers. "Endgame" is glorious and priceless 80's entertainment like they just don't make it anymore. The battling sequences are extended and body count is enormous, with literally hundreds of bad guys and the occasional good guy dying left and right and in highly imaginative ways. In spite of the obviously low-budgeted production values, D'Amato managed to gather together some excellently apt set pieces and flamboyant vehicles and even the make-up effects are far above average. Director Joe D'Amato stated that this is his own personal favorite of all the movies he directed, and he's probably right although I personally have even bigger soft spots for "Anthropophagus" and "Beyond the Darkness". This is somewhat also a very atypical D'Amato film and that's a positive comment. For once, he could keep his viewers alert and fascinated with actually content instead of through showing nudity and sleaze. I mean, Laura Gemser stars in this film and she barely takes her clothes off! George Eastman also stars and he doesn't even attempt to rape a woman! This is just a perfectly entertaining Italian post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi movie with all the necessary ingredients: action, bloodshed, gimmicks, costumes, silliness and a terrific freeze-frame end shot.

I really don't like using the word "cheesy", but it seems to be the one that applies best here. "Endgame" is likely to be picked up only by post-apocalyptic fantasy fans, or Joe D'Amato completists. So what do they have to look forward to? Some good ideas (the hero at one point acknowledges that men like him, living by their fists and guns are "the past"), some cliched ideas (the hunting game that's the most popular show on TV, the "Magnificent Seven"-type enlisting of the hero's sidekicks), and some weird ideas about telepathy: apparently the hero is not telepathic, and he can't read people's minds, yet he can communicate telepathically with a "gifted" woman. Get it? (*1/2)

Stop me if you've heard this premise before. A telepathic mutant summons up two celebrity gladiator type butt kickers to lead her and her telepathic friends out of the city and into a safe place away from the corrupt government. Endgame actually is about as enjoyable as Z-grade Italian rip offs get, my three star rating then is meant solely for those who know what they're getting since nobody else would rent this in the first place. Endgame actually is true guilty pleasure because it's just so weird and loopy, there are fights against blind monks, a kung fu expert named "Ninja" who helps our hero and weird vehicles and costumes. This is a movie that they just don't make any more and is based on taking Mad Max and adding so many ideas and weird touches that it becomes somewhat enjoyable. The twist ending truly must be seen to be believed and I mean what can I say, I liked it. * * * out of 4-(Good)