aka Atlantis Inferno, aka Atlantis Interceptors, aka The Last Warriors
- Directed by “Roger Franklin” (Ruggero Deodato)
- Written by “Vincent Mannino” (Vincenzo Mannino) and “Robert Gold” (Tito Carpi)
- Starring
- Christopher Connelly
- “Marie Fields” (Gioia Scola)
- Tony King
- Mike Miller
I’m in kind of a queer situation. I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this movie as a good one, as it is quite clearly a Bad Movie, one which I can describe as “Mad Max meets Shock Waves meets Mysteries of the Gods.” And yet I can’t bring myself to dislike it. I’m sure this says all kinds of things about me that I don’t want to know.
Certainly, we open with those signs that portend doom for the initiated. First up, that little Prism Video signature blurb (you know the one — the vector-graphic videocassette, cross-crossed by laserbeams that form the triangle of the Prism logo); it’s an established fact that 90% of the movies released on the defunct Prism label were bad enough to make most people gouge out their eyes. And then, we start the movie proper with a long establishing helicopter shot of the Miami Beach waterfront, complete with an “action disco” theme song that rates slightly more painful than the theme from Yor, the Hunter From the Future.
We’re told (by the same title card that identified Miami Beach) that this is 1994. Aside from given the viewer a premonition of doom by asserting that such godawful music lived far beyond this movie’s 1983 production date, I can’t determine any reason for that specific date, and I’m not willing to wade through the collected prophecies of Edcar Cayce to find a correlation.
Our heroes are Mike (Christopher Connelly) and Washington (Tony King), a black-and-white tough-guy team whom we meet as they break into some Miami mansion, kick some ass, chloroform an old man, and slide him out a window in a bodybag down a rope (cool trick), whereupon they are paid $50,000 by their mysterious employer. Don’t worry, none of this matters at all; it only serves to establish that they are, indeed, capable guys (that and their constant mentions of tough spots they got into in ‘Nam). It also establishes probably the best bit of dialogue we’re going to get — Washington’s constant insistence that people refer to him by his new name, Mohammed. Nobody does. “Dammit, it’s Mohammed! M-O-H-A-…”
Having accomplished their job, they set sail into the Caribbean until things cool down.
Also in the Caribbean, the beautiful Dr. Cathy Rollins (Gioia Scola, here credited as “Marie Fields”) is rather forcefully recruited to a Navy project. Seems that a Russian sub foundered in these waters some months back, and the Navy is trying to raise it from the ocean bottom, under the guidance of Professor Saunders (George Hilton). So why has Cathy, an expert in pre-Columbian dialects, been drafted into this? Because they’ve dredged up a plaque from the ocean bottom, one that’s apparently 12,000 years old, and they hope she can decipher it. (Uh, yeah. Right. Sure. Because most written languages are still recognizable after more than ten thousand years, right?) Because… well, because. Who knows why Dr. Saunders wants the plaque translated right here, right now?
(Insert here an ominous foreshadowing: Back in Miami beach, a mysterious young guy in a suit goes to the wall safe and pulls out — a plastic skull mask! Okay, it’s obviously meant to be crystal, since it’s modeled directly on the famous crystal skull, but it’s so incredibly obviously plastic that it never failed to elicit my giggles every time it wandered on-screen — which was pretty often. Read on.)
Anyway, the plaque is put on the back burner for a bit (once Cathy determines that it definitely has something to do with the sinking of Atlantis) as they team tries to bring up the sub. They almost get it — then there’s a major power kablooey, and Star Trek-style sparks start flying from control panels, and everyone rushes to evacuate.
(An insert to go with the last insert: On a Caribbean isle, a well-to-do couple notice the instant storm on the horizon — then their attention is diverted by Plastic Skull Man! [And boy, if you thought the skull looked hokey when he was holding it, just wait until you see him wearing it.] And surrounding him, a motley assortment of Mad Max wannabes. We’re talking mohawks, facepaint, leather’n’studs, and automatic weapons, all riding in the standard post-apocalyptic vehicles, accessorized with grills’n’spikes’n'blades’stuff. Hope you weren’t too attached to the well-to-do-couple.)
Since Mike and Washington (and their third shipmate, Manuel) are in the area of the platform, we get to see them wrestle the ship through incredible waves, and watch as they see a something — it looks like a big dome, opening in the middle of the maelstrom (not unlike the Kryptonian domes in Superman: The Movie).
Then they’re swept off to the middle of nowhere, with their engine fried and their compass doing the hokey-pokey; and fortuitously, the single craft of survivors from the destroyed platform ends up in the same vicinity. (You knew they’d have to get together sooner or later, right?) Together, they wander without a compass, worried that they’re going around in circles (hint, fellas: LOOK AT THE SUN), which gives us a chance to see the obligatory sketched-in dialogue that’s supposed to show Cathy and Mike falling for each other. Honestly, I don’t know if I’d find the following conversation all that endearing:
[Cathy is still examining the plaque, which she rescued from the platform.]
MIKE: Don’t you ever quit?
CATHY: I find work relaxing.
MIKE: What is that thing?
CATHY: I don’t think you’d understand.
MIKE: Oh, all sailors are guys like Popeye, huh? All we do is eat spinach?
CATHY: I like spinach, too.
MIKE: Well, I tell you what. As soon as we get back, I’ll take you out to a spinach dinner.
Mercifully, this exchange is cut short as Manuel (you remember, Mike and Washington’s boatmate) suddenly goes postal. He grabs Cathy and blathers on about “we” need her, and stuff, then jumps overboard. (and ooh, he’s got a tattoo that matches one of the designs on the plaque.)
As everyone is still going, “Hunh?”, they hit land — and discover that the town on this island is in shambles, with burning buildings and vehicles all over. And corpses, both lying in situ and lynched from the telephone poles. There’s a nifty image here, where our party walks down the deserted street and hears a repetitive, skipping musical sound; they investigate inside a house to find that a corpse has been cowled and hung from the ceiling, and its swinging feet keep hitting a record player.
Eventually, they do discover another human being: Manuel again, who’s come to warn them to get Cathy of there before “they” arrive. Too late — “they” arrive, “they” being Plastic Skull and his biker posse. The party takes shelter, though one hopeful idiot (you know, the guy who gets all upset that they’re not cutting down the bodies and giving everyone a decent burial on the spot) exclaims, “They’re human! They’ll listen to reason!” I think you can figure out how quickly said idiot meets his demise, given the non sequitur upon which his hopefulness is based.
Mike and Frank lead their charges to safety as evening falls (a plan which includes a clothesline decapitation for one of the bikers), and into a most fortuitous warehouse — fortuitous because not only do they find a case of rifles and unlimited ammo, but apparently they also find napalm. Both come in handy in the extended fire fight that follows, as the Crystal Skull Posse demonstrates that being mean and cruel-looking is no substitute for an elementary understanding of the concept of tactics. In other words, they’re more than obliging in their willingness to stand in the open and let Mike, Washington, and everyone else shoot them and blow them up from their stronghold.
Mike also discovers a family of three hiding in the basement, who make sure to inform him tha the first attack came right as the big bubble thing was rising, before they join the ranks of the cannon fodder. And Plastic Skull makes a big speech about “We have come back!” and how they’re going to smush all the johnny-come-latelies who are squatting on the planet that rightly belongs to them!
A moment of rationality before I leap back into the fray: As far as I can tell, then, the idea is that there have been these Atlantis cultist lingering around the Caribbean, just waiting for the say when Atlantis rises again, and they can all put on their post-apocalyptic gear and get crazy. Although it also seems like they’re somewhat possessed with the souls of the ancient Atlanteans. I’m not quite sure that the crystal skull mask actually does anything except make its wearer look really silly.
Anyway. In the confusion of the big brouhaha, Plastic Skull’s men manage to snatch Cathy, and immediately withdraw. Mike tries to give chase, but is distracted by a fight with a person whom he initially assumes to be another Atlantis groupie, but turns out to be a more straightforward escaped small-time crook. (Hey, our fodder pool was running low.) Distraught, Mike does with any hero does when rendered impotent: he reads Cathy’s notes on the translation of the plaque, which informs them that Atlantis sank as a consequence of a civil war and the use of a “solar fire” weapon. It then becomes obvious that the radiation from the Soviet sub is what caused the island to rise (well, of course), and also that Plastic Skull had Cathy kidnapped for her knowledge, which will help free the souls of Atlantis, and therefore, to rescue her they need to go to the risen Atlantis.
All they need to do is drive their commandeered bus to a chopper pad (avoiding the goons’ own chopper and the fodder-goons which keep leaping out of it onto the roof of the bus) and break through the wall-o-goons surrounding the chopper pad, and then head for the former location of the platform.
What do they find? Well, a small wooded island that looks very good for having been in a bubble at the bottom of the sea for 12,000 years. They land, exchange more fire with the Atlantis groupies (the Professor opines the the island looks so undisturbed because the Atlanteans had developed a technology which works in harmony with nature, but them Atlanteans certainly have no qualms about using good ol’ 20th-century firearms constantly), and find the Russian sub. Mike’s brainstorm: If it was the radiation that brought up the island, then neutralizing the radiation will cause it to sink! Rather than drop into his best bad Scottish accent and argue, “Ye canna change the laws of physics,” the Professor agrees and enters the sub to, well, neutralize the radiation. (Apparently, Professor Saunders holds his professorship at the same university which employs the Professor from Gilligan’s Island, an institution that apparently only grants tenure to those faculty members who demonstrate a knowledge of everything about damned near everything — including, in this case, the semi-alchemical process of transmuting plutonium into lead.)
And what has been happening to Cathy all this time? Probably quite a bit, since we see her in some futuristic chamber in the bowels of the island, wearing a jewelled tunic and with her hair and makeup done like a girl from a Robert Palmer video. The souls of the Atlanteans are represented by a bunch of hazy faces seen through the window panels all around her (reminiscent of the classic Star Trek episode “The Mark of Gideon”). Under some kind of hypnosis, she agree to help them regain their former stature.
Back outside, Mike and friends are blasting their way through the cannon fodder, using the plaque as a homing beacon — it resonates more strongly when aimed a certain direction, which leads them to the opening into the interior of the island. By this time, of course, everyone else (the crook, the chopper pilot, the Professor, Mary Anne — wait, that’s wrong) has bit the dust, though not before the Professor somehow neutralized that danged radiation. Mike fights it out with Plastic Skull, eventually winning by bashing him across the face with his gun butt. It’s ironic that this is the single scene in which the skull mask is obviously not plastic — but that’s okay, because the head beneath it obviously is.
Mike and Washington (who, I should point out, has not declared his name to be “Mohammed” since the first twenty minutes, although other Islamic references abound) brave the perils of a laser-eyed altar and a fan trying to suck them through its blades (scenes that are reminiscent of Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back, respectively), to enter the chamber where Cathy is surrounded by the Atlantean faces. Mike pleads with her to leave the Atlanteans where they are, and there’s a slight twitch in her entranced face — and then something happens (I’m still not sure what), and she fades away, to reappear in the windows in which the Atlanteans had so recently resided. Repeating a mantra of “Mike, I’m frightened,” she fades away.
Huh? I dunno. Aside from echoing the opening “Phantom Zone” scene from Superman: The Movie, none of this “Atlanteans behind glass” stuff has made sense to me anyway.
Mike and Washington rush out to the chopper to get away, as the dome is starting to close over the island again (now that that pesky radiation has been neutralized, you know). And (hold on to those brain cells) there’s Cathy in the chopper, back to normal (i.e., no longer looking like a Robert Palmer girl), though somewhat stunned looking. (Huh? What? What just happened? Did I miss something? Hello?) Neither man questions her presence; they simply battle the chopper into the air and make it out of the bubble just before it closes and Atlantis sinks again beneath the ocean. We close with a final comment by Cathy, reminding Mike of his promise of a spinach dinner.
The end.
Now, as I said, I absolutely cannot justify my enjoyment of this movie. Not a whit of it was original, and as referenced above, most of the elements were lifted so completely from other movies that their origins are easily identified. I never did figure out exactly what the deal was with Plastic Skull and his posse, nor with the disembodied Atlanteans, and that last scene when Cathy shows up, hale and hearty and none the worse for wear, gave me yet another pinprick aneurism trying to wrap my mind around it.
And to top it off, where the hell’s the Navy??? I mean, there’s a major naval disaster involving a Russian sub, and yet more than 24 hours later there’s no military presence in the waters! You’d think they’d be no higher than Def-Con 2 at this point, but apparently everything’s copacetic.
And yet, despite everything, I had a good (if brainless) time. Maybe it’s the fact that, whatever’s going on, there’s always something going on. Aside from some padding in the first twenty minutes, things move at a brisk clip thoughout.
Maybe it’s also the fact that this is one of the few Italian genre movies of the time period that doesn’t merely content itself with being a bad fill-in-the-blanks ripoff of another movie. No, this is a movie that steals from several dissimilar movies, and that odd recombinance almost makes up for the sheer goofiness of what’s going on.
Hey, I know it’s not art, but I know what I like.
Some Notable Totables:
(for the Prism Video release)
- body count: 80
- breasts: 0
- explosions: 29
- ominous thunderstorms: 0
- actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0
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