THE STORY: Most bad movies are just someone's brilliant idea for entertainment gone horribly awry. This flick is one of them, but while it was by no means a good movie it was at least a good BAD movie. It didn't start out to well. I was bored to tears with it after the first twenty minutes had passed. It seemed to remind me of the movie Survivor, which I really didn't like. But Greywizard at the Unknown Movies liked Survivor and after an email conversation with him about it I began to see his point of view. Survivor wasn't really all that bad. So in the same vein, I kept watching this movie. Its not actually as good as Survivor. But it did entertain me, ever so slightly. That's all most movies have to do to keep out of the Gorge of Eternal peril.

The movie starts with a small preamble about the last world war (nuclear of course) and how the earth has been rendered barren. There's little water left and its the most valuable commodity around. A girl is being chased through the desert buy leather clad thugs. She has water and she knows where there's more water! Just as she gets captured she's rescued by Stryker and a guy called Bandit. (I'm not up on Everyone's name in this movie...my mind wandered a bit.) Stryker, as you'd expect is the loner hero in his movie. He doesn't say a lot. The bad guys are soldiers of Cardis. Cardis is the movies bad guy...an evil ruler forging an empire. He wants to find where the water is himself since control of water means ultimate power. The girl...who I'll refer to as The Girl from now on...is the daughter of a guy that dresses like Moses...so I'll just call him GTDLM. He's the leader of a colony that's found a spring with unlimited fresh water. He made a promise to another colony's leader, Troon, that if he found the spring he'd share it. But he hasn't told Troon about it and his daughter, feeling that they should share has gone looking for Troon and his men. GTDLM has a wimpy army, while Troon has a force capable of fending of Cardis. Cardis sooner or later will find the spring and GTDLM's colony and take over. So its in their best interest to team up with Troon.

If you think the way I just described this is hard to follow try watching the actual movie. Nothing is explained right away. The first half hour of this flick I was saying "What the hell is going on? Who are these people?" Geez, I didn't find out who Stryker was until 20 minutes into it. He could have been Bandit or the other guy and he's the title character!

It doesn't help that when The Girl is eventually captured by Cardis' men (and RAPED!) The following rescue by Stryker and Bandit is badly shot, and to be honest, pretty stupid. They pretty much stage a lame diversion, waltz into Cardis' base and rescue her. But it does get the plot moving at least.

The rest of the movie is pretty predictable. Cardis tries to attack the good guys (who have teamed up now to protect the spring) and of course Stryker kills him in their fight to the finish. The things that made this otherwise cheap little turd a little interesting was we find that Cardis and Stryker have a grudge from the past and Stryker is actually Troon's brother! Not a long lost brother...they're kind of close...only Stryker is a loner and prefers to ride around the wasteland beating up guys. Stryker also fears that Troon will usurp GTDLM's leadership since he has the army needed to fight Cardis. There's also a colony of dwarves that exist only to have additional aid show up when the fighting starts.

Yep, this movie is low budget. Its boring and almost incomprehensible in spots. But it had a glimmer of things in it that made me stick it out. So while Stryker isn't going to more than a VHS tape you'll find in Mom & Pop video stores or way, way in the back of a flea market, its still mildly entertaining for those of us who have a little warm fuzzy spot for crap. I just hope Greywizard reads this and looks it up....I'd love to hear his take on this "unknown" movie.

Best Lines: "Everyone's got their own highway to hell...you've got yours and I've got mine."- Stryker tells Troon why he left in the first place.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?:

1.) I can't figure this and I've watched the movie twice...but when The Girl is running from the thugs at the start of the movie she's on a three wheeler. Maybe she ran out of gas or something...its not explained...but she just pulls over and runs on foot!! Why? It made no sense to me.

2.) Forget anything you ever learned about nuclear winter and radiation. A nuclear war doesn't do anything but make the earth really, really dry! I'm going to paraphrase Sam Kinison...if there ain't no water where the characters are are at (in the middle of a [unwrite]ing desert!) Why don't they go to where there is water!? The entire ocean couldn't have dried up! I don't know exactly how such things are made, but there's no shortage of studded leather, gasoline, tanks(!), guns and ammunition! Don't you need some water in the making of some of these things?

3.) Ever notice how in these really cheap post apocalypse movies how there's always one thing (Gasoline, water, fertile women) that's missing but everything else in abundance? (Guns, weapons, ammo, tight leather clothes). Well there's something in this flick I noticed...where are these people getting food from? I didn't see one [unwrite]ing animal! (and animals need water!) They ain't eatin' fruits and veggies because I didn't see any plants either...and plants need water! So we can rule out fish!...because fish need water! You know, when I'm hungry a glass of water just ain't gonna cut it!

4.) I'm going to paraphrase Richard Pryor here, too...but except for some of the dwarves, particularly the lead dwarf, there weren't any minorities...I guess we're not expected to be around in the future, especially the apocalypse. Geez.

NUDITY AND SEX:  The Girl's boobs are shown...and the rape scene.

HUH?:  All of the women after the world melted down are HOT! So there's no water, but there are plenty of cosmetics and hair care products to go around!

At the end of the movie it starts raining and the people cheer! At last the Earth has begun to renew itself. Kind of makes all of the warfare and death over the spring kind of pointless, huh?

THE TALLY: As I said, anyone with a desire to see a low budget post apocalypse flick that's, well, pretty crappy can't do too badly with this one. I've seen worse. Despite the things I complained about, this movie is entertaining enough to be bearable if you can stick with it for the first 20 or so minutes.