Sergio Martino's 2019: After the Fall of New York (1983) Review

Today, since it is still holiday time I got to spend the entire day shovelling logs onto the fire while enjoyng a triple bill of Italian genre cinema. Things started off great with the excellent, indeed flawless, Django, a western I would recommend to pretty much anyone without doubt and then things got a little more intense and cerebral with the second of my Franco Nero double bill when I took a look at the delightful mafia/political thriller Perché Si Uccide Un Magistrato or How To Kill A Judge. But to finish the day I decided to run with Sergio Martino's headfull of a Mad Max meets Lord Of The Rings meets Wizard Of Oz type post apocalyptic sci-fi action thriller 2019: After the Fall of New York.

Its hard to know where to begin to write about a film such as this one in a way that doesn't make it sound inept. Okay lets try.

The world goes to war. There is a nuclear showdown and pretty much all is in ruins. The American resistance called the Confederacy has shifted to Alaska where things are not too bad, though obviously a little cold. The Confederacy like almost every human on earth is now sterile but there is a single woman who can still have kids existing in New York which is under the jackboot of the evil Europeans who ride around on white horses, wear kendo costumes and fire laser bullets from strange futuristic crossbow type weapons. With me so far? Good!



Anyhow the only hope for mankind is to send some people to New York to rescue the woman who is chock full of eggs to fire her off in a rocket to Alpha Centuri where the Confederacy hopes to start a new world from such an expansive gene pool. To do this they capture Parsifal who is to be assigned this task and is played by the delightful Michael Sopkiw who had a sadly too brief a film career starring in such gems as the First Blood clone Blastfighter and Massacre In Dinosaur Valley which is a movie that has always pushed the right buttons for me.

Anyhow Parsifal is introduced to us as he competes in a form of post apocalyptic jousting using New Barbarians style custom cars. He wins his contest and is summoned to meet a sort of body popping robotic clown with an irritating voice which dispenses his prize which consists of a woman with whom he sets off across the desert on a motorised tricycle before granting her freedom. Before he is given the chance to feel smug about his act of philanthropy he is radioed by some American Confederacy who are travelling across the desert in a flying saucer. Parsifal demands they identify themselves but in an act of Bushlike diplomacy he is zapped with a laser and taken back to base in Alaska.




Parsifal is offered a deal on a take it or leave it basis where he can go to New York with Ratchet played by Romano Puppo who post apocalypse fans will recognise as Trash's father in Bronx Warriors 2 who sports a fetching post apocalypse style eyepatch and fights with some ball bearings on a wire, and Bronx played by Paolo Maria Scalondro who has no post apocalypse cinematic pedigree but has a bionic claw making him an ideal candidate for these sort of movies.

Anyhow our three heroes set off across the desert on motorbikes until they reach the outside of New York where they meet a dude playing a trumpet. The trumpeter tells our heroes that they must pass through a tunnel to enter the city which they duly do. They spend ages wading through waist deep water in a rat infested tunnel to arrive at a park for disused buses guarded by thugs with futuristic looking weapons not unlike the ones that would appear in the early scenes of Bronx Warriors.

Having dispatched the thugs, we are introduced to some mutants who are persecuting a typecast midget that is essential to the genre who for once in his career has not been asked to wear a Viking helmet or pointy elf ears. Our heroes rescue the wee fella but are in turn captured by mutants. However they manage to escape with the first non mutant like looking woman who Parsifal assumes must be Miss Fertility 2019 enter Valentine "Monster Shark" Monnier otherwise kown as Valentine "Devil Fish" Monnier, she of Devouring Waves. They all then get captured by the evil European Olympic Kendo Team where they are tortured in what appears to be a dairy or some sort of bottling plant before again escaping with the aid of more typecast midgets who live in the sewers.



Its not long before our heroes discover a robotic woman rocking a cradle with a mechanical doll in it. Before they have a chance to be surprised they are even more shocked when a cargo net drops on them and they are surrounded by ape/human hybrids led by Big Ape played by the always brilliant George Eastman in this case with extra massive eyebrows to emphasise his apeness. Parsifal fights with one of the apes and as a prize gets to sleep with the girl he has rescued.

In the morning the penny drops for Big Ape and he realises that Parsifal may have slept with the last fertile woman. Ape is not pleased and attacks Parsifal only to be stopped by our midget who it turns out is called Shorty(!!). Shorty informs them that our lead heroine cannot in fact make babies but there is one woman who lives with a professor in a form of suspended animation to preserve her for humanity, the woman is the professor's daughter who he has kindly donated as an egg bank. She is kept in a tank of sorts.

Our remaining heroes, because I did forget to mention that along the way Bronx bought the farm, customise a family car in the style of the A Team to lauch a breakout in the style of Clint Eastwood's The Gauntlet (1977). Our heroes go away gathering parts for their custom car leaving Ape to guard our sleeping beauty and it is implied that our damn dirty Ape lays his stinking paws on her.



With the custom car complete they launch their Gauntlet style break out with George Eastman who has learned little from Rabid Dogs sitting in the back. Needless to say our George does not make it nor does the infertile woman Giara, but Melissa, our chick in a fishtank, is okay.

Our remaining cast which consists of Parsifal, fishtank lady and Trash's father from Bronx Warriors 2 escape, then Parsifal stops the car and says to Ratchet that he knows that he is a cyborg and so deactivates him. Back to Alaska, then into space, the end.

Okay I've tried to ive the short version of all this because there is hell of a lot going on. In style and thematically the film plays somewhat silmilar to the post apocalyptic Don Johnson vehicle A Boy And His Dog (1975) with enough of Catellari's Bronx Warriors and New Barbarians thrown in to make it recognisable to fans of Italian fururistic efforts. It is a pity really that stuff like this no longer gets made, it is a movie that sets out to entertain. With some gore, plenty of action it is never dull, it's not cheesy and it is not bad, though best taken for the entertainment that it tries to be. A great finish to a great days viewing.

DVD: 23rd Century
Running Time: 90 mins approx
Extras: None Really but there is a trailer type montage at the end.