This is one of the dumbest Italian films I've ever watched, but don't let that put you off – It's brilliant! The plot, what there is of it, concerns the ancient lost island of Atlantis somehow being brought up from the sea bed by the radiation from a sunken nuclear sub, causing either the Atlaneans or local humans to turn into Mad Max style killers and before you know it you've got everything being destroyed and everyone being killed – but don't worry. We've got a list of Italian exploitation vets out there willing to pick up a machine gun and blow these mental sub-aquatic upstarts to hell.
You've got mercenaries Christopher Connolly (Strike Commando) and Tony King (The Last Hunter), professor George Hilton (Devil with Seven Faces), pilot Ivan Rassimov (Eaten Alive) dubbed by Nick Alexander (every Italian movie ever) in a double whammy of greatness, Michele Soavi (Blade in the Dark) and even Mike Monty (Zombi 3). These are the folks I'd be calling if the apocalypse loomed (even though at least four of them are no longer with us)! The head bad guy? Bruce Baron of The Ultimate Ninja fame! I'm getting faint just typing all that out.
After meeting up on Connolly's boat after some lab is destroyed in a storm, our heroes head for the mainland and from then on it's a toe to toe battle with our ridiculous looking antagonists involving shotguns, loads of petrol bombs, machine guns and even some electrical wire (which chops off some guy's head).
I love the way that Connolly and co lay waste to hundreds of Atlanteans over the course of the last hour of the film. Sure, he's no good at protecting people, especially when he promises three scared people they'll be fine shortly before they're all killed, but I reckon he was just fobbing them off anyway as they were distracting him from mowing down dozens of bad guys. There's a slim plot about a lady who can decipher all these languages getting drawn to Atlantis in some plot to free the Atlanteans (which confused me regarding who all the bad guys were), but just strap yourself in a let the contant sound of gunfire roll over you.
I said this film was dumb, and I mean it. Soavi's character states at one point, when they're all trapped in a building, that he's going to scout around for a way out, then he walks out the front door and gets captured. Check out the Atlanteans – their costumes are like rejects from the Bronx Warriors! And what's with the echoey voices? And what purpose does it serve to have Tony King's character as a recent convert to Islam? It's this kind of stuff that draws me back to Italian films again and again.
It's a Ruggero Deodato film, so there are fleeting bits of gore (decapitations, a woman being shot through the mouth with an arrow etc), and this is so much more a guilty free pleasure than Cannibal Holocaust – no animal cruelty here, thankfully. Get in! I loved this one.
