Stryker

This movie, though often described as a low budget Mad Max or Road Warrior movie, is more comparable to Wheels of Fire. It is low budget pleasure that features silly or nonexistent acting, crazy choreography, and a wonderful cast of actors and actresses you've probably never heard of. Yet, this little gem is downright action packed fun, 1980s style! The movie is set in a futuristic post-holocaust world that is largely made up of desert, dunes and rocky hills. The largest and most precious commodity in this world is water, and those in control of water sources control the most power. The plot ultimately involves a small community defending a secluded sanctuary - an underground water source - from a wicked tribe of Road Warriorish thugs. Lots of crazy car chases, gun-toting warriors, cheap special effects (pyrotechnics), and stiff choreography during the fight scenes.

One fella stands out as the main character, a roguish silent wanderer named Stryker on a personal mission. He's a satisfying lead, meeting every cliché of the strong silent type. His dialogue is scarce, and his ability to express emotion comes across as forced. But he's extremely suitable for his role, however, given the handful of actors and actress he is working with in this movie. If you're not fond of the strong silent lead, you have a host of typically attractive 1980s female desert warriors, some donned in what appears to be football shoulder pads (sorta like Road Warrior). The main villain, unfortunately, never gets any sort of identity, not even to the point of cliché. He's just a mean thug who can't talk without sounding like he has a mouth full of marbles. The movie tries to build him up as someone foul enough to peak Stryker's persistent and stubborn indifference, yet, as a movie villain, he simply fails to impress the viewer as a credible threat to someone as collected and methodical as Stryker.

I rate this movie 9 out of 10 because for a low budget flick, it packs a lot of action, shoot outs, and car chases. One serious drawback to the movie, however, is the extremely boring set - desert. Probably 95% of the film was shot outdoors in what appears to be nothing but deserts and dunes. After watching this setting for about 5 minutes, the movie gets very claustrophobic and you get the distinct impression that all the different filming locations were done within a 5-minute walk of each other. But the movie is really a little unpolished gem. You have to love low budget antics to give this movie an entire viewing. It's one of those movies you'll either love or shut off after the first five minutes.

This movie is rated R for violence and nudity.

Every once in a while, these cheesy grindhouse movies show good movie-making constrained by a non-existent budget. Well, this isn't one of those movies. Script, dialogue and acting ar all way substandard, although the camera-work is good enough. Nice scenery and the young men and women in this can't act, but they are very pleasant to look at in their ripped shirts and leather panties. But the whole thing is clearly a Mad Max rip-off and you can't look at it for more than, oh, half a minute without figuring it out.

But after a while you start to wonder about the basic premise of the movie: a nuclear war has destroyed all the water in the world. Uh, OK. So why does everyone have clean clothes, hair and tanks? Obviously these people know why civilization needs water.

In a post-apocalyptic future, people have banded together for survival. The key to that survival is water. A woman holds the key to the location of a vast water supply. She's being chased by a roaming gang of baddies hoping to gain her knowledge. Water is power and the baddies want the power. The woman is rescued (multiple times) by a man known as Stryker. Stryker and his friends will battle the baddies for the secret of the water.

Stryker is one of the countless number of films that looked to cash-in on the success of The Road Warrior. Some are good (or at least enjoyable) and some are not so good. Stryker falls into the latter category. There are lot of problems I had with the movie, but the biggest issue I had was Stryker is it's just plain boring. I had the hardest time staying awake. There's little that held my interest. The plot is so unbelievably unoriginal. The filmmakers attempted to take the search for gas in The Road Warrior and replace it with the search for water in Stryker. In addition, the action is repetitive. The good guys save the girl, then they save Stryker, then they save the girl, and on and on it goes. But the biggest bore of all comes in the form of lead actor Steve Sandor as Stryker. Sandor's Stryker is so unappealing and so dull that it's hard to believe he's the title character. You'd be hard pressed to find a lead with less screen presence. What a wretched waste of time!

Steve Sandor ("Bonnie's Kids") is the title character in this routine "Mad Max" & "Road Warrior" inspired post-nuke sci-fi action flick. Teaming up with another hunky hero, Bandit (William Ostrander, "Christine"), he decides to help out a lovely young woman, Dielha (Andrea Savio), with knowledge of a plentiful water source. You see, in this world of the future, landscapes often consist of deserts, and water is hard to come by. The villain who stands in everybody's way is a snarling despot named Kardis (wrestler / actor Mike Lane, "The Harder They Fall").

This was the first of *seven* movies that Filipino exploitation icon Cirio H. Santiago ("TNT Jackson") made with similar themes and stories. It's not particularly distinguished, and you soon see that the "story", such as it is, is often incoherent. At first it seems as if we won't ever get to know the characters very well, but Santiago does save that stuff for the second half of the picture, when things slow down for a bit. We even get a bit of romance.

Santiago mostly concentrates on action and pace, and shows his audience a reasonably good time, with sex and violence aplenty. The music, credited to Ed Gatchalian and Susan Justin, is occasionally hilariously bad, but mostly it's good, atmospheric stuff, with a heavy accent on percussion. Costumes and vehicles are decent looking, but where the movie really works is the use of locations and the art direction.

Sandor is not a bad actor, but he's just sort of taking up space here. His character is generic and lacks personality. Ostrander also does what he can with an under written role. Lane is an effective, amusing villain, and the supporting cast includes Monique St. Pierre ("Motel Hell") and Filipino exploitation mainstay Ken Metcalfe, who was also the casting director on this show.

Not a terrible way to kill an hour and 24 minutes, but some people may prefer to just revisit the works of George Miller instead.

Six out of 10.

....on a future Earth where it apparently....never rains anymore?

Now I'm only speaking for myself here, but if I was a girl (which I'm not), and my living environment was 99.9% large, hard, uneven, sharp, randomly strewn rocks, my first fashion choice wouldn't be a leather thong slit up to my hip bones. Of course, that's just how I roll, I'm a different breed of cat. Fortunately for the lucky ladies, none of them ended up with so much as a scratch on those long, shapely legs.

Which, of course, is the only redeeming quality of the movie. Normally, I'd complain that Monique St. Pierre should lose the football equipment, but with the advent of the internet, anyone can see her naked within 5 seconds anyway, so I actually enjoyed the novelty.

Full disclosure, I saw this as part of the "Grindhouse 2" collection, so I knew exactly what to expect, and got pretty much exactly what I expected.