Endgame - Bronx lotta finale

A grizzled veteran of a futuristic battle game who is undefeated for 22 matches, is hired by a group of telepathic humans to take them to a safer location out of New York where they won't be persecuted. He gets together a band of five skilled warriors to act as their bodyguards, and they set out on the trail. Along the way, they have various encounters with perverted mutants and blind warriors, along with a army general and his platoon who is determined to find out just what the hell is going on. Can anyone save these poor bedraggled creatures from a life in a laboratory? Their saviour may yet turn out to be (surprise, surprise) a five year old boy with an extraordinary talent.

You can either take 'Endgame' one of two ways: as a reasonably effective post-nuke thriller with passable action scenes and a half-decent plot, or as a laugh a minute B-movie filled to the brim with laughable dialogue and bad special effects. Either way, it works. Me? I sit somewhere in the middle, there were some moments where I got quite involved in the action, and others where I could have almost slapped my forehead at the cheesiness of the whole affair. (Best moment: Our hero says goodbye to his sort-of girlfriend at the end with a true howler of a line: "Lillith, look inside me. You are the future, I am the past!" YUCK! Suddenly he doesn't seem to tough..) It certainly isn't a masterpiece but if you take the film for what it is I'll bet you'll find it quite enjoyable. There is just one thing that confuses me though..

One battalion of mutants that accost our protagonists on their way deserves further discussion. To all intents and purposes, they look the same as any other bunch of freaks: tattered clothing, old-fashioned weapons, inability to speak proper English. But check this out: mounted on their leader's tank like a couple of war trophies is TWO TOPLESS GIRLS. Now, usually this wouldn't be a problem, I love a bit of random nudity. But these ladies are UGLY. The kind that originated the phrase Coyote Ugly. (You know, when you'd chew your own leg off to get out of bed with them..) You'd think being the boss of these mutants he would have his pick out of a million pretty ladies, and he chooses those two trollops. Unbelievable. The radiation from his mutation must have fried his brain. Anyway, just thought I'd get that off my chest.

What? You're wondering why I bothered wasting a whole paragraph on that? Listen sister, this is my review, and if I wanted to discuss the Stock Exchange while discussing the finer points of E.T, it's my decision. SO THERE! *Blows raspberry at invisible critic and walks off in a huff* 5/10

Despite the slow-going and uninteresting first half, ENDGAME really picks up when a group of telepaths and mercenaries hired to guard them leave in a caravan to escape the city. The group's adventures in the wasteland are quite entertaining, beginning with an exciting low-budget battle sequence when a huge force of blind cultists with a vast array of odd weapons attack. Naturally, these blind types aren't the best at aim (or tactics) and are summarily mown town in waves much like ZULU or THE ALAMO. However, this scene alone is quite funny and stands out as a reason to see this movie above most of the rest of Post-apocalyptic dirge the Italians flooded out in the early 80's to capitalize off of MAD MAX 2.

Lots of cool shootouts, lots of cheesy gore and makeup, and a lot of silly dialog make this movie a winner for fans of Italian C-movies. On top of that, the cast is hard to beat with an odd assortment of Spaghetti Western, Polizioteschi, and Sexploitation movie veterans not seeming too out of their element wearing goofy costumes and fighting each other in the same abandoned rock quarry. Massacessi, who began and ended his career making smut, had a brief period in the 80's where he really tried hard to make non-lowest-common-denominator-type movies largely on his own under his Filmirage company (of which this film is one of the first and best examples). Eventually though the law of diminishing returns took hold and one of the company's final productions would be the legendarily noxious TROLL 2.

This film is pretty hard to find though, which is a bit of a shame, as with a cleaned up transfer may play a little better than the gritty old VHS tape.

My review was written in January 1986 after watching the movie on Cinemax.

"Endgame" is a rather weak entry in the crowded post-WW III series of Italian action films made circa 1983. Emanating from the Helen Sarlui pic stable (though she does not take a screen credit), item was mulled for a while as a New Line theatrical release but went instead to pay-tv and home video.

Misleading opening reel establishes a tv game in the year 2012 called "Endgame", quite similar to Robert Sheckley's concept used in the classic "The Tenth Victim" (and recently updated in another Italian pic, "The Final Executioner"). Al Cliver toplines as a successful warrior in the killing game who is recruited by a telepathic mutant Lilith (Laura Gemser) to help her band of mutants leave the city (where they are subject to extermination by storm trooper-styled soldiers) to set up a new community.

The tv game is over in 20 minutes, with the remainder of the film given over to fights en route to delivering the mutants. Action scenes are perfunctory, with none of the thrills to the model for this genre, "The Road Warrior".

Given the poor dubbing of these pictures, "Endgame" benefits from its telepathy gimmick, which allows many dialog scenes to have staring faces with no lips moving as the thoughts are voiced-over on the soundtrack. Acting is stilted, with the ubiquitous husband-and-wife team of Laura Gemser and Gabriele Tinti both credited with different "real" names, Moira Chen and Gus Stone, respectively. Freeze-frame non-ending is poor.

In the year 2025, a nuclear holocaust has left New York City ruined, inhabited by persecuted telepathic mutants. Keeping the people pacified is the reality television program Endgame, where a new hero must save a group of people and fight to the death.

Directed by Joe D'Amato (under the pseudonym Steven Benson) Endgame (Bronx lotta finale) is one of the better executed Italian post apocalyptic B-films. The action seems endless especially in the closing act as scavenger packs and telepathic mutants fight it out with hunters, gladiators and military elite. There's an unnecessary rape scene, this aside the majority of D'Amato's Max Road Warrior meets Beneath the Planet of the Apes is very watchable especially if you enjoy the likes of Rats: Night of Terror, Warriors of the Wasteland and Bronx Warriors.

The locations and costumes deserve a mention. Carlo Maria Cordio's music working best when it's borrowing cues from Vangelis' Blade Runner score.

Interestingly, the TV game concept (even though not fully explored) predates The Running Man a good four years before Arnold Schwarzenegger's scifi romp and was made around the same time Stephen King's pseudonym book was published.

Overall, not too shabby at all.

So how many of those post apocalyptic movies did they make, its felt a bit like the running man for the first 20 minutes of the movie then it got into the usual mutant like looking 5 against 50 fights.

All in all it was an ok movie.