The Lawless Land

I am known for my ability to sit through horrible movies and find something entertaining about them. Having said that.....this is the only movie in my entire 50 years of life that I have ever paid to see and walked out of the theater without finishing it...I felt so bad about it that I didn't even ask for a refund...felt I deserved the punishment for having the audacity to think that this might be up there with Mad Max: The Road Warrior (which is the genre I assumed they were trying to emulate)Anyone who says this was an excellent movie needs to have their head examined. Horrible script, stupid special effects and just plain bad acting....years later I am surprised at the number of higher level actors that were involved with this.....

My review was written in January 1989 after watching the film on MGM/UA video cassette.

Minor sci-fi effort "The Lawless Land" serves to introduce some new talent. Pic played briefly theatrically last year ahead of home video release.

Helmer Jon Hess, who went on to shoot Carolco's "Watchers" for Universal release, shows technical know-how in this "Mad Max" genre tale set in "The Southern continent after the collapse (lensed in Chile). Nick Corri portrays Falco, who runs afoul of the chairman (Walter Kliche), as industrial magnate, when he elopes with his pretty daughter (Amanda Peterson).

In road movie fashion, much of the film is taken up by the chairman's goons, led by Road Kill (played by laconic Leon), chasing after the lovers, Odd casting has a tramp-styled beauty hitchhiking and getting mixed up in the violence, played by Peterson look alike Ann-Marie Peterson, evidently the actress' sister.

Corri exudes an engaging personality in the undemanding lead role, and went on to a subsequent toplined part in "Slaves of New York". Rest of the cast is fine, with some scene-stealing by Xander Berkeley as a folksy guy who always seems to turn up when the good guys need an assist.

Tech credits are acceptable, with an excellent out-theme ballad, "We Found Our Way", sung by Gary Stockdale.

The Lawless Land is an underrated and under seen classic. Hard to enjoy at first, one soon comes to realize the creativity and nuances of the movie on repeated viewings. It is an adaptation and improvement on William Shakespeare's classic love story, and using a stroke of subtle directorial genius, gives the sense that it is being narrated through a kind of God's eye view. The acting is effectively removed from the melodrama one would expect from the material in order to provide the viewer with a fascinating story of love in a world where emotion has run dry.

A flick that was under the radar even back when it was first released. Although production information on this is pretty sparse, the consensus is The Lawless Land ended up being released solely direct to home video. I could have sworn back in the day I initially saw it on some premium movie channel (Cinemax, Showtime, whatever) late at night, bit I suppose I could have first saw it as a movie rental via the local Mom 'n Pop VHS Video Hut ...I mean, it's almost 40 years ago we're talking, here.

Anyway, to summarize. Per a voiceover at the beginning of the flick, the movie takes place in "the Southern Continent after the collapse". We're never told what the cause of said collapse is. Since the movie was filmed in Chile, I'm assuming the continent referred to is South America. But's that's just a guess, since neither the continent nor the actual country is referred to by name.

Um, let's see ...lead actor Jsu Garcia - who went back then by the name of Nick Corri (perhaps best known for playing Rod in the original Nightmare on Elm Street) - plays a guy named Falco. Falco is a working-class guy living in Union City. Union City is a mining town and the main place of employment there is a company called the Union Mining Company. Falco has fallen in love with a young girl named Diana. Diana is played by actress Amanda Peterson, fresh off her starring role in the 1987 teen romantic comedy Can't Buy Me Love. Diana's father is referred to as The Chairman, and he's the CEO of the Union Mining Company.

Union City is basically an authoritarian police state and The Chairman essentially controls the local police.

No explanation is given as to how Falco and Diana first met, but it would assumedly have been difficult since Diana lives with her father inside his heavily guarded fortress-like compound. Anyway, obviously, they met somehow. They are in love. They run away together to get married. The Chairman, disapproving of the marriage, hires a mercenary to find them and bring his daughter Diana back.

What else? After stashing Diana with his grandfather, Falco gets arrested and thrown in jail. Falco undergoes torture via electric shock to reveal where he hid Diana. Falco doesn't tell. Falco escapes jail. Falco has spiritually mind melded with a falcon (yes, you read that correctly). Falco escapes into the vast deserts outside of Union City, referred to as the lawless land.

After buying a motorcycle and some guns, Falco visits a strip club. The mercenary hired to find Diana, a guy named Roadkill (played by an actor simply billed as 'Leon'), tracks down Falco. Falco unwittingly leads Roadkill to Diana. Roadkill abducts Diana to bring her back to her father, The Chairman. Will Falco intercept them before Roadkill returns Diana to her father? Will true love prevail in the end?

Being that The Lawless Land was a Roger Corman production, there is the more often than not Corman requisite nudity via the two strip club scenes. Sadly, Amanda Peterson didn't get full-frontal, although she did take off her shirt in two separate scenes with her back to the camera providing a brief amount of slight side boob, so there's that I suppose.

In truth, The Lawless Land isn't one of 'the worst movies ...ever!' Actually, it's mildly impressive that it turned out as well as it did, considering the shoe-string budget it obviously was operating under. The cinematography and camera shots were competent, which isn't always the case with quickie b-movies. Clearly shot on location in some small town in Chile, the director and location scouts honestly did the best they could with what they had, and that's not a backhanded compliment, either. Jsu Garcia/Nick Corri actually put in a noticeable effort to provide the best performance he could, whereas one could have easily understood if he had phoned it in given the nature of the project: any number of actors may well have just gone through the motions, but Garcia/Corri put his best in front of the camera. Amanda Peterson was okay. She was in several scenes in the first 15 minutes of the movie, then her character vanishes from the film for the next 45 minutes. She turns up for several scenes in the last 15 minutes or so (The Lawless Land had an 80-minute run time, so there was barely 70 minutes or so of actual movie as it was). You read a lot of other reviewers comparing it to Mad Max or Romeo and Juliet. Far as the Mad Max biz, outside of the fact that maybe half of The Lawless Land takes place in the desert, that's about as far as the similarities go for me. Romeo and Juliet? Mmmm ...maybe. Let's just say Boy From The Wrong Side of Town Meets Upper Class Teen Girl Who Is Willing To Give Up Daddy's Riches For True Love. Oh, wait ...IS that the plot of Romeo and Juliet? Meh, whatever. Who cares about Shakespeare anymore, anyway?

Anyway, far as I know this thing has never gotten any official dvd release. The only physical media available for purchase was a 1989 MGM/UA vhs home video version. So, I dunno. Maybe buy a pirated vhs to dvd-r copy off of some online rare movie store for ten bucks? Or an old MGM/UA vhs tape off of the web for $40? And then hope your 35-year-old vcr doesn't give up the ghost or eat the tape when you try to play it? Or maybe see if the worldwide netscape interwebs has a channel where someone uploaded it for free? Maybe via entering The Lawless Land 1988 in the search bar? Or ...I dunno, take a nap? Read a book? Walk your dog? Call your Grandma and tell her you love her?