Land of Doom

Deborah Rennard and Garrick Dowhen make their way across a nuclear-war-devastated landscape as they search for a rumored paradise. There are rapists, cannibals and evil motorcyclists who wear black leather studded with shiny metal, as well as the odd Venetian mask for them to encounter. Why is it that leather-clad motorcyclists always survive, and there's plenty of gasoline?

It's shot amidst the weird, weathered, rocky deserts of Eastern Turkey, which certainly has the look of a devastated landscape. It's odd to think this was once prime farming land, fought over by conquerors for three thousand years... which is why it looks that way.

It's a pretty bad movie, but TCM added a bit of humor by noting that Miss Renard is a man, and Dowhen is a woman.

In a poisoned post-apocalyptic world, marauders destroy all the good that is left. Harmony (Deborah Rennard) survives a raid which devastates her village. She encounters wounded warrior Anderson who is being hunted by ruthless raid leader Slater. She distrusts him but joins him anyways.

This is a straight up B-movie. The acting is bland. Rennard lacks charisma. Usually, this type of movie would try to sex her up. I can give it points for making her functional as a post-apocalyptic survivor rather than a bikini-clad killer. She tries to be seductive in one scene and it is so awkward. There is barely any chemistry between the two leads. Mostly, I like the Turkey locations. The style is somewhat silly. I don't mind the simplistic plot. It's a bit boring but it's not the worst.

Of course this was a movie that I had never heard about. But as I happened to stumble upon the movie by random luck here in 2024, and it being a movie that I had never seen, then I would indeed sit down to watch the movie and give it a fair chance. Truth be told, though, I didn't exactly harbor any grand expectations to the movie, as it seemed to be a low budget apocalyptic movie that perhaps cashed in on something like "Mad Max".

"Land of Doom" was watchable, sure, but it was hardly an outstanding or overly memorable viewing experience. I definitely didn't feel that I had been missing out on a grand cinematic experience here by not watching the movie before 39 years after it was released. It wasn't as if writers Peter Kotis and Craig Rand put together a particularly extraordinary script and storyline here. It was a pretty generic apocalyptic wasteland type of movie.

The vehicle designs in the movie were laughable and very, very low budget. It was hard not to burst out laughing when you see the motorcycles on the screen, especially with those homemade Arts & Crafts modifications they put on them.

Hardly a movie that will grace my screen a second time, but I can now check the movie off of the watched-movies list.

My rating of director Peter Maris's 1985 movie "Land of Doom" lands on a four out of ten stars.

Plenty of reviews to the quality of the movie already that are pretty accurate.

One classic part was where the guy drove the motorcycle off the cliff. He makes a face like "oh no" and you see him jump off and the bike goes over... to explode of course. But the the shot back up and he has fallen over the cliff and is just hanging on, where he was on the ground several feet behind it.....

And no one has commented on the pants the star wears. What's with the giant black V think that looks like a big thong on the outside? It made her backside look pretty big.. And then there was the cave girls. The villain has four women in slightly skimpy clothes we only see briefly.... but they really needed MORE clothes. Obviously someone doesn't understand the idea of background scenery in sci-fi.

A few people knocked the music, but the last 15 minutes or so during all the fight scenes the music was very inspired, if you like cheesy action stuff. Bit of batman, intro to baywatch, maybe a little A-team or incredible hulk fight scenes. The composer did a good job ramping it up to try to give it some energy, needed since much of the fight scenes were dumb at best.

And then there's the theme song that plays at the end. It has lyrics including: "talkin' bout, warriors of rape, of death and hate, killing for fun" "cannibalists, living amidst, are hunting man" How can you not give that a thumbs up. If you search it's available on u tube with a whopping 8 comments. Maybe go there and add one...

Anyway, have to upgrade this from a 1 to a 2 for the music in the last 15 or 20 minutes. The music achieved the fun cheese that the rest of the movie was never able to...

I'm a longtime fan of cheezy foreign knock-offs of THE ROAD WARRIOR and such. Often times that kind of exploitive, badly dubbed, low budget trash makes for high entertainment. Sadly, LAND OF DOOM brings no such entertainment. It's the future again, and it's post-apocalyptic. The world is ravaged by plague and evil bandits (sound familiar?). A woman named Harmony and her rugged hero partner (she won't let him touch her) try to escape from the Land of Doom to a fabled paradise. Some overlord villain type, who wears a lot of fake chromed armor and studded leather, tries to stop them. The best part of the whole movie is the opening shot of a dawn over a bleak looking landscape, accompanied by some appropriate music- Harmony's explanatory narration begins and it's all down hill from there. Some creatures that look suspiciously like the Jawas from STAR WARS appear and some things explode. LAND OF DOOM is oddly short on the over-customized junk cars that usually roam the post-apocalyptic wastelands of these pictures. Naturally, all the dialogue is awful as are the attempts at sexual tension between our two heroes. Plague victims sport painted on sores and behave like zombies. Much more frightening is the ineptness of the production and the performances. The ending is left wide open for a sequel that never came. Over the end credits runs a horrid tune called "Harmony's Land of Doom" which tries to sound like a modern pop song, but is just as dull and low key as the movie. In short: skip it and rent 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS instead.