The Bronx Executioner

In the land of bad movies, this movie would be at least a duke. First of all, it is very clear that half of this movie is from stock footage. It is also clear that they used multiple takes of the same scene (or maybe it was actually the same take) a few different times in the movie. Good guy rounds the corner, shoots two bad guy. Same good guy, same corner, two minutes later, shoots two more bad guys. Same corner a few minutes later... Then there are the scenes where you see someone shooting on one set, and blowing someone up on a different set entirely.

Then there was the acting. Even without the movie being dubbed the acting was terrible. It is like watching the first earliest rehearsals of an elementary school play. The only people who don't entirely underact are the ones who entirely overact!

How about the set? With a name like Bronx Executioner, taking place (supposedly) in the south Bronx in the relatively new future, you would expect to see a city. Or at least a run down city. Or at least the ruins of a city. Nope. There are beat up looking factories in the middle of dirt fields. A castle in the middle of the woods. Another scene seems to take place in a quarry... No cities anywhere, a couple of country roads through he middle of nowhere, and a couple of beat up looking factories, that's it.

Also, going to the plot of the movie... This is a movie about the humanoids fighting the androids. Both humanoids and androids are factory reject robots. So of course when they get shot they bled. Okay, some of them spark a little bit, but that is more muzzle flash than anything. Basically they all look human, and act human (alright they act like bad actors trying to act like robots trying to act human) and there is no way to tell they aren't human in the movie. Well, one guy does die and reveal some circuits where the gaping hole in his neck appeared. Of course, you couldn't see a head or a body in that one shot, so it is hard to tell. Also they were really fragile robots. I mean when a human can kill a robot with a couple of karate chops you know they are weak. Also in all the slaughter scenes, there are never any wounded. They are all either dead, or escaped. The only robot to even last a few seconds after they got fatally wounded was a "good guy" robot who got to say something "human".

Personally I hate MST3K, but this movie is perfect for that sort of treatment. Or better yet, redub the whole movie to be a comedy instead. Some of the stuff that happens in this movie is just too funny not to be made fun of. Like the good guy robot goes to the sheriff for help. The sheriff says that he is staying out of it. Both actors just stand there waiting while the earlier soundbite that says he has to help those who ask gets played back. Then he immediately apologizes and agrees to help. "No I can't help you, i can't get involved.... [pause for soundbite]... I'm sorry, I will help you."

This movie is truly spectacularly bad.

The Bronx Executioner is truly an hypnotic experience. There is something mesmerising about the film's sheer lack of plot, continuity and credibility. Viewers searching for an intelligent sci-fi thriller should look elsewhere. However, if you enjoy car crash cinema, then this is the film for you! One of the most charming things about this movie is the fact that it is entirely unapologetic about making absolutely no sense.

This is signalled from the very first sequence in which an ancient looking computer bleeps. For about 2 minutes. From there we get a confusing voice-over about a trainee sheriff, James, and warring humanoids and androids. Before you can say, "what the?", our stony faced trainee has been given a sheriff's badge - after completing an obstacle course and doing a few chin-ups.

The film then shifts almost entirely away from James, to the leader of the humanoids, Dakar. Dakar spends most of the film driving around in his jeep, screaming incoherently into his walkie talkie. When Dakar realises that Margie is behind the rape and murder of his girlfriend, he finally puts the damn walkie talkie away and joins forces with James to bring Margie down.

The characters of Dakar and Margie are truly hilarious. Dakar looks like a WWE escapee, while Margie runs around in a red leather dress and at one stage sports a truly fetching peroxide blonde mullet. Both actors are fabulously awful. In all fairness, lines like "the only thing I love is death" and "why do those damn androids hate us so much?" really didn't give them much to work with.

Other moments or jaw dropping incompetence include the rape of Dakar's girlfriend, who is apparently violated in 5 seconds while fully clothed and a sub-plot involving killer dogs and green lights on a computer monitor that makes no sense whatsoever.

This film is definitely not for everyone, but fans of camp 80s Euro-action films or car crash cinema could do a lot worse than spending 90 minutes of their time on "The Bronx Executioner".

A new sheriff in town helps a good hearted robot battle other cyborgs who are militant and kill crazy, where as some cyborgs are good and civilized, anyway the new sheriff sorts everything out after training with Woody Strode (The film's most famous cast member) in this crummy action flick which is pretty much what you would expect from the bargain bin. Bronx Executioner is one of the 4 titles you can have for the low price of 5 dollars and of course as the old saying goes, if something is too good to be true, it is. So with 4 movies for 5 bucks (6 with tax) This averages out to be a dollar a movie and when I got done watching this clunker, I started wondering if I hadn't paid too much. Another interesting thing is that the DVD promises a Michael Dudikoff introduction which sadly never materializes and instead we witness in horror as Italian actors run around and shoot at each other with no sense of who's really shooting who or for that matter who we should be rooting for. Still as these things go, there is some schlocky fun but it's not nearly as fun as say ROTOR or Future War which offer more bang (Read laughs) for the buck. Still i'm not complaining, after all I have nobody to blame but myself for buying this. And to think I could've used the five dollars to buy myself a Mad Magazine. A pity.

* out of 4-(Bad)

Being some one who likes to catch a movie that features Woody Strode I decided to get this movie out. Well I could be forgiven for thinking that this was a sequel to THE FINAL EXECUTIONER (1984) that featured William Mang and Harrison Muller and also Margit Evelyn Newton. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085540/ The reason for this looking to like a sequel is because this movie , THE BRONX ECCUTIONER seems to start where THE FINAL EXECUTIONER finishes. But thats not the case at all ! What it is , is actually is footage from THE FINAL EXCECUTIONER has been put into this movie. I have to admit that this is pretty clever how they did it. If someone never saw THE FINAL EXCECUTIONER they probably wouldn't notice it. This in part is due to the storyline being pretty basic and confusing at times. Also with the dubbing you lose a bit of the plot too.

When The Final Excecutioner was released when Woody Strode would have been about 69 or 70 years old. The Bronx Excecutioner was released when Woody was 75 years old. But as I mentioned the footage was taken from The Final Excecutioner so Woody Strode didn't actually take part in this movie in actual terms. Never mind !

The scene where Woody Strode takes on some guys is fairly good and I have to say that for a man of his age probably 69 at the time , Woody could do all of the stuff and go through the motions. He also did his own stunts in the film too. I have to mention again that it was pretty clever how they inserted Woody Strode into the film but thats the main reason that this movie has any sort of worth. Other than that well there is some passable action and a story line thats pretty much senseless but with an occasional surprise . But besides that I have to say that I'd be flat out trying to find anything else good about this film.

Why ?? Why ?? Why ?? This movie starts out bad and ends up bad. It is bad all around. The first 5 minutes of the movie is saturated with images... images of video editing equipment. This is followed by the stock footage Circle Line tour of New York complete with narration (notice the Queensborough bridge panoramic pole shot - classic). There is no reason to watch this movie .. unless it is late night and you can't sleep, or your are completely wasted and want to lose some more brain cells. If this is not enough for you, how about the addition of veteran movie actor Woody Stode (aka black man - in this movie thats what he is referred to) to improve the movie. WRONG !!! It only gets worse. Woody was a pro-football star in his days, too bad he was 70+ years old in this movie. Not only that, but he does his own stunts. I have not seen fight scenes this bad since I watched a Jean-Claude van Damme movie. Truly horrific action. Action so boring, you may want to break out the coffee to stay awake through them. This movie was so cheaply done that they could not even afford fake blood for the death scenes. The sound effects are horrible. The Atari 2600 had better and the soundtrack sounds like it was ripped from a bad porn movie. This movie is so boring, "Margie" actually watches a scene from the movie (Spaceballs - save me). So in that scene we are watching the actors watch their own movie. There are endless scenes of "Dakar" driving and whining on his 2-way radio. There is a 2-second fully-clothed rape scene. And no thats how long it actually lasts - 2 seconds. Incidentally, that is the scene that "Margie" watches later. There are 2 scenes which stand out in my mind - the training of the new sheriff (which involves "white man" shooting at a film projection on a wall) and the sheriff shooting through the castle at the end (think Wild Gunmen for the Nintendo). If you want to watch a better movie ... try just about anything. If you want to see a post apocalyptic Italian exploitation movie about New York .. watch 2019: After the Fall of New York.

-Celluloid Rehab