Land of Doom (1986)

Good movie but grossly overrated

A lot of fun.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Sure its cheap, harebrained and badly overacted. But its also the Rosetta Stone of Mad Max 1980's movies , Scripted for now long forgotten movie audiences (Turkish, American & Euro). That are now faced with crises upon crises finding little solace in bloated budgeted and just as badly acted films that now get the media corporate stamp of approval of an IMDb 8.5 ,but oddly never a 7 or 7.5 Enjoy the Land of Doom for what it is and what its not. This movie is a rare look into the ancient 1980's . Movies of this type used to stock the particle board shelving of now long dead & paved over Video Rental Stores stocked with thousands of VHS scrolls of now long forgotten gems like Land of Doom.How many times will this movie be resurrected from the dead , maybe a dozen times a decade on late night antenna T.V?Its really worth a watch if you are privileged to see it once again. A less than million dollar budget & Puffy-hairdo leather clad Road Warriors of the Anatolia Highlands . The Age of Reagan Innocence will never be forgotten.

For some reason never explained, half of the earths population go mad and decide to wear leather for the rest of their lives.The others are either really bad European cannibal actors, or the posh one from AWOL (or Lionheart), and some bloke who is acting about ten years younger than he should be.These leather clad people pillage villages and just run about being downright rotters.Having seen Mad Max and any other post apocalyptic movie before 1985, the heroes go on a quest to defeat the uber-leather villain. We can single this guy out because he has the wild hair and a mask.It's pretty vile stuff, with no one really having a clue whats going on, just riding round with some weird frame on their bikes and cars looking foe something thats never explained.The writers couldn't have had a clue either, because the ending is just awful.The only reason why this film did not get a one from me is because it keeps you guessing as to how people are clean shaven and also how the lead keeps her hair looking so god....

Yep, you guessed it, it's the end of the world again. Must be time to dust off the leathers and bring out the dodgy motorbikes. But get this.. the main character here is a LADY. And she can fend for herself! But just in case she can't, she finds an injured Calvin-Klein model to watch over her. How novel, eh? The planet is a wasteland, survivors are mostly plague-infested psychos or Ewok-resembling dwarfs.. isn't it fortunate that the two most attractive members of each sex alive find each other? Now they can start the human race anew and make lots of lovely babies together that are just as pretty as they are.. but first, there's the small matter of a mad gang to defeat. You know the sort: attacking the few settlements that are remaining, setting all the buildings on fire, indiscriminately killing the men while assaulting the women, spraying gunfire everywhere while riding on their souped-up Harleys.. you get the picture. The leader of this rabble is a guy with a really DEEP VOICE who wears a mask all the time. Is it a symbol of his power, or maybe he has an embarrassing birthmark underneath it? We never find out. Against such odds, our heroes can't help but get captured, but just as it seems things are at their bleakest.. an eccentric old man, who has a whole pound full of dogs, enters the film out of left field.. and promptly gets busy with a flamethrower. Can the three desperadoes escape the clutches of these maniacs with appalling body odour and no fashion sense whatsoever? All will be revealed..Well actually no it won't, because the ending doesn't resolve anything. Perhaps a sequel was in the pipeline? Some hope, there isn't much here to give the likes of Mad Max a run for its money. True, there are a lot of bizarre elements here that make the film almost strangely compelling, but then you pull back and realise how shoddy the action scenes are and the lack of anything approaching clear plot direction. True, I wasn't expecting a masterpiece, but I did at least hope for a little more entertainment. You may have a few laughs out of pure incredulity while its on, but is it really worth investing 90 minutes of your life for a few small pleasures like that? I say it is not. A 3/10 from me.

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.