Survival Zone (1983)
In a post-nuclear world, a happy family of ranchers is beseiged by a roving band of ne'er do well marauders who want to eat the men and mate with the women. Having already killed and eaten an entire mission full of nuns, the family has no choice but to grab their rifles and defend their homestead. Meanwhile, the lonely, nubile daughter begins to have feelings for the buff blond stranger with no family who has wandered onto the property. It's romance, intrigue, action, and violence on the dark continent!
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Excellent, Without a doubt!!
Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.
The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful
This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.
I didn't track down this rare flick till last year, but am I glad I did. This one stands as a strong entry into the post-nuke genre. The plot is simple: after the nuclear war, small pockets exist where the radiation levels are low enough to sustain life. These areas are known as "Survival Zones". The story follows the lives of a family on a farm, trying to eek by after "the big one". This is definitely a B movie, and the acting less than stellar, but it makes up for it in spirit. I really liked the overwhelmingly positive attitude displayed by the father. This is just what would be needed to get through a situation as dire as this. He was the glue that held his survival unit together. What really hurt the movie was the budget. There was no footage of any devastation: flattened cities, burnt-out buildings, nothing. No money for special effects here, like radiated zombies, etc. The only way you know what happened is from dialog. This hurt the overall impression of how bad the aftermath of World War III would be. They only make one trip to a city for supplies, and it looks normal, just abandoned. The heavies in the movie are leather-clad cannibalistic bikers (a bit cliché, no doubt). I'm not sure what the significance of the plastic baby doll parts on his helmet and clothing was!? If it was supposed to be scary, it wasn't. Nevertheless, the realities of kill or be killed in a lawless world are presented quite clearly, and provide a lot of food for thought. As far as I know, this never made it to DVD, so you will be forced to locate a used VHS on online, but it will be worth the search. If you can look past the numerous small flaws, it is a solid flick. If you like these types of movies, also check out The Aftermath, Def Con 4, Damnation Alley, Warriors of the Wasteland, and After the Fall of New York.
Another of the endless Mad Max ripoffs, and this one ranks with the stinkinest of all time. I don't mind a few stinkers, and I love the campiness of these late 70's/early 80's post-nuke films, but this is probably the worst film I've seen since Blair Witch 2. After a WWIII holocaust, we look in on the lives of a few survivors who are about to cross paths. We have the scum biker gang, the all-American dad and child with a foreign sounding wife and daughter (who have an old man as a mock grandpa),we have the last 2 remaining horses on planet earth, a convent of nuns, and finally a loner stud lookin' for action any way he can get it.All I can say is, all of the horrible clichés are in affect. Absolutely nothing happens for about the first 50-55 minutes except a lot of garbage talk about the way things were and how retarded man is for destroying everything. The rest of the film cannot be considered action, horror, or science fiction in my opinion. You just have to make a whole new genre for films like this and call it the Sh*t genre. You could fit this 90 min. film into a 25 min. TV show package.The editing is horrible also, and you have the feel that some scenes (including the ending) needed more extensions onto them to help tell the story, but I have a feeling this would just prolong the pain of viewing it even more. Please be warned, there's a good reason why less than 30 people have rated this film.
This like it's going to be a good slasher at the beginning, when in the second scene, Bigman defeats another bikie in a jousting match with chains, then soon after another of his gang punches a nun to death, but it goes very quiet after that and never picks up.
I was thirteen when I saw this film. Some friends of mine were big fans of horror films. I wasn't particularly a fan but I knew what to expect. "Survival Zone" wasn't at all what I expected. I have a soft spot for this movie and would love the opportunity to see it again. But I'm afraid to say that is because I distinctly recall it as being the worst film I ever saw. I mean....the doll's head on top of the motorcycle...is that supposed to be scary? Evidently it was supposed to be. It wasn't.