Stryker (1983)

Load of rubbish!!

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The beautiful Delha (luscious Andrea Savio) holds the secret to the location of a spring of water in a bleak and violent post-apocalyptic world plagued by drought. It's up to rugged loner Stryker (beefy Steve Sandor in sturdy stoic and two-fisted form) to protect Delha from a bunch of vicious thugs led by the ruthless Kardis (a nicely hateful portrayal by the chrome-domed Mike Lane).Sure, this flick hasn't much of a plot and the characters are wafer thin, but fortunately director Cirio H. Santiago keeps the enjoyably mindless story moving along at a zippy pace, makes neat use of the desolate desert locations, and stages the lively and exciting action set pieces with considerable go-for-it gusto. Moreover, lots of stuff blows up real good, Savio bares her fabulously full breasts once during a nasty attempted rape scene, and both a tribe of helpful chattering dwarfs and a band of formidable warrior women in leather hot pants are tossed in for good goofy measure. The decent acting from the game cast keeps this movie humming: William Ostrander as the valiant Bandit, Julie Gray as the perky Laurenz, Monique St. Pierre as the fierce Cerce, and Ken Metcalfe as friendly old-timer Trun. Ed Gatchalian's funky-thudding score hits the stirring syncopated spot. Entertaining schlock.

It's hot. It's the desert (well, actually, it's a gravel pit in the Philippines masquerading as the desert) They're fighting over water. End of story. Once you get past the fighting over what appears to be only a few gallons of water, the plot of this post apocalyptic grindhouse flick becomes nonexistent, as entire reels of film go by with either not much happening, or several lengthy car chases and explosions and shootouts. Most of the characters here are never even given names, let alone do we ever find out anything about them. It's also rather difficult to learn anything about the characters when there is hardly any dialogue to the film. Good looking girls in shorts, and good action in the first half hour and at the climax are about all this has going for it. Its climactic battle between the Chuck Norris lookalike leader of one tribe, aided by the Keebler elves, against the other tribe led by one-handed Anton LaVey lookalike was reasonably exciting and well done, but it's a LONG wait for it. If you can turn your mind off and just enjoy the action scenes, this movie might be more watchable for that and the good looking half nude girls, but if you want more than that, look elsewhere. I'm also a fan of William/ Bill Ostrander, so I was disappointed by his somewhat small role in the film, and by the fact that his voice was apparently dubbed for his few lines. Also, this movie looks like it was filmed a year or two prior to its release, as Ostrander looks noticeably younger than he did in Christine, which was released only three months after this.

Here's yet another Mad Max inspired post apocalyptic outing from the glorious 1980's that depicts a parched and barren world inhabited by leather clad gangs (an odd choice of material to attire oneself with considering the scorching temperatures!) who drive around recklessly in armour plated cars and on motorcycles searching for the most precious commodity remaining on earth: water.Yes, fans of the genre may recognise the above plot as exactly the same as Giuliano Carnimeo's Exterminators Of The Year 3000 which was also released in 1983. In fact, the miraculously fortuitous ending in both films is exactly the same to! (I don't know which one was released first but considering the derivative nature of the Italian movie industry in the late 70's and 80's I would hazard to guess that Carnimeo's film was most likely 'heavily inspired' (ahem) from the film being reviewed here.Back to the film and oddly, it would appear that the producers of this, neglected to hire two always vital contributors in any film making process, namely a screen writer and a script writer (!!!) - well at least one could be forgiven for assuming this to be the case as this film has virtually no logical plotting nor character development (or even character definition for that matter!) and has scarcely any dialogue throughout! The end result is a somewhat confusing affair with scene after scene of seemingly pointless car chases and shoot outs revolving around a (VERY HOT!) woman who is being pursued by just about everyone she encounters (including the films beefy hero).To be fair, as the movie progresses a plot of sorts is disclosed and there's even the trappings of a love story that begin to blossom! On the plus side, the action sequences are competently handled throughout with some fair stunt work on display in a number of scenes and as previously mentioned, - males rejoice, for the heroine along with all of the other females in the cast, is absolutely gorgeous (and spends the entire film in some seriously sexy leather shorts!) Wey Hey!!! For fans of the genre this is certainly worth a watch but it has to be said that this is far from the best of its kind.

Where is the dialogue? There are periods in this film when no one speaks for like five minutes. I can't get over how bad this film is, but I really enjoyed it nonetheless.I bought it .75 cents on EBay, and was surprised how entertaining it was. This film has a certain comic book feel to it, although it borrows the same premise from Mad Max.Steve Sandor, the hero, is a big dude and handles the role well, but William Ostrander of Red Heat outshines him. The villains were all laughable, and you knew Sandor would have little trouble defeating them The flashback scenes were the worst I have ever seen.A must have for the "It's so bad it's good crowd."