Endgame (1983)

I think it's best that I watch some movies by myself. Like this one. That's because the minute George Eastman showed up on screen, I let out an audible cheer of pure bliss. No one needs to hear me screaming like that.2025. A nuclear war has left New York City in ruins, populated by scavengers and telepathic mutants who are hunted and killed by the elite. To keep the people of this world from revolting, the reality game show Endgame has been created, where hunters and gladiators battle to the death in the place of warfare. Lilith (Black Emanuelle herself, Laura Gemser, credited as Moira Chen!) is a psychic who wants protection for her band of mutants. She hires the best Endgame player ever - Ron Shannon (Al Cliver from Zombi and The Beyond!) - to help. Shannon has his own problems, as he's in the middle of Endgame and facing off against professional killers like Kurt Karnak (the much loved Eastman, who also co-wrote this film), who was Shannon's childhood friend and has now become his greatest rival. The last time Shannon and Karnak battled in an Endgame, time ran out before they could determine which man was the best player.Lilith helps Shannon defeat Karnak, at which point his sponsor and the cameramen show up and ask him to drink Lifeplus on screen. Lilith reaches out to him and he rushes to save her. That's when he agrees to help her and the mutants she protects.Karnak has lost his mind due to losing, shooting targets obsessively. Colonel Morgan and his men try to recruit him to their cause while Shannon tries to recruit his own team, including Ninja (Hal Yamanouchi, who in addition to playing Silver Samurai in 2013's The Wolverine also appears in Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals, 2020 Texas Gladiators and 2019: After the Fall of New York as the Rat Eater King!) and Bull (Gabriele Tinti, who was married to Gemser and appeared in nearly every Black Emanuelle movie) ."You're too famous to disappear in a city that grows smaller every day," says Colonel Morgan when he catches up to Shannon, asking him to give up Lilith. This leads to a firefight where he's saved by Karnak! George Eastman as a good guy? YES!If you haven't guessed by all the shouting and exclamation points, this movie is the perfect combination of everything I look for in film - it's a ripoff, it's post-apocalyptic, it shares Italian genre favorites and it's in a ridiculous world where everyone either dresses like a viking or Dump Matsumoto (1980's Japanese women's wrestling bad girl supreme).Meanwhile, in the wasteland, our heroes come upon mutants, which Professor Levin (oh yeah, he takes care of the telepaths) explains have combined man's primordial caveman past with feral instincts. Which means, in layman's terms, that they look like human fish or apes.Think that's crazy? They then come upon holy monks who have blinded themselves so that they can be guided by psychics and kill anyone who offends their conception of God. What follows is a scene of black-robed maniacs fighting with machine guns and grenades and knives and motorcycles and man...a cast of hundreds gets killed until Shannon finds the captured psychic and instead of saving him, tosses an axe at his head. All the monks have no idea where they are, wandering around yelling that they are blind as our heroes make their escape. If you think they aren't going to drive over the head of one of the monks, well, you haven't been watching Italian genre cinema!Meanwhile, Lilith explains to Shannon that she keeps one of the young psychic kids basically autistic, because if he starts to experience emotions, he's liable to wipe out everyone around him.Then, the professor gets killed in a trap, but asks Shannon to save all of them. But that means Bull discovers that she's psychic, which means that the entire team learns that everyone is a mutant. Everyone starts arguing before Karnak shows up to let them know that more enemies are on the way. Monkey-faced enemies! And a fish-faced leader who has two women with roped up bare breasts on his modified golf cart! What is going on with this movie?Ninja and Kovack get killed and Lilith is captured. Karnak offers to help Shannon save her. Lilith reaches out to Shannon, telling him that Karnak only wants gold and then to kill him. Then, the fishman leader tears off Lilith's clothes, yelling "Look at me while I rape you, dammit!" Shannon asks if she's OK because he's seeing flashes and she's all like, "Yeah, I'm fine," while a fish mutant slobbers all over her. Umm...When the guys get there, Lilith is fully clothed and the mutant is passed out on the bed. So are we to believe that she enjoyed it? Or that she just went with it? I guess if you're looking for woke feminism, a Joe D'Amoto movie is probably the last place one should root around.Then they find Kovack, who the mutants have left inside a wall. They can't help him escape and he wants to die, so Karnak breaks his neck. He faces off against an entire room of mutants while Shannon and Lilith escape. She can tell that Karnak is in trouble, but not dead, to which Shannon replies "Fate decides the winner of Endgame, not me."Lilith reunites with the children and everyone celebrates that they are only ten kilometers from the rendezvous. Of course, the government is waiting to take everyone out. SS logo adorned stormtroopers show up and just start shooting, but Shannon talks Tommy, one of the mutant children, into creating wind storms and telekinetically using a machine gun and an avalanche to kill all of the soldiers. He even levitates a car that crushes several of them and sets a fire that wipes out even more. Then, he forces Colonel Morgan to kill himself.Lilith asks Shannon to come with them, but he says "She is the future and he is the past." She leaves while he stays behind in the wasteland with the gold. As he goes to pick up his gold, Karnak comes back and tells him they haven't played the final round yet. He throws away his gun as we get an awesome long shot of both men, like something out of a western. They rush at one another with knives and the credits roll.The poster for this film promises "For An Endgame Champion In The Year 2025, There's Only One Way To Live. Dangerously." And this film more than lives up that. If you only know D'Amoto from his adult work or gorefests like Beyond the Darkness and Antropophagus, you should totally check this one out. Movies like this are why I went from worrying about the end of the world to wishing that it would happen!

Based on the reputation of director Joe D'Amato, who's primarily known for an endless number of pornography movies and perverted exploitation flicks, and a shallow first look at the VHS cover and stills, I was expecting "Endgame" to be an extremely low-keyed and virtually worthless piece of Italian 80's trash but I'm glad to announce that it actually is a pleasantly engaging Post-Apocalyptically themed Sci-Fi experience. It's a piece of 80's trash nevertheless, of course, but one of the most enjoyable kinds. "Endgame" belongs in the extended category of Italian produced "Escape from NY" knockoffs and it can easily compete with the most successful and notorious accomplishments in there, like Sergio Martino's "After the Fall of New York", Ruggero Deodato's "The Atlantis Interceptors", Lucio Fulci's "The Fighting Centurions" and Enzo G. Castellari's "The New Barbarians". These titles probably don't mean anything to 'normal' film lovers, but to true fans of Italian exploitation cinema they form an excellent source of comparison. The main story lines are very familiar and D'Amato isn't too ashamed to add in one clichéd plot twist after the other, but the film is extremely fast-paced, spectacular and indescribably violent, so who really cares about originality? Al Cliver plays a terrific Snake Plissken clone, but the show is obviously stolen by the almighty George Eastman as the arch enemy. It's the years 2025 and everybody eagerly awaits the new edition of a popular TV show, called "Endgame", in which a couple of bloodthirsty hunters go after a human prey. Ron Shannon wins the game, but only thanks to the help of the telepathically gifted mutant Lilith (D'Amato muse Laura Gemser). The government systematically exterminates all the mutants, and thus Shannon swears to help Lilith and her other mutant friends flee out of the city. Along with a troop of recruited mercenaries, Shannon guides them out of town but the group successively encounters hugely challenging ordeals like a community of blind cannibalistic monks (a splendid homage to "The Omega Man" perhaps?), an army of bewildered mutants and Nazi-like government soldiers. "Endgame" is glorious and priceless 80's entertainment like they just don't make it anymore. The battling sequences are extended and body count is enormous, with literally hundreds of bad guys and the occasional good guy dying left and right and in highly imaginative ways. In spite of the obviously low-budgeted production values, D'Amato managed to gather together some excellently apt set pieces and flamboyant vehicles and even the make-up effects are far above average. Director Joe D'Amato stated that this is his own personal favorite of all the movies he directed, and he's probably right although I personally have even bigger soft spots for "Anthropophagus" and "Beyond the Darkness". This is somewhat also a very atypical D'Amato film and that's a positive comment. For once, he could keep his viewers alert and fascinated with actually content instead of through showing nudity and sleaze. I mean, Laura Gemser stars in this film and she barely takes her clothes off! George Eastman also stars and he doesn't even attempt to rape a woman! This is just a perfectly entertaining Italian post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi movie with all the necessary ingredients: action, bloodshed, gimmicks, costumes, silliness and a terrific freeze-frame end shot.

It has been a while since I saw this movie but I still remember it quite well. I know that some people discard it as a cheesy and pathetic attempt at a movie but I cannot help but hold it dear to my heart. Of course, I am a sucker for low budget Italian apocalypse movies...Anyhoo, I enjoyed it because of the anti-commercialism theme, colorful characters, and overall obnoxious attempt to be serious. I mean, who couldn't love George Eastman as Karnak? He has to be one of the coolest arch nemesis' that I have seen in a while! Half of the time I was rooting for him! And what about the mutants? I know that it was made in 1983 but I thought that they did a pretty damn good job with what they had to work with. I was somewhat torn by the ending because while I did like the clashing freeze-frame, it left you hanging with quite a cliffhanger.As a final word, it was corny as hell but strangely entertaining. I only hope that I can still find it on VHS or god forbid, DVD...

Wow, this is italian exploitation flicks at it's best. Guess this one came because of the post-apocalyptic hype after "Escape from New York" and "Mad Max", and got stuff like "Rollerball" also in it. Of course it's an awful movie full of missing links. But here is simply no need for explanations, this question would be stupid. It's the full atmosphere of 80ies italo exploitation thrash: good explosions (gas!gas!gas! - nothing digital! I reminisce in nostalgica), crazy overacted characters, some bare breasts, a setting full of cheap dirt. Those movies are so honest in their cheasiness and roughness, I love 'em. - And the eighties were best! Italy full ahead! A pitty the video-market got down and what is left is filled by the majors with hollywood-cheapos exploiting themselves with their own cheap ripp-offs which have no life of it's own; a pity, no good exploitation-scene nowadays...And hey, wow, this one has them all in it: Joe d'Amato, Al Cliver, Laura Gemser, Michele Soavi and George Eastmen. - A Fest! Gets a nerdish 7 out of 10!