Is 1985's Clash of the Warlords, AKA Mad Warrior, the shittiest Mad Max ripoff of all? Yes.
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| The version I watched on YouTube opens with a two-minute-long freeze frame of this explosion. Presumably it was intended to be filled in with opening titles or voiceover narration, but nah. Leave a comment if your version played differently, because I'm dying for that deep lore. |
In this spin on the post-nuke world, goofily costumed baddy Malzon (????, Mad Warrior) entertains himself by making all his best fighters off one another in gladiatorial axe fights, which is strange, because he later muses that his main disadvantage against his enemies is fewer men. I disagree with this assessment, though, because it's clear his real main disadvantage is that he's a dribbling idiot even by post-nuke megalomaniac standards.
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| Malzon looks like the one guy at every Halloween party who put effort into his costume and now feels like a NERD. |
Nor, dear reader, is this solely my assessment: for Malzon goes into an ear-biting meltdown every time he sees the moon, at which point his own goons chain him up and openly laugh at him for the gigatard he is. There's nothing quite like an outnumbered, mentally challenged villain whose own minions treat him as a huge joke to instill fear into the hearts of viewers.
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| Without his Phantom of the Opera mask, he looks like a Filipino Toxic Avenger. |
If you think this lunar fixation will come into play at a timely moment to change the outcome of the movie, you'd be wrong: it's never mentioned again. Rather, his not particularly tragic downfall is precipitated by the escape of one of his gladiators, Rex, who goes to join the rebels from Return of the Jedi. That might seem like just a throwaway comparison, but this fucking gem has the brass balls to close out on a lightsaber fight straight out of a Star Wars fan film:
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| I love how there's no attempt to hide or fudge it whatsoever: they even use the same colour-coding. |
It's clear director Willy Milan (I swear this is the name he's credited with on The Movie Database) just dumps whatever he liked in other movies into his, which is endearing, but incoherent. The movie literally ends with Rex riding off on a horse because I guess Ol' Willy saw a western once. For all its faults, Clash boasts one ace that sets it apart from the pack: its searing Top Gun Ray Bans beer commercial cock rock soundtrack is insultingly good for so farcical a project. If a cleaned-up version exists anywhere, send it my way, because it stomps absolute prostate.
Post-apocalypse checklist:
MOHAWKS: none.
SHOULDER PADS: special mention must go to the female lead's choice to don gold-plated ones, which in a low-res YT upload make her look like something off the Soldiers Under Command album cover.
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| Damn, Michael Sweet looks like that? |
CUSTOM CARS: we have to count this dorky looking tricycle:
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| Lord Humungus and Wez would have raped this guy so many times. |
MUTANTS: presumably Malzon.
GOGGLES: IDK, I don't recall any.
TOTAL: 3/5 - uuuurghhh
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