Verdict
Summary
Previously available on VHS and a DVD from Echo Bridge, this reissue comes in a standard definition full-frame format. For a cult film like this to be reissued, it would be best served with an upgrade to picture and sound, so this particular edition in a bare bones package is nothing special. Still, if the film has never been on your radar and if it sounds like your cup of tea, you can do worse with twelve bucks.
“I don’t like the idea of men around here – they screwed up the world once, and they’ll do it again!”
Plot:
In a post-nuke wasteland, a blonde Amazon is still around to save what’s left.
Review:
Pretty terrible on all counts (but at least the girls don’t roller skate!), Phoenix the Warrior is one of those movies you might have caught late at night on cable in the early 90’s, and it managed to keep you awake because it was so freaking stupid. After the “Conventional Wars, the Nuclear Wars, and the Chromosome Wars” the world is left without men to repopulate the earth, and so women in loincloths and dirty bikinis run around trying to find the last man alive to knock them up. Running the show is an ugly, wheelchair-bound character named “The Reverend Mother” who has some kind of mind control powers, but she doesn’t live long enough to really use them in the movie. She threatens her henchwomen to no effect, and all of her scenes are filmed on a black-draped set that looks like a Halloween costume store’s dressing room. The only savior of this particular wasteland is Phoenix, a blonde, gun-toting Amazon who can’t act. But don’t bag on her too hard – she’s not the worst of the bunch. Her mission is to keep a single little boy (born through an artificial process) away from the Reverend Mother. She does. The end.
The best moment comes when Phoenix is captured by a television-worshipping cult in the mountains. Her captors, a band of mutants, chant the names of T.V. shows they read about in an old T.V. Guide. It’s funny. And so is the rest of the movie even though it shouldn’t be. Directed by Robert Hayes.
Previously available on VHS and a DVD from Echo Bridge, this reissue comes in a standard definition full-frame format. For a cult film like this to be reissued, it would be best served with an upgrade to picture and sound, so this particular edition in a bare bones package is nothing special. Still, if the film has never been on your radar and if it sounds like your cup of tea, you can do worse with twelve bucks.
