EXTERMINATORS OF THE YEAR 3000

Italy, 1983, 91 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Enzo Castellari.

Exterminators of the Year 3000 is one of the many Italian rip-offs of the Mad Max genre. Writer-director Enzo Castellari made The Bronx Warriors (echoing Mad Max), The New Barbarians (echoing Mad Max 2) which was so successful that he produced a sequel, Bronx Warriors 2.

As with spaghetti westerns in the '60s and 170s and the tendency to produce 'R' certificate versions of science fiction in the late '70s, the Italians take the basic plot line, reproduce the situations and go for broke in terms of spectacle and violence. This is the case in this film.

The year 3000 looks like the early '80s in terms of cars and machinery. The situation in the United States is a shortage of water. The good community need water and those seeking it are killed by cycle gangs with powerful bikes and cars. The police are ineffective. A young boy accompanying one of these expeditions asks a loner to help him find the water. They are helped by an attractive heroine and an old man with a capacity for fixing cars. The inevitable trek through the desert and pursuits are all there - even visually echoing Mad Max 2 in the villain. The final shoot-out is a direct steal from Raiders of the Lost Ark. The violence is not as excessive in, say, Castellari's films and the plot about the need for water is effectively handled, especially with some mutants who have charge of the reservoirs of water. Unnecessary 'R' certificate style story and violence - an interesting comment on the European film industry's aping the genres from other countries.