2019 After the Fall of New York

-Reviewed by Skunkape-

Directed by Sergio Martino 1983

2019 is Italy’s answer to the the success of John Carpenters’ Escape from New York. It’s directed by Sergio “Mountain of the Cannibal God” Martino. Martino didn’t just take the job for quick buck, he brings his A game thus making a movie that in my opinion may be inferior but just as entertaining as JC’s Escape. This is actor Michael Sopkiw’s first film playing Parsifal aka “Fake” Plisskin.

"oops, forgot my eye patch."

SNL news with Dennis Miller!

The Earth is a total wasteland all because of  E.U.R.A.K (the Euro Afro Asian Unity) monarchy who dropped a nuclear weapon destroying almost all humanity. Which begs the question where were the Eurak’s when the bomb was dropped? The Eurak’s have set up their base in New York City where they rule and look for ways to procreate. You see when they nuked everything the radiation was so bad that not one human is fertile. When we meet our hero he’s competing in some kind of death race 2000 I guess you could say! As winner, the mutants of the Nevada dessert cheer and chant his name. Then a freaky robotic clown announces that he has won his own sex slave. He takes her on his futuristic motorcycle into the dystopian wasteland. Instead of getting down and dirty he sets her free, which is what you do if you love something, right? Parsifal then gets abducted by a spaceship and brought to Alaska. That’s where the Rebel Federation has set up their base. It's very Hoth like, but there are no Taun Tauns or Wampas to be found, just cheap looking models that wouldn’t fool your 3 year old brother.

The Alaska play set, Spaceship not included.

Among the Rebel Federation is the dreamy Edmund Purdom playing the President of the Pan American Confederacy. I say dreamy Edmund Purdom because Theater of Gut’s President and head writer Crankenstein just loves this guy (he’s smitten). It’s more of an inside joke actually but he seriously wouldn’t shut up about Purdom after watching Pieces for a whole week. So now that the rebels have Parsifal, President Purdom gives him an offer he can’t refuse. The mission is to sneak into NYC undetected and find the one fertile female before the Eurak’s do. In return for his services he is offered a seat on a spacecraft that will head to another planet, where life can start over contamination free. This plan will only work of course if he gets the girl. However, they don’t send him alone, two very special helpers are assigned to aid him. Bronx (Paolo Maria Scalondro) is the navigator, he is an ex resident of the city and knows his way around. Ratchet (Romano Puppo) is extra muscle and has lots of special skills to kick butt.

Along the way they encounter the Rat Eater King and his merry rat eaters. From that group they take in Giana, (Valentine Monnier). Also helping them is a little person appropriately named Shorty who is key in helping them locate the girl they seek. Another key player is Big Ape (George Eastman), they meet him hanging out with whole group of half man, half monkey men. Eastman was reluctant to play the role because of the makeup he had to wear but after the movie came out was glad he did, and I am too. Who else could’ve played that role?

Little People, Nuked World the reality show

"You think I should trim my eyebrows?"

After the Fall of NY on Broadway!

2019 is one of those post-nuke science fiction Italian movies that really delivers. Martino never lets the film drag. The sets are cheap but fun and interesting as our heroes navigate through the remains of NYC. It also contains some nice stunt work with lots of explosions and even a little gore here and there. Oliver Onions provides a mostly electronic score. Actually the credits say “with original music by Oliver Onions”, because we also get some music stolen from Margeriti’s Yor Hunter from the Future as a bonus.  There is also a poor mutant bum (James Sampson) that plays the trumpet over the opening credits but Martino didn’t pay him. He only lives off the gratuity of tourists.

"Welcome to the 2019 McDonalds."

My Big Fat Post Nuke Apocalypse Wedding

"I'm Issac Hayes' stunt double."

"Ratz off 2 Ya!"

"Don't cry just because Warwick Davis got the role of Willow 2: Lost in NYC."

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2019

After the Fall of NY special Trailer!

"Tell Crankenstein, I Love him too!"

Frankenstein General Hospital

Frankenstein General Hospital Directed By Deborah Romare, Mark Blankfield (1988).

The first thing that led me to this alarmingly titled flick was not playmate Kathy Shower as you might imagine, but Irwin Keyes as the infamous monster. I've followed Irwin's career ever since The Warriors, that bulbous face was always lurking somewhere in the background, sometimes if you blinked you missed him. He died in the first Exterminator only to return in the second one as Monster, a menacing punk dodging that pesky flamethrower. He's appeared in a wide range of cult films like Nice Girls Don't Explode, Chained Heat, StarDust Memories, House of a 1000 Corpses and even played Hugo, George's bodyguard on The Jeffersons! That loveable bug-eyed knucklehead is always a welcome site throughout the exploitation genre. In FGH he's hardly in this piece of shit and they focus more on the stupid doctor and his unfunny antics. If you're thinking maybe I'll watch this film for its cool title and Irwin Keyes as the creature, fuggetaboutit, don't get burned like I did. It actually took me a month to recover from this painfully unfunny comedy.

Who's ready to laugh?

  The doctor played by Mark Blankfield looks like he's related to Gerrit Graham and his assistant is Iggy instead of Igor. This movie blindsides you immediately with its wretched-ness, don't bother to track it down, its appallingly bad! I've seen Leslie Jordan, the actor who plays Iggy in Ski Patrol and Pee Wees Playhouse, he's a midget with a southern drawl and looks like a gay elf. I'm not being derogatory, Jordan is gay and also 4 feet tall.
   The decision to cast Lou Cutell, (Seinfeld's "Assman" and Nadir the Martian from Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster) as a surgeon would be an inspired tribute to that film, but here it's a wasted role.

Your funny bone is busted

   The cornball jokes fall flat on their face and seem like really bad vaudeville comedy, I mean there's nothing worse than "fake Mel Brooks type humor".
   Dr Bob Frankenheimer (Blankfield) is laughed at by his coworkers who all have mullets, anytime Bob mentions his experiment, phantom giggle noises are heard. Bobby Boris Pickett is somewhere in the background waiting around for his pay check.

Holy shit, it's the mom from The Goldbergs!

   This is the kind of irritating comedy that you could get toasted to and not be even mildly amused.
Ben Stein shows up I'll never understand the appeal of that loser, unless you're a Right Winger.
The psychiatrist/dominatrix is played Kathy Shower, she looks really hot, but never gets fully undressed. This film makes those shitty Lou Anderson comedies like The Wrong Guys seem on par with cutting edge humor like Louis C.K.-- just dreadfully unfunny! The monster finally shows up 30 minutes in, I wonder if the film makers thought "Young Frankenstein sucked, let's try to top it"! They even paraphrase some lines from the Brooks classic and Bob Frankenheimer tries to ape Gene Wilder! Which is appalling to me!

They paid me in hookers and fluffernutters and I still hate myself.

   The worst part is that they have all these hot women and we get a two minute boob flash (fodder for Mr. Skin I suppose). When they are in the Doctor's lab, the film goes to black and white but the rest is in color (probably some inside unfunny gag that flew over my head).

   I think Keyes deserves a better film than this wretched piece of shit! He runs around with a boom box dressed like a greaser and even gets a blowjob. Hopefully he had a nice time on the set and I don't fault him for how terrible this movie came out. The comedy really grinds on your nerves and is horrendous, I totally hated it.

DRAGS THE FRANKENSTEIN NAME THROUGH A MEAT GRINDER, AVOID AT ALL COSTS!

this is where Electric Frankenstein got thier name from

Please Don't Eat The Babies

Please Don't Eat The Babies Directed By Marcus Robertson, starring nobody (1983).

The legendary description written by Chas Balun in the Deep Red catalog went as follows "A Shipwrecked crew of anal dwarves get chomped by big bugs!"

That was enough to set Skunkape and I on a wild goose chase into the video trading underworld to secure a copy of this rare supremely retarded, inbred hillbilly tale.

Anal Dwarves will not be seen tonight

  There are zero anal dwarves in tonight's feature sadly, just a cannibalistic one that pops up out of nowhere and takes a chunk out of this girl's belly. The film itself is pretty horrible, but there's forced perspective shots of cockroaches right in the camera that made me laugh so hard, I almost bit my tongue off!

Be afraid, don't laugh at my ginormity!

   There's lots of slack jawed yokels who all talk in that authentic Appalachian gobbilty gook and seem like second cousins to the banjo playin kin-folk from Deliverance or Sarah Palin.

I was Macauly's stunt double when he slept over at Michael Jacksons

   There's a fake Macaulay Culkin, dressed in a Huck Finn costume lurking about and the whole flick has that Night Of The Demon horrendous quality that can only be achieved by entry level humans who got together and decided the world needed to be made aware of their rural plight (or that bugs sprang from the depth of hell crave the scrumptious taste of people)! 

We got armadillo's in our trousers

   Bikini girls and hairy dudes in speedos are the main characters, we're supposed to identify with. The camera looms underneath in the speedo ball range (who was the cinematographer? Matt Ramsey)?

   The kids take advice from a couple of toothless sailors who look like rejects from Cabin Boy (or the documentary version), they tell the tall fish tale of big baby eating bugs and all the scantily clad women in this film look criminally underage!

Cabin Boy, the documentary

   There's a long shot of bubbles rising to the surface, they are supposed to be the big scary bugs (but they just look like garbage bags). Gramps is an abusive, gun toting creep and his wife looks like the rapping granny from Adam Sandler films.

I'll just wait here and think of baseball until I can walk again

   Then there's an inbred Frankenstein in jeans who constantly has a boner (and occasionally feeds the lone dwarf poor innocent girls). This film makes absolutely no sense and was possibly created to capitalize on some of that sweet Jason Voorhees/ Paramount Pictures moollah (who the hell knows)? The bad lighting and nobodies in bathing suits also reminded me of another atrocious movie that I never want to revisit; Humongous.

   Than the movie takes a nose dive into hillbilly surrealism as "The Devil" shows up (he looks like Robert Picardo or The Cowboy from Inner Space), he speaks in a warbled tone and uses his supernatural powers to possess a busty girl (with giant pepperoni sized nipples) to slice up a dude with a straight razor.  

Hail me

   The film quality gets increasingly poor and threatens to swallow up all the action in a haze of darkness. The last 20 minutes take place in some kind of pit of hell (you'll feel like you're in a living nightmare trying to survive the waves of boredom, striking at your skull full force)!

Howdy, I'm Hank The Anal Dwarf!

   The film's only redeeming quality is that hopefully Rifftrax will pick it up and trash it (other than that, it's a totally worthless wretched piece of junk)!

The editor credits are larry,joe,tom,dick and harry, I shit you not! It got even more bizarre after I discovered that the re-edited cleaned up version is called Island Fury. The footage from Please Don't Eat The Babies is used to bookend a dull terrorist island flick (called Island Fury). The entire subplot about giant bugs, blood thirsty dwarves or devils was edited out, I'll put it this way, if you thought this movie was already horrible, just wait until you're left with the dullest characters in cinema minus all the entertaining parts. 

Recommended for people with severe brain trauma or fans of Night Of The Demon (a Skunkape approved cinematic triumph)!