WORLD GONE WILD (1988) ***

World Gone Wild is basically Seven Samurai, Mad Max style.  Bruce Dern lives in a post-apocalyptic hippie wasteland community that has the only known water source.  Adam Ant is the psycho cult leader who quotes Manson and commands an army of poncho-wearing machine-gun-toting brainwashed minions.  He raids the camp and says he’ll come back in a week to finish the job.  Dern then goes and gets Michael Pare (with Wolverine sideburns) and an assortment of warriors to defend the town in exchange for as much water as they can drink.

This had the potential to be awful, but the great cast anchors the film and makes you care about their characters.  Catherine Mary Stewart does a fine job as the post-apocalyptic teacher who teaches school out of an old school bus.  (Only four books survived the apocalypse.)  Julius J. Carry III (as a magician who uses smoke bombs) and Rick Podell (as a gunslinger not unlike Robert Vaughn’s character in The Magnificent Seven) also make memorable impressions given their brief screen time.  Speaking of The Magnificent Seven, Dern and Pare are awesome.  They act very much like post-nuke versions of Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen and they have a lot of chemistry together.

It’s not perfect though.  Some of the movie looks unfinished.  There are long scenes of cars driving while poorly-dubbed, exposition-heavy dialogue drones over the soundtrack.  Some of it looks cheap too, especially the scenes inside the desolate city. 

What World Gone Wild lacks in polish, it makes up for in charm.  The action is competently handled by TV vet Lee H. Katzin.  The battle scenes are pretty cool and there are enough novel death scenes (like the death by exploding moonshine still) to keep you thoroughly entertained.  I mean how can you not love a movie in which Dern sharpens a hubcap and uses it as a deadly Frisbee? 

The post-apocalypse movies of the ‘80s were basically the westerns of their day.  Part of the fun is seeing the way the filmmakers update the timeless western clichés of yesteryear and relocate them in a futuristic setting.  (Instead of cowboys circling the wagons on the plain, our heroes circle the cars in a junkyard.)  It’s no Seven Samurai, or The Magnificent Seven, or heck Battle Beyond the Stars even, but World Gone Wild should fit the bill for any fan of the post-nuke genre.

Dern, naturally gets all the best lines like, “Does Pinocchio have a wooden dick?”