It would be a lie to say this film was selected purely on its title. The cover and the trailer both suggested that there was a highly enjoyable Mad Max 2 rip-off to be experienced. The expectations were set to “all the violence, all the post-apocalyptic wasteland couture, but with none of the plot getting in the way”. When it became readily apparent that it was an English script performed by a mostly monolingual Italian cast the joy and hope that this was going to be cinematic mayhem, unfettered by any artistic responsibility, was just added to. With the bar set that low, how could we possibly be disappointed?
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Exterminators Of The Year 3000 (1983)
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The fundamentals of this film are explained within the first 5 minutes, in one of the greatest displays of “show, don’t tell” exposition in cinema that clearly demonstrates the skill found within this work. Tomatoes have started attacking, and killing, people all over America. The police and the army have failed to stop them, thus the country is facing Tomatogeddon. The Pentagon has recruited Mason Dixie (David Miller) to lead a team of utterly improbable agents (Sam Smith (Gary Smith), a disguise expert, Greg Colburn (Steve Cates), scuba diver, Gretta Attenbaum (Benita Barton) Olympic swimmer, and Wilbur Finletter (Stephen Peace), parachute trooper) who team up and then head their own ways to provide comic asides in a variety of unlikely locations.
StarCrash is a 1978 space opera written and directed by Italian filmmaker Luigi Cozzi, and you’ll work out within the first two minutes that this is a blatant Star Wars cash-in. It was filmed in and around Rome, using an extensively Italian cast and crew, but it’s technically an American movie because the money came from the Wachsberger Brothers, and Roger Corman was the distributor. Today we would probably call it a Mockbuster, but, unlike everything churned out by companies like Asylum, this is actually quite a fun watch.
Trash or Treasure 