The star of this film " Warlords " is suppose to be David Carradine, (Kung-Fu) but I wonder if he regrets it? I have not seen a movie this bad since 'Blair Witch.' The film is directed by Fred Ray who claims to know his craft. Not so. Not after this poor offering. The premise is of a post apocalyptic world where Dow, the hero (Carradine) wonders the land in search of his long lost wife. With him as a companion of sorts is a mutant head in a box which talks, constantly complains and makes snide remarks. Joining Dow is Danny (Dawn Wildsmith) a renegade woman who is constantly firing her guns and rifles, but can't seem to hit anything. Sid Haig plays 'The Warlord' who with his menagerie of bare-breasted women, is as menacing as a loose tooth. The warlord plans on recruiting a mutant army with the help of Ross Hagen as Beaumont, Fox Harris as the double crossing Colonel Cox and Robert Quarry as Dr. Mathers a veterinarian. You might consider watching this film if you are totally bored out of your mind, which is what will happen to your head if you finish it. To say this film is bad is an understatement. The question remains, why did a fine actor like David Carradine do this film? It has got to be the worse movie of his career. *
7 Reviews
Pretty Darn Good "B" Movie IMHO
mikecanmaybee5 December 2019
David (Caine) Carradine actually come's out of his usual truculent shell for a couple of scenes and with the help of the ever dependable Sig Haig, Fox Harris and Robert (Count Yorga) Quarry make a rather fun movie. Dawn Wildsmith, who play's Danny the leading lady, is a little off kilter in some of the early scenes, but I can't help believe that this could have been corrected by a little intervention on director Fred Olin Ray's part.
The film does bog down a bit at about the hour mark but picks up for a great, if not predictable, ending. Great bad guys and a bunch of pretty ladies with something quite different in the back pack make for a winner.
The film does bog down a bit at about the hour mark but picks up for a great, if not predictable, ending. Great bad guys and a bunch of pretty ladies with something quite different in the back pack make for a winner.
Almost So Bad It's Good
jaratcli27 January 2006
Warning: Spoilers
Yeah, it's dreadful. If you see it in a video store, there will usually be some empty space on either side - the nearby movies have subtly scootched themselves over, for fear this movie is contagious.
My favorite bit was the "mutants" who have become dependent on radium in the atmosphere. Therefore, they have to wear gas masks with _radium in them_ in order to breathe. The fact that this allows the hero to kill the same three guys over and over again is purely coincidental, I'm sure. I can just imagine the director talking to these guys: "OK, after you get shot, we'll pan away for a second. Run around the tent and attack again. Then go the other way. It'll be great"
It's also rather amusing to note that, while civilization seems to have completely collapsed, silicone breast implant technology seems to have survived intact. Either that, or it's an effect of the radiation.
My favorite bit was the "mutants" who have become dependent on radium in the atmosphere. Therefore, they have to wear gas masks with _radium in them_ in order to breathe. The fact that this allows the hero to kill the same three guys over and over again is purely coincidental, I'm sure. I can just imagine the director talking to these guys: "OK, after you get shot, we'll pan away for a second. Run around the tent and attack again. Then go the other way. It'll be great"
It's also rather amusing to note that, while civilization seems to have completely collapsed, silicone breast implant technology seems to have survived intact. Either that, or it's an effect of the radiation.
Endless car chases, a hand-puppet mutant, and David Carradine Fred Olen Ray strikes again
silentgpaleo1 June 2000
I sure hope the actors working in Fred Olen Ray's films are having fun when they're making them. Because we, the viewer, sometimes have no fun at all.
Enter WARLORDS. Some sort of MAD MAX-inspired cheese that has really little point(except for blowing up a few cars, and displaying some of the cheapest effects since GHOULIES), WARLORDS is insulting to everyone's intelligence. Anyone who finds this entertaining should go back to the hospital, 'cause you've gotta be sick to like this.
Dawn Wildsmith, once married to Fred Olen Ray, is the damsel in distress, Sid Haig is the bad guy, there is bad chase music, a mutant sidekick, and caves. What Fred Olen Ray movie would be complete without some cave footage(perhaps he is homaging EEGAH?)
WARLORDS is probably no worse than all the other films that Fred Olen Ray directed that year, but this is hardly bragging rights. When the measuring stick is this short, what's the point in playing at all?
Enter WARLORDS. Some sort of MAD MAX-inspired cheese that has really little point(except for blowing up a few cars, and displaying some of the cheapest effects since GHOULIES), WARLORDS is insulting to everyone's intelligence. Anyone who finds this entertaining should go back to the hospital, 'cause you've gotta be sick to like this.
Dawn Wildsmith, once married to Fred Olen Ray, is the damsel in distress, Sid Haig is the bad guy, there is bad chase music, a mutant sidekick, and caves. What Fred Olen Ray movie would be complete without some cave footage(perhaps he is homaging EEGAH?)
WARLORDS is probably no worse than all the other films that Fred Olen Ray directed that year, but this is hardly bragging rights. When the measuring stick is this short, what's the point in playing at all?
brainless rubbish
greenflea212 January 2007
Warning: Spoilers
Surely someone like David Carradine would be smart enough to getting involved in this low budget rubbish. This movie is the pits, low budget, daft story-line, a puppet mutant and a rip off Mad Max two. It has a interesting side story, of an army officer who comes a likely Allie of the Heroes in this movie. For someone who is a high ranking army officer, he seems to be a imbecile who couldn't even run a ant farm, let along an army. Interesting at the start, it shows him coming out of what appears to be a white van, than a underground bunker. Why is he alone, wouldn't there been other soldiers with him. Later he shows up, appearing to have live in a desert for years, yet his uniform is in good shape, like it been iron the night before, and chances it was, its not even dirty or ragged for someone who sleeping in the desert for years.
There is many boobs, even with the opening scenes of two babes been chase by bandits over the desert, when they catch them, rip off their tops, revealing their boobs. There is another sense, with the warlord, were it appears one of the bandits is push into the front of the camera by one of the film crew.
I only watch half the movie, when the puppet shows up, i had enough of this and switch it off in disgust, well i really fast forward to see if there was anything Elsa worth worthing. There wasn't.
Don't watch this movie, watching an ant crawling up the wall would be far better waste of time, than watching this brain dead, low budget, crap feast.
There is many boobs, even with the opening scenes of two babes been chase by bandits over the desert, when they catch them, rip off their tops, revealing their boobs. There is another sense, with the warlord, were it appears one of the bandits is push into the front of the camera by one of the film crew.
I only watch half the movie, when the puppet shows up, i had enough of this and switch it off in disgust, well i really fast forward to see if there was anything Elsa worth worthing. There wasn't.
Don't watch this movie, watching an ant crawling up the wall would be far better waste of time, than watching this brain dead, low budget, crap feast.
A horrendously awful late 80's post-nuke end-of-the-world sci-fi atrocity
Woodyanders15 January 2007
Warning: Spoilers
Leave it to the unsparingly pathetic Fred Olen Ray to spit out one of the worst, most hideously drab and annoying two-cent post-nuke sci-fi action snorefests to ever feebly limp its way across your TV screen. A haggard, burnt-out, desperate hack actor for hire David Carradine assumes stoically rugged heroic duties as Dow, a cranky DNA-enhanced synthetic super warrior who wanders the arid, infertile nuclear fallout devastated desert lugging around Ammo, a gnarled, prune-like malformed talking head with spindly arms, a mouth full of snaggle teeth, and constantly rolling googly eyes who's forever ripping into Dow with an endless barrage of tiresomely witless caustic quips (Ammo's trebly, piercing tenor whine is pure murder on the ears). You see, Dow wants to get both his hot honey wife (slinky minx Brinke Stevens) and a cowed, spineless gene-splicing scientist (meek Robert Quarry) back from the wicked, megalomaniacal the Warlord (grandly overplayed with trademark leering, lip-smacking élan by Sid Haig, who also served as 2nd unit director), a sleazy gun-running greedy mercenary (gravel-voiced Ross Hagen, who in better days directed the 70's grindhouse hoot "The Glove"), and the Warlord's loyal army of disfigured mutants (actually just a bunch of extras in tattered rags and dimestore gas masks). Dow's aided on his brave mission by profoundly unappealing smartaleck distaff survivalist Danny (an insufferably peevish Dawn Wildsmith, Fred's buxom, blowzy redhead former real-life wife) and Colonel Cox ("Repo Man" 's Fox Harris doing his standard flaky in-his-own-singular-orbit shtick), who's an incessantly jabbering bicycle-carrying fruitcake.
This is your characteristically substandard by-the-numbers dreadful Fred Olen Ray bilge, replete with flat, graceless cinematography, a grindingly trite cookie cutter script, a noisy, blaring, guitar-screeching trash-rock score, lousy sarcastic dialogue ("Would you slow down, I'm gonna be sick!," a captured lass yells to her abductors in a speeding automobile), lethargic pacing, slackly staged action (mostly crummy shoot-outs, uninspired car chases, and tired hand-to-hand fisticuffs, with a few brightly exploding cars saved for the pitifully unexciting "let's blow what's left of the paltry budget" last reel finale), deeply irritating and hopelessly unfunny sardonic, insult-laden rat-a-tat-tat banter between Dow and Danny, a light sprinkling of gratuitous nudity (perpetually topless B-picture starlets Michelle Bauer and Debra Lamb briefly appear so their shirts can get torn off to expose their bare breasts), no semblance of style, facility or distinctive individual flair to be discerned from the nondescript direction, disconcertingly over-familiar Bronson Canyon locations (Al Adamson's old shooting grounds, no less), slipshod editing, cheap, not-convincing-for-a-second (way less then) special effects (the cheesy matte painting at the start of the film is atrocious, while the laughable, rubbery phony puppet noggin Ammo takes the booby prize), and the sad, spirit-deflating sight of watching a handful of weary, washed-out veteran thespians embarrass themselves royally for the sake of a quick, easy paycheck. So bad it's not even enjoyable on a something-for-nothing schlock movie level, this unbearably talky, hardly-any-story, skimpy-on-action, but heavy-on-tedium low-budget loser like nuclear war itself should be avoided at all costs.
This is your characteristically substandard by-the-numbers dreadful Fred Olen Ray bilge, replete with flat, graceless cinematography, a grindingly trite cookie cutter script, a noisy, blaring, guitar-screeching trash-rock score, lousy sarcastic dialogue ("Would you slow down, I'm gonna be sick!," a captured lass yells to her abductors in a speeding automobile), lethargic pacing, slackly staged action (mostly crummy shoot-outs, uninspired car chases, and tired hand-to-hand fisticuffs, with a few brightly exploding cars saved for the pitifully unexciting "let's blow what's left of the paltry budget" last reel finale), deeply irritating and hopelessly unfunny sardonic, insult-laden rat-a-tat-tat banter between Dow and Danny, a light sprinkling of gratuitous nudity (perpetually topless B-picture starlets Michelle Bauer and Debra Lamb briefly appear so their shirts can get torn off to expose their bare breasts), no semblance of style, facility or distinctive individual flair to be discerned from the nondescript direction, disconcertingly over-familiar Bronson Canyon locations (Al Adamson's old shooting grounds, no less), slipshod editing, cheap, not-convincing-for-a-second (way less then) special effects (the cheesy matte painting at the start of the film is atrocious, while the laughable, rubbery phony puppet noggin Ammo takes the booby prize), and the sad, spirit-deflating sight of watching a handful of weary, washed-out veteran thespians embarrass themselves royally for the sake of a quick, easy paycheck. So bad it's not even enjoyable on a something-for-nothing schlock movie level, this unbearably talky, hardly-any-story, skimpy-on-action, but heavy-on-tedium low-budget loser like nuclear war itself should be avoided at all costs.
Wildsmith is wild
lor_3 May 2023
My review was written in October 1989 after watching the movie on Vidmark video cassette.
Yet another "Mad Max"-styled entry, "Warlords" benefits from a tongue-in-cheek approach but is still of only limited interest to sci-fi completists.
Pic is set after a nuclear war during an uprising by mutants. David Carradine portrays a cloned vesion of a famous hero, searching for his wife (Brinke Stevens) who's in he clutches of a powerful warlord (Sid Haig).
Taking the familiar sparring twosome trek of films ranging from "Soldier Blue" to "Spacehunter", Carradine reluctantly teams up with tough babe Danny (Dawn Wildsmith, in one of her best, earthiest screen roles to date). Later they're joined by nutty Colonel Cox (the late Fox Harris), In pic's silliest routine, Carradine converses with Ammo, his little talking mascot, played by a childish puppet.
Dim plo line concerning cloning experiments and warlord Haig's true identity fails to rouse much interest. Main fun is watching Wildsmith's antics as she makes the most of Scott Ressler's putdown dialog. Victoria Sellers, daughter of Peter Sellers and Britt Ekland, makes an unimpressive film debut as a girl Wildsmith abandons in the desert.
Tech credits are extremely modest.
Yet another "Mad Max"-styled entry, "Warlords" benefits from a tongue-in-cheek approach but is still of only limited interest to sci-fi completists.
Pic is set after a nuclear war during an uprising by mutants. David Carradine portrays a cloned vesion of a famous hero, searching for his wife (Brinke Stevens) who's in he clutches of a powerful warlord (Sid Haig).
Taking the familiar sparring twosome trek of films ranging from "Soldier Blue" to "Spacehunter", Carradine reluctantly teams up with tough babe Danny (Dawn Wildsmith, in one of her best, earthiest screen roles to date). Later they're joined by nutty Colonel Cox (the late Fox Harris), In pic's silliest routine, Carradine converses with Ammo, his little talking mascot, played by a childish puppet.
Dim plo line concerning cloning experiments and warlord Haig's true identity fails to rouse much interest. Main fun is watching Wildsmith's antics as she makes the most of Scott Ressler's putdown dialog. Victoria Sellers, daughter of Peter Sellers and Britt Ekland, makes an unimpressive film debut as a girl Wildsmith abandons in the desert.
Tech credits are extremely modest.
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