DUNE WARRIORS (1991)

I have a strong affinity for post-apocalyptic cinema. I blame this on the 1980’s R-rated movies of my youth such as THE ROAD WARRIOR (1982), ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981) and various other types of after-the-bomb fantastic cinema of that benighted decade. I enjoy these kinds of movies so much that even the weakest and most poorly written variations on this theme is something that I can get a kick out of. Case in point, there is a Blu-ray of the film DUNE WARRIORS  (1991). Why is an eternal mystery that I need never have answered. I'm just going to assume that all the other better films of this subgenre have already been put out on Blu-ray and we're just working our way through the bottom of the barrel examples now. That's not to say that this is a completely bad movie. I mean - it's not very good, but it has enough points of interest and it’s energetic enough to keep you entertained for its meager 90-minute running time.

It is little more than an unattributed remake of Kurosawa’s SEVEN SAMURAI (1954). It follows the plotline of that classic film slavish with the only real change being shortening it down considerably. This trimming of story results in fewer fighters to the point that we only have five Warriors instead of the classic seven. Budgets being what they generally are for these kinds of shot-in-the-Philippines mini-epics I’m surprised there weren’t just four. One of the warriors is an older man who's clearly looking for revenge on the head bad guy terrorizing the town looking for mercenary help. Played by David Carradine he gives the film's best performance even it's obvious he finds the entire affair pretty silly. But, Carradine could have made three of these films in a month and still be the freshest thing onscreen. The rest of the cast ranges from amateur level to competent-but-inexperienced meaning that the few times this reliable tale nearly works it usually gets undermined by a bad line reading. But still, the film isn’t awful and rarely dull so it serves as a mid-range entry. Not sure why it’s on Blu-Ray but I’m glad that is how I got to see it.