Land of Doom (1985)

(On Cable TV, November 2020) Looking at the way 2020 is unfolding, with people making the worst possible decisions based on crackpot theories and self-harming ideology, there’s an argument to be made that terrible post-apocalyptic movies may be one of the few things dissuading us from willingly triggering said apocalypse. I mean, if life after the big catastrophe is going to be so bland and awful as Land of Doom, we should keep modern civilization going as long as we can. A big dump of familiar clichés, it’s a film with very few ideas and no visible scruples at stealing from other movies. Set in the generic desert, it features a man fighting for honour, justice and the predictable secret oasis of survivors. While, at first, Land of Doom seems to be leaning toward a female protagonist (Deborah Rennard), that idea is eventually abandoned in favour of supporting the male intruder (Garrick Dowhen), who quickly becomes the real main character of the film. Generic battles and plot points quickly follow, never made any more compelling through any kind of originality: It’s all punk gangs throughout. Dialogue is dull, acting is bad, directing is unimpressive, production values trend toward the low-budget end, and everything that the film does brings to mind the much superior Mad Max movies or, for that matter, any random half-dozen post-apocalyptic movies of the time. Hey everyone, let’s take lessons from terrible movies: Let’s make it through the current bad patch and avoid the apocalypse, because I’d hate to live in a full-blown cliché.