ALL SCI-FI

[Bogmeister]

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_____________________ Ravagers - Trailer


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Ravagers was one of a number of post-apocalyptic seventies films, like The Ultimate Warrior (75) which it most resembles, that sort of got lost in the shuffle and forgotten after the new breed of Road Warrior-styled films took over in the eighties.

This one is after a nuclear war (narrator and star Richard Harris simply refers to "disasters") and the titular characters are a select breed of survivors who move around like wolf packs, preying on others who are usually termed "flockers." Everything is dead or dying, illustrated by frequent shots of dead trees (The Road ain't got much on Ravagers)



The leader of one particular band of Ravagers (played by seventies bad guy Anthony James) gets on the bad side of the main character, Falk (Harris), after his band rapes and kills Falk's woman, a young, gentle blonde (Alana Hamilton).

Falk gets his revenge by sneaking up and killing the bad guy's brother, but from then on Falk is on the run. He runs across an old, addled sergeant (Art Carney) holed up in a missile silo base and then finds another woman (model and then-wife-of Harris, Ann Turkel) at a small cave settlement.

Then they're off to perhaps the most civilized settlement, run by Ernest Borgnine on a derelict cruise ship. Woody Strode also shows up here as one of Borgnine's men. But, the Ravager band is not far behind.



This has some interesting depictions of life-after-civilization breaks down (based on a novel Path to Savagery by Robert Edmond Alter), but it's saddled by a very slow pace. It becomes very predictable as the scenes shift from Falk to the Ravagers trudging through the desolation and back again.

It also got off on the wrong foot with me during the credits, set against a background of a ruined city. I'm pretty sure this was lifted from Battle For the Planet of the Apes (1973) and just looks fake to me, like a small model of a city. I still remember my reaction to it when I saw this in a theater.

BoG's Score: 5 out of 10


BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[ralfy]

I remember one scene where the protagonist finds some with corn in a barn, and then later meets the old man with lots of MREs in a bunker.