Il giustiziere del Bronx

The Bronx Executioner is truly an hypnotic experience. There is something mesmerising about the film's sheer lack of plot, continuity and credibility. Viewers searching for an intelligent sci-fi thriller should look elsewhere. However, if you enjoy car crash cinema, then this is the film for you! One of the most charming things about this movie is the fact that it is entirely unapologetic about making absolutely no sense.

This is signalled from the very first sequence in which an ancient looking computer bleeps. For about 2 minutes. From there we get a confusing voice-over about a trainee sheriff, James, and warring humanoids and androids. Before you can say, "what the?", our stony faced trainee has been given a sheriff's badge - after completing an obstacle course and doing a few chin-ups.

The film then shifts almost entirely away from James, to the leader of the humanoids, Dakar. Dakar spends most of the film driving around in his jeep, screaming incoherently into his walkie talkie. When Dakar realises that Margie is behind the rape and murder of his girlfriend, he finally puts the damn walkie talkie away and joins forces with James to bring Margie down.

The characters of Dakar and Margie are truly hilarious. Dakar looks like a WWE escapee, while Margie runs around in a red leather dress and at one stage sports a truly fetching peroxide blonde mullet. Both actors are fabulously awful. In all fairness, lines like "the only thing I love is death" and "why do those damn androids hate us so much?" really didn't give them much to work with.

Other moments or jaw dropping incompetence include the rape of Dakar's girlfriend, who is apparently violated in 5 seconds while fully clothed and a sub-plot involving killer dogs and green lights on a computer monitor that makes no sense whatsoever.

This film is definitely not for everyone, but fans of camp 80s Euro-action films or car crash cinema could do a lot worse than spending 90 minutes of their time on "The Bronx Executioner".

Being some one who likes to catch a movie that features Woody Strode I decided to get this movie out. Well I could be forgiven for thinking that this was a sequel to THE FINAL EXECUTIONER (1984) that featured William Mang and Harrison Muller and also Margit Evelyn Newton. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085540/ The reason for this looking to like a sequel is because this movie , THE BRONX ECCUTIONER seems to start where THE FINAL EXECUTIONER finishes. But thats not the case at all ! What it is , is actually is footage from THE FINAL EXCECUTIONER has been put into this movie. I have to admit that this is pretty clever how they did it. If someone never saw THE FINAL EXCECUTIONER they probably wouldn't notice it. This in part is due to the storyline being pretty basic and confusing at times. Also with the dubbing you lose a bit of the plot too.

When The Final Excecutioner was released when Woody Strode would have been about 69 or 70 years old. The Bronx Excecutioner was released when Woody was 75 years old. But as I mentioned the footage was taken from The Final Excecutioner so Woody Strode didn't actually take part in this movie in actual terms. Never mind !

The scene where Woody Strode takes on some guys is fairly good and I have to say that for a man of his age probably 69 at the time , Woody could do all of the stuff and go through the motions. He also did his own stunts in the film too. I have to mention again that it was pretty clever how they inserted Woody Strode into the film but thats the main reason that this movie has any sort of worth. Other than that well there is some passable action and a story line thats pretty much senseless but with an occasional surprise . But besides that I have to say that I'd be flat out trying to find anything else good about this film.

I spotted this gem while browsing the dollar isle at my local discount grocery store. It was between some Smurf air fresheners left over from the 80's and an assortment of kitchen magnets that claimed to be guaranteed for life. After pondering the scenario under which one might possibly send a kitchen magnet back for repairs, I was enticed into picking up this DVD. I was surprised that given the captivating description of a battle between humans and "Robotic Replicants" in a future New York, the price would only be one dollar. "They must be crazy" I muttered, and dashed off to the cashier with my prize. All the way home I envisioned cyborg warriors clashing amidst blood and guts of the weaker humans as they dominated futuristic city landscapes littered with tell-tale trademarks of the once proud NYC. My dream was shattered in the opening scene and never recovered. After a barrage of stock footage that looked like it was designed to lure nerds into joining the audio-video club in high school, my senses were assaulted by what seemed to me to be a typical sunny day in The Big Apple complete with WTC shots and vacation-like panning of NYC architecture. Where were the futuristic landscapes? Shouldn't the city be an apocalyptic shell of itself? Just when I thought things couldn't seem further from the morbid vision of the future I was led to believe I would see, I was switched to a bad video of two guys running through some bushes with all the seriousness of a weekend paint ball tournament.

As the "plot" developed I began wondering if there was any possibility that Smurf air fresheners might one day come back in vogue and if perchance I may have purchased the wrong item. After trudging through scenes of bad actors doing what they do best ... acting badly, I realized that this movie may have been made simply to show off Margit Evelyn Newton's thighs as she sported her seemingly futuristic shiny leather suit. More bad acting was accentuated by action scenes that make Walker Texas Ranger fight scenes look like high-tech special effect wizardly. Then came one of the most grueling and monotonous scenes this side of an Andy Warhol film ... black man (is that really the most inventive name the writers could come up with?) begins training the new sheriff using such futuristic techniques as running through potato sacks and banging a pipe on a railing for what seemed like an eternity while spewing insults that wouldn't motivate a boy scout to rub two sticks together. On to the target practice scene where the new guy shoots at a slide show. More special effect pyrotechnics from the high school AV club!

Eventually I yawned my way through to the rape scene. Yes rape is still a crime in the future and robots are in on the act. For the first time the movie seems to want the viewers attention! Sure they have to resort to the gratuitous naked breast shot and "woman with lustful look of pleasure on her face" shot but after all they know what the public wants. Why would a grubby biker-robot want to rape a human woman? And why would a sexily clad female robot get her rocks off watching it? These and many other questions such as "How does one break a refrigerator magnet anyhow? Can a refrigerator magnet actually wear out?" kept rolling through my head as I stared blankly into the glowing screen before me. More scenes of guys using walkie-talkies that look like shoe boxes with lightning rods attached. Obviously at some point in the future miniaturization of electronic components becomes lame and everyone goes in for the retro look of the 50's. Suddenly everyone is running Willy-nilly through abandon factories with a lot of rusty machine stuff around. Rusty machine stuff is a must-have for any futuristic movie worth its salt so I guess the producers figured they might as well throw it in to take up time in the least expensive way.

The next scene involves bad robots behaving badly by watching a video tape of the rape scene again. Sort of a cyborg porno group type thing that gives Margit Evelyn Newton a reason to heave her breasts wanting and toss a few more "woman with lustful look of pleasure on her face" shots in ... just in case anyone was still watching. Hitch that to a scene of her undressing, then dressing for bed, then being undressed by a male robot, and you have about the most intense 2 minutes that this movie can pull off

... if you pardon the expression.

It never gets any better, bad gun fight scenes and poorly choreographed fight scenes pepper their way through this mish mash of cinematic slop until I was left begging for it to end and wishing I bought the refrigerator magnets.

A whiskey stream of consciousness review.

"Time to get busy" Nothing like a fade out into an android crotch. Not sure where this was filmed, but it looks more like a giant quarry outside an Italian villa more than a post-apocalypse Bronx, NY. Machine pistols, .22s, carbines, and nail guns galore! Never will you see more proficiency with the "spray and pray" MAC-10 than how head cyborg Shark uses it in this film. The amount of perfect technique and accuracy he displays with his machine pistol is another example of why we really need to prevent AI from becoming Skynet. By the way, you know you have genius-level creativity when the main baddie is named "Shark"! Woody Strode is pretty good as the intense sheriff of NY. Sadly, he is sorely misused in the film. Dakar (Alex Vitale) the sympathetic hulk of an android with a heart, is a cross between private Pyle and Lou Ferrigno with maybe a dash of "Raw Deal" Schwarzenegger. "You're only an android which is zero!" And the first credit at the films finish is for continuity! Bwahahaha! Ridiculous, almost like the director put it there to say "blame this one!" Continuity aside, how about the editing?! Looks like the editor may have also worked on Troll 2. Seriously. It shows. Could have used better effects and maybe a few gore shockers. Not the best "so bad it's good" film, but enjoyable enough. Especially with a dram of Wild Turkey Rare Breed! Cheers!

Why ?? Why ?? Why ?? This movie starts out bad and ends up bad. It is bad all around. The first 5 minutes of the movie is saturated with images... images of video editing equipment. This is followed by the stock footage Circle Line tour of New York complete with narration (notice the Queensborough bridge panoramic pole shot - classic). There is no reason to watch this movie .. unless it is late night and you can't sleep, or your are completely wasted and want to lose some more brain cells. If this is not enough for you, how about the addition of veteran movie actor Woody Stode (aka black man - in this movie thats what he is referred to) to improve the movie. WRONG !!! It only gets worse. Woody was a pro-football star in his days, too bad he was 70+ years old in this movie. Not only that, but he does his own stunts. I have not seen fight scenes this bad since I watched a Jean-Claude van Damme movie. Truly horrific action. Action so boring, you may want to break out the coffee to stay awake through them. This movie was so cheaply done that they could not even afford fake blood for the death scenes. The sound effects are horrible. The Atari 2600 had better and the soundtrack sounds like it was ripped from a bad porn movie. This movie is so boring, "Margie" actually watches a scene from the movie (Spaceballs - save me). So in that scene we are watching the actors watch their own movie. There are endless scenes of "Dakar" driving and whining on his 2-way radio. There is a 2-second fully-clothed rape scene. And no thats how long it actually lasts - 2 seconds. Incidentally, that is the scene that "Margie" watches later. There are 2 scenes which stand out in my mind - the training of the new sheriff (which involves "white man" shooting at a film projection on a wall) and the sheriff shooting through the castle at the end (think Wild Gunmen for the Nintendo). If you want to watch a better movie ... try just about anything. If you want to see a post apocalyptic Italian exploitation movie about New York .. watch 2019: After the Fall of New York.

-Celluloid Rehab