★★★
“Many Mad Maxines.”
This one may be the origin of the meme, “After the apocalypse, food, water and gasoline are in short supply – but hair-spray will still be plentiful.” For there’s no denying the absolute silliness of this slab of post-apocalyptic nonsense. But it’s still imaginative and energetic enough that my interest was largely sustained. We’re apparently long enough after World War III for it all to have become the stuff of almost-forgotten legend. In the aftermath, the world is now occupied by roaming bands, mostly of men. However, certain women are gifted with special powers, and they have banded together into the titular group, under their reverend mother, and are feared by most as witches.
After her settlement is attacked by Mikal (Wagner, looking like a low-rent Chuck Norris), and her brother killed, Marya (Johnson) hits the road, seeking revenge. She meets two members of the Sisterhood, Alee (Holden) and Vera (Patrick), and when they discover Marya’s gift, the ability to communicate with her pet hawk, they allow her to join them. Vera is abducted by Mikal, who then heads off to add her to the collection of Sisterhood members, being held in one of the few remaining cities. Alee and Marya follow, until a shortcut into the forbidden zone of radiation and mutants lets them stumble across a pre-apocalypse arms dump. Now armed with automatic weapons and a tank (!), they are thoroughly well-equipped, first to rescue Vera, and then storm the city and liberate the rest of their sisters.
Made in 1988, the debt this owes to the Mad Max trilogy (which had finished with Beyond Thunderdome, three years earlier) is apparent to the point of being blatant. There’s a lot of whizzing around in a quarry, with giant fireballs going off just to the side of the target. For, while it’s remarkable the heroines are able immediately to drive their tank, their talents clearly do not extend to aiming the guns accurately. This is all highly mockable, not least that it’s apparently set in the far-distant future of… er, the year 2021. Yet those involved play it all entirely straight, and eventually I found this seriousness rubbing off on me. There were occasional moments which, if not making me go “Wow!”, did extract a somewhat-impressed “Huh.”.
Director Santiago should be well-known to readers here, having also given us Angel Fist and The Muthers; he brings much the same combination of female empowerment and exploitation here. Because, for all the strong female characters, they also seem to spent a inordinate amount of time either chained up or getting their tops ripped open – and, occasionally, both. But Holden and Johnson manage to rise above the low-rent production values with their dignity intact – even if nothing remotely like the video sleeve is to be found in this one! By the admittedly low standards of the genre, this is likely well-above average. And we only have to wait two years for it all to come to pass…
Dir: Cirio H. Santiago
Star: Rebecca Holden, Chuck Wagner, Lynn-Holly Johnson, Barbara Patrick