Daily Grindhouse | [TRIPLE-FEATURE!] A SHORT TRIP THROUGH BRONXPLOITATION!

Bronxploitation is a short-lived genre that I hope will rise again. It came about somewhere in the early 1980s, with the releases of 1979’s THE WARRIORS and 1981’s ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. THE WARRIORS had immediate cultural impact and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK was a box-office hit, plus I can almost guarantee the makers of the films that constitute the Bronxploitation genre were very much attuned to what Walter Hill and John Carpenter were up to. Of course, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK is more of a Manhattan thing than a Bronx thing, but tonally, it is right where Bronxploitation lives. Though I would like to think that 1979’s THE WANDERERS had something to do with the movement, it didn’t seem to reach people as much as it could have. That movie is still discovering fans. (Go be one of them!) It’s also possible that 1981’s FORT APACHE, THE BRONX was an influence. That one did star Paul Newman, after all.

The Bronx is a rough-and-tumble borough, ideally stationed for settings of dystopian chaos and majestic shit-kicking. Manhattan is New York’s movie star. You can take your swings at it, just not in the face. Brooklyn absolutely has a toughness, but it’s more of a high-end toughness, when we are speaking in cinematic terms. Queens doesn’t have the same appeal, somehow, even though that’s where Spider-Man hails from. I will concede Staten Island is fucking terrifying, but that hasn’t made it to movies so far. No other borough has the kind of flair that The Bronx has.

It’s there that Bronxploitation resides. Spurred on by the aforementioned American films, Italy brought us their own brilliantly distorted view, in much the way that they took on traditionally American genre films with their “spaghetti” Westerns. The pivotal auteur there was of course Sergio Leone. Just as Leone’s vision defined the “spaghetti” Western, so did Enzo G. Castellari with the Bronxploitation film.

1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS (1982)

Yes! Kings! Fred Williamson was for many years a favored star player for the great Italian exploitation filmmaker Enzo G. Castellari, who’s kind of a junkyard Howard Hawks. I mean that in the fondest sense. Castellari — who is still around! — was not as much a genre innovator as a master of the knock-off. Films like HIGH CRIME (made shortly after THE FRENCH CONNECTION), THE LAST SHARK (made several years after JAWS), and THE INGLORIOUS BASTARDS (made quite a long time after THE DIRTY DOZEN) were very far from the first of their kind, but more fun to watch than many of the more highly-regarded films of the same type. In other words, Enzo Castellari is that guy who’s consistently late to the party, but once he shows up, things are gonna get funky.

Maybe nowhere is that clearer than here. 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS, as you can probably guess from the title, owes everything to two American films, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and THE WARRIORS. It’s low-key hilarious to me that while John Carpenter in 1981 foresaw a hellish future for 1997, Enzo Castellari was even less optimistic, and his 1982 post-apocalyptic dystopian New York was set even sooner, in 1990. EIGHT YEARS IN THE FUTURE. In this film, Fred Williamson plays the Isaac Hayes “Duke Of New York” warlord analogue, but he’s named “The Ogre” — another funny thing about the film is that there is a character named “The Hammer” but he’s played by Vic Morrow, not Fred Williamson. Just one of life’s funny little ironies.

The leading man of 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS is named “Trash” and he is played by a male model named Marco Di Gregorio, or Mark Gregory as he’s billed here. Mark Gregory, to phrase it politically, is not a Kurt Russell type. He’s not even a Michael Beck type. The only quality he has in common with the protagonists of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and THE WARRIORS is an affinity for tight clothing. You might not expect Mark Gregory to be the leader of a hero gang to look at him, but here we are.

The Castellari future-pictures — this, THE NEW BARBARIANS, and ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX (this film’s semi-sequel) — have a shameless, hyper-camp Euro-trash aesthetic that is so absurd it’s almost surreal. It’s like Castellari was inspired by only the very kookiest, most instantly-dated aspects of the films that influenced these ones. But for that reason, they’re midnight-movie manna, some of the most fun you can have in the wee hours with your pants buckled.

ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX (1983)

Here’s the aforementioned sequel to 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS, in which Mark Gregory returns as “Trash,” you’ll be happy to know. Fred Williamson sat this one out, for whatever reason, and Vic Morrow did not make a return appearance, for an unfortunately notorious reason, but salvation arrives in the form of Henry Silva, the ne plus ultra of wackadoo character actors, who plays a character named “Floyd Wangler,” which is just a perfectly bizarre name for a Henry Silva character. I look forward to revisiting this film, or even to seeing it for the first time, since it’s easy to confuse THE BRONX WARRIORS, ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX, and THE NEW BARBARIANS with each other. These three films share a director, and various cast members, and an oddball futuristic setting, and all three have been renamed so many times that it’s no wonder they fog over the windshield of the brain. Honestly, they all feel like a really weird dream I once had. Fred Williamson, naked ladies, tigers, skeletons, explosions, the Bronx, this is pretty much the contents of my conscious and unconscious mind anyway.

And by the way, having been born in the Bronx, it goes without saying that there’s almost nothing recognizably genuine about the setting of any of these films, which are extremely Italian but not in any way Italian-American. The Jackie Chan film RUMBLE IN THE BRONX feels more authentic, and that one had snowy mountains in it.

THE NEW BARBARIANS (1983)

Also known as WARRIORS OF THE WASTELAND, this movie to me is easily confused with 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS and ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX, since they all came out within a year or so of each other, along with some of the other reasons I mentioned.

Here Fred Williamson is back to being a full-on hero. George Eastman, who was so good in Mario Bava’s RABID DOGS and who also appears in 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS, plays a villain. That’s unfortunate for him, since the villains wear super-embarrassing armor that makes them look like a cross between the Spaceballs and certain brands of vibrators. And the vehicles they drive are even more embarrassing, if you can believe it. Really, you may need to see this one for yourselves. Then you’ll see how confusing this movie can be. I mean sexually!

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Jon Abrams

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Jon Abrams is a New York-based writer, cartoonist, and committed cinemaniac whose complete work and credits can be found at his site, Demon’s Resume. You can contact him on Twitter as @JonZilla___.

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