THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR (1975)

Robert Clouse's 1975 post-Apocalyptic adventure film, The Ultimate Warrior, is not particularly well-remembered or well-regarded, but I first saw it on the CBS Late Movie in the late Seventies, and liked it quite a bit - and still do. Starring Yul Brynner (Westworld) and Max von Sydow (Flash Gordon), it is essentially a Western in sci-fi drag, filmed entirely on backlot city streets on a low budget. Still, coming four years before Mad Max, its urban setting makes a nice difference from the usual deserts and  wastelands of the majority of post-Armageddon genre efforts, and I've always had an affection for the film.

It is the year 2012, and war and plague have devastated the world and civilization has crumbled. Among the ruins of New York City, groups of survivors have banded together within walled-off city blocks and attempt to carve out some sort of life for themselves. Some groups are peaceful, clinging to the tattered remnants of civilized life, while others are aggressive, violent scavengers. One of the peaceful groups is The Commune, led by a man known as the Baron (von Sydow). Nearby is another band of survivors led by the brutal, red-haired Carrot (the always-awesome William Smith). One day, a bare-chested, bald man appears on the streets between the two groups, standing unmoving in the same spot for hours. Apparently this behavior is a recognized way of applying for a job, because the Baron believes that the man is a fighter entertaining bids for his services.

The Baron leads a delegation to try and recruit the man, a mercenary called Carson (Brynner, still convincingly badass at age 55). At first, Carson appears disinterested in the Baron's offer, but when the delegation is attacked by a group of Carrot's marauders, Carson steps in to help, proving himself adept with a knife. The Baron and the surviving members of his group, accompanied by Carson, retreat to the safety of their barricaded neighborhood compound.

Once introduced to the members of the Commune, Carson is given clothing and food and sits down to discuss his services with the Baron. When asked why he agreed to join them, Carson admits that it was because the Baron had mentioned that he possessed a supply of cigars! Eventually, the Baron reveals his true reason for recruiting the mercenary. The constant raids from Carrot's group and the rapidly diminishing food supply has convinced him that the only hope for the future is to get select members of his group - including his pregnant daughter Melinda (Joanna Miles) and green-thumbed rooftop farmer Cal (played by Richard Kelton, who portrayed a vegetable himself as Ficus on Quark) - out of the city. He wants Carson to lead and protect them as they make their way to an island off the coast of North Carolina with a supply of Cal's hybrid seeds.

Ultimately, only Carson and Melinda make it out of the compound, and are pursued through the city's abandoned subways by Carrot and his raiders... leading to a final battle to the death between the mercenary and the red-haired scavenger.

Robert Clouse is a competent director of B-action movies, having helmed films like Darker Than Amber with Rod Taylor (and William Smith) and The Amsterdam Kill with Robert Mitchum. But his greatest success was directing Bruce Lee's only Hollywood-financed film, Enter The Dragon. He spent most of his career trying to recreate that success with a slew of drive-in chop-socky films starring Jim Kelly, Jackie Chan, Joe Lewis and Cynthia Rothrock. In the case of The Ultimate Warrior, he not only directed but wrote the screenplay, which, as noted above, is pretty much a straightforward Western plot.

Although not a great movie, Clouse makes good use of the Warner Brothers backlot city streets (which have been appropriately "distressed") and stages the fight scenes fairly well. Brynner - and his stunt double - are convincingly tough and quick with a knife, and Smith always makes a great, physically menacing villain. In fact, the cast is uniformly good, with everyone delivering solid, professional performances. Special effects are minimal - shots of the "abandoned" city/aftermath world are conveyed by still photographs of empty streets and one or two static matte paintings.

As a pre-Mad Max/Road Warrior/Escape From New York "aftermath" flick, The Ultimate Warrior is refreshingly free of "punk" haircuts and S&M fashions, and presents a somewhat more believable world than most of the post-Apocalypse actioners that came along in the 80s. The backlot filming does give the movie a slightly claustrophobic/artificial feel, but Clouse manages to keep things moving along a decent clip, and Brynner's charisma holds it all together.

A couple years ago, Warner Brothers released it on DVD as a Best Buy exclusive, paired with the extraordinarily goofy, 1967 "yellow peril" flick Battle Beneath the Earth. The DVD has no extra features, but does sport a very decent, 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. The disc is still available for less than twenty bucks, at Amazon: Battle Beneath the Earth/The Ultimate Warrior