AMERICA 3000 (1986)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, sociological*

Post-apocalyptic stories are often more concerned with creating new weird worlds than with expressing regret about losing the old familiar world. Every once in a while, though, I've encountered a post-apoc story in which the creators seem almost desperate to bring back the old world, even to the extent of duplicating the same mistakes that created the catastrophe.

Not since 1956's WORLD WITHOUT END have I seen an after-disaster flick so cavalier about the  mistakes of the past. True, writer-director David Engelbach didn't try to create any radical new cultures. AMERICA 3000 focuses on a tribe of Amazons who have revolted against male authority, implicitly because of some nuclear disaster. The Amazons tyrannize men, using them either as slaves or as brood-stallions, and yet for some reason the women maintain some reverence for the lost leader of earlier ages, the "Prezzi-dent."

"Prezzi-dent" is one of Engelbach's more bearable verbal concoctions, while the most of the rest are pretty stupd. "Neggy" means "negative," "the regs" mean "regulations," and so on. One young Amazon Vena is scheduled to lay with a stud named Korvis, but he breaks away from the Amazon camp and heads for the hills with a comic-relief friend. They stumble upon an old military bunker and figure out how to use ancient weapons to re-establish the standing of men in a female-dominated world. The story is vacuous but the action is fairly well staged, and the lead females-- Laurene Landon, Victoria Barrett, and Camilla Sparv-- sport incredible bouffant hairdos and buff bods.