Two Cents is a Cinapse original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team curates the series and contribute their “two cents” using a maximum of 200-400 words. Guest contributors and comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future picks. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion. Would you like to be a guest contributor or programmer for an upcoming Two Cents entry? Simply watch along with us and/or send your pitches or 200-400 word reviews to [email protected].
Drama, Comedy, Romance, Science Fiction, Musical… cinema is filled with grand, sweeping, big tent genres. And yet, so often Cinapse’s particular brand of cinephilia dwells in the subgenres. Too numerous to list, subgenres are where the meat is really added to the bone of deep cut cinema. And one of the greatest subgenres of them all is the post-apocalyptic picture! This month we’re celebrating the release of author David J. Moore’s World Gone Wild, Restocked and Reloaded 2nd Edition: A Survivor’s Guide to Post-Apocalyptic Movies with a curated selection of some of the Cinapse team’s very favorite and most beloved post apocalypse films – all of which are highlighted in Moore’s exhaustive love letter!
The Pick: The Blood of Heroes AKA Salute of the Jugger (1989)
Known internationally as The Salute Of The Jugger, writer/director David Webb Peoples (writer of Blade Runner, Unforgiven, Soldier, and 12 Monkeys!) unleashed his underappreciated diamond in the rough The Blood Of Heroes in 1989. It’s cult has grown ever since. Let’s see if we can’t grow it even further.
Featured Guest
David J. Moore, Excerpt From World Gone Wild, Restocked and Reloaded 2nd Edition: A Survivor’s Guide to Post-Apocalyptic Movies
It’s too bad David Peoples hasn’t made more movies. Peoples, the writer of Blade Runner and Soldier, wrote and directed this fantastic, one-of-a-kind post-apocalyptic sports movie. The world it’s set in is sparsely populated in an expansive wasteland topography, and no one drives or even remembers what cars were. There are no guns, no wars, just depressing villages in the desert full of hungry people whose only real joy in life is to wait for the Juggers to come into their town to play their violent game. It is a bloody game, an honorable game, where freelance gladiators divided into two teams vie in three rounds to place a dog skull on a spike in the ground. First one to place the skull on the spike wins. Game over. Rutger Hauer (never better) leads his winning rag-tag team through the desert, one village after another, and his team gets even better when they pick up a new “Quick” (player whose job is to focus on putting the skull on the spike) in the form of the plucky girl warrior named Kidda (Joan Chen). When their winning streak has nowhere to go but down, the team decides to go to the vast, never ending underground city (maybe the only one left in the world) where The League plays their harder-core version of Jugging. Hauer challenges The League, and this sets off the final sport scene of the film where the amateur team faces off against the huge, pro gladiators of The League. It’s a really good movie… Overseas, this film is known as The Salute of the Jugger. Other members of the fine cast include Vincent D’Onofrio, Delroy Lindo, and Richard Norton. Filmed in Australia.
The Team
Ed Travis
In any big sports or tournament film, the end product is only as good as its final act – the championship game, or the title match. In the “can’t believe this exists” The Blood Of Heroes, you’ve got a post-apocalypse film, a tournament action film, and a sports movie all in one! And the final salute of the juggers… er, final set piece? The ultimate post-apocalyptic David & Goliath match of our heroic underdog athlete-warriors against the gladiators of the last remaining elites? It’ll put goosebumps on your skin and get your fists pumping. Overall the film is an astonishingly good time, but it’s really that final act that spikes the dog skull and secures the “must see” status of this obscure artifact.
A stellar cast propels this odd concoction, with Joan Chen as Kidda, the upstart jugger (athlete of the only known sport in this post-apocalyptic hellscape) who impresses Rutger Hauer’s Sallow with her skills, and ultimately inspires him to take their ragtag team back to The League from which he was banished to test their skills against the greatest juggers in the world in a massive underground city containing the only remnants of wealth and power. The Toecutter / Immortan Joe himself, Mr. Hugh Keyes-Byrne, shows up as Lord Vile, an agent of power who seeks to corrupt the purity of the game.
But in The Blood Of Heroes, the game is all that is left, and there remains honor among the juggers. No challenger has ever gone more than 26 stones (the primitive game is marked by 100 stone throws per round). Sallow, Kidda, Young Gar (Vincent D’Onofrio), Mbulu (Delroy Lindo), and the rest of the team risk the only hope they have (whole, functional bodies) to see if they can become legendary. The film is clear in its worldbuilding, concise in its structure, and quits while it’s ahead. Don’t miss this unique, well-cast, multi-genre’d gem!
“We should be fucking and drinking by now”… damn, I love Rutger Hauer in just about everything he did. His action roles are among my faves. He brings a distinct grit and attitude to these roles that I tend to really vibe with. And in The Blood of Heroes, that’s exactly what I got.
The film opens with the most brutal version of Capture the Flag I’ve ever seen, where the flag is a skull and the combatants bludgeon each other until incapacitated. They call this brutal sport “The Game”. It was a tad bit bloodier and more painful than I remember at church camp. But, it’s sure fun to watch.
In this opening scene, we meet our most important characters – our heroes for the next 90 minutes (or 104, if you’re watching the Australian cut, which I did not). Hauer’s Sallow and Joan Chen’s Kidda are the most compelling, but the star studded cast is all pretty fantastic.
When watching it earlier this week, Ed suggested he thought this would be my kind of jam… and he was right. While horror is my favorite genre, post-apocalyptic action of this sort is not too distant as one of my favorite other genres. Give me a brutal sport or game as a centerpiece and I’m almost certain to be a fan, unless of course it’s Rob Zombie’s awful attempt at an unofficial Running Man remake, 31.
From goofy onlookers of “The Game” to the journey of Chen’s Kidda, the badass presence of Hauer’s Sallow, a great little performance from a younger Vincent D’Onofrio, and the fact I that get Delroy Lindo on my screen, The Blood of Heroes is indeed my kind of jam.
Spencer Brickey
What if Bull Durham happened in the Mad Max universe? Then you’d have The Blood
Of Heroes; A post-apocalyptic tale that’s little on the apocalypse, more on its weird
mutated version of football, and the men, women and dog boys who play it.
Follows a surprisingly stacked cast (including a baby-faced Vincent D’Onofrio and an
appearance by Delroy Lindo that feels like a jump scare when he first appears) as they
wander (dog)town to town, taking on local teams in “The Game”, hoping to one day
make it to “The League”. It’s pretty basic post-apocalyptic stuff mixed with pretty basic
sports movie cliches, with the added benefit of genuinely talented actors walking us
through it all.
What it doesn’t have the benefit of, and what really hamstrings most of the film’s efforts,
is any sort of action choreography. What should be thrilling matches of quick moving
action and brutal violence instead feel like a group of actors who’s whole direction was
either “run serpentine that way” or “mash your sticks together”. The final “runout the
clock” sequence, which should feel akin to the final seconds of something like Miracle,
instead is just two people awkwardly shuffling in front of each other. It kills any sort of
ability for the tension-and-release of a good sports build-up moment, and really lays it
bare that you’re just watching people play pretend on a constructed set.
All that being said, I can’t say I was ever bored. Everyone is bought into the world,
especially Hauer, who you can always depend on putting in a good performance. The
world is hammy as hell, but in a perfectly goofy sort of way, never trying to overextend
past what it is; a cheapie exploitation flick with a fun hook.
Still, for a film that looked so much like an Albert Pyun film, I wish it had the same sort of
heart as a Pyun film.
CINAPSE CURATES MAD MAX RIPOFFS
Join us by contacting our team or emailing [email protected]!
11/11 – Doomsday
11/18 – Turbo Kid
11/25 – The New Barbarians
And We’re Out.
