THE ATLANTIS INTERCEPTORS (aka RAIDERS OF ATLANTIS aka ATLANTIS INFERNO)

 

My official big box ex-rental VHS video of The Atlantis Interceptors (© Ruggero Deodato/Indipendenti Regionali – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Yesterday I reviewed here at Shuker In MovieLand Eliminators, one of two 1980s sci fi movies that I purchased in big box ex-rental VHS video format for my birthday in December 2021. Today, I'm reviewing the second of those two movies – The Atlantis Interceptors (aka Raiders of Atlantis aka Atlantis Inferno).

Directed by Ruggero Deodato (who also directed The Barbarians – click here for my review of it – as well as Cannibal Holocaust), released in 1983 by Indipendenti Regionali, and, as all three of its titles clearly indicate, directly related to the lost continent of Atlantis, The Atlantis Interceptors (its most commonly-used English-language title) is an English-Italian sci fi movie in which a gang of murderous Atlantean bikers appear out of the sea from the fabled sunken continent to wage war upon surface-dwelling humanity.

It all begins with a team of American scientists on an ocean platform sited off Miami, Florida, seeking to raise up a sunken Russian nuclear submarine before the Russians can locate its whereabouts. In so doing, however, they also retrieve off the seafloor a mysterious artifact bearing seemingly indecipherable inscriptions – until Dr Cathy Rollins (played by Gioia Scola), an iconographical expert, is brought in to decode them, and uncovers to everyone's astonishment a link to the legendary lost continent of Atlantis.

Moreover, following the team's clumsy attempts to raise the submarine resulting in radioactive leakage that induces the re-emergence of Atlantis and a devastating tidal wave that wipes out the platform, it falls to two Vietnam veterans, Mike Ross (Christopher Connelly) and Washington aka Mohammed (Tony King), relaxing in their small boat close by, to rescue the few surviving scientists, only for their boat to run aground shortly afterwards on a small Caribbean island.

Here they discover to their horror that a veritable posse of fierce, decidedly unfriendly Atlantean biker punks (whose enigmatic leader, played by Bruce Baron, wears a very impressive full-face crystal skull mask, no less!) have risen up through the waves on equally ferocious-looking spike-wheeled motorbikes, with their declared aim being to wipe the land of all surface-dwelling sea-polluting humans and then re-establish Atlantis there instead.

 

Croatian lobby card featuring the Atlantean bikers in The Atlantis Interceptors (© Ruggero Deodato/Indipendenti Regionali – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

The remainder of the movie is a fast-moving, no-holds-barred battle between the implacable Atlantean bikers and a straggly group of terrified islanders who are led in their efforts to defend themselves by Mike and Washington plus a bold if youthful vigilante. Initially they all flee from the fiery remorseless destruction of homes on the island and the bloodthirsty murder of their owners, wrought with sadistic glee by the vicious, all-conquering biker gang, before arming themselves with guns and all manner of improvised weaponry as they swiftly realize that their only chance of survival is to take on and beat the brutal bikers at their own deadly game of assault and annihilation.

In addition, it falls once again to Mike and Washington to be the ones who set out to rescue Dr Rollins. Her specialized knowledge is key to the Atlanteans' sought-after supremacy, as a result of which she has been abducted by them and taken to a secret high-tech undersea laboratory where their sinister plan is to transform her – but how, and into what?

The Atlantis Interceptors is one of those movies that strives to provide something for every taste, and in so doing has sampled from a wide range of different movies that were around back then – indeed, it is as much a movie mélange as a movie in its own right. The same applies regarding different styles. Thus, it features some very ethereal underwater Atlantean scenes that are beautifully shot, and very imaginative in design. Equally, there is a fair amount of amusing banter and quips tossed around at one another by the lead characters. And it goes without saying that it contains plenty of action and thrills.

Yet it is also an indisputably savage flick at times, the bikers emulating the violent, mindless excesses seen in Mad Max and other flicks of this genre, with one biker losing his head entirely – and literally! Then again, just like the late great UK DJ/comedian Kenny Everett's Cupid Stunt actress character always used to say: "And don't worry, the decapitation scene is all done in the best possible taste!"

Not a film to be taken even remotely seriously, The Atlantis Interceptors' sole purpose is to entertain – not to educate, not to inspire, not to pose lofty questions.

So just sit back, suspend disbelief, disengage quality control, and allow it to steal 90-odd minutes of your time that could otherwise be spent mowing the lawn yet again, holding on for a call back from a firm who repeatedly tells you how important your call is to them but never gets around to answering it, standing in a queue for something that you neither want nor need, and listening to someone you don't really like regaling you with tedious recollections that are of zero interest to you. You've pressed the Play button to watch The Atlantis Interceptors? I thought so.

And to experience a blistering taste of what to expect when the belligerent biker punks from beneath the waves come calling, be sure to click here to view an official trailer for The Atlantis Interceptors.

Finally: To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

A German lobby card for The Atlantis Interceptors, featuring one of its alternative titles, Atlantis Inferno (© Ruggero Deodato/Indipendenti Regionali – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

ELIMINATORS

 

My official big box ex-rental VHS video of Eliminators (© Peter Manoogian/Empire Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Recently scrolling down through some of my Facebook 'Memories' posts from a few years ago, I was reminded that my main birthday present to myself in December 2021 was a pair of nowadays rare-to-find (in good condition!) big box ex-rental VHS videos that I remember so well from the 1980s. Namely, the sci-fi movies Eliminators (1986) and The Atlantis Interceptors (aka Raiders of Atlantis aka Atlantis Inferno) (1983). Having watched both videos during the past year, now is as good a time as any for me to provide a review of each of these two movies here at Shuker In MovieLand. So today I'm reviewing Eliminators, with my review of The Atlantis Interceptors following tomorrow – don't miss it!

Directed by Peter Manoogian, and released in 1986 by Empire Pictures, Eliminators features a premise initially reminiscent of the much more famous sci fi/thriller movie RoboCop (but which came out a year later than Eliminators). However, there are notable differences too. The central character in Eliminators is a terribly-wounded (but not murdered) man – in this instance a crashed pilot named John – who has been recreated as an android (or Mandroid, as he's referred to here, played by Patrick Reynolds), but to whom additional combat equipment can also be incorporated when needed, converting him into a virtually invincible cybernetic fighting machine, half-human and half-tank, moving around on caterpillar tracks, as seen in the photograph further down in this review.

However, the Mandroid's creator is an evil megalomaniacal scientist (rather than a law-enforcement corporation as in RoboCop), one Abbott Reeves (Roy Dotrice), who has been experimenting with time travel, using the Mandroid as his disposable guinea pig. Reeves's demented plan is to go back to the Roman Empire and rule it, together with the rest of the world too, in Julius Caesar's stead, thereby changing the entire course of human history. To that deranged, potentially devastating end, he sends the Mandroid back in time to retrieve a Roman shield, for if he returns to the present day with it – as he does – Reeves will then know for certain that his time machine is fully functional.

As soon as this momentous event has successfully occurred, however, Reeves shows his callous disregard for the Mandroid, deeming him to be of no further worth, by ordering him to be dismantled, which of course will kill him. Mercifully, though, Reeves's much more honourable assistant, a fellow scientist named Dr Takada (Tadashi Horino), assigned to carry out this heinous task, cannot bring himself to do so. Instead, Takada releases the Mandroid, but inevitably incurs Reeves's wrath, who summarily shoots him.

The Mandroid, conversely, successfully escapes, and, following instructions given to him by Takada before being killed, sets out to find cyber-scientist Colonel Nora Hunter (Denise Crosby), who recognizes some of the Mandroid's components as works created by her, and therefore agrees to assist him in his quest to quell Reeves's terrifying plan for world domination.

After the Mandroid tracks down Hunter in the U.S.A., and is repaired by her (his cybernetic system had sustained damage when he was escaping from Reeves), they travel to Mexico (with Hunter bringing along with them a small anthropomorphic floating robot helper named S.P.O.T. whom she has personally created), where they hire a wisecracking riverboat captain named Harry Fontana (Andrew Prine), to take them via a system of inland waterways to the jungle location in Latin America of the Mandroid's crashed aeroplane, which may still contain vital data to assist them, and is not far from Reeves's secluded headquarters.

Despite several skirmishes with an assortment of rival boat captains, armed pursuers sent by Reeves to eliminate them, and even a tribe of prehistoric cavemen brought into the present day by Reeves during his time travel experiments, the determined trio (plus S.P.O.T.) finally reach the plane, retrieve what they require, and also encounter a youthful but very experienced weapon-wielding Ninja warrior named Kuji (Conan Lee), who turns out to be none other than the son of the late Dr Takada, and has been seeking his father for some time. So when Kuji is informed of his father's violent death at the hands of Reeves, he pledges absolute allegiance to the Mandroid, his team, and their cause.

 

Publicity still for Eliminators, revealing the Mandroid in his fully-assembled fighting machine mode (© Peter Manoogian/Empire Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

And so it is that the Mandroid and his motley crew of sidekicks now set forth to Reeves's jungle-shrouded headquarters, to thwart his evil plans once and for all – only to discover to their horror, however, that Reeves has meanwhile converted himself into a cyborg too, but one far more powerful than the Mandroid. This grim fact is swiftly revealed when he effortlessly defeats the Mandroid in battle, and then imprisons the others within a spherical force field that rapidly begins shrinking in size. Nevertheless, with one final, self-sacrificing act the Mandroid touches the force field, shorting it to release his friends but knowingly killing himself in so doing.

Tragically, however, the Mandroid's sacrifice is in vain, because Reeves meanwhile has returned to his lab and entered the time machine before they could reach him and work out how to destroy it. The machine carrying Reeves vanishes, thus beginning its journey back through time; and in frustration at having failed to stop him, Fontana runs his fingers randomly against the keyboard that had controlled the time machine externally.

To their amazement but delight, however, the team discover that Fontana's ostensibly innocuous action has very fortuitously disrupted the machine's temporal trajectory, taking it, with Reeves inside, much, much further back than the period of the Roman Empire – back as far as the Silurian Period, in fact, over 400 million years ago. And as Reeves will all too soon find out at first hand, in this dank primeval world the only higher terrestrial life forms available for him to rule over are arachnids – giant arachnids of unequivocally carnivorous intent!

The plot of Eliminators is very episodic in execution, full of set pieces rather than a more complex, flowing storyline, and is somewhat derivative not only of movies from the 'bionic man'-type genre that were very popular during the 1970s and 1980s but also of adventure-themed flicks from that same time period featuring a dash of love interest along the way, such as Romancing the Stone/The Jewel of the Nile, Kill Slade (reviewed by me here), and the Indiana Jones franchise.

Overall, however, Eliminators works well, is entertaining in a Saturday afternoon rip-roaring, trail-blazing, gung-ho movie pastiche kind of way, with the cast playing their parts efficiently and effectively enough to sustain my interest throughout this movie's 96-minute running time (though as someone who'd previously associated Dotrice most closely with his much more benevolent role as the eponymous literary author in the 1976 TV miniseries Dickens of London, it took me a while to readjust to seeing him portray an archetypal mad scientist!).

If you'd like a glimpse of the thrills, spills, and chills awaiting you in Eliminators, be sure to click here to view an official trailer for it on YouTube. And don't forget to check Shuker In MovieLand here to read my review of The Atlantis Interceptors!

Finally: To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

Patrick Reynolds from Eliminators examining some of his Mandroid costume accoutrements (© Peter Manoogian/Empire Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)