Welcome back to another installment of B-Movie Enema.

This week, we’re going to the late 70s with a bunch of recognizable faces and names for a post-apocalyptic thriller called Ravagers. This is the pre-Mad Max era of post-apocalytic films. Maybe, to a certain extent, this has more of a lineage to something like Planet of the Apes than what most people my age grew up with in terms of the loner in the wasteland fighting off people trying to steal his gas type of dystopian future flick. Honestly, the cover of the movie and the poster/promotional materials showing roughs attacking people in the streets of a city recall a lot of the early 80s, bonkers Italian dystopian films too.

Now, I don’t necessarily want to set myself up for disappointment, but this might just be a diamond in the rough. The copy I have of Ravagers states that this “all but forgotten post-apocalyptic action thriller is waaaay more decent than some of the reviews and its abandoned status would suggest” so I think this might have something to it. It goes on to talk about grand sets and frequent chases and it even comments on the various names that appear in this movie too. Again, sometimes gassing up something like that in this way can lead to disappointment, but I’ve been known to find some real gems when I go to HorrorHound Weekend and I’m kind of hoping this will be one of those times again.

Ravagers comes to us from director Richard Compton. Now, originally, Compton was an actor, but that didn’t last very long. In 1967, he appeared in the second season episode of Star Trek “The Doomsday Machine” and then followed that up in 1968 in the third season episode “The Enterprise Incident”. Aside from that, he just had bit parts here and there. In truth, Compton was best known as a director. He directed the very first film released by Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, Angels Die Hard. For the first ten years as a director, Compton was making featured films. Ravagers was the final feature film Compton made. From there, he transitioned to doing a lot of TV work. I brought up the fact that he appeared on Star Trek twice because he returned to the franchise in 1987 to direct the Star Trek: The Next Generation first season episode “Haven”. In his personal life, Compton was married to Veronica Cartwright for 25 years until he passed away.

This movie is loaded with either really famous actors or people who were associated with really famous people. Right at the top of the cast is Richard Harris. His first of two Best Actor Academy Award nominations came 15 years earlier but he was still a big deal in 1979. Along with him in this movie is his wife at the time, Ann Turkel. And speaking of famous spouses, we also have Alana Hamilton who was married to George Hamilton at the time and is now known as Alana Stewart since marrying Rod Stewart.

But, then again, let’s talk about more Oscar-caliber actors in this cast. Playing Rann, a man who has a boat anchored off the coast and away from the mutant ravagers, we have Ernest Borgnine. Borgnine is known for everything in my lifetime from Escape from New York to Airwolf to The Black Hole to Spongebob Squarepants, but it was his performance as the titular butcher in the romantic drama Marty that won him the top prize in American acting. When it came to Borgnine, even when he’s playing the literal devil in The Devil’s Rain, I still always see him as a kind grandpa-type figure. I think it’s his warm, gap-toothed grin.

Anyway, we also see Art Carney in this cast. Carney was a big-time TV guy. That’s especially the case after Jackie Gleason came along with The Honeymooners in which Carney played Gleason’s Ralph’s buddy, Ed Norton. He won six Emmy Awards for the role. Then, for 1974’s Harry and Tonto, a movie in which he plays an elderly man hitting the road with his cat, he won the Best Actor Oscar in a MASSIVELY talented category featuring Albert Finney (Murder on the Orient Express), Dustin Hoffman (Lenny), Jack Nicholson (Chinatown), and Al Pacino (The Godfather Part II). That’s a hell of a category and it was the guy who went on a road trip with his cat who took home the prize that night.

One last person I want to make sure to call out is Woody Strode. I know Strode best from Kingdom of the Spiders (which was a featured movie on this season of B-Movie Enema: The Series). Strode was a professional football player in the early 40s. In 1946, Strode became one of the very first black NFL players when he signed with the Los Angeles Rams for a season. He also had another significant piece of history due to his race. In 1936, he posed nude for a portrait for painter Hubert Stowitts that was part of a whole exhibition of athletes and athletic poses to be on display at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany. Now, if you know your history, and you should, the leader of German in 1936 was some doofus named Adolf Hitler. Because the exhibition included black and Jewish athletes, Hitler and his gang of thugs known as the Nazis had the exhibition shut down.

Alright, so it’s time to really tear the top off this Ravagers movie. I hear it got really disappointing reviews, but, let’s be honest, here at B-Movie Enema Industries, only my opinion counts. It’s up to me to sell you on the movie being as disappointing as people found it 45 years ago OR convince you that it really is better than history dictates. Let’s fuckin’ go!

So to set the stage… In the far-off year of 1991, World War III was waged with nukes leaving pretty much all of civilization utterly destroyed. Pretty much everything looks like a Southern California desert. Disease and hunger killed much of the surviving population. Those who were “stronger” would basically kill off the weak and take what they had. Before long, the more rabid of these people willing to kill or steal (or both) from others started to group up in packs like wolves. These are the Ravagers.

The leader of the Ravagers is played by Anthony James. James is one of the great character actors of the late 20th century. At the very end of his career, he had a couple great bit roles in two very memorable films. The first was as Hector Savage in The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear. The second was a year later as Skinny Dubois in Clint Eastwood’s Academy Award-winning Unforgiven. While 1992 was the final year he was active as an actor in film and TV, he didn’t pass until 2020 from cancer.

We meet Falk (Harris) as he walks from the city where he attempts to find what could be left of the very slim selection of items at a small store. He did find two rusted cans of food that he takes to bring to his wife Miriam (Hamilton). She’s worried about hearing a gunshot when he was in town. He tries to play it off as being only something he “thought” he heard. What he doesn’t realize is that he was followed by the Ravagers. Anthony James says that whoever gets Miriam can “have” her.

Inside their makeshift home, Miriam tries to surprise Falk by showing him a bird egg she found while scrounging around outside. Falk breaks the bad news to her that the egg is dried and therefore has nothing for them to eat. He warns her about being out in the open and how dangerous it is for her to do so. He says it’s his job to risk his life to get them things to survive with.

If I’m being honest, I only know these two are supposedly married, or, if nothing else, just a couple, because of Wikipedia. Otherwise, I would think they were father and daughter. There’s not a great deal of romantic chemistry between the two.
Plus, Miriam kind of comes off as infanticized a bit. She is trying to show her worth by finding an egg but doesn’t quite understand that it’s worthless because the egg is dried out. She should have realized that by picking it up and feeling how light it is. If you’ve ever picked up a dried-out bird egg, you can feel it is hollow and empty. So that only lends to me thinking she’s his daughter and not his wife. Plus… She’s dressed in white as if to portray innocence and youth.

Let’s go back to The Quiet Earth, shall we? In that, Joanne is young and kind of wide-eyed but she comes with a lot of cleverness in her eyes and face. Sure, there is innocence, but she doesn’t talk like she doesn’t understand the way the world should, or could, work after the Event. She doesn’t have to prove her intelligence or intuition to Zac.

I will at least give Ravagers some grace here. It is just the two of them in a pretty desolate world where the only other people they may run into are members of a roving gang of rabid ne’er do wells. There would need to be some consideration around hunting and gathering roles and safety when being left alone. For all we know, Falk has talents for taking care of himself while Miriam might have always been a housewife or something like that. We can’t rule out that possibility based on the era in which this film was released. Maybe she was always more of an urbanite and this is not a great situation for her to be a part of now that every day brings with it struggle and strife.

Maybe I’m just not sure about Richard Harris, who by the time he also appeared in Eastwood’s Unforgiven, was VERY old and I can’t help but still think of him as being quite a bit older than Alana Hamilton.

Falk figures it’s time to move on. He wants to head south. Miriam is concerned that the Ravagers would be headed in the same direction. She wants to go back toward the coastline. She hopes to find fish there in the sea, but Falk says it’s no use. The sea is poisoned. She just feels like there has to be someplace where there are children and a more normal life.

Falk drifts off to sleep as she takes care of food and the makeshift home. The Ravagers attack forcing them to fight them off and try to escape. They catch up to them and Falk’s nearly killed when thrown off the top of a silo into a container of water. The Ravagers take off with Miriam. When he pulls himself out of the water and returns to his home, he finds Miriam dead on the floor after having been beaten and raped. Falk buries her before planning to leave as originally planned.

Meanwhile, we spend some time with the Ravagers. They basically party and get drunk and fuck about. But they aren’t the only ones in the driving thunderstorm. Armed with a broken booze bottle, Falk is planning some revenge. As one guy goes to take a leak in the alley, Falk gets the guy’s attention and stabs him in the throat. Falk leaves the city and before the Ravager dies, he tells the leader that it was “the guy from the steel mill.” Angry and distraught over losing one of his own, the leader tells the search party that couldn’t locate Falk the following day that he’s out there somewhere and he will find him.

Miles outside the city, Falk discovers a barn that he pokes around in and finds a single ear of corn that he boils and eats. He doesn’t stay long and gets moving rather quickly. However, he’s not aware the Ravagers are following. While walking along a road, he hears an old man yelling nonsense to no one in particular. He soon discovers this is a blind man. The blind man was once a lawyer and he no longer has a tribe as he was just thrown out recently, but Falk wants to go talk to them. He’s played by Seymour Cassel who was a veteran of over 200 films and TV shows over a 50-year career.

While the Ravagers are now at the last place Falk stayed the night, Falk and the blind man arrive at the cliffs that served as the entry to the tribe’s camp. When they get there, the members of the tribe toss large rocks off the top of the cliff to ward off Falk and the many they recently kicked out. Falk tries to get them to stop so he can talk to them. When he finally gets them to stop throwing their rocks, he turns to the blind man to see that a rock struck him and killed him. Falk is forced to turn back.

That’s a good scene. It’s bleak as hell too. It’s safe to say that the blind lawyer had two things working heavily against him. The first, he was a lawyer and there is no law to practice anymore so what else, if anything, can he do in a broken society? Second, he’s blind. He’s likely not going to be able to do much of anything so they told him to beat cheeks. Falk, needing a place to be and have numbers to feel protected basically convinces this guy to return only for that to lead to the blind man’s death by way of being struck on the head by rocks thrown by his former tribespeople. That’s a whole series of events that is worth pondering. It definitely gives you an idea of how this world might have to work in terms of taking care of only those who can, themselves, produce.

Anyway, Falk is forced to move on where he finds a curious sight… A space shuttle. Yeah. There’s just a space shuttle parked out in the wilderness. He’s in what appears to be a field where various space rockets, moon rovers, and other various space exploration vehicles are being stored. When he goes inside the building this stuff is parked outside, it’s a NASA museum. The mannequins of astronauts in various space suits startle Falk, but maybe not as startling as the live man with a machine gun also inside the building.

This guy is an old sergeant, played by Art Carney. This old guy says this is a military installation. He’s got orders from a colonel saying that anyone who comes into this installation will be deemed a looter and will be executed on sight. He gives Falk a pack of smokes and tells him to say his prayers and get ready to face the firing line. Falk distracts the sergeant and wrestles the gun away from him.

When the sergeant comes to after being knocked out in the struggle, he recognizes Falk as a superior. Falk says that the sergeant can’t have gotten the belly he has just eating grass. He takes Falk to the food ration storage bunker and gives him something to eat. Falk tells the sergeant that he isn’t part of the military and that he’s simply a loner, but this old man just doesn’t listen to him. That said, before he leaves, he wants the old man to teach him how to shoot the machine gun the sergeant gave him thinking he is a higher-ranking member of the military. The sergeant obliges and even wants to go with Falk saying he knows where there are people. Falk isn’t so sure about having this crazy old guy with him, but relents and lets the old man join him.

The old man leads Falk to a cave where a guard at the entrance recognizes him and allows the two men to enter. Inside, there’s a large community of people seemingly living a sort of pleasant life with music, dance, and booze. Falk is surprised to be offered a pair of apples despite not really having anything to trade for the fruit. He ends up parting with his scarf despite the man saying he’s owed nothing. These are people living in relative happiness and enjoying life without all the normal stuff that was lost during the war. Falk can hardly believe it.

Plus, a lot of the women are fairly pretty. One girl catches Falk’s eye in particular. A girl dancing in the center of a ring of people playing music and dancing joyfully is interrupted by a man who decides to try to rape her. Falk sees the woman reach for a torch and use it to fight the guy off her by hitting him on the back with it and lighting him on fire. Once he’s off her, another guy steps in and beats up the rapist. Impressed, Falk approaches her and talks to her, first saying he’s not going to hurt her. (You know, to probably avoid being hit with a lit torch by her himself.)

The woman is Faina (Turkel). He gives the woman tobacco which gets him invited into her bedroom. I believe Faina is actually a prostitute. She sleeps with Falk, but their sleep is interrupted by a dream of Miriam that causes him to thrash about and nearly hit her. He talks about a place she wanted to go to called “Genesis” where things would grow and life was much more like it used to be. Faina asks if such a place is real, but Falk says no, seemingly doing the same with her as he did with Miriam.

Later, Falk gets dressed and plans to leave. Faina wants him to take her with him because she believes he is going to Genesis, but he insists that is not a real place. He sneaks out but the sergeant catches up to him and says the place is crawling with Ravagers and he needs his help to be careful. The old man starts shooting into the darkness, claiming he heard something out there, but all they find is that Faina has also followed them out of the cave.

When the trio finds a place to camp for the night, we learn something kind of interesting about the world. Ever since the sergeant woke up from being knocked out, he has referred to Falk as “the Major” and basically serves him as a subordinate. Falk has tried many times to say he is not this major fella, but the sergeant doesn’t really listen. So Falk asks him how much he remembers of the whole thing. The sergeant says something about having to dig a mass grave and how sick the major was. Falk asks if perhaps the major was one of the people put into the mass grave.

What’s more, the sergeant isn’t just somebody who is playing war. He really WAS stationed at that military installation with all the NASA shit when the bombs dropped. His insanity is likely due to his intense loneliness. Falk, to try to, again, say he is not the major this old man thinks he is says he was only six years old when everything happened.

I really wish Falk didn’t say that line. I didn’t have many questions about the timing of anything. In fact, it seemed to kind of line up pretty well. Let’s say the war happened when the movie was released – 1979. Okay. If the poster/box is right and it is now 1991, you would see why Miriam is so desperate for Genesis. She’s seen and experienced a normal life with kids and food and normal people doing normal things. What haunts Falk is that she wanted to find a plentiful place to lay down roots and have children of their own. It’s as if they would have had these plans before the war anyway. The Ravagers would still have some sense of hierarchy as they would know how to recruit and keep people who are useful. They would also know where to find all the good booze as they clearly spend some time celebrating raping and pillaging.

Even if we were being kind to say Falk is in his mid-to-late 30s, we’re still looking at no more than 30-35 years since the war. He wouldn’t seemingly have the knowledge of what is edible, what is to be expected to be found in the wilderness, and seemingly have a sense of what civilization is. He’s not seeing that cave rave where the sergeant took him as something new. He’s seeing it as something he’s missed. At least that’s how I’m reading the performance from Harris. And to add to that, we met that lawyer guy. He didn’t seem old enough to have been regularly practicing law 30-35 years (or likely more) ago. We also saw previously that there are still supplies that can be found in the cities. Not much, mind you, but something that can be obtained and still useful. There are a few canned items, Falk has tobacco to barter for sex, and the Ravagers enjoy drinking booze. Are all those things that old? It doesn’t seem like anything that would be useful.

So here’s my problem… Either the poster is wrong and it is not 1991 and it’s sensationalizing the year to scare people that the world is ending in a dozen or so years or this movie is poorly timed in terms of the script and/or the direction/performance. Besides, Faina doesn’t come off as someone who would have been alive when the bombs dropped and the world ended. Was she born in the wasteland? Is anyone born in the wasteland? Miriam didn’t seem that old either. There are just a lot of timeline problems that can crop up in these types of movies when they try to rationalize some sort of date or consideration of when things happened.

It becomes a very frustrating situation. Before that, I was enjoying the world of the movie. There isn’t a whole lot that is going on in this plot, really, but the world and the way people are setting up their own feeble attempts at some kind of tribe or civilization have been interesting up to this point. Now, I’m forced to think about the movie’s poster, the ages of the characters, the state of the world, and what resources are still left and I just can’t reconcile it all.

Alright, so the Ravagers are still trying to track down and find Falk for the death of a single member of their group. The leader of the Ravagers sure is dogged in making sure this guy pays. By the way, bro… You killed Falk’s lady. You don’t think he shouldn’t get an eye for that eye? Eh… whatever. Anyway, they aren’t too far behind because when we see them again, they are killing the old man who had the apples at the cave party.

Our three travelers find a home that they decide to use for shelter for the night. Falk wants the three of them to split up in the morning despite Faina not wanting to leave Falk. Falk continues to tell her he has no room in his life for anyone else. The Ravagers sneak up to the house and go inside to attack. Falk and the sergeant fight off several of the Ravagers. The sergeant covers Falk and Faina’s escape and seemingly dies in the process. Additionally, the Ravagers pick up a really useful tool too – the old man’s binoculars.

Falk and Faina get to the coastline where they find men pulling water from a well. Faina thinks they are Ravagers, but Falk doesn’t think so. They are too well dressed and, I suppose, well-behaved to be that. So he approaches them and says he just wants to talk. Falk wants to know who these people are and why they look like they are well-fed with nice clothes. Brown (Strode) says they will talk if he puts down the gun, but Falk decides he wants to go with them wherever it is they are going.

As they get on the boats, the sergeant, who was simply used as a hostage for the Ravagers and not actually dead, catches up. He watches the rowboats float off. Where are the rowboats going? To a giant tanker that is full of people. It’s also got a whole bunch of food and a lot of stuff that can make for a fairly good little life.

Brown says that Rann brought everyone here with the ships and all the supplies. There are two ships and there’s enough for people to survive for 50 years. They also have electricity through a whole bunch of diesel fuel and a generator. Again, Falk mentions being a kid. It was the last time he saw light powered by electricity. That… That’s a fuckin’ problem here, man. I feel like this movie is got a very wonky timeline and it is bummin’ me out.

Brown says they have all these great things, but there is something they don’t have. Falk asks what the hell could be wrong with a place with all these marvels. Brown says he heard the girl say Genesis. They know about Genesis from rumblings, but, still, Falk believes it’s all bullshit. Instead of convincing Brown that it isn’t a real place, Brown says he knows Falk is being cautious and careful. So he takes him to the underbelly of this ship where there are a bunch of people being held prisoner.

The prisoners are being held because they want to leave the ship. Rann has a very specific rule… No one is allowed to leave the ship. Why? I’m assuming it is to protect the location of these ships. A location that the Ravagers are sussing out right now and building rafts to get to.

In the mess hall, Falk makes a poor first impression by complimenting Rann on this amazing “flocker” camp. Rann sharply corrects him by saying they don’t have flockers here. While Falk apologizes for speaking out of turn, he still says that they aren’t much different. Both Rann’s people and flockers hide from others. Falk says they should be seeking something better than being trapped on this ship. Rann says they have everything they need right here. Falk disagrees. They don’t have hope.

But then a woman brings out a platter of freshly caught and prepared fish. This was something that Miriam wanted to live by the water to be able to catch and eat but Falk only ever said the sea was poisoned. Between seeing that fish are now coming back and proving that maybe the sea isn’t in such bad shape and the fact that he was given fresh fruit not but a week or so prior to arriving here, perhaps the land isn’t in such bad shape. It gives some sort of hope that they could leave the ship and settle on land.

Falk makes an impassioned speech that if apples can be grown, maybe other foods can be grown on the land. If fish and fruits and vegetables are back… maybe even children are getting born again. Rann says the issue is settled. No one can leave the ship. Falk asks if that makes him a prisoner. Rann says he is not. But first, Rann has to settle a matter. You see, Faina is a sexy young lady. Sexy young ladies can’t remain single as that creates a lot of problems among the people on the ship. Faina chooses to be with Falk, despite his protests, so Rann settles another issue… Faina and Falk are now married.

While the celebration of this impromptu (damn-near shotgun) wedding is going on, the Ravagers are shimmying up the chains from the anchors to the ship. Brown pulls Falk off to the side to ask, again, where Genesis is. Falk says he has no idea. He thought this was Genesis but he’s clearly wrong. Brown pushes for an answer, but Falk just says what difference would it make because Rann isn’t going to let anyone go. Brown asks Falk if he’d lead them because, the way he sees it, Rann wouldn’t be able to stop them if they wanted to leave.

Inside the mess hall where everyone is celebrating the new wedding, the sergeant tells the story of how he was captured and, like idiots, they just cut him loose. As Rann figures out what that would possibly mean, the alarms go off indicating the ship’s getting attacked by Ravagers. Rann gets people mobilized to fight back against the attackers. It’s an all-out war with casualties all over the place, including Rann who is shot and killed by one of the Ravagers.

Falk tells Faina and the sergeant to get off the boat and they will escape, just then, the leader of the Ravagers jumps out from behind a corner to try to stop them but Falk fights him off. To protect the armory, the last thing Rann does before dying is firing a flare gun into the room to set the boat on fire. At the last second, Falk jumps off the boat before the whole thing explodes killing the leader of the Ravagers.

The remaining survivors look to Falk to lead them and he reluctantly leads them off the beach to find somewhere to survive.

This is an interesting movie. Is it particularly good? Eh… That’s a tough one to answer. On a technical level, I think it is well-shot and well-produced. This was Saul David’s final film he produced. David produced Logan’s Run a few years before this. There is a bit of similarities between that film and this one. In Logan’s Run, Logan and Jessica escape and are ultimately pursued as runners. It follows them through a world of recognizable things but things they don’t recognize themselves. Richard Harris is playing a very similar role. He’s traveling on foot across a lot of things we have plenty of reference and understanding of, but he doesn’t. Or, I should say, people in this world wouldn’t have the same use for those things as they once did (i.e. the space museum).

But that’s just it… While I have no issue with the sets or the way the film is shot or the performances (I especially like Art Carney in this movie), something doesn’t feel right about the movie. There’s not much of a plot. And while the movie is only 90 minutes, it’s a 90 minutes that is easy to wander away from. It’s a lot of watching Richard Harris walking. Sometimes he’s walking with Art Carney. Sometimes he’s walking with Art Carney and Ann Turkel.

I do think the movie is kind of meant to be something like Homer’s Odyssey. But there just isn’t quite enough for Falk to run into along the way to fully achieve that over-arching vibe. There are moments and elements of this movie I really liked. But when I added all the pieces up I found myself particularly engaged with? It didn’t equal a particularly great movie. It’s not a bad movie. It’s just a near miss. But not the kind of near miss that Strangeland was. That movie had a very specific path it could have followed to be great and it just missed it but by being so close to making the right call, it ended up being very frustrating that it just didn’t take the right fork in the road.

Ravagers had no fork in the road to make a wrong turn. Instead, it just didn’t quite live up to the collection of things I very much liked about the movie when I added everything together.

But! C’est la vie. That’s the way things go sometimes. That said, we’ve got some business to look forward to. First, tomorrow, join me for another episode of B-Movie Enema: The Series. This week, it’s David Hasselhoff on the trail of Jack the Ripper (no, really, he is) in the made-for-TV thriller, Terror at London Bridge! Then! Next week! My next review is for a gross-out sci-fi horror flick from the 80s. Oh yeah… It’s time to talk about Xtro!

See you around next week and look out for stray ravagers and stray Ernest Borgnines!