Future Year 1994: Miami U.S. of A. and the sweet disco sounds of Black Inferno by the De Angelis brothers fills the air with the funkiest of fuckin’ funk!
Why do I mention the De Angelis brothers at all, well the music that plays as our “heroes” straight up murder a dude in his home sounds a lot like a piece of the score from Anthony Margheriti’s Yor: The Hunter from the Future (which they also composed the music for)… wait, you want to know why those dudes killed that other dude? It’s because Mike Ross (a truly game Christopher Connelly, he of Fulci’s Manhattan Baby and Mattei’s Strike Commando fame) and his partner Mohammed (ne: Washington… though Ross still calls him “Wash”… or more accurately “Warsh”… in a (not so) stunning (because this was made in the early ’80s) and hilariously accented display of cultural insensitivity… oh, and he’s played by Tony King) are top-notch mercenaries employed by the government to handle all manner of dirty work.
Then we get some happy horseshit about some scientists on an oil rig trying to raise a Russian sub from the ocean floor… which when screwed up causes all hell to break loose weather-wise… which is noticed by a Freddie Mercury-clone and his wife, who are then murdered by a large gang of crazy vehicle-riding “Mad Max Punks” lead by the translucent mask-wearing Crystal Skull (Bruce Baron).
Mike and Mohammed (Tuesdays on CBS) then rescue a few of the scientists from the now destroyed rig and their helicopter pilot pal on their boat and see an island mysteriously appear.
Talk of Popeye and promised spinach dinners ensue.
Confused yet? We are only 24 minutes in…
Once ashore on a nearby beach, our heroes find the ruins of a town… and guess who comes a tear-assin’ through? That’s right, the “Mad Max Punks” resulting in one hell of a scrape let me tell ya… and oddly enough, these fiends are descendants of Atlantis which was disturbed from it’s resting place by that sub biz mentioned earlier! If I were our heroes, I’d warsh my hands of the whole affair…
If Ruggero Deodato’s Raiders of Atlantis is anything, it’s double capital “F” Fuckin’ Fun!
Nearly every minute of the film’s 90 minute runtime are packed with action; car chases, gunfights, explosions, people being set on fire… it’s a delightfully relentless barrage of pure adrenaline! Add to that the colorful, mohawked n’ masked baddies (that make zero sense), the great chemistry between Connelly and King (and everyone else really… Connelly seems to be having the time of his life making the film), some trippy music video-style imagery, a few chintzy models, some “pew-pew” lasers, some New-Age ancient aliens style shit… it’s completely batshit, and completely flat-out awesome as all fuckin’ fuck!
Speaking of “awesome”, we get a bit more of that with the bonus features present on this Blu-ray release from Severin, the likes of which include: an audio commentary featuring King and Vinegar Syndrome’s Brad Henderson, which provides first hand recollections of the production along with factoids (though to be fair, this chat suffers from the dreaded “dead air” frequently), interviews with Deodato and cinematographer Roberto D’Ettore Piazzoli (which fill us in on production info and other career tidbits), and the film’s trailer.
Pound for putrid pound, Raiders of Atlantis is one of the best grindhouse action flicks about punk rock psychos from Atlantis that you’re ever likely to set your eerie eyeballs upon, and that is a wickedly wonderful thing indeed!
