This post was submitted by raphael

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Event Details: Post-Apocalypse Double Feature - The Cinefamily: Friday, March 5

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The Cinefamily (611 N. Fairfax Avenue) presents a pairing of our bleak, desolate future with back-to-back showings of Damnation Alley and The Road Warrior. And for only $10!

Damnation Alley

I wasn’t familiar with this seminal cyberpunk film, so I poached the description from Cinefamily’s website:

Amongst pulsating irradiated skies, giant scorpions, cockroach assassins and other nonsense left behind in the aftermath of a nuclear winter, Damnation Alley is a wacky, gung-ho prototypical “A-Team” adventure of hardy American military survivors leaving the confines of their NORAD-like headquarters to blaze across the countryside, hunting for other refugees and a path to the last remaining city not yet vaporized. You’ve got the crusty stogie-chomping team leader (George Peppard), the hotheaded young buck (Jan-Michael Vincent), the nervous wisecracker (Paul Winfield), the sultry foreign chick (Dominique Sanda), and the adolescent who’ll save the day (Jackie Earle Haley) — all touring around in the RV From Hades: a gonzo, armored “Landmaster” that could easily make shredded cheese out of both The Car and Killdozer. Alongside the film’s snap-crackle-and-pop exterior is also a surprising nihilistic undercurrent, with its creepy, somber missile attack prologue, and the fact that Peppard’s Air Force major (the supposed hero of its post-apocalypse) also happens to be the dude who pushed the nuclear button in the first place!
Dir. Jack Smight, 1977, 35mm, 95 min.

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior

Now, this movie I know well! It features a younger, hunkier Mel Gibson (who was pretty hot before we learned what a douchebag he is). It has inspired imitation and parody in dozens of movies and teevee shows. This is a true classic, and one that has surprsingly queer elements.

In the post-apocalpytic Australian outback, Max (Mel) helps some tunic wearing whitehats who guard one of the last productive oil wells in the world. From whom?

Why, a pack of biker thug-barbarians who seem to have stepped out of the Folsom Street Fair:

Wez, played by Vernon Wells, is a lower-ranking thug in the marauder’s band who goes beserk when his lover, The Golden Youth (played by Jerry O’Sullivan), is slain by a boomerang.

The chief maruader is Lord Humungus (Kjell Nillson), and his outfit is the gayest thing I’ve seen since my trip to the Tom of Finland house:

Oh, and here he is, driving Wez around on a chain, just because he can:

Perhaps my favorite thing about Mad Max is the boy known as Feral Child:

References to the Road Warrior are evident throughout pop culture, and its influence can be clearly scene in movies like the orc hordes of Lord of the Rings, and video games, like Gau in Final Fantasy VI.

This movie also provided a model for Los Angeles in the year 3000 for an episode of Futurama:

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