This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Some things I liked some I did not.

Lack of good storyline.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

RAIDERS OF ATLANTIS is ninety minutes of straight gunfire and five minutes of expository dialogue with a sprinkling of bad jokes for flavor. Yes I'm embellishing but not by much. This is not a movie that's concerned with little things like "plot" or "making sense". It's an 80's action extravaganza! The movie poster looks like the packaging for an old Nintendo game, and it's blatantly trying to ape the success of the Mad Max movie franchise minus the talent. There's some fun to be found in RAIDERS OF ATLANTIS but I think it's in spite of itself. In the film, a United States military operation is attempting to raise a sunken Russian nuclear submarine from the ocean floor. When an ancient tablet is discovered near the site, a specialist is brought in to decipher it; enter Dr. Cathy Rollins (Gioia Scola), with a Ph.D. in pre-Columbian dialects. Almost immediately, there's chaos as a landmass in an enormous transparent dome rises from the ocean, emitting a tsunami wave that obliterates the military's ocean platform. Despite the destructive power of the wave, a small team of survivors, including Dr. Rollins, are found adrift aboard a piece of wreckage by our film's true heroes: Mike Ross (Christopher Connelly) and Mohammed (Tony King). Mike and Mohammed…sorry, "Washington"…are Vietnam veterans turned mercenaries who, along with our survivors, are drawn into a battle against the remnants of the lost continent of Atlantis whose descendants have risen from the waves to reclaim the Earth as their own.Before Atlantis has even finished rising, before the glass dome over it has finished receding, the Atlantean hooligans have already arrived on our shores and announce their arrival by firing a blow dart into some poor woman's neck while her husband watches helplessly. These Atlanteans are nothing like what you'd expect. Unless you were expecting Mad Max rip-offs, then it's exactly what you expect. Classic cars and motorcycles dressed up in fake chrome and spikes. The Atlanteans are dressed in a lot of biker gear with straps and, of course, spikes, and they're all dolled up in face paint and zany hairdos. Their leader is a man in a Crystal Skull (Bruce Baron) and he wants Earth for the Atlanteans. He will lead his army of machete and knife-wielding maniacs in a violent coup against the human race. A short, violent coup. That will undoubtedly end in failure because all of his invaders are using bladed melee weapons and the people of Earth have fully functioning militaries with loads of guns. I guess the Atlanteans really underestimated us in their invasion plans. I mean, they do have guns…we see them in use when our heroes invade Atlantis in the final act. But the raiders only brought melee weapons. We never get to see how easily our Earth militaries would make short work of the Atlanteans because they never get past a handful of survivors with automatic rifles and Molotov cocktails. It's a never-ending symphony of gunfire as Atlanteans are mowed down.I'll give RAIDERS OF ATLANTIS credit: they give us a nice body count. In addition to the endless waves of Atlanteans gunned down, the filmmakers keep refreshing our team of survivors so we have a supply of fresh meat on the good side too. Most of the movie happens on an island the survivors stumble across where the Atlanteans have made landfall and murdered the coastal villagers. In this village, we find some extra tagalongs who can either fire guns while lamely wisecracking or die in spectacular ways. We get some cool violent ends in the form of decapitation, incineration, and one particularly cool arrow through the mouth/throat. But for every cool death scene we're treated to, there's an abundance of mindless gun battles that start to drag the pace down to a crawl. We hide in a building, shoot a bunch of Atlanteans, move to another building, shoot a bunch of Atlanteans, escape on a bus while shooting a bunch of Atlanteans. Snore. And that's the big weakness with RAIDERS OF ATLANTIS. Otherwise it's a fun, super cheesy Mad Max rip-off with some great unintentional laughs. The honest attempts at humor hit the ground with a thud (there's a total failure of a running gag for a few minutes where people keep calling Mohammed "Washington" and he corrects them…until he doesn't and then he's just known as Washington for the rest of the movie) and serious moments are laughable (Mohammed/Washington's useful "Can't move! We're immobilized!" when they reach the Atlantean control room).RAIDERS OF ATLANTIS is better than your average Z-grade fare with a lot of fun to be had in the juvenile writing and focus on near constant violence. The story itself is incredibly stupid and therein lies some of the charm. It would've been nice if they had traded a few minutes of guns firing for a little extra plot development, but I guess it just means you don't need to pay as much attention to follow along. It's another good one to watch with some friends over beers.

A group of scientists and a pair of rough'n'tumble Vietnam veterans run afoul of a vicious bunch of crazed biker thugs who are direct descendants of the people from the fabled lost city of Atlantis. Said bunch plan on taking over the world. Can they be stopped before it's too late? Director Ruggero Deodato, working from a gloriously ridiculous and eventful script by Tito Carpi and Vincenzo Mannino, relates the delightfully wild'n'crazy story at a constant snappy pace, stages the exciting and plentiful action with rip-roaring panache, and sprinkles in a few nice bits of gore for good measure (a grisly decapitation rates as the definite splatter highlight). Moreover, the enthusiastic cast has a ball with the wacky material: Christopher Connelly displays mucho macho flair to spare as the rugged Mike Ross, Tony King holds his own as Mike's equally hard-bitten buddy Mohammed, the fetching Gioia Scola brings a spunky charm to her role as the feisty Dr. Cathy Rollins, Ivan Rassimov does well as the tough Bill Cook, Stefan Mingardo contributes an engaging turn as hearty criminal Klaus Nemnenz, George Hiltin is solid as the amiable Professor Peter Saunders, and Bruce Baron makes for a suitably menacing lead villain as the savage Crystal Skull. Both Roberto D'Ettorre's slick cinematography and the spirited funky jamming score by Oliver Onions are up to speed. Best of all, this film is done with a fiercely tight, brutal, and straightforward verve that gets right down to stirring brass tacks and delivers the satisfying loopy goods like nobody's business. A really fun flick.

Mike and Washington are two mercenaries who kidnap some guy for 50,000 dollars and head out to sea for some R&R. At the same time scientists are raising a Russian sub only to somehow trigger the rise of Atlantis. Mike and Wash manage to rescue a few scientists that are lost at sea and head to an island. The island, however, has been wasted by bikers who are descendants of Atlantis. Mike and his team try to rescue a captured scientist and get away safe. Along the way there's lots of gore and gun-play.I saw this movie as a teen. I loved it then and I loved it when I saw it again recently. Admittedly, a suspension of reality is needed. The plot is far-fetched and there are some things that just aren't explained.For instance, no one explains how the character of Crystal Skull knew how Atlantis was coming. The lady scientist ends up in the chopper at the end and we're not told how she got there. A lot of film time is wasted watching a copter land when it could've been used to fill us in on the plot holes.But in spite of these things this movie is a whole lot of fun. The action is nonstop. Tony King and Chris Connolly are great as the two male leads. They have a great chemistry. There are moments of humor too. A fight with a German military man stops because Mike drops his cash and they realize they are both good guys. You have to see it to get what I mean. A biker gets beheaded with wire in another great scene. All in all this one won't leave you bored. I recommend it. It's tough to come across so good luck getting it. It's worth finding.

From Ruggero Deodato, the director who gave us the incredibly powerful and disturbing Cannibal Holocaust comes this lighter weight action yarn from 1983.It utilises the intriguing central premise of the resurfacing of Atlantis as a catalyst for mass violence when the descendants of the aforementioned long lost continent, who are now living amongst us, take to the streets in heavily armed gangs and set about annihilating the rest of mankind.The future of the human race appears to rest in the hands of a small group of people who escape the initial wave of urban anarchy whilst they are out at sea.But returning to dry land how can so few defeat so many? The above plot provides the basis for scene after scene of urban shoot outs and ferocious pitched battles against the marauding hordes of leather clad, painted faced bikers as our heroes fight for survival in a world that has descended into chaos.A great assembled cast of B-movie favourites including Christopher Connelly, Tony King and Ivan Rassimov head this fairly enjoyable effort that is certainly never dull and boasts some admittedly very exciting scenes ala. Assault On Precinct 13.Added to this some great stunt work, with some very noteworthy scenes involving a mini bus and you have a solid 90 mins or so of action entertainment.However……it has to be said that the film makes virtually no sense at all! It appears to have been cobbled hurriedly together sans any logic which sadly serves to seriously undermine it.It's almost as if, in a desperate attempt to cramp in as many action scenes (copied from other movies) into one picture, the makers forgot to provide a plot that links the said scenes together.The end result is a decidedly disjointed affair to put it mildly.However, I don't wish to be too hard on the film for viewed as an action movie it certainly delivers the goods by the bucket load.As a final note, fans of those lovable cut and splice ninja movies from the 1980's as produced en masse by Godfrey Ho and Joseph Lai will delight to see non other than Bruce Baron as the head villain in this, although he spends most of his screen time beneath a 'crystal' mask.