Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
BATTLE BENEATH EARTH 1968 ON DVD FINALLY !!, November 30, 2008
Exciting double bill of Sci-fi Post Apocalyptic Films provides many thrills.
The superior quality film is BATTLE BENEATH THE EARTH 1968, an admirable
1960s cold war type adventure involving the Chinese, tunnels under the earth, a top star cast of Kerwin Mathews and Viviane Ventura with Ed Bishop.
Director Montgomery Tully directs with visual style and flair.
Secondary film on the disc is the ULTIMATE WARRIOR 1975, a well made sci-fi
futuristic movie with Yul Brynner, Joanna Miles and William Smith.
Picture quality is good, colours are bright and sound is crisp.
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5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Get it if you are into that kind of stuff., April 14, 2009
If you're into corny sci-fi from the 60's and 70's get it! If you only watch blockbusters and chick flicks, stay away! I love old yul brynner sci-fi movies and max von sydow actually did a great acting job for being a B movie sci-fi flick, so the purchase was good for me. Battle beneath the earth was OK too. The beginning is kind of catchy, "just like ants!". Drink plenty coffea to make it through the middle of the movie. Enjoy! P.S. if you like Yul Brynner Sci-Fi movies, make sure to get "Future World" & "West World"!
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14 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Warner Bros Blows it, October 8, 2008
I would rate the movie four stars if I could but this disc gets a 1 star for not treating "The Ultimate Warrior" like it deserves to be, so I just have it three, whatever, the following will explain. As another review has stated, I also have waited years for the release of The Ultimate Warrior, starring Yul Brynner, max Von Sydow, Joanna Miles, and William Smith. This great film (1975) was one of the very first Post Apocalyptic films made. I own the VCD of this film, and have bought this new DVD as well, but it is simply a terrible choice to place such a great and well made film as The Ultimate Warrior, alongside some b movie thing. The Ultimate Warrior is a historic film deserving a lot better treatment that this. I hope they re-release this and do it the justice it deserves with its own disc, extra features, etc, but I am glad to at least have it on a single dvd instead of the VCD's. The Ultimate Warrior is presented in Widescreen here on this DVD, and the picture and sound are nice and clear. As with any film from the 70's there is room for restoration and whatnot, but its a nice sharp picture despite minor grain issues.
As for the movie itself, "The Ultimate Warrior" (1975) is a post-Holocaust action-thriller that came out in 1975 after "THX-1138" and "The Omega Man" (both -1971), and after "Zardoz" (1974), but just before the genre became popular with "Logan's Run" (1976), "Mad Max" (1979) and "Escape From New York" (1981). "Rollerball" starring James Caan also came out in 1975, but nobody that I'm aware of had really portrayed the gritty horrors of post-apocalyptic survival in a realistic modern setting/story out in the streets (and under them) with real, unaltered, typical people until The Ultimate Warrior.
A precedent setting film containing many original seeds of post-apocalyptic action that would show up time and again in other films, The Ultimate Warrior takes place in 2012 in a New York City that was decimated by a biological plague a couple of decades earlier that has created a world in which nothing grows. Now in the decaying city Baron (Max Von Sydow), leads a group that has barricaded a street against a rival gang of thugs, run by Carrot (b-movie legend William Smith). Wanting his pregnant daughter, Melinda (Joanna Miles), to have a better future, Baron hires Carson (Yul Brynner), a tough fighter with a code of his own, who has been standing outside the public library waiting for somebody to make an offer for his services. Baron has heard of a mythical island off of the coast of North Carolina and wants to relocate his band there. Of course, this means fighting their way out of what is left of the Big Apple. Melinda's husband, Cal (Richard Kelton) is a scientist who knows the secret of growing plants from seeds, so humanity might have a chance after all.
"The Ultimate Warrior" is not the ultimate example of the post-apocalyptic action film (my vote for best post-apocalyptic film is a tie between Logan's Run in 1976 and Escape From New York with Kurt Russell in 1981), but it is a solid, unpretentious movie. The cinematography by Gerald Hirschfield is done very nicely, it has a decent script, a standout eclectic experimental musical score by Gil Melle, and it has Yul Brynner & William Smith matching wits and weapons! Taking into consideration that Brynner was around 60 when he did this film he still showed audiences that he had what it takes, could look cool and get down. Having just done Westworld in 1973, The Ultimate Warrior was Yul Brynner's very next film. It was directed by Robert Clouse of "Enter The Dragon" fame.
The film hinges on Brynner's performance, which is actually fairly complex because we are not completely sure that Carson is a cynical anti-hero; in fact, we suspect he might be the only truly human character in the film.
"You know, people are beginning to eat people out there." -Yul Brynner as Carson.
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