It’s the end of the world in Texas. Nisus (Al Cliver) along with the rest of his gang including Jab (Harrison Muller), Halakron (Peter Hooten), Red Wolfe (Hal Yamanouchi) and Catch Dog (Daniel Stephen) travel around trying to salvage what’s left of this hellhole by helping others (kind of…eventually). After Catch Dog attempts to rape a girl named Maida (Sabrina Siani), he is kicked to the curb. Nisus has a meet-cute with Maida and they end up settling down and starting a family. We fast forward then several years. Now Catch Dog has his own gang of rape-y delinquents while an even bigger threat has arisen, a Neo-Nazi gang led by this psychopath named The Black One (Donald O’Brien). As you would expect, The Black One’s gang raids Nisus’ village, rapes Maida then KILLS Nisus (wait… what?). Maida, through a series of improbable occurrences, ends up reconnecting with Nisus’ old buddies Jab, Halakron and Red Wolfe, who combines forces with a band of Native Americans to take down both Catch Dog and The Black One. Will vengeance be served?

2020 Texas Gladiators was co-written and co-directed by good ol’ George Eastman (Mr. Antropophagus himself) along with the king of Italo-schlock Joe D’Amato, and the cheapness, senseless gore and sexual violence and aimless script all tells us that we are in good hands with these guys. Interestingly what they’ve delivered here is basically a spaghetti western masquerading as a post-nuke flick. The plotting and sets are very reminiscent of a western… I mean, it takes place in Texas and heck, they even have Indians in it! They’ve just swapped out the six shooters for more cheesy, ridiculous weapons and the horses with janky Mad Max-lite vehicles. As such, if you can get into this movie’s groove and can get past the seemingly constant rape and bleak main character deaths, it’s a lot of fun actually (at least as fun as a movie with multiple rape scenes and the main character dying halfway through can be). Pus it was a delight to see Dr. Butcher M.D. as the big-bad in a post-nuke movie, and the soundtrack by Carlo Maria Cordio (who composed the score for a personal favorite of mine Troll 2 as well as classics like Absurd and Aenigma).

The ultra hi-def transfer here looks quite good. We have a very nicely balanced color palette and a solid depth of field. The grain level never feels too busy, and the source elements themselves look very clean and nearly pristine with only slight specs noticeable on occasion. The transfer itself is also free of distortion, macro-blocking or any other flaws that might have arisen during the restoration process. Included is both the English and Italian mono audio tracks and both sound clean and free of distortion or hiss beyond what was present in the source elements themselves. They also have a decent amount of kick to them for a mono track during the action scenes. For extras we have a couple of featurettes mainly. The first is an 18-minute making of featuring interviews with D’Amato, assistant director Michele Soavi, George Eastman and actor Al Cliver. It does a good job of covering various aspects of the production like how the film was written, the confusing directing credits, and other info on how the movie came together. The disc also features an interview with actress Geretta Geretta (who has a smaller role in this movie but who many may know her as the spicy Rosemary in Demons) about her career and how she ended up in the Italian film industry after appearing in the critically acclaimed Smithereens. To top it all off, the disc contains one of my favorite kinds of extras, a bonus CD of the original score!

In the ’80s, the market was flooded with these Italian post-nuke flicks in the wake of the success of the Mad Max movies. While 2020 Texas Gladiators certainly isn’t one of the more original ones of the bunch, D’Amato knows how to deliver the action without letting up, creating an exciting, fun flick that will be sure to please End-of-the-World fans.