The Grim Cellar

1980, USA, Directed by Steve Barkett

Colour, Running Time: 92 minutes

VHS, PAL, Trans-Global, Video: 1.33:1, Audio: Mono

Returning from a shuttle mission two astronauts find the civilised world a devastated ruin - while they were away a nuclear war kicked off and all but destroyed mankind (NASA obviously neglecting to mention it to them). All that apparently remains of thinking organisms are small pockets of now mindless mutations who will feed on anything still alive. Newman and Chris find a deserted house and temporarily try to continue as normal for a while before Newman decides to head off out in the hope of finding others; he gets more than he bargained for in the shape of Cutter and a group of militaristic (but amateur) assassins who are intent on claiming what’s left of Earth for themselves through a regime of brute force and rape. Momentarily finding sanity, Newman picks up a kid from a dying museum curator and later meets a wandering female, Sarah, who’s managed to escape Cutter’s love-hungry clutches. Telling Newman about Cutter’s campaign of tyranny he learns about a friend of Sarah’s still trapped in a prison camp run by the madman and decides to help break the woman free. Thus ensues a battle for supremacy and revenge between survivors who want peace and those who prefer dictatorship and violence.

Superbore Steve Barkett does almost everything here including writing, producing, directing, and starring in this exceedingly ambitious film, but you can only stretch a budget of seven dollars so far before it starts to show. The razed city landscapes look like they were knocked up on Blue Peter and some interiors consist of a couple of foreground items against a black background, the production unit probably hoping that darkness would conceal the fact that they could only afford about four props. Some of the early mutants actually look quite good (though they’re only seen during a nocturnal attack) but the few that turn up in daylight look like school play rejects. Barkett plays the nihilistic Newman, a man who’s actually glad that humanity has wiped itself out after his wife and child died partly due to procedural red tape several years earlier. During the course of the story he manages to acquire himself a young beauty to mate with, proves himself to be adequate as a surrogate father, beats off an entire base of gun-toting nutters Commando-style, and manages to be an all round hero - a process which can’t help but stimulate accusations of egocentricism from any viewers that are still awake. He is, however, probably one of the most ambitious film-makers that ever surfaced in the wake of Edward D Wood Jnr., and you can’t completely knock someone for trying this hard, even if it does end up completely wasting a couple of hours of your precious life. I actually first saw this when I was about ten years old thanks to my cousin who was babysitting us at the time - he put this on in between bouts of repeatedly playing the Convoy bar brawl in slow motion (video was a new phenomenon at the time) and my innocent mind was horrified at the bloodiness. Years later the squib effects are pretty good and it does feature occasionally gory shoot-outs, probably the one aspect of this production that was executed with some efficiency. Somehow Barkett persuaded the legendary Forrest J Ackerman to take part as ‘The Curator’ and even roped Dick Miller in for some voice work (perhaps the only competent bit of acting in the movie), but this doesn’t fool anybody. Lynne Margulies provides the love interest as Sarah well enough and it’s a surpirse to see Sid Haig as Cutter, a prolific tough guy actor who’s recently acquired a bit of infamy from Rob Zombie’s films. The ending is quite nifty but whatever way you look at it though, The Aftermath is still a piece of garden waste.

Released in the early days of video (under its original title I believe) this was later put out on a cheapo label as Zombie Aftermath in some amoral attempt at selling it to people who might have been expecting a little excitement (as the cover almost warns: ‘They returned from space expecting a heroes [sic] welcome. They were met by something very very [sic] different.’). I bought it a few years ago hoping it might live up to my vague boyhood memories of something far more epic and nastier but it just goes to show that even nostalgia can’t always turn shit to gold.