10 Cult Sci-Fi Alternatives To Star Wars: The Force Awakens You Must Watch

By Ian Watson /

1. 2019: After The Fall Of New York (1983)

In the Nevada Desert (or its Italian equivalent), road warrior Parsifal (Michael Sopkiw) literally defies death in a vehicular gladiatorial contest, bringing him to the attention of Pan-Am president Edmund Purdom, who€™s clearly seen Escape From New York because he wants Sopkiw to go on a search-and-rescue mission. With the population rendered sterile courtesy of radiation, there hasn€™t been a child born in fifteen years, but Purdom€™s computer has thrown out the name of the world€™s last fertile woman located somewhere in (you guessed it) New York City. If she€™s young enough, Purdom reasons, her ovaries may contain as many as five hundred unfertilized eggs: €œThat€™s five hundred uncontaminated human beings!€ Even though Sopkiw prefers to €œwork alone€, he€™s partnered by a claw-handed ex-schoolteacher and Robowar€™s Romano Puppo, cast here as an eyepatch-wearing muscleman who may not be all that he appears. Along the way they encounter a succession of colourful supporting characters, including a sadistic villain who knows ways of making you talk, a dwarf named Shorty and Big Ape (George Eastman), who€™s either a man/ape hybrid or an ugly sumbitch. Despite an unfortunate resemblance to Bela Lugosi€™s Ape Man, Eastman just happens to be the World€™s last fertile man with an unwholesome interest in the last fertile woman, who he finds hibernating in a Perspex tube clad in transparent clothing. If that seems a tad unlikely, bear in mind that director Sergio Martino€™s next sci-fi flick was Hands Of Steel, the greatest arm-wrestling cyborg movie ever.