The creators of 'Mad Max' was indirectly responsible for unleashing a surge of rather bad films that depicted a future where modern society had been all but eradicated and the survivors scrabbled to make a living and not die until the end of the film.
The success of 'Mad Max' and of the sequels ensured that ideas for films that would have otherwise been dumped in a drawer somewhere were made; hence you can find films such as Rutger Hauer's 'Split second' which was a 'Predator' rip-off set in 2008 in a very flooded London with lines such as "Are you telling me there's something running around loose in the city, ripping out people's hearts and eating them so he can take their souls back to hell?"
'Split second' was unintentionally funny when it decided to have a side-effect of seeing the monster being to eat chocolate and drink lots of coffee.
Another film that owes its existence to 'Mad Max' is Jean-Claude Van Damme's 'Cyborg.' I stumbled across this film on Blockbusters for 50 pence and decided that it look the perfect thing to hibernate through winter with as the plot is almost incidental to the random action that occurs on screen.
It is set in a post-apocalyptic future where starvation and disease are plaguing the few remaining inhabitants of Earth. Scientists are close to discovering a cure for the plague that is sweeping the country. Gibson Rickenbacker is a strong fighter who leads a group to Atlanta to gain information needed for the cure, along the way attempting to avoid kick the hell out of the cartoon villains called 'The Flesh Pirates'.
The acting stinks and the script is even worse, as someone decided it would be a wonderful idea to name the characters after musical instruments or manufacturers ensuring we have Gibson Rickenbacker, Nady Simmons, Fender Tremolo, Marshall Strat and Pearl Prophet. At no point is the reasoning for this explained and since this film was last official theatrical release for Cannon Films before they went bankrupt it appears they didn't even receive any backhanders from the companies concerned.
Even more curious is the fact that 'Cyborg' was actually intended to be a sequel to the 1987 live-action version of 'Masters of the Universe' film that stared Dolph Lundgren and is known in some circles as 'Masters of the Universe 2: (The) Cyborg.' This would explain why after the credits of the 'Masters of the universe' Skeletor's head pops up from the lake and says "I'll be back!"
In case you thought that vision of the future was bad it appears that Lion Rock have decided to get John Woo to produce and direct a new version of 'Masters of the Universe' in the very near future. This is a prospect which makes the original films depicting the future starring overly muscled men running around with their shirts off and accents so thick they require dubbing seem incredibly comforting and not something that should be discarded just yet
