Life is a B‑Movie: Joe D’Amato’s Bizarre Prophe­cy of 2025

Four decades ago, Ital­ian exploita­tion film­mak­er Joe D’Amato envi­sioned 2025 as a bleak, spec­ta­cle-filled waste­land. Set in the Bronx fol­low­ing a nuclear holo­caust, his 1983 film Endgame depicts a col­lapsed soci­ety with an author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ment in con­trol, their troop­ers wear­ing gar­ish neon-pink thun­der­bolts on their hel­mets as an unsub­tle nod to fas­cist iconog­ra­phy. Tele­path­ic ​‘mutant’ peo­ple, an after­ef­fect of radi­a­tion (nat­u­ral­ly), are per­se­cut­ed for their assumed threat to pow­er, while the main form of enter­tain­ment is an annu­al state-sanc­tioned and tele­vised glad­i­a­to­r­i­al con­test known as Endgame, in which fight­ers hunt a vol­un­teer human ​‘prey’ for a cash prize.

Even at its most sen­sa­tion­al­ist, apoc­a­lyp­tic cin­e­ma offers an invalu­able lens through which to exam­ine how we con­tem­plate the future, and ulti­mate­ly our destruc­tion. Though it might be a stretch to pro­pose that Endgame was prophet­ic in any real or cal­cu­lat­ed sense, the film’s vision of dystopia res­onates in unex­pect­ed­ly pro­found ways today, both through its reliance on recur­ring anx­i­eties of the apoc­a­lypse, and also because the pulpy the­atrics of exploita­tion cin­e­ma feel more true-to-life than ever.

Endgame takes place after World War III, bring­ing togeth­er total­i­tar­i­an­ism, grit­ty cityscapes, desert vehi­cles and high-octane action. It is a bla­tant ride on Mad Max​’s suc­cess two years pri­or, and a rel­a­tive­ly soft­core entry into D’Amato’s fil­mog­ra­phy, which includes pornog­ra­phy, erot­i­ca, spaghet­ti west­erns, hor­ror, fan­ta­sy and oth­er post-apoc­a­lyp­tic imag­in­ings. A film­mak­er that would rev­el in the shocked recep­tion when at his most extreme, he was even accused of mak­ing snuff on films such as Antropoph­a­gus (1980), in which a can­ni­bal­is­tic Nean­derthal con­sumes the fetus ripped from a mother’s womb. To him, such alle­ga­tions mere­ly proved that he was doing a good job.
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On the tamer side, the vio­lence of Endgame is more fit­ting to its dystopi­an set­ting: blood-spurt­ing and bone-crunch­ing in a fight for sur­vival. Ron Shan­non (Al Cliv­er), reign­ing cham­pi­on as both hunter and prey, becomes entan­gled in a plot to assist the tele­path­ic mutants escape the city, led by the right­eous Lilith (Lau­ra Gemser) and accom­pa­nied by a gang of war­riors. Beyond this, the film deliv­ers campy ​’80s cos­tum­ing, from leather-clad and stud­ded war­riors in face paint to back­ground char­ac­ters styled as New Roman­tic music video extras, as well as droll satire – the broad­cast vio­lence is inter­ject­ed with perky prod­uct place­ments: ​“Life Plus: High Pro­tein Ener­gy Tablet!”

In many ways, Endgame speaks to ongo­ing con­cerns about author­i­tar­i­an­ism as shaped by sur­veil­lance, our voyeuris­tic con­sump­tion of suf­fer­ing and the oppres­sion of an ​‘oth­ered’ com­mu­ni­ty. In the film, the game itself is used to dis­tract the pub­lic while the mil­i­tary exter­mi­nates shel­ter­ing mutants, not unlike how large-scale tele­vised events such as the Super­bowl or Met Gala have been used in the past year to deflect atten­tion from war crimes – a shal­low anal­o­gy not meant to triv­i­alise these heinous acts, but rather empha­sise the rela­tion­ship between glob­al impe­ri­al­ism and entertainment.

While death­match­es are yet to reach our screens, social media has become a relent­less and inescapable stream of ads, memes, war imagery and per­for­ma­tive out­rage. The ongo­ing suc­cess of shows like Squid Game reveals our appetite for vio­lent spec­ta­cle, but also demon­strates the irony of con­sum­ing ​‘anti-cap­i­tal­ist’ art with­in its sys­tem. The adapt­ed real­i­ty show, crit­i­cised for its uneth­i­cal treat­ment of par­tic­i­pants, exploits the very things the show made attempts to reflect on. But the high­ly stylised vio­lence of Squid Game is a dif­fer­ent breed from that of B‑movies – though still gra­tu­itous, their campy, low-bud­get gore demands a unique kind of view­er­ship from mod­ern audi­ences. With­out the sheen or spe­cial effects that we’ve come to expect from con­tem­po­rary films, whether slash­ers, satires or his­tor­i­cal epics, B‑movies dis­rupt our desen­si­tised con­sump­tion of this pol­ished style of vio­lence, even if only temporarily.

In Endgame, the peace­ful tele­path­ic mutants, feared and oppressed for their mis­un­der­stood dif­fer­ence, are a glar­ing alle­go­ry for mar­gin­alised groups that have become the tar­get of reac­tionary pol­i­tics. This is often a mark­er for fas­cist resur­gences, as are ableist beliefs that go hand-in-hand with glob­al crises and survivalism.

A pro­fes­sor and neu­ro­sur­geon (Dino Con­ti) describes anoth­er effect of radi­a­tion: ​“invo­lu­tion”, in which genet­ic muta­tions are caus­ing humans to regress to their pri­mor­dial begin­nings, depict­ed onscreen by brutish ape-hybrids and peo­ple with gills, fins and scales (hark­ing back to our aquat­ic ori­gins, obvi­ous­ly). Relat­ed­ly, the professor’s own fanati­cism over the tele­path­ic mutants marks anoth­er fas­cist sign­post, view­ing them as a supe­ri­or race that should rule not only the world, but the uni­verse, his eugenic desires shared in a Ger­man accent.

The 2025 of Endgame and now are dis­turbing­ly sim­i­lar: soci­ety clings to civil­i­sa­tion whilst on the edge of envi­ron­men­tal and nuclear cat­a­stro­phe. But as B‑movies often com­man­deer var­i­ous tropes and sub­gen­res in a nev­er-end­ing ref­er­ence loop, draw­ing com­par­isons between these films and our present day can be like play­ing lucky dip with the­mat­ic mes­sag­ing. Regard­less, there­in lies their strange bril­liance. The unruly splic­ing of aes­thet­ics, themes and taboos, as well as a reliance on extremes in vio­lence, sex­u­al­i­ty or polit­i­cal alle­go­ry, make these films not only insight­ful reflec­tions of their time, but strange­ly time­less in their over­stuffed and unabashed recy­cling of tropes.

As mis­in­for­ma­tion and polit­i­cal pomp become even more fren­zied when broad­cast through­out our hyper-con­nect­ed and tech­no-cap­i­tal­ist hellscape, B‑movie fever dreams now feel uncom­fort­ably close. Cru­el­ty is enter­tain­ment. In Endgame​’s 2025, a reporter instructs the cam­era­man to zoom in and cap­ture the ​“kill shot”. In our 2025, we wit­ness the Offi­cial White House social media accounts post­ing a clip enti­tled ​“ASMR: Ille­gal Alien Depor­ta­tion Flight”, and only days lat­er, Trump releas­ing a sick­en­ing AI-gen­er­at­ed video depict­ing Gaza as a non-descript Mid­dle East­ern lux­u­ry resort, fea­tur­ing a large gold­en stat­ue of the US pres­i­dent, sky­scrap­ers, bel­ly danc­ing women and Elon Musk stuff­ing his face with flat­breads. It’s not that B‑movies sud­den­ly appear more pre­scient, as the threat of apoc­a­lyp­tic anni­hi­la­tion at the hands of the rul­ing class is noth­ing new, but the rise of polit­i­cal pageantry with­in our age of media sat­u­ra­tion has forged a real­i­ty that’s not too far off from their own far­ci­cal worlds.

Despite its short­com­ings, as well as the glar­ing irony of exploita­tion serv­ing as a poten­tial cri­tique of spec­ta­cle or com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion, Endgame is a reminder that the non­sen­si­cal can be the most illu­mi­nat­ing. As we con­tin­ue to grap­ple with the chal­lenges that our media-sat­u­rat­ed land­scape brings in which spec­ta­cle is the most sought-after social cur­ren­cy, it is in the more unre­fined cor­ners of cin­e­ma his­to­ry that we might dis­cov­er films to bet­ter make sense of this may­hem. Though most­ly buried beneath the post-apoc­a­lyp­tic exploita­tion canon, Endgame is one of these many cul­tur­al relics worth uncov­er­ing, and if the film is prophet­ic in any sense, it is that the dark­est peri­ods often arrive cloaked in absurdity.