Warlords of the 21st Century (AKA Battletruck)

Originally published October 2009 on the now-defunct ascreennearyou.co.uk

Every time I see Mad Max I remember a similar movie I remember watching way back when.  All I had to go on was it was set in some post-apocalypse future where there was an oil shortage, but the villains find some guys who have a stash which is accessed by a secret panel under a rock, it had an armoured truck and the hero rode a methane-powered motorbike.

Needless to say that numerous Google searches yielded nothing, until today. Mad Max is back in the press (they’re apparently making a fourth) and Thunderdome was on telly last night (which prompted me to watch 1 and 2).

Anyway, I finally tracked down a site that seems to specialise in post apocalypse movies.  A search on the site brought up Battletruck (which seems to have been called Warlords of the 21st Century in the US).

You can find various bits, as well as the entire movie, on YouTube.

It was actually shot in New Zealand, it seems the antipodeans make good post-apocalypse road movies (Mad Max was made in Australia).

Don’t get me wrong, I imagine it’s a terrible movie these days, but thought I would post to make sure any like-minded individuals can find details of such post-apocalyptic gold.