The world man created, he destroyed.
Out of the darkness and ignorance of the
radioactive rubble emerged a new order..."
"...and the world was woggos."
(In old speak, that means—Crazy!)
Another Golan/Globus production, America 3000 might conceivably have made a very entertaining Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode, but somehow never ended up on that show.
Somewhere in Colorado, some nine centuries and more After the End, semi-civilized women rule the world from their walled villages while the men have been reduced to savages and slaves. Amid a very literal gender war in which the savage men prey on the women's supply convoys and the warrior women regularly sally forth from their villages either to enslave or exterminate the men, a clever and handsome young boy named Korvis and his trusty new sidekick Gruss escape from one of these slaver raids and set out to build a village of their own for men.
Several years later, having set up their village in the ruins of an old American military base, Korvis and his men organize a raid on the women's village of Frisco to take advantage of a recent change in the leadership. When the raid goes awry due to a few of his mistakes, Korvis misleads the women into chasing only him while his men flee back home in a different direction. Ultimately, this pursuit accidentally lands him in an old Presidential fallout shelter from which he receives a message from the long-forgotten past and retrieves several very interesting and useful bits of old technology for his men.
The women, meanwhile, have political concerns of their own. The previous "Tiara" or queen Reya, much to everyone's surprise, promoted her gentler daughter Vena to be Tiara over her more violent sister Lakella (who had been, and now must continue to be, second-in-command). As one might expect, Lakella is not at all happy about this state of affairs, and Vena is determined to prove herself worthy of her position in order to head off any challenges to her authority from her sister. Further complicating this royal infighting is Tiara Morha and her delegation from the neighboring village of Kansos; Morha has her own plans to overthrow Vena and set Lakella up as her puppet so that she can take control of both villages.
To complicate matters further, Korvis and Vena are developing an instinctive attraction for each other which, due to their respective societies' mutual contempt and loathing for each other, neither of them entirely understands. Thanks to this central tension, and to Korvis and Vena each receiving a mandate to lead their respective peoples into a "New Tomorrow" from their fragmentary mythology, he and she ultimately end up making war and making love and making peace before the credits roll.
Tropes featured in this film:
- After the End: As noted, it's been more than nine hundred years.
- Black Box: As we know, but as Korvis and his men do not, and as one poor fellow named Trog finds out the hard way, it's not a good idea to go playing catch with grenades. Also, being illiterate, they fail to notice some of the grenades they're passing out in preparation for war are harmless smoke grenades.
- Captive Date: Vena, after a fashion, after she agrees to go with Korvis for "a talk" in exchange for his releasing her friend Lynka. She eventually warms up to the idea, though, and they end up doing a great deal more than talking during their, er, high-level negotiations.
- Dating Catwoman: The none-too-subtle Foe Romance Subtext between Korvis and Vena gradually develops into this.
- Fallen States of America
- Future Slang: You gotta get hot on new ways. Prezzydent Korvis gonna free all men; neggy more machos, neggy more toys, neggy more seeders. Tiara Vena's second Lakella is convinced plugots got neggy smarts for tricking nobody. Hot scan what I say: if you disobey, then the Prezzydent'll cold nuke all combs just like the Mericans and Commies. Also, Tiara Vena wishes Prezzydent Korvis would stop calling her a fraul.
- Hand Wave: Korvis somehow learns how to read (albeit only simple words) from an ABC book for toddlers, which also rather conveniently has a visual pronunciation guide (showing you how your mouth should look when saying a word) and the words "horse" and "man" in it. Don't ask for any more explanations for his improbable literacy than that, because you're not going to get any.
- Lost Technology: Korvis finds plenty of it, and Vena learns how to make some.
- Made a Slave: Happens to a lot of the men in this story, including Korvis and Gruss, motivating them to free every man they can.
- Matriarchy: This one is of the kind one might see in a World of Action Girls.
- No One Gets Left Behind: Mildly deconstructed during Korvis' raid on Frisco. Pretty much everyone ends up wishing he'd left Aargh The Awful behind.
- Nuke 'em: According to a recorded message from General Greer, the USA "won" a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, meaning that America got the first strike.
- Only You Can Repopulate My Race: The women play with this trope a bit. Although there's no lack of men to keep the population going, the women have a mythology which mandates that they ultimately exterminate the men, which clashes with the reality that they need them in order to make babies. Their society's face-saving solution appears to be the "seeders" or breeders, who are kept in seclusion and exclusively trotted out at breeding time. They are also kept heavily veiled in a man-burka throughout the entire unenjoyable-looking and decidedly unromantic act.
- Personal Arcade: There are several arcade video games in the Presidential Chamber.
- The Power of Love: In this case, diplomatic power bordering on Deus Sex Machina as Korvis and Vena very successfully "negotiate" an end to their war with each other in the bedroom of that Presidential fallout shelter.
- Scavenger World: The women apparently have the basic skills for making food and weapons, but any man who isn't one of their slave "machos" pretty much either has to forage for basic supplies or raid the women for them.
- Sex Is Evil: As Lynka says concerning seeding, "It's a cold act... but it's gotta be done."
- Title by Year: Well, an approximate year, being 900+ years after 1980-ish, the third millennium is the closer one.
- Tongue Trauma: The poor "toys" (eunuchs) all have their tongues cut off as well as their manly parts.
