2019 - After the Fall of New York (1983) is one of the cheap copycat films that followed the great success of the Road Warrior.
Like many of this genre it’s an Italian production where producers had a long experience with the peculiar Sword-and-Sandal films. Like the Road Warrior films their Italian sucessors preferred desert sceneries which resulted much cheaper than that filmed in cities.
Therefore a lot of these films look like Hercules meets Star Trek in the desert.
These magnificent dark romantic paintings are by Paul Julian one of the best artist of warner brothers in the forties and fiefties.
"All Fools' Day" is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by the English writer Edmund Cooper. It was already published in 1966, meaning in the good old days of post-apocalyptic fiction. There was no atomic blast and Cooper is really enjoying the scenery when great parts of humanity have vanished.
Some strange stone carvings in the Spanish community Catalonia. I think that’s all what’s left of an old medieval chapel.
Hombre is a Spanish comics series written by Antonio Segura and drawn by José Ortiz and was first published in 1981 in the magazine Cimoc.
Hombre lives in an America after the collapse of the technological civilization. He is sort of a post-apocalyptic cowboy and many of the people populating the ruined citues look (and behave) like zombies, long before these became fashionable in post-apocalyptic films and comics.
It’s a dark well drawn comic series which may have influenced even Stephen King’s Dark Tower series.
Even though the buildings are a reference to the traditional huts of the Kanak tribes living in New Caledonia, there is also a strong impression of decay. The buildings seem to fall apart, to be covered by the vegetation, becoming once again part of nature.
Some of his paintings look like old wartime propaganda posters like this one, which is one of my favorites. It’s called "Patriot". Proud and happy she’s returning from the battlefield presenting her pickings.
A fantastic post apocalyptic Vogue editorial in Vogue Paris (September 2006) by Craig McDean.
Skinny models in the best Road Warrior look in an ambiance of industrial decay. That’s the combination to make a cool Vogue photo shoot.
Despite ruins are crucial in Tomb Raider, they never have any (romantic) value of their own. Like Indiana Jones Lara Croft is totally unsentimental. Ancient ruins exist for her only to be robbed, to look for treasures. Don’t mind if they are destroyed by the way. In absolutely no way Lara could be an archaeologist, she combines the mentality of buccaneer with that of a bank robber.
But anyway I like King’s language his descriptions: "The desert was the apotheosis of all deserts, huge, standing to the sky for what might have been parsecs in all directions. White; blinding; waterless; without feature save for the faint, cloudy haze of the mountains which sketched themselves on the horizon and the devil-grass which brought sweet dreams, nightmares, death. An occasional tombstone sign pointed the way, for once the drifted track that cut its way through the thick crust of alkali had been a highway and coaches had followed it. The world had moved on since then. The world had emptied."
