Raegan Butcher Based on an excellent book called Path To Savagery by Robert Edmond Alter and then butchered beyond recognition in typical Hollywood fashion, Ravagers is a lack-luster film pretty much from start to finish. Unconvincing matte paintings of a destroyed city starts things off and before you know it we are introduced to a forlorn Richard Harris with hang-dog face and soon-to-be-killed wife. After being sniffed out by scruffy "ravagers"and suffering loss of said wife Harris (even more mopey)takes to the road. His journey is not conducted with any sense of urgency but is marked by some striking scenery. The rocket graveyard is particularly effective. So is the ship used as a hang-out for Ernie Borgnine and his crew of authoritarian head-busters or whatever the hell they were supposed to represent. Judging by the names in the cast it is obvious that a fair amount of money was spent on the project. But the film lacks excitement. The pace drags.Richard Harris gives a bad performance. The story meanders. It is all very vague. Fans hoping for another post-apocalyptic adventure like 1975's The Ultimate Warrior will be disappointed. Ravagers is rather flat and dull. What interest it does hold owes to its 70s period flavor.

Coventry Apparently there are good reasons for this film's obscurity status as well as for the low rating on this wondrous website. Richard Harris doesn't nearly whoop as much butt as I expected in this overall dull and completely unmemorable post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi feature from the late 70's. The one strong point this movie benefices from (set pieces) isn't nearly enough to overlook the massive amount of weaknesses (lack of action, miscast players, no script…), but it has to be said the location spotters and set piece designers pulled off an exquisite job. The story may be non-existent and sadly ruining all its potential, at least all the exteriors look very depressing and the scenery appears to genuinely have lived through a nuclear holocaust. The story, as said, is mundane and hardly worth wasting words on. Falk (Harris) and his wife are two of the last few civilized people left in the world, all the rest is either extinct or joined Ravagers clans. When a gang viciously kills his wife (of screen even, damned!), Falk flees towards … nowhere. On his journey chased by the same scum that killed his wife, Falk encounters an army sergeant who went a little mad due to the loneliness, a community of cave people and the new & highly enlightened leader of mankind Rann. "Ravagers" had copious possibilities and could have become a great film, but nothing justifies the script boredom! Falk doesn't even want to avenge the death of his wife? Bah! There may be some famous names in this American production, but without hesitating I prefer the anonymous but violence & spectacle-packed Italian exploitation efforts instead.

fedor8 This is such a pointless exercise... Nothing rings true in this shallow film. A post-apocalyptic world that leaves you totally disinterested. This war not only killed most people and made savages out of them, it also seems to have damaged everyone's brains; the characters act illogically, say nothing when they talk, and seem to live by rules that even mentally-deranged amoebas would object to.When the black guy mentions someone called "Rem" a couple of times, Harris asks him, "Who's this Rem?". The black guy answers, "Rem is Rem". And Harris says "Oh." Oh, well, thank you very much; that's just the answer I was looking for. What kind of bull**** dialogue is this? It sounds like a comedy but isn't.The stupidest aspect, however, is this idea of "the rats" (violent, brutal humans) following Harris throughout the whole film just because he killed one of them out of revenge for them killing his girl! They actually leave their base - their city - and follow him around during the whole film. How they manage to track him down in the end is anyone's guess; after all, Harris didn't tell anyone where he was going and couldn't even if he wanted to because he himself didn't know where he was heading towards. Supposedly they followed his trail by finding remnants of food, bullets and what not - what baloney.The "rats" are lead by a skinny guy who, in reality, couldn't assert himself as leader of a pre-school basketball team, let alone a post-apocalyptic wild bunch such as these "rats". When an attractive woman decides to follow Harris on his way to the elusive "Genesis", he dislikes the idea of her tagging along because, as he puts it, he is a "loner", blablabla.When they find Borgnine's ship (the Rem character) Harris gets into a very silly dialog with him over how the ship is run and so on. Then, at nightfall, the "rats" attack the ship, the ship blows up, the ship's inhabitants escape, and find themselves on the shore the next morning staring at Harris as if he were the new messiah or something. Then the black guy says something about "Genesis" and Harris tells them they'd found it. Brilliant. And that run-of-the-mill soundtrack doesn't help, either.

William Richard Harris and Alana Stewart (George hamilton's ex, and at the time Mrs. Rod Stewart) plays couple trying to survive the future where earth is pretty much dead. Now there are these normads called the ravagers that roams and kills because they are your typical bad guys. The leader is character actor Anthony James. They even play undressing the manniquin (later stolen by MAD MAX). James and his ravager's attack Harris and Stewart, and kills Stewart leaving Harris for dead. Harris in return comes back and kills James' gay sidekick making James go on a revenge trail. Harris goes on a quest for a better life meeting a messed up old army guy (art Carney), Ann Turkel, Woody Strode and Ernest Borgnine (who takes 70min to appear only to disappear in 81min). Cassel plays a nothing part as a blindman who gets stoned. The film looks real cheap and it looks like it was cut to get a PG rating. The film is very padded, but looks slopply edited near the end. In fact James seems to be gaining more new ravagers which each new scene! It's ironic that this was Hollywood's answer to the apocalypstic theme, as this and DAMNATION ALLEY killed the apocalypitic theme craze, and it took a Aussie film MAD MAX 2 3 years later to get people interested in this genre once again, causing a grut of Italian rip-offs! But nothing beats the cheeziness of the original "Hollywood" incarnation The Ravagers!