Last time I saw THE SALUTE OF THE JUGGER it was called THE BLOOD OF HEROES. That only version available in the U.S. was about ten minutes shorter, but still kinda legendary as a slept-on gem by some of us. That version was recently put in its proper place as bonus material for the original 104 minute Australian version on a 4K/blu-ray combo from Umbrella Entertainment.

It’s written and directed by David Webb Peoples, his only time directing a feature, but he’d written BLADE RUNNER and went on to write UNFORGIVEN, 12 MONKEYS and SOLDIER. Not a bad run. This one has a bit of the sci-fi and a bit of the western, because its heroes (blood and all) are travelers in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. But mostly it’s a sports movie.

See, it’s about this group of “Juggers” who travel from dog-town to dog-town challenging locals to The Game, which involves two teams of five hitting each other with bulky staffs while an unarmed player called a “qwik” tries to place a dog skull over the other team’s goal post. We follow a team led by Sallow (Rutger Hauer, WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE), once a full-fledge League player, drummed out for falling in love with an “elegant lady,” now living this hardscrabble life on the road. His teammates are Young-Gar (Vincent D’Onofiro, ESCAPE PLAN), Mbulu (Delroy Lindo, returning from the stage to the screen 11 years after MORE AMERICAN GRAFFITI), Big Cimber (Anna Katarina, Poodle Lady from BATMAN RETURNS) and the qwik, Dog-Boy (Justin Monjo, DARK CITY), who has a deformed face and crawls around like a dog. They also have a manager called Gandhi (Gandhi MacIntyre, DEAD END DRIVE-IN) who travels with a tall wardrobe strapped to his back.

To be honest I understood the rules and game play about as much as I understood the racing in F1® THE MOVIE, but it really doesn’t matter because you see guys fighting and the score by Todd Boekelheide (DEADLY DREAMS) tells you how well things are going. And you can see from the camera following her that you should pay attention to one of the locals, Kidda (Joan Chen, later in WEDLOCK with Hauer), who runs to join in the match, then follows the team on the road afterwards. Dog-Boy is so injured in the match he can’t continue walking, and so proud he refuses to be carried. So Kidda kinda insinuates herself onto the team.

I don’t know that much about Chen, but she’s an intriguing figure to me. Obviously I can’t separate her from being the female lead in ON DEADLY GROUND. She grew up in Shanghai, where as a teenager the wife of Mao Zedong saw her marksmanship on a school rifle range and recruited her to the Actor’s Training Program. Soon she started starring in Chinese movies including YOUTH (1977) and LITTLE FLOWER (1979). At the age of 20 she came to the U.S. to study filmmaking, which led to appearing in Wayne Wang’s DIM SUM: A LITTLE BIT OF HEART and Chinese-set Hollywood epics like TAI-PAN and THE LAST EMPEROR. But also episodes of Knight Rider, Miami Vice and MacGyver. I imagine most Americans know her from Twin Peaks, but that was a little after this. So I’d say SALUTE OF THE JUGGER was the beginning of her genre period, which included WEDLOCK, THE HUNTED, and JUDGE DREDD. (Then she went classy again, writing and directing XIU XIU: THE SENT DOWN GIRL, about the Cultural Revolution she grew up in.)

Anyway, she’s immediately cool in this – scrappy young farm girl with the cool short hair, daughter of Cecilia Wong (SHAOLIN MANTIS, WAY OF THE BLACK DRAGON), runs up and does some intimidatingly flexible stretches, looks so delicate next to these bruisers, but kicks ass. Of course the story makes her sleep with some of the men in the movie, but at least they give her agency in it. There’s even a joke about her having a male groupie she could get with as her reward but weighing her options and choosing one of her teammates instead.

They swing chains, they wear headgear made of scrap metal, sticks and tires. They’re covered in wounds and brands, Sallow usually covers his poked-out eye. Kidda wonders what type of luxury Sallow experienced back when he was a pro. She wants to know if silk is real, and what it felt like to touch the skin of women without scars. She helps convince him to take the risk of returning to the Nine Cities, the subterranean structure where the rich people live and The League operates. He’s always said amateur teams don’t stand a chance against the pros, but now that he has a qwik this good the distant possibility of proving himself to the world he was ousted from is too tempting.

I’d been meaning to rewatch this for years, and the push to finally do it was when I remembered Lindo was in it. I’m so happy about his Oscar nomination for SINNERS, whether or not he has much of a chance to win it. He’s been around for so long but it was CROOKLYN that made me notice him as one of the greats. No matter how many times I watch that it doesn’t get old – such a layered character, a loving father, a talented but snobby artist, a fuck up as a husband and a landlord, but still so warm. Mbulu isn’t that type of character at all, he doesn’t get a huge amount to do, especially when it comes to dialogue. And yet he brings that deep presence and humanity that you expect from Lindo, playing a guy in kit-bashed armor, with huge rows of scars across his face like Colonel Quaritch, often hidden behind a helmet. Not one of his best roles, but definitely a cool one to have on his resume.

It sorta goes without saying that not one person in recorded human history has seen this movie without thinking about the MAD MAX series, particularly BEYOND THUNDERDOME. There are many direct connections in the crew. Second unit director/stunt coordinator Guy Norris had done stunts in ROAD WARRIOR and went on to coordinate FURY ROAD and FURIOSA (plus George Miller’s BABE: PIG IN THE CITY, HAPPY FEET TWO and THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING). Director of photography David Eggby shot the first MAD MAX. Editor Richard Francis-Bruce cut THUNDERDOME (plus THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK and LORENZO’S OIL). Special makeup designer Bob McCarron did that for THUNDERDOME and was in the makeup department for ROAD WARRIOR. Second assistant director P.J. Voeten went from unit runner on THUNDERDOME to producer and first assistant director of FURY ROAD. Storyboard artist Steve Lyons also did THUNDERDOME. And I’m sure there are others I missed.

There are also a few MAD MAXers in front of the camera. Grand Imperator Richard Norton (GYMKATA, CHINA O’BRIEN, LADY DRAGON) is in it, and Max Fairchild, who was in both MAD MAX and ROAD WARRIOR, plays Gonzo, leader of the Nine Cities all-star team Sallow’s up against. But the big one is Toecutter/Immortan Joe himself Hugh Keays-Byrne, who plays the leader of the Nine Cities, Lord Vile. He’s a different tone of villain here, an aristocratic asshole, but yes, a total piece of shit like his MAX characters.

He wants Sallow to lose bad, and one reason it’s a legit sports movie is that he gives them a dirty play and Gonzo (who knows Sallow from back in the day) doesn’t feel good about it. They pin Sallow down for the whole round so he can’t do anything, but they don’t hurt him like they’re supposed to, and when confronted about it Gonzo gets to say a righteous line about never hurting someone except to put a dog skull on a stake. Webb Peoples says on the commentary track that the movie was very influenced by ROCKY, but this part is more THE KARATE KID if Johnny refused to sweep the leg. I don’t really like sports much but sports movies can work on me, and both this and the end of the match gave me the type of goosebumps you want in one of those.

A sports movie in a post-apocalyptic world is a cool gimmick, which would be enough, but I also think it was a clever way to say some very true things about sports. These are people who are physically gifted, they’ve trained hard, they have a bond from playing together, they’re proud of what they do, they love to be competitive, but they have codes of ethics and honor with their opponents. On the darker side of things, the world they live in is very harsh, and being good at The Game is the only possible way for Kidda to get out of her dog-town and find a better life. It’s also true that this sport is absolutely brutal, leading to the debilitation and early deaths of many players, and it’s a source of sadistic entertainment for rich people, who think they own the players. So there is triumph and glory and also greed, corruption and exploitation. All things that are natural in a post-apocalypse movie but also part of the reality of sports.

I wouldn’t take SALUTE OF THE JUGGER over any of the official MAD MAX movies, but it’s gotta be near the top of MAD-MAX-like movies. I salute it.