STRAIGHT TO VIDEO PRESENTS AMERICA 3000 (1986)

We all love B-movies for various reasons, but sexism isn’t one of them. In July, Straight to Video introduces you to America 3000, a Cannon-produced post-apocalyptic oddity in which men are finally portrayed for what we really are: illiterate, feral slaves dominated by an all-matriarchal society. After nuclear war has collapsed civilization, women, clearly the smarter half of our species, rule what remains of the world, which, given the film’s budget, is not very much. Men have lost the ability to read, can barely communicate, and are kept either as labouring slaves or as “seeders,” until one runaway macho discovers the most powerful artifact in the known universe: a first-grader’s reading book.

The film’s most interesting angle is its language: to suggest linguistic decay, every faction speaks in made-up slang, not unlike the youth argot of A Clockwork Orange, just way dumber. To fully enjoy the creativity of its constructed jargon, this screening will be subtitled in English. Otherwise, you might miss such tearjerking dialogue highlights as: “Neggy more machos. Neggy more toys. Neggy more seeders. Just men.”