The New Barbarians (1983)

Costume Design by Mario Giorsi

Between filming of 1990: The Bronx Warriors and Escape from the Bronx, Enzo Castellari made The New Barbarians (also known as Warriors of the Wasteland), a film with much more 'space age' costume designs than most post-apocalyptic films. Its protagonist Scorpion (Timothy Brent) is only dressed in brown leather trousers with a codpiece attached, and a muted green fur coat, except for in the final battle where he dons see-through plastic chest armor.

Assisting Scorpion is his rather sardonic and cynical former accomplice, Nadir (Fred Williamson) who sports the most memorable outfit of the film by far – the black leather and gold-trimmed vest and armor pads aren’t something forgotten in a hurry! Of note is how the armor piece on his forearm is coated in the multicoloured arrow tips, making it look like its adorned in jewels.

Of the main cast, the last to note is Alma (Anna Kanakis) whose outfit sadly never gets a decent shot in the film itself, being a shirt worn with tan and purple leather leggings with a diamond pattern on the waist, as well as the white shoulder pads she sports in her first appearance.

The evil Templars all sport white and black uniforms, the only differing versions seem to be sported by their various leaders, notably One (George Eastman) and his lieutenant Shadow (Ennio Girolami). One’s uniform is adorned with studded leather pieces (presumably a nod to Lord Humungus' kinky getup in The Road Warrior, a subtext that actually reaches its full conclusion in one scene of New Barbarians).

Shadow’s however is more conservative (though still with leather straps and codpiece), with rounded shoulder pads and leather collar. The most notable thing about Shadow’s style has to be that hairdo though!

The last of the three lead Templars is Mako (Massimo Vani) who also is immediately recognizable via his purple-dyed mohawk and braided ponytail. Mako, like the other Templar commanders, has an open shirt and rounded collar, but his uniform is distinguished by the studded stripes on his shoulder pads and trousers.

The other Templars are all dressed identical, in white overalls with triangular leather straps going over the chest and large pointed shoulder pads with black lining. Most of the Templars also wear white motorbike helmets with the uniform – between this, Castellari’s two Bronx Warriors films, Sergio Martino’s Hands of Steel and Bruno Mattei’s Robowar, motorbike helmets truly were a sign of evil in Italian scifi films!

The other wasteland residents are in contemporary clothing except for Vinya (Iris Peynado) is notable, thanks to the see-through stockings and bikini she wears during the love scene with Nadir.

Starcrash (1978)

Costume Designer Uncredited

I suspect the costume designer was Mario Giorsi - compare the costumes of Starcrash to those of The New Barbarians and Warriors of the Year 2072, and tell me if its not just me who sees a similarity? The costumes of Starcrash were based on illustrations by the Italian comics artist Niso Ramponi - some of the final film's costumes adhere closely to Ramponi's art.

Perhaps the most well-known out of all the films to come out of the success of Star Wars perhaps barring Battle Beyond the Stars. Caroline Munro has the starring role as Stella Star, who incidentally wears the most variety of outfits in the film, albeit most of them being on the skimpy side. Her first outfit is a glittery blue one piece suit which doesn’t get shown much sadly.

Worn over the blue suit (and over several of Starr's other costumes later on in the film) is a vinyl protective suit, worn with a red belt sash - I neglected to include the 'helmet' as I'm sure it's actually just a water cooler tank.

When Starr is arrested by the Imperial Police, she ends up wearing the first of her infamously skimpy outfits of black leather pants and bikini combo. This version has a popped collar too, as well as a symbol stuck on her pants – the prison logo? Also of note is the little star ear-ring she sports with all her outfits.

Munro’s second outfit is vaguely ornate, with the symbol being replaced for a studded diamond shape.

The third and final version of Stella's black outfits is a much more lurid top cut to be as revealing as possible, with another symbol on the leather pants. This version also seems to continue having red trim like the first outfit in the prison scenes did.

For her other scenes, Munro wears a red unitard with a silvery 'armor' tunic worn over it, with silver trim on the cuffs. In some scenes, the unitard is black instead.

Helping Stella Star is Akton (Marjoe Gortner), who in every scene of his, is always clad in the uniform of black leather with a ref triangle shape on the front going down to the waist, markings cut over the shoulders too.

They are hired by the Emperor (Christopher Plummer), whose outfit is similar in design to Akton's, but has a raised collar and curved epaulettes, with panelling over the sleeves to imitate armor.

The last of our protagonists to be introduced is Prince Simon (David Hasselhoff) who also happens to be related to the Emperor. He wears an outfit also consisting of triangular panelling over a vinyl jumpsuit, but with a collar and ribbed material.

The devious chief of police Thor (Robert Tessler) is in a brown unitard adorned with a v-shaped piece going over his chest and shoulders, topped off with the collar.

The Emperor's soldiers are all dressed in the brown bodysuits worn with patterned pieces that looks like they were made to resemble some for of future body armor. The uniform is completed with a golden helmet.

The villainous Count Zarth Arn (Joe Spinell in a role allowing himself to chew the scenery) dresses like the archetypal space opera nasty, with cape, popped collar and uniform of black leather piped with red. What appears to me especially is how the bottom of his tunic is cut in that pointed way.

The Count’s troops are all in identical black suits and gold-lined helmets, with the only exception being his lieutenant who has extra gold markings on the sides of his helmet to signify his higher rank.

During the firefight towards the film's climax, we briefly see the Count’s personal death squads employed against the invading royal forces, and it’s a shame we only see them in this brief scene, because these are definitely some of the more fascinating designs to me – the pointed face of the helmet gives a very inhuman quality, with the armor plates making them seem tougher.

However some light can be shed on where these helmets were also used in – that they were meant to be used for by a detachment of imperial prison guards outside the prison itself at the start, if this still of a deleted scene is anything to go by – whilst the helmets were reused for the ‘death squad’ troopers, the main outfits ended up just being used for the Emperor’s bodyguards, only seen as background characters.

Lastly, one sequence of the film involves Stella being captured by a group of ‘amazons’ led by the evil Corelia (Nadia Cassini) – all the amazons are dressed identically, with Corelia’s garb being identical except for hers being black rather than beige, coupled with the cape she wears with it in most of her scenes.