Warriors of the Pasta-Apocalypse: Michael Sopkiw and Mark Gregory Kicking Ass in the ’80s Italian Wastelands
A career retrospective and reviews of the Films ‘2019: After the Fall of New York,’ ‘1990: The Bronx Warriors,’ and ‘Escape from the Bronx’
An Apocalypse Overview
I write this article in the year 2019 with a morbid disappointment: the Italian-predicted post-apocalypse never happened.
I should be reminiscing about last year’s Rollerball World Championship Game between Houston and New York — you know, the game where the league suspended the rules to force the world’s greatest sports hero, Jonathan E., to retire. I should be running in fear from the marauding motorcycle ‘n dune buggy hoards on a quest to control the last drops of fuel and water. I should be worried about being eaten by radioactive zombies. I should be swinging makeshift, nail-spiked bats at cannibal warlords.
New York hasn’t fallen to the Eurac Nation. Manhattan should have been turned into a walled prison by now. There’s no Arthur C. Clark-predicted spinning-wheel space station over the Earth. I still do not have my one-piece jumpsuit and it looks like I’ll die before I catch that flight on a Pan-Am space shuttle to the Moon. We’re not consuming each other by way of soylent wafers and law enforcement doesn’t control starving rioters with human-scooping, dump truck-bulldozer hybrids.
Yes, to the chagrin of the Italian film industry: we are still alive. And to my chagrin: the Italian post-apocalypse — the single greatest sci-fi film sub-genre to dominate the drive-ins and home video stores of my youth — is over.
Sure, Hollywood offered us their big-budgeted versions of our decimated future with Waterworld (1995), Escape from L.A (1996), 28 Days Later (2002), The Road (2006), I Am Legend (2007), The Book of Eli (2010), World War Z (2013), and Mad Max: Fury Road (2016), but it was the low-budgeted indie knock-offs coming out of Europe in the 1980s — spearheaded by the Italian film industry’s insatiable quest to rip-off proven American genre flicks — that revved our post-nuke engines.
While the first wheat grains of the ’80s spaghetti apocalypse were planted with 1979’s Mad Max out of Australia, those stalks blossomed in 1981 with the cinematic one-two-punch of John Carpenter’s Escape from New York and Mad Max’s sequel, The Road Warrior.
However, the inspiration for several Italian-Euro apocalyptic films began with a film based on a 1924 short-story by Richard Connell: 1932’s The Most Dangerous Game — a story that inspired novelist Robert Sheckley to compose his sci-fi variations of “human death sports” that, in turn, begat the American-made Rollerball (1975), Death Race 2000 (1975), and Deathsport (1978), and the later pasta variants of Endgame and Rome 2072.
Sheckley’s grandfather of sci-fi “death sport” films came courtesy of the Italian-made The 10th Victim (1965) based on his 1953 short story, The Seventh Victim. Sheckley’s literary inspirations about humanity’s future psych-condition continued with the 1958 short-story, The Prize of Peril, first adapted as the German television film, Das Millionenspeil (The Millions Game; 1970), then as the French film, Le Prix du Danger (The Price of Danger; 1983). Both films so influenced Arnold Schwarzenegger’s The Running Man (1987) that it resulted in a copyright infringement lawsuit.
Another American inspiration for Italy’s post-and-gooey zombie apocalypse was 1964’s The Last Man on Earth, the first take on Richard Matheson’s influential novel, I Am Legend — along with Invisible Invaders (1959). Both films influenced George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), itself a horror/post-apocalypse flick.
No nostalgic waxing of the pasta-apocalypse is complete without honoring the influential “Big Three” starring Moses and Ben-Hur himself: Charlton Heston. His turn in Planet of the Apes (1968) ignited the post-apocalyptic sci-fi craze within the Hollywood mainstream studio system and led to Heston’s turns in The Omega Man (1971) and Soylent Green (1973).
Once sour on the low-budget “image” of sci-fi films of the ’50s and ’60s, major studios and A-List actors quickly committed to the apocalypse genre with Oliver Reed in Z.P.G (1971), Yul Brynner in The Ultimate Warrior and Sean Connery in Zardoz (both 1974), James Caan in Rollerball (1975), Michael York in Logan’s Run (1976), George Peppard in Damnation Alley (1977), and Richard Harris and Paul Newman in Ravagers and Quintet (both 1979), respectively.
Then, by 1981, John Carpenter and George Miller sealed the Earth’s cinematic fate with their respective films: Escape from New York and The Road Warrior. Both films turned (the adult) Kurt Russell and Mel Gibson into worldwide stars.
Courtesy of the Italian film industry’s penchant for perpetually replicating successful American films — such as Steve McQueen’s, Clint Eastwood’s, and Charles Bronson’s Bullitt, Magnum Force, and Deathwish (to create the poliziotteschi/action-drama genre), Dawn of the Dead (to create the zombie genre), Star Wars (to create the space-opera genre), and endlessly remaking Jaws and Piranha with a variety of aquatic monstrosities — noted Italian directors Ezno Castellari, Ruggero Deodato, Lucio Fulci, and Sergio Martino started up their Roger Corman (New World Pictures) and Charles Band (Empire Pictures) inspired, cinematic blenders. The pasta-apocalypse of 1980s was born.
And while the directors and actors of the Italian apocalypse have come and gone — and been forgotten by the many — we, the survivors of the celluloid cataclysm of our teenaged years have never forgotten the genre’s two biggest stars. And no: it’s not Kurt Russell or Mel Gibson.
Welcome to the lives and careers of Micheal Sopkiw and Mark Gregory.
Michael Sopkiw: Radiation, Sharks, Rednecks, and Cannibals
It is interesting to note that one of America’s finest actors, James Dean, achieved his legendary status with only three films. Michael Sopkiw’s equally revered (by post-apoc fans), all-too-brief career consisted of only four films — which he shot in the span of two years.
Born in the U.S state of Connecticut in 1954, Michael Sopkiw (pronounced Sop-keev) began his show business career as a successful photo/runway model-turned-actor. As with the equally Euro-revered apocalyptic-action star Mark Gregory, Sopkiw starred in several Italian-produced films that, while not earning critical praises as result of their low-production values, garnered substantial financial returns in the U.S, European, and overseas home video markets.
Before he became a beloved Euro-action star during the ’80s home video boom, Sopkiw’s lifelong love of sailing earned him a job as a merchant sailor, which led to a job laying underwater cable in England’s North Sea in the seventies. Finding other employment opportunities as a yacht broker, and as a sailor on luxury yachts and commercial ships, he returned to his homeland to attended college at the University of Miami (Florida) to study mechanical engineering. For reasons lost to the test of time: Sopkiw’s oceanic navigation activities led him into the underground world of drug smuggling. The end result: he served one year on a two and a half year prison sentence for transporting cargos of marijuana.
As result of parole guidelines that restricted his return to sea, Sopkiw needed to choose a new career. As result of knowing someone active in the New York City theatre scene, he took up acting — seriously and full-time. In an interview with David Everitt in the pages of Fangoria, Sopkiw said that acting was merely a fantasy at the back of his mind that, for many years, he never took it seriously. When he was appearing in [high] school plays, he said, “I never thought you could do this sort of thing seriously. I thought it was chosen people who became stars.” And thanks to Sopkiw’s impressive physique, developed from his years of working at sea, he was “chosen” to work as a model with the world-renowned Ford Modeling Agency — and off Sopkiw went to work on the biggest magazines and runways in Europe.
While in Rome, Sopkiw met noted Italian Giallo director Sergio Martino (All the Colors of the Dark, The Case of the Scorpion’s Tale — just to name a few) who, ready to jump on the Escape from New York and The Road Warrior-inspired, post-apocalypse bandwagon, was on a national talent search for a film regarded as the best of the Italian-made wasteland rip-offs: 2019: After the Fall of New York (1983). Martino, taking note of Sopkiw’s readymade, action-film physique — and his facial similarities to John Carpenter’s Snake Plissken character portrayed by Kurt Russell — cast him as the hero-reluctant, Parsifal (yes, based on Wolfram von Eschenbach 13th century Arthurian hero, Parzival). Sopkiw, like British actor Oliver Reed before him, scored a leading man role in his first ever casting/acting job — and was signed to a four-picture deal.
In a 1999 interview with filmologist Fred Anderson, Sopkiw gave his thoughts on his film debut in After the Fall of New York:
“[I am glad everyone likes the film, but] I’m not sure it was supposed to be a comedy, but at least it turns out to be a redeeming feature [of the film].”
“[As for the ‘rip-off quality’ of the film, in comparison to its inspiration, John Carpenter’s Escape from New York], I think everyone should do his best work or not bother working [at all]. We call this genre of ‘rip-offs’ — exploitation films. Not sexually of course, in this case, but exploiting concepts and ideas that have already been shown to attract interest — and therefore money. Generally speaking, I don’t find this a very attractive or noble motivation. If this is the best work these people can do, then I thank them for their efforts, thank them for allowing me to be a part of it, and hope they are not just into it for the money. I also hope for them that they can do better in the future.”
In a 2009 interview with the online publication Icons of Fright, when asked which film was his favorite of the four he made — he cited. . . After the Fall of New York:
“They were all [four of my films] a blast to work on. I suppose, overall, After the Fall of New York would top the list as a fave film. I think it has the most memorable lines like, ‘Cleaned up & disinfected she might be all right.’ I also think it has the best caliber of actors overall with Gigi, Vince, Romano, Gigetto, Valentine, et al. There were really some good performances there I think and some serious actors.”
In the pages of Fangoria (Issue # 44; reposted alongside a plethora of film stills, posters, video box covers, and articles about After the Fall of New York and Sopkiw’s “boss,” Almi Pictures, by the online publication, The Tell Tale Mind), Sopkiw had this to say about being a leading man in his first acting job — ever:
“[It] was a little overwhelming at first. A kind of instant, minor stardom. I can remember the first day I walked into the studio: You go through the gates set in these big concrete walls, and inside there’s one set after another, each one a different world. And then I went to my dressing room and there it was — with my name on it. It felt really great. While I was getting dressed, I opened up my window and there was eight or ten guys from the movie down below, dressed up like Darth Vader, all on white horses. And I said, ‘Jesus! I think I’m where I Iike to be.’”
After working in Rome and the U.S state of Arizona (for ATFONY’s desert car-chase duel and his tooling across the desert on a future-cool three-wheeled cycle), Lamberto Bava, the son of famed Giallo director, Mario Bava, recruited Sopkiw for two films shot in the U.S: the Georgia-shot Blastfigther and the Florida-shot Monster Shark — the second utilized his past sea-faring skills.
In working with Lamberto Bava, Sopkiw had this to say in the Icons of Fright interview:
“Almost nothing but praises for Lamberto. He’s a very compassionate guy; pretty much to be expected being Italian. That was my experience with most Italians. But he shows it in his everyday consideration and caring for both actors and crew. And he sure knew how to make a lot with a little. He was always quite accessible and gentle but seems to have had a bit of a penchant for blood. You noticed? I would love to speak with him now to find out a little bit more of what drove him.”
As with the spaghetti-cloning of Kurt Russell’s and Mel Gibson’s apocalyptic romps with his Parsifal character in After the Fall of New York, Blastfighter borrowed from Sylvester Stallone’s vision for Sopkiw’s next film as Jake “Tiger” Sharp: a Rambo-inspired, take-no-prisoners ex-cop with a supersonic sci-fi rifle out for revenge against a gang of backwoods rednecks.
Blastfighter: According to Splintered Visions: Lucio Fulci and His Films (2015; Midnight Marquee Press, Inc., by Troy Howarth), Blastfighter was initially going to be a film directed by Lucio Fulci as a follow-up to 2072: The New Gladiators. Legal and professional disagreements led the sequel to be scrapped. New director Michele Massimo Tarantini was unable to use the script; he kept the title and grafted it onto his Rambo-inspired faux-sci-fi romp. (Damn you, Mr. Fulci, for denying us the joy of having Sopkiw kickin’ pasta-apoc ass in TWO films.)
As the title of Sopkiw’s third film implies, Monster Shark (aka Devil Fish, Monster Fish, Monster from the Red Ocean, Apocalypse in the Red Ocean, Devouring Waves, and Shark: Red in the Ocean) was Italy’s (and one of many) reimaging of Steven Spielberg’s 1975 don’t-go-in-the-water classic, Jaws, in which Sopkiw starred as a dashing, sea-faring shark fighter.
And so it goes in Italian cinema: once you rip off Spielberg, George Lucas is fair game. Thankfully, Sopkiw didn’t appear in one of Italy’s many Star Wars celluloid swindles (. . . that’s an article unto itself!). He did, however, appear as an Indiana Jones-inspired adventurer in Massacre in Dinosaur Valley (Prisoner of the Valley of Dinosaurs), a bizarre, little action movie that borrowed from Italy’s cannibal sub-genre of zombie films, had no dinosaurs — and mixed it with comedy!
It was while filming these four films (which completed his “contract”) and residing in Switzerland that Sopkiw, looking for a greater purpose in life beyond a career making low-budgeted rip offs of better made films, he took up the study of metaphysics. Those disciplines and philosophies led to him developing natural healing remedies based on sun energy — which required a special glass to maintain the vitality of organic plant molecules.
Through his studies in medical plant and herbal sciences, Sopkiw founded the California-based Miron Violettglas to achieve his ultimate goal: encourage people to get back to natural Earth-born remedies in an over-drugged, pharmaceutical-oriented society. The ancient Egyptian-inspired glass craft was also adapted for wine-bottle importing.
Today, thanks to an Internet-based renewal of his all-too-brief career, Michael Sopkiw is dabbling in acting once again with a few short film roles, as well as attending sci-fi film conventions and participating in supplementary vignettes for the DVD reissues of his films.
About violet glass from MIRON’s marketing materials:
The appreciation people have for the special protective qualities of violet glass can be traced back to the heyday of ancient Egyptian civilization. Even then, valuable essences and healing natural products were kept in gold and violet glass containers.
Even with the alchemists during the middle ages there are signs that people of that time were aware of the special quality the shimmering violet glass had. The advancing industrialization and the emergence of new packaging materials meant that violet glass faded into obscurity during the last hundred years.
Since the first industrially produced MIRON violet glass production in 1995, the composition, manufacturing- and verification methods have significantly changed. More and more producers of high quality natural products discover that the advantages of MIRON violet glass containers help their produce to gain an even better market position.
Ruckus/Blastfighter confusion: No, Michael wasn’t in the pre-First Blood rip-off, Ruckus (known in some markets as The Loner). Overseas distributors marketing 1980’s Ruckus to VHS and DVD simply stole the artwork from Michael Sopkiw’s Blastfighter from 1984. Adding to the confusion: the DVD artwork (right) was originally from a poster for Mark Gregory’s Afghanistan: The Last War Bus (War Bus Commando).
A war movie starring Dirk Benedict, Micheal Sopkiw, and Mark Gregory is in order!
Mark Gregory: The Adventures of Rome’s Phantasmal Bronx Warrior
Born 1965 as Marco Di Gregorio, Gregory was only 17 years old when he portrayed the beloved post-apocalyptic character of “Trash” in 1990: The Bronx Warriors (1982) and went onto become a mainstay as an Italian-European action star through the remainder of the ’80s.
Tailor made for the job — by way of his avid and expert motorcycling skills and expertly-trained skills as a Greco-Roman wrestler — Gregory was rumored to be paying his bills by working in a Rome shoe store at the time of his “discovery.” The tales of his transition into the film world vary: One story claims he was discovered while working-out in a Rome gym by the film’s director; the other rumor is his fiance pulled a “prank” and sent Gregory’s photo to Fulvia Films in response to their Italy-wide talent search for 1990: The Bronx Warriors. Not only did Gregory win over a rumored 2000 hopefuls for the role, Deaf International Films signed him to an exclusive, three-picture deal.
The second film of Gregory’s initial three-picture deal was 1983’s Adam and Eve (Adam and Eve vs. the Cannibals). Yes, you guessed it: it’s a biblical epic about the first man and woman on the Earth — in a pre-apocalyptic world filled with cannibals! Then he was back to the sewers and rubble in Escape from the Bronx (The Bronx Warriors II; 1985).
Unlike the American Michael Sopkiw, who bailed out of the Italian film business after completing his four-film contract, Gregory fulfilled his three-picture deal — then signed on for seven more, completing a total of ten films during his seven-year acting career.
Remember Michael Sopkiw’s John Rambo-inspired work in Blastfighter? Well, as it goes with Italy churning out several Star Wars and Escape from New York knock-offs, First Blood was ripe for more spaghetti cloning: Gregory signed on as the ass-kicking, Native American cop, Deputy Luis “Thunder” Martinez, in the hugely successful Thunder theatrical series; its debut and sequels issued 1983, 1987, and 1988 also cleaned up on the worldwide home video market.
Then it was time to rip-off Chuck Norris’ Delta Force movies (themselves made to cash-in on Stallone’s Rambo character) with Gregory starring in 1988’s Delta Force Commando, Ten Zan: Ultimate Mission, and Just a Damned Soldier. Also equally successful in European theatres and the home video market was what became Gregory’s final film role as Johnny Hondo in Afghanistan: The Last War Bus (War Bus Commando).
While Sopkiw welcomes inquires from his newly acquired Internet-fan base enamored with his contributions to the ’80s pasta-apocalypse, Mark Gregory — rumored to now manage a company that specializes in health and personal growth products — has refused any and all attempts to contact him; he refuses interview requests nor participates in the reissues of his film catalog. After 1989’s Afghanistan: The Last War Bus . . . it was all over. At the tender age of 25, Mark Gregory walked away from the business and vanished from our beloved video store shelves.
The latest web-Intel about Gregory’s whereabouts comes courtesy of the Worse Movies website, which states the “rumor” of Gregory working as a “marketing specialist” in personal growth products was debunked — and that “new information” (from where or whom is unknown) suggests Gregory works as an interior decorator based outside of Rome. Another rumor about Gregory: the From Page 2 Screen blog claims Gregory resides in and has friends in “the film business” in London.
As Worse Movies points out: In this Internet-era where it’s possible to track down anyone — even the most obscure one-hit wonder musicians and B-movie actors, and see their music and acting careers reignited as result — Gregory is completely off-the-grid and an elusive mystery.
The phantasmal career of Gregory has a little insight by way of Gregory’s co-star in 1990: The Bronx Warriors, ex-U.S football player and exploitation-film mainstay, Fred Williamson. He’s stated in interviews that he had to “teach” Gregory how to “walk and look tough” on camera.
So, how rabid is the fandom for Mark Gregory?
The website Monster Hunter watched every film in Gregory’s catalog and reviewed the films (so you don’t have to; hey, we love you Mark, but wow . . . a few of those films are a chore to sit through). The “epic” Adam and Eve (but don’t want to endure it) . . . the film, like most Italian romps, is a rip-off of a popular film — this time it’s Brooke Shield’s teen epic, The Blue Lagoon . . . but with cannibals . . . and God!
Then there’s filmologist and Italian film buff Lance Manley, whose The Hunt for Trash website chronicles his search for the actor. But why did Gregory abruptly disappear from the acting world? According to an expose on the Everyday Hetrosexism Blogspot, Gregory didn’t seem to like acting much as his “feminine mannerisms” resulted in on-set homophobic harassment from some of the extras. It’s reported that, as result, Gregory kept to himself, not socializing with anyone except his Bronx director, Enzo Castellari, and Castellari’s teenage son, Andrea.
March 20, 2022: Sadly, according to the Cinema Italiano Database, Mark Gregory died in 2013. We hope the actor found a peace in death that he could not get in life.
After leaving the world of film, Gregory returned to his first love, art, as inspired by his painter-sculptor father; Gregory continued his artistic activity in Rome, in the Tuscolana area until a financial scam resulted in his losing his home and possessions, with consequences that also had repercussions on his relationships with his closest family members.
In later years, as his health declined, he lived on government assistance. As result, Marco De Gregorio committed suicide on January 31, 2013, at the age of 48, by ingesting a mix of psychotropic drugs dissolved in hot water. His funeral was held at the expense of the municipality; at the ceremony, in addition to the municipal employees and delegates, there are no relatives and no friends in attendance. It is reported that an identified woman, tall with long black hair, who, throughout the ceremony, shed tears continuously. No De Gregorio relatives will claim the later home Marco owned. As result, the home was auctioned by the city. Marco was placed in an anonymous grave in the city cemetery of Castel Madama, a commune in the Metropolitan City of Rome in the Italian region Lazio, which is located about 30 kilometres east of Rome.
Rest in Peace, our dearest Trash.
END
Graphic collages of top banner, posters and VHS sleeves by R.D Francis.
