Badasses, Boobs and Body Counts
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How Military Surplus Shook Up the Filming of Wasteland

Wasteland (1983) looks like a fever dream of post-apocalyptic cinema, yet it was made with a budget that seemed better suited to a weekend at the drive-in. Chuck Vincent directed the film, while Bruce Campbell, then fresh from The Evil Dead, played Duke Hemingway, a sharp-talking traveller wandering through a desert overrun by mutants, robot killers and roving packs of survivors. Its rough edges and eccentric danger give it a handmade quality that still feels refreshing.

Its strangest production story involves a post-apocalyptic film using real military surplus before the Pentagon shut down access to the shoot. Calling it “shut down by the Pentagon” compresses the chain of command into a dramatic phrase, but the basic consequence was real: military clearance was withdrawn, filming stopped and the production had to continue under tighter conditions. The story also explains why genuine hardware appears throughout a film that otherwise looks as though it emerged from a desert junkyard.

A desert apocalypse built on a shoestring

Wasteland was filmed around Barstow, California, where the Mojave Desert supplies enormous horizons, hard sunlight and an almost total absence of vegetation. Mountains interrupt the distance, scrub and broken scrub provide useful silhouettes, and roads disappearing into heat haze create a natural sense of abandonment. Barstow also contains abandoned commercial buildings, industrial lots and service structures that could pass for the remains of civilisation.

Vincent used that environment as more than a backdrop. The landscape establishes how little infrastructure has survived, while the scattered locations provide secluded spaces for ambushes, camps and strange settlements. Even when the production looks improvised, much of that improvisation suits the material. Dust, heat haze and bleached colours become part of the apocalyptic mood instead of simple evidence of a low budget.

The result is a film that mixes Mad Max-style survival imagery with Gothic horror, science fiction and the wild physicality associated with exploitation cinema. Its villains wear clown faces and chainmail, its cyborgs look assembled from workshop scraps, and its human survivors behave like a post-nuclear morality play turned loose in the desert. The production constraints feed directly into that atmosphere.

Why genuine hardware changed the picture

A vehicle represented by a cardboard box and two headlights has to work hard to convince an audience that it could cross a hostile landscape. Real or decommissioned military machinery supplied a different kind of presence: weight, wear, mechanical noise and an authentic relationship between the machines and the terrain. Jeeps and utility vehicles could carry people and equipment through the desert, while tracked vehicles provided a convincing bulk that studio-built props often lacked.

Surplus status also created a useful ambiguity around where the equipment had come from. Military material might pass through auctions, National Guard units, military resale channels or private collectors before reaching a low-budget film crew. Once it entered a film, however, its ownership history did not disappear. Active installations, restricted airspace, controlled weapons and government property could all trigger formal clearance requirements.

The production gained access to several categories of equipment:

The crucial distinction was between possessing surplus and having permission to use it. Buying an old vehicle did not grant access to a base, authorise filming beside live operations or permit unsafe work around military stores. Filming genuine hardware also required technicians who understood its controls, stabilised the ground for heavy vehicles and preserved film continuity as equipment moved or broke.

When Washington entered the production

The official problems began when the filmmakers’ use of military equipment and military locations attracted federal attention. The United States Department of Defence became involved, and the Pentagon became the shorthand for the authority that withdrew clearance. The military portion of the production stopped rather than proceeding under the informal understanding that had apparently worked earlier.

Safety, liability and security formed the practical background to that decision. Heavy vehicles could damage soft ground, military weapons carried more than decorative risk, and camera crews working around installations could obstruct real training or reveal information about layouts and procedures. The stoppage was about controlled access and responsibility, even if the bureaucratic process ended with a familiar piece of Washington shorthand.

The halt did not mean the Department of Defence ordered the destruction of the completed movie or prohibited its release. It concerned the live shoot and the use of protected resources. Material already filmed remained valuable, while subsequent work had to rely more heavily on locations and equipment that raised fewer questions. The distinction matters because the drama of a government shutdown usually sounds like censorship, whereas this was closer to a federal production being pulled up sharply.

Barstow's ruins as genre-film country

Barstow became useful to genre filmmakers because it offered a functioning town surrounded by emptiness. A production could film an urban confrontation there and move a short distance into open desert for a ruined convoy, alien landing or mutant attack. Barstow's harshness is part of its appeal: dust penetrates everywhere, the sun flattens colour, and every object looks as though it has survived years of neglect.

Repeated use of the same locations made that environment even more productive. The site's account of warehouse filming history shows how one abandoned building became a recurring set for a dozen genre productions. Familiarity helped crews plan their shots, while the building’s existing decay supplied practical texture that would have been expensive to create.

Australian filmmakers recognise several elements of that location economics. The heat and dust around Alice Springs, the immense distances through the Pilbara and the long road between a production base and an outback site can transform modest locations into spectacular ones. Remoteness may reduce the cost of finding open ground, but it turns catering, transport, power and safety into serious logistics. Melbourne also offers a different version of the same resource: old factories, warehouses and laneway buildings that can carry a convincing urban history.

Human weirdness beside military machinery

Bruce Campbell gives Duke Hemingway the restless confidence of a performer who expects the world to become his stage. He walks into danger with a swagger, treats armed mutants as an inconvenience and turns physical comedy into a form of defiance. Before his larger fame, that mixture of charisma, panic and exaggeration gave Wasteland an energy that no amount of hardware could have supplied.

The villains receive the same deliberately theatrical treatment. Their costumes and behaviour belong to a future in which civilisation has collapsed without making society any less theatrical. A clown-faced killer or a chainsaw-wielder in improvised metal becomes more disturbing because the performance is committed. The film understands that excess works best when played straight, at least for a moment, before the joke collapses into bloodshed.

In Australia, where specialist distributors, genre festivals and late-night streaming shelves often carry cult films beyond their limited theatrical runs, that mixture has particular appeal. It also travels well through podcasts and midnight radio. Local listeners might call the surviving military hardware “fair dinkum army kit” and the finished chaos a “proper mongrel”, but the appreciation is universal: strange filmmaking survives when somebody is prepared to explain why the oddest detail matters.

Production compromises that became part of the film

The interrupted military shoot altered what Wasteland could show. Some planned action had to be simplified, while other scenes depended more heavily on close-ups, performers and handcrafted effects. The budget became stricter at precisely the point when the filmmakers needed flexibility, encouraging the crew to concentrate on movement, sound and threatening shapes rather than expensive wide-screen destruction.

Several compromises became recognisable features of the finished film:

These choices are not simply evidence of restricted access. Wasteland gains force from its refusal to hide the seams. The machines have odd silhouettes, the performers sometimes seem to inhabit the landscape rather than dominate it, and the attacks arrive with a raw directness that polished studio action would often remove.

That roughness also changes how the military imagery is read. Genuine-looking vehicles become symbols of a world where institutions have broken down, not merely props in a chase. Their abandoned or repurposed condition suggests a military order that lost control of its own tools. When official military involvement complicated the production, the accident suited the film’s themes: the army entered the frame as both a source of protection and another authority ready to impose limits.

Hear the story behind the screen

The production of Wasteland is a reminder that low-budget genre films often contain stranger history than their polished histories suggest. The mix of practical hardware, federal restrictions, improvised creatures and cult-film performer Bruce Campbell gives the movie a background as varied as its wasteland. The podcast examines those connections with the irreverent attention to plot, performance and context that made Badasses, Boobs and Body Counts a distinct voice in film criticism.

For more of Mike’s critical writing and production notes, visit Mike's author profile. Then listen to the Wasteland episode, subscribe through your usual podcast app and share it with the mate who still believes every practical explosion is magic rather than controlled demolition. Continue through the archive for more neglected action, horror and exploitation cinema built with determination, questionable decisions and hardware that somebody should have inspected before the cameras rolled.