In the ruins of civilization, roller-skating nuns worship a glowing smiley-face and heal each other with magic knives and the holy hot tub. For my money, Roller Blade is the most wonderful/awful post-apocalyptic movie of all time. NSFW clip below.
Director Donald G. Jackson is best remembered for Hell Comes to Frogtown — which is adored for good reason. But his greatest achievement, in my book, is 1986's Roller Blade, which spawned a few sequels. It's the future, and the world has been reduced to ashes. The only force for peace and justice is an order of roller-skating nuns, led by Mother Speed. Here's my absolute favorite bit of the entire movie, where Mother Speed gives a little speech about the end of civilization and the fact that in this dark world, "thou must either skate or die":
Oh and yes, the Mother Superior does have a pet dog, who also wears a nun's shroud thingy.
The "skate or die" thing is spray-painted here and there around the ruins as well. I don't know why you can't ride a bicycle, or skateboard, or hang-glide. But for whatever reason, the only viable mode of transportation that remains in this world is skating. One character, a lawman named Marshall Goodman, has a young son who doesn't yet know how to skate — and the son isn't supposed to go outside where his lack of skating will lead to (wait for it) death. But the son disregards the Marshall's instructions and ventures out, only to be captured by the evil Doctor Sattacroy, who's basically a hand puppet that barks shrilly at the camera.
I bought Roller Blade on VHS for a dollar, and have watched it way too many times to count. I can't possibly summarize all of the goodness in this movie in one short post. There are post-apocalyptic punks whose acting has to be seen to be believed. There are Sattacroy's heavy-metal henchmen, who try to force some of the roller-skating nuns to fight each other at one point. There's a whole subplot where instead of money, in this post-apocalyptic future, they use Walkman batteries. It's all just too amazing.
But here's the NSFW clip, where three nuns who have been gravely injured by Doctor Sattacroy's men (one of them is bleeding profusely from the throat, but doesn't seem bothered by it) get into the holy hot tub while Mother Speed watches. And then two of the nuns (one of whom is secretly a spy trying to steal the source of the smiley-face power) discuss the nuns' philosophy:
Truly a masterpiece for the ages.