‘SIX-String Samurai” is a witless, lead-footed attempt to apply the Quentin Tarantino spirit to the post-apocalyptic ‘Mad Max” genre. Its student makers have sufficient technical skill to put together a remarkably glossy film on a minimal budget, but their aesthetic sensibilities match those of 12-year-old boys, and they lack storytelling ability.

As a result, this film mostly feels like a home movie made by some precocious but dorky comic-book-obsessed high school freshmen – who must have had great fun putting in really cool scenes copied from favorite westerns, Chinese martial-arts flicks and ‘The Wizard of Oz.”

Their fun, alas, doesn’t rub off on the audience. I can only describe watching it as an experience so tedious, it’s almost painful.

‘Six-String Samurai” is set in a low-budget, post-nuclear America: Back in 1957, the Russians took over America except for the city of Lost Vegas, where Elvis was crowned King.

But, 40 years later, Elvis is dead. And a sword-swinging, guitar-playing, ultra-laconic superhero named Buddy (Jeffrey Falcon) is making his way to Vegas to claim the crown.

But there are other claimants, including Death himself, who wears a stovepipe hat and resembles the guitarist Slash of the band Guns N’ Roses. Buddy, with his blue suit, thick glasses and weirdly high voice, must battle Death, Russians and a bowling team as he crosses the wastelands with an 8-year-old orphan (Justin McGuire) in tow.

The acting ranges from the merely bad to the unbearable, ensuring that you don’t care for a second about the fate of Buddy or his tiresome child sidekick. What no one seems to have told screenwriter-director Lance Mungia and his co-writer, Falcon, is that all the knowing movie references in the world cannot make up for this or for abysmal writing and nonexistent pacing.

‘Six-String Samurai” is only 90 minutes long, but it feels like it lasts for days.

Falcon is an impressive martial-arts expert, but the violence looks fake – and not in a deliberate or stylized way. The floppy bayonets on the Russian soldiers’ rifles are obviously made of cardboard. If the film had a tenth of the witty, bizarre sensibility of the low-budget films put out by the folks at Troma (remember ‘The Toxic Avenger”?), this wouldn’t matter.

‘Six-String Samurai” tries desperately hard to be cool. But it’s just a plodding, unfunny compendium of narrative and visual cliches that never gel. The only bright spots are some impressive photography and the accompanying music by the Red Elvises, a Russian rockabilly band.