Robot Holocaust

What a despairing film. Dress actors in furry rags, place in suburban wasteland, set cameras rolling and hope for the best. One can only imagine e the thanks the cast gave when their characters were killed off by sockpuppets, thus sparing them further humiliation in this dullfest. This rivals Monster a go-go as the best cure for insomnia ever made. Oh God - how can I fill up 10 lines explaining how overwhelmingly bored everybody looks in this movie? Whiney crappy plastic bungling robot who annoys everybody both on and off screen, Giant spider reduced to a single giant hairy leg pulled by string, actors desperately trying not to look at the camera while mumbling off dialogs...

This movie is bad, it goes without saying. But, I have seen comedies that weren't this funny. Really? Sewer socks? A female villain that is a cross between Barbarella and Freddie Mercury? The only reason that it wasn't longer is that Kai had to be back at Chippendales by 6:00. The whole thing looked like it was filmed at William McKinley Jr. High with the art room making construction paper props. The grand total of three robots that comprise the mega population of robotum. Finally, the pasty white legs and tighty whities of the slaves used to feed the dark one. The whole thing looks like a Jazzercise class gone bad. Other than that, it was fantastic.

After starting his film career making gay porn (under the pseudonym Joe Gage), director Tim Kincaid (not his real name either) tried his hand at low-budget sci-fi movies, turning out cheesy cheapo trash like Breeders (1986), Mutant Hunt (1987), and this dreadful post-apocalyptic garbage which still has more than a whiff of homo-eroticism about it: the film opens with some man-on-man action, as two warriors stripped to the waist wrestle to the death; there are some very phallic rubber-glove-puppet creatures called sewage worms that lunge at the heroes; Andrew Howarth, surely a Chippendales reject, stars as long-haired mute Kai, whose economical costume consists of a small banana hammock; and choice lines of dialogue include 'Is there a small knob at the tip of one end?' and 'I'm reaching behind you'.

Still, it's not all penis-shaped monsters and sweaty men grappling each other: Robot Holocaust also features really bad rubber robots, the most unconvincing matte painting that I have ever seen, a very attractive female villain played by Angelika Jager (seriously hot, but also contender for worst actress in movie history), a corpse-burrowing surveillance drone, the terrifying 'beast of the web' (a hairy rubber claw), cruddy mutants (who get decapitated), and a character called Neo who might be the saviour of the human race (sadly, not played by Keanu Reeves, but rather no-talent Kincaid regular Norris Culf).

Robot Holocaust is badly written tosh (requiring an intermittent voice-over to help with the exposition) that is occasionally so bad that it entertains, but is mostly so bad that it doesn't. After a couple more straight to video duds, Kincaid returned to the world of gay porn where one can only assume that his real passions lie.

2.5/10, rounded up to 3 for the scene in which a topless Angelika Jager enters a pleasure machine (Barbarella, anyone?), where she fondles a plasma globe proffered by two semi-naked gyrating slaves.

Angelika Jager, eh? What a woman! Alas, the sad fact is young Angelika is the only reason this film is worth even half-watching – and even then only if you're a heterosexual male – because everything else about this film is total trash.

Angelika plays Valaria, the sidekick of the Dark One, a deep disembodied voice who issues veiled – and not so veiled – threats to his lovely assistant as the cartoon power station in which he resides is visited by a young hero called Neo who is – well, to be honest I can't quite recall why he's there. Wants to free humankind from the Dark One's tyrannical grip, I think; something like that, anyway. The fact is, the rank amateurishness of all aspects of this film quickly had me sinking into a kind of stupor, from which I would only emerge when the lovely Angelika was on screen.

Now I can't claim that the lovely Angelika is exactly an actress of quality – in fact the truth is she could easily be out-acted by a toothpick – but she possesses the kind of luminous beauty that makes such matters irrelevant. Anyway, it would be impossible to possess such beauty and acting talent – it just wouldn't be fair. Angelika has a sulky, sensuous mouth and a sexy French accent identical to Valerie Kaprisky's in Jim McBride's 1983 remake of Breathless and, although she can't act for toffee, there's something Bergmanesque (Ingrid, not Ingmar) about her that is quite enchanting.

Not that her lack of acting talent singles her out for criticism in this cast of nobodies. Everybody looks as if they're envisaging in their mind the words as they appeared in their script, and very carefully repeating each one, completely forgetting to add any kind of emotion into their lines. The guy who plays the heroine's father has only one expression throughout, regardless of whether he's watching two gladiators scrapping, describing his boffo invention, facing the terror of coming face to face with The Dark One, or being slowly absorbed by the aforementioned Dark One – who actually looks like a slimy green egg – so that only his living head remains. That expression is one of expressionless boredom – an image that will probably be mirrored by anyone who sits through this rubbish.

This gets one mark for Angelika's sultry looks and no other reason

All right, there's no way to sugarcoat this. The plot was ridiculous, the premise was ridiculous, the acting was unconscionable, the effects were laughable and all of the outdoor scenes appear to have been filmed in New York's Central Park. That having been said, there was something about this movie that I couldn't walk away from. Maybe it was the atmosphere, or maybe it was the evil super-vixen or the amazon wenches.

Anyway I'm not one to sit on the margins and criticise without pointing out a few redeeming qualities, so here they are.

A violent off-shoot of the women's lib movement is portrayed in a wilderness setting (central park, of course), and all of the masochistic young men out there will be very impressed. Furthermore, some of the scenes in which certain characters lose consciousness are amusingly dramatic (you'll note that I write dramatic, rather than convincing).

All I can say is that some people like B movies and I'm one of them. If you're one of them too, then give it a go. Cheers, Mr Kincaid. This is one for the ages.