Robot Holocaust

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

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...

I was so "impressed" with Tim Kincaid's MUTANT HUNT that I gave this one a try. It is the near future, post apocalypse of course. A wandering fighter named Neo (no, not that Neo!) joins a group of similar looking fighters to challenge The Dark One and his underling Valaria. Along the way they encounter mutants, crazed females, sewer worms, a big spider leg and some clunky robots. Oh my!

Sadly, ROBOT HOLOCAUST is hardly up (or down) to HUNT's level. Clocking in at a painful 79 minutes (the box says 90), this is one cheap flick. The sets have all the elaborate design of a carnival haunted house and the costumes prove that in the near future everyone will dress like John Travolta in the final dance number of STAYING ALIVE. The atomic wasteland is a combination of rubble filled old buildings and Central Park. The Dark One's headquarters is ominously named The Power Station and looks like, well, a power station. The acting is universally bad except for Angelika Jager as the evil Valaria. Jager is a whole 'nother level of bad. Vit er sick Cherman acczent, she gives a performance so amazingly bad that it becomes the sole reason to recommend this film. She also delivers the film's only nudity in the "pleasure chamber" section of the film. Ed French again supplies the robot effects but they aren't nearly as slimy as his work in MUTANT HUNT.

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.

I can't say I wasn't warned.

After all, MST3K's writers -- who week after week subjected themselves to the most putrid scrapings from the bottom of the cinematic barrel -- made a running joke out of this one. That's often how people deal with a particularly traumatic experience.

And this movie really delivered the hurt.

I wouldn't exactly call the general level of acting here "wooden" -- because it's positively petrified. Angelika Jager (Valeria) is a revelation: calling her style "robotic" would imply something far better than the actuality. It's not over-acting so much as anti-acting: Ms. Jager's got an undeniably beautiful instrument, no argument there at all, but it's as if she's trying to play it with her big toes. Whether it's dialog or body language, she literally never misses a chance to come across as stunningly awkward.

And it's not as though there was even one mildly competent actor in this mess, to throw her transcendent awfulness into stark relief; she manages that feat quite well on her own, thank you very much.

But I pile on.

There's no point in going into the details of the ridiculous story, inane narration and preposterous dialog, but rest assured, it's all here, along with "sewer worm" hand puppets who look like Ollie the Dragon with a terminal case of the mange, a giant spider (well, they could only afford one leg), robots, mutants, amazon warriors and badly choreographed fight scenes.

And of course his Moldy Avocado-ness, the Dark One (or "Dak Wan", in Valeria-speak).

Annoying rip-offs include a C3PO clone who fails miserably to provide any comic relief, as well as a score which lifts a theme from Bernard Herrman's music for "Mysterious Island" and then beats it to death.

By the way, one thing the other reviewers seem to have missed is that according to the opening narration this nonsense is supposedly taking place on a colony planet. (That's why the air's bad and they had to import a bunch of robots to do the work.) I guess the colonists were so homesick for the mother world they had to create a painstakingly accurate replica of early 1980s New York City to live in. Or maybe these futuristic Pilgrims were a splinter cult of Scientologists who regarded John Travolta's character in "Saturday Night Fever" as their prophet.

Whatever. If given the choice, I'd prefer to be repeatedly bludgeoned with the Manhattan Yellow Pages rather than endure another viewing of this movie, but aficionados of 80s' trash might get a laugh or three out of it. Just be forewarned that this isn't your average, everyday, grade-Z chunk of post-Apocalyptic cheese: it's a steaming, radioactive pile of cinematic Limburger.

Movies like this really will rot your brain.