Robowar

Ah, leave it to the directorial talent (or lack thereof) of Bruno Mattei to make me yearn for the Citizen Kane Reb Brown classics such as Space Mutiny or Yor the Hunter from the Future.

Think of this outing as a prolonged hike in the nature preserve. Reb is Murphy Black; the leader of commando group on a mission of...actually what WAS their mission(?) as it's evident that Reb himself wasn't even sure of. Heck, I don't even know if I'd let Reb lead me in a game of horseshoes let alone on a reconnaissance endeavor. No tears are shed on this journey as people are killed and you have no iota clue (or concern) about who they are or what purpose they serve except as bullet fodder. Thrill at the menacing Omega 1 (that reminds me to get multivitamins at GNC this week) as his state of the art pixelated kill-o-vision makes him...well, pretty lame. His 8 bit speech makes him sound like he contracted a form of Robot Tourettes. I can't be too angry with him as he helps to thin the herd thus providing a semblance of entertainment. Herr Mattei also had access to bio lab skeletons and you're bloody sure that he was going to use them!

All levity aside, many thanks to Smoke Manmuscle, I mean Reb for making this trial somewhat amusing. Whether it's his high shrilled helium-ated octaves of unforgettable lines such as 'Incoming, get out of here!' and 'Move out!' or his constant bickering with Mascher (less than Carl Weathers and more like Andy Richter's shady uncle), Murphy Black weathers the storm to the beat of a Casio laced soundtrack. Beware the true horror of Robowar: the cutoff shirt prone to exposing Rebbish midriff.

The horror...the horror....

Robowar (1988)

* (out of 4)

Maj. Murphy Black (Reb Brown) leads a group of men into the jungles where they can't possibly imagine what is about to attack them. Inside the jungle is an alien creature who will slowly stalk and kill them.

Plagorism is one of the most serious crimes that a writer can commit and often times it will end their career or at least put a black cloud over it. For some reason filmmaker Bruno Mattei ripped off countless movies in his career. Often times he would not only rip-off plots but also entire sequences, lines of dialogue and much more. With that said, for some reason Mattei is still a "legend" in his own way as bad movie lovers flock to his films.

ROBOWAR is a rip-off of PREDATOR but it also rips on ROBOCOP. The alien here stalks the people in the jungle just like PREDATOR but his outfit is pure metal like ROBOCOP. I can understand how some people would watch movies like this and have a good time with their badness but sadly this film isn't in that "so bad it's good" range. Instead, ROBOWAR is just a really low-budget movie and a really bad one at that.

The performances, direction, editing, story and pretty much everything else are downright awful but that's to be expected. What's so bad about this movie is that it really doesn't reach a sleazy level as the violence is rather tame and there's not much blood or gore. In fact, just take a look at a sequence where a group of men are shot up with some large guns. The men are hit with countless bullets but not a drop of blood spills.

The action scenes are all rather stupid but the ending is nice in terms of explosions. As far as the alien goes, it looks incredibly silly and it almost looks like a futuristic version of the killer seen in THE NAILGUN MASSACRE. I'm sure some might find a few laughs in how bad the movie it but sadly it's too boring to be enjoyed.

Bruno Mattei must be the only person in on his own joke. I simply cannot understand how he made such a career out of such blatant ham-fisted ripoffs of famous Hollywood movies. Sure, Italy and The Philippines are known for cashing in on the latest trends - like with all the post-nuke flicks to flood out of both countries immediately after MAD MAX 2: THE ROAD WARRIOR. But no one until Mattei had the gall to just brazenly ape a popular movie scene-by-scene, shot-by-shot, line-by-line.

ROBOWAR is an obvious remake of PREDATOR, only changed slightly to accommodate the total lack of budget. Here it's a government-engineered cyborg out destroying massive amounts of stock footage from DOUBLE TARGET and STRIKE COMMANDO. Thankfully, the bulk of the actual film is largely stock-footage-free though you'll recognize a lot of the locations from other Mattei/Fragasso Filipino films like the old hut from AFTER DEATH.

The great cast (including Romano Puppo, Massimo Vanni, Jim Gaines, Max Laurel, etc.) actually turn in surprisingly good acting. Even star Reb Brown performs much better here than in his other Italo-Filipino outings. Not Olivier-quality of course, but COMPARATIVELY good. It's amazing too considering Mattei stages them either theatrically (everyone crammed into a master-shot) or shoots them shot-for-shot like scenes in PREDATOR. Good, yet idiotically staged action scenes come fast and furious but are interspersed with more than enough filler shots of Reb Brown and Co. wandering through the jungle.

The only real kudos go for the pyrotechnic crew for plenty of lovable slow motion explosions, as well as Al Festa and his wonderfully cheesetastic 80's synthesizer spectacular score. While nothing as heinously 80's as AFTER DEATH and COP GAME, it's in a pretty similar league.

People who like this film and get a kick out of line-by-line ripoffs should also seek out Mattei's not-quite-as-fun-but-still-hilarious SHOCKING DARK, which did the same thing with ALIENS and TERMINATOR.

After the explosive opening credits -Literally, stuff is blowing up all over the place!-, ROBOWAR begins.

It seems that a cyborg has gone rogue, and a team of ultra-abrasive, tub-of-testosterone commandoes are dispatched to hunt it down and neutralize it. Into the jungle they go, so that everyone can wear RAMBO gear and sweat a lot. A definite PREDATOR vibe is prevalent, and it's obvious that most of our musclebound heroes will become prey.

Some scenes are direct PREDATOR lifts, adding to this movie's parody of that movie's characters.

Intergalactic omni-star, Reb Brown plays Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonator, Major Murphy Black. Brown, along with his fellow performers, make Arnold look like the greatest actor who ever lived! However, this movie's crowning achievement is their quarry, called Omega One, that looks fairly solid. Alas, it speaks, emitting a squeaky, buzzy "voice", best described as C3PO shoved up R2D2's cannister!

Irredeemably absurd, at least there's something going boom every few minutes to distract our lilting attention. Plus, something hilarious happens every few seconds!

The idiot robot is a wonderment all on its own!

DO NOT MISS: The explosion / flying trousers scene toward the end! It's a riot!...

Pretty terrible Italian mash-up of "Robocop" and "Predator." Reb Brown, best known for "Uncommon Valor," Conan knock-off "Yor: Hunter from the Future" and the hilariously awful 1970s made-for-TV Captain America movies plays Maj. Murphy Black, the Arnold "Predator" analogue, leading a commando group on a jungle mission, only to find themselves being hunted by a deadly cyborg. Checking the film's credits, "Robowar" was directed by Bruno Mattei, who specialized in cheapie Italian exploitation flicks, ranging from women in prison to nunsploitation to zombie to mondo documentary to cannibal to Nazisploitation films. However, Mattei has made a few enjoyable films, but the biggest tipoff this film is going to be a terrible movie is that the writers are the same folks who wrote and directed "Troll 2," which if you're not familiar is widely considered the worst film of all time (yes, even worse than "Plan 9 From Outer Space"). Unfortunately for "Robowar" it's not really a so-bad-it's-good kind of film as is "Troll 2" so you can't even be ironically entertained by it. You're best off skipping this one, though if you really need an Italian cyborg movie, watch Sergio Martino's "Hands of Steel" instead.