La Guerre des robots

Call me crazy, but I found "War of the Robots" to be a campy charmer. While the plot--involving a crazy professor and an "empress" (who looks like Zora Kerowa's evil twin), a league of blind alien beings, and a league of Aryan robots--is negligible, the film possesses a low-budget spirit that carries it quite a ways. Sure, it feels like a rip-off of "Star Wars," "Star Trek," "Dark Star," and even "Cave Dwellers" (which came a few years later), but it's low-budget fun in the same way that playing with "A-Team" action figures was fun when I was 5. That, and the atrocious special effects, lousy dubbing, chintzier sets, and sci-fi tropes (ray-guns that are really nothing but souped-up flashlights) makes "War of the Robots" especially juicy for a MST3K-style skewering with a group of friends (one wonders how this avoided the Satellite of Love).

As I write this, the work in question is still playing back before my stunned eyes. I am not quite finished drinking in this cinematic masterpiece, and I already have to relieve myself of my chicken dinner.

On the more pleasant side, I have to say that the sounds in this movie are WAY rad in such that it is definitely an analog collection of Boops and BLEEPS to be recorded in one's spare time.

The acting is mostly sincere, although I had a hard time figuring out how the character's lips would switch from italian to english and back again while all in the same shot. huh?

I have to say my favorite scene (which just finished a few minutes ago) involved a certain, let's say, "reference" to a certain 'laser sword' from everyone's favorite gray-goateed' master of the pen <chuckle...>.

Credit is still due to the shot selection, although with certain scenes I was left asking myself 'what just happened' too many times to remember.

On that note I must bid adieu to the juggernaut of motion pictures that is War of the Robots.

Ciao baby

3 peter pepperonis out of 10

Bad movie fans will appreciate this Italian attempt to make a quick buck on the popularity of "Star Wars." Everyone else should avoid it as they would a rabid weasel. Even Italian children, no doubt the film's target audience, must have felt insulted after the first couple reels of this low budget non-epic.

That being said, "La Guerra Dei Robot" does have a sort of cheesy charm. It's plot attempts to parallel the first "Star Wars" movie with truly hilarious results. Also the faux "Star Trek" make up of it's crew is funny in a painfully dumb sort of way.

In sum, unless you're a fan of crummy sci-fi movies, keep away from this one.

Have you noticed that about half of these Italian sci fi movies have people sitting at their panels on the space ship, wearing helmets, and talking with their backs to us. Then there are the silly costumes and antics of the aliens. This film goes to some really low levels. It's about an intervention to save one space culture from another. There are two female leads competing for the attentions of the space hunk. There are a group of silly aliens who keep getting recycled (I'm sure there were only about five actors) and shot. There's a shirtless leader who doesn't dress the way the rest do (he looks like he may have just escaped from the gay pride parade in New York). I don't know. Do things like this make money for their producers. There is nothing here to maintain interest other than the cheese. I've seen so many of them that they don't entertain much anymore. Skip this one.

Professor Carr (Jacques Herlin) and his attractive assistant Lois (Malisa Longo) are abducted by silver skinned aliens in bad wigs, who are later revealed to be androids ruled by a wicked empress intent on ruling the galaxy. Rather inconveniently, the professor is the only person alive with the know-how to prevent the potentially catastrophic explosion of a malfunctioning Earth satellite, and so a perilous rescue mission is quickly launched, with Captain John Boyd (Antonio Sabato) in command of the spaceship Trissa (the name of the company that provided the film with its funky PVC space suits!).

Never ones to ignore a trend, opportunistic Italian directors quickly jumped on the late-70s sci- fi bandwagon, churning out some amazingly horrendous films in the process; one such effort was The War of the Robots, a pulp sci-fi stinker that clearly aimed to mimic both Star Wars and Star Trek, but which missed the mark in almost every way imaginable, providing none of the spectacle, excitement and technical wizardry of those particular films, but plenty in the way of unintentional laughs as Boyd and his brave crew spout ridiculous 'futuristic' space jargon, are repeatedly duped by obvious traitors, and do battle with wave upon wave of inadequate androids that possess all the fighting prowess of a bath sponge (whether it be with a gun, a laser sword or a space-craft, the robots seem incapable of killing their enemies).

Other silliness includes a couple of pathetic space-walks, a Texan character with a distinctly un-Texan accent, a minor character called General Gonad (snigger), the dullest space dogfights imaginable, and a sub-plot that sees shapely crew-member Julie (Yanti Somer) holding a torch for Captain Boyd, who remains oblivious to her obvious charms until the film's heartwarming finale, when he finally realises that, despite a rather unflattering Ziggy Stardust haircut, she is a total babe (as are all the women in his crew, whose PVC space suits appear to be a tad tighter than those worn by their male counterparts!).