Goddammit.
Plot
So we’re on a world/planet/general area called “New Terra.” Apparently it is the distant future and things are very different since the robotic uprising of ‘33. Finally, robotic beings rule the world. And by “rule” I mean, live in a big building with an even bigger basement called the “Power Station” and use humans (called “airslaves” because of their need to breathe air) to actually produce the power the robots need to exist.
Or, as the movie puts it in the title narration: The World had been brought to its knees by the
ROBOT HOLOCAUST (DUN DUN DUN!)
What follows is a plot that lifts heavily from Star Wars AND Conan, and we get some guy from the Wasteland leading a group of ragtag misfits (and a some expendable nameless redshirts) on a mission to find the Power Station and kill/destroy/deactivate the “Dark One.”
Whatever, it’s dumb.
Characters
Neo: Norris Culf plays a wastelander who can breathe the poisoned air. Yes, he’s a character named “Neo,” but I’m certain that’s mere coincidence. Anyway, the character has no personality, is somehow able to telepathically communicate with a robot (only does this once, of course) and knows occasional survival tricks when they are beneficial to the plot.
Klyton: Joel Von Ornsteiner (who according to IMDB went on to get a PhD and is apparently a prominent forensic psychologist who’s been a guest expert on various news agencies) plays a robot pickpocket with shades of C-3PO. A “Freebot” (which apparently means “Expositionbot”), he becomes Neo’s sidekick, provides “comic relief” and explains plot points from time to time. Probably has the best robot costume out of the bunch, but that’s damning it with faint praise. All things considered, not THAT annoying, but that is also not saying much.
Jorn: Michael Downend plays a scientist who’s developed a way for humans to survive going into a choking fit when the robots unleash poison gas on the air slaves to keep them in line. He gives himself up to the robots in order to save a bunch of other humans and spends most of the movie in various states of interrogation.
Deeja: Nadine Hartstein plays the daughter of Jorn who is also immune to the gas. Determined and very easy on the eyes, she is also the first person to join up with Neo & Klyton, though she tends to get into peril quite a lot.
Nyla: Jennifer Delora plays the leader of an Amazonian tribe of man-haters that live in the, I shit you not, “She-Zone” which is marked off with something that looks like a “no men’s room” sign. Quite hot, she is a bloodthirsty action girl who goes on the front lines with the rest of the heroes and only joins when she is defeated in combat by one of the nameless redshirts and not the actual hero. That indignity aside, if anyone is the badass of the movie, it’s the lovely, antisocial Nyla.
Kai: Andrew Howarth plays a loin cloth garbed fellow who was the most recent male to trespass into the She-Zone. Apparently the punishment for that is to be stripped down, “forced” to mate with the women, have his tongue cut out and “destroyed.” Sure, the tongue cutting out part sounds rough, but on the bright side, he doesn’t have any dialogue. Doesn’t sound like such a bad deal, really. Actually, it sounds a lot like…
And speaking of Snoo Snoo…
Valaria: Angelika Jager plays our main villain, the servant of the Dark One who spends most of the movie in tight fitting clothing getting chewed out by the Dark One and scheming. She’s really hot but has a fairly thick accent. And then there’s the “Pleasure Machine” which, well… It’s really weird and for the MST3K version, most of it was edited out for television. Because boobies.
Torque: Rick Gianasi plays an evil robot underling of the Dark One who looks a lot like a lobster-man-robot-thing in a cape. Not exactly threatening, but apparently he’s the Dark One’s hands-on guy for killing humans and stuff.
The Dark One: A disembodied voice (not listed in the credits) that is apparently the overseer of the evil robot society. He only shows up in the Power Station and only in one big room/level. We never see him, so we’ve no idea what he is. Mostly he just yells at his henchmen to do their jobs and then screws them over anyway because he’s a jackass.
Visuals/Effects
Directed by Tim Kinkaid (who in addition to a few other low budget 80s movies has written and directed a staggering number of gay porn films under the pseudonym “Joe Gage,” which is another sentence I never thought I’d ever write)
Visually, the movie isn’t very good. The costumes are generally bad with the humans wearing somewhat tattered fur/faux fur (which tend to emphasize the cleavage of the buxom females) and the robots looking slightly better (all five of them). There are also some shitty mutants that attack the heroes in a random encounter. There are also the monsters, which aren’t very good either (there’s wall worms that are essentially sock puppets and a web beast that is one arm of a giant spider puppet).
Writing
Written by Tim Kincaid, the story follows an on-rails plotline with dialogue that often doesn’t work right. One character will ask a question and the reply will either cryptically avoid an answer or explain an unrelated plot point. Characters will wander off for no valid reason. One could spend hours picking apart the flaws with the story and I don’t really have the patience to do so right now. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I’ll use this instead:
No, context wouldn’t help it make sense.
Sound
Synthesizers with occasional orchestral touches. None of it is very good or memorable and all of it apparently lifted from older B-movies. Which would explain the sudden shifts in score.
Conclusion
Robot Holocaust itself is just plain bad, but actually looking it up after watching it led to a case of “too much information.” I know I’m a weirdness magnet, but I think something went *ping* in my head as I was writing this.
BEWARE: NOT QUITE SAFE FOR WORK
Closest thing to a trailer I could find.
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