War of the Robots

War of the Robots

Italy - 1978

Director- Alfonso Brescia (as Al Bradley)

Brentwood Home Video, 2003, Space Quest 20 Movie DVD set

The credit sequence is straight out of a 50’s serial. The names all look Anglo-American, but the production value, all the visuals and the dubbing are oh so Italian.

A professor conducting genetic experiments in a reactor on a space station with his beautiful blonde “au naturale” assistant are kidnapped by several golden page-boy wigged and silver jumpsuit clad “aliens” armed with light weapons of some kind. They are whisked by wire propelled spacecraft into the blurry depths of space. After a droll and simplistic computer reads off some grade-school computations, a rescue force is launched into space with directions that include North and East. They encounter three enemy craft, which they engage, destroying two. The third disappears. The rescue force, ship damaged in the brief exchange, lands on a nearby soundstage planet to perform repairs. On the surface they encounter a race of aliens who resemble humans in every way except for their puffy latex eyes and leather helmets. The puffy eyed people it is revealed are the slaves of the silver jumpsuiters. Anyway, it turns out the 2 kidnapped people are actually the leaders of the golden haired bad aliens, except for the fact that the woman, the assistant chick is in love with the leader of the humans, so she helps them escape and splits with them.

Damn, this is so incredibly low class it’s shocking. Classless as hell, but mercifully, all the men are clad in loose fitting jumpsuits, and predictably, but thankfully, the women are not. None of the women is wearing a bra, the spaceship animations are circa 1960 TV quality and are so painfully wooden and Star Wars derivative that it was hard to keep from covering my face. Ugggghhhh. When the spaceship gets hit all the people’s chairs shake in different directions. The actors all deliver some of the most idiotically scripted and and dubbed lines ever. People stand in the open and have conversations during gun battles. Wins the award for worst spacewalk scene ever sinfully committed to film, while simultaneously delivering the awesomest soundtrack this side of a death rattle.

So bad it’s like punching yourself in the face repeatedly or shooting up under your fingernails. Terrible, painful, unhealthy and rotten, but it feels so goddamn decadent.