Robot Holocaust

This seriously imbecilic zero budget pop-up book of 1980s trash genres does not abound with originality, but it will appeal to appropriately tuned-in viewers with its dawdling, amateur ethos and shameless plagiarism. On the one hand, it may seem that combining plot motifs, characters and elements from Star Wars, Barbarella, Aliens, barbarian fantasies and post-apocalyptic action flicks could not strike anyone as being a reasonable thing to do. But the infantile logic unhindered by adult genre boundaries and rational causality is one of the advantages of Robot Holocaust. Another advantage is the evidently enthusiastic and punk style of filming. Rather than a professional production, the movie is reminiscent of amateurish projects of enthusiastic children who got their hands on a video camera and wanted to make their own variations of popular films. No shooting was done in studios, but – quite possibly without a permit – in New York in parks, construction sites, old factories and docks, and at the crumbling Smallpox Hospital building on Roosevelt Island. The acting ensemble brings to mind a group of friends with zero acting experience and even less talent for action scenes, which is thoroughly manifested in the local film’s spasmodically edited and horribly clumsy shootouts and fight scenes. As a definitive statement of the movie’s qualities, let us mention the voiceover, which, similarly as in other atrocities in the mould of America 3000, the distributors apparently added to the film in order to give this senseless work at least a semblance of coherence and narrative. In conclusion, let’s add that, from some bizarre interplay of coincidences, this film does not lie somewhere in the realm of the forgotten, but actually belongs to the library of one of the leading Hollywood studios, MGM. (2016.08.02)