Robowar (1988)

Best movie of this year hands down!

That was an excellent one.

Such a frustrating disappointment

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

An Italian ripoff of both Predator and Terminator starring Reb Brown (Yor Hunter from the Future), directed by Bruno Mattei (The Other Hell), from a script by the husband and wife team of Claudio Fragasso and Rosella Drudi (who concocted Troll 2, a movie that is at the same time not a sequel and not about trolls)? You had me at Italian ripoff.Major Murphy Black (yep, Red Brown) is the leader of a team of commandos that are on a mission in the jungle. Only Mascher knows why they are really there - to test his new invention, Omega-1 (who is played by writer Claudio Fragasso), a robot that looks like a BMX racer with scuba gear.But first, they have to rescue Virginia (Catherine Hickland, Witchery) from soldiers who are overtaking her hospital camp. Just like Predator, the team easily kills all of the terrorists/evil guys/generic villains, but it's just to set up the real story. Yep, Masher wanted to see how his creation would stack up against Murphy.The robot is smart enough to kill everyone, even his creator, and destroy the one device that is supposedly the only thing that can kill it. Also, Omega-1 is really a cyborg with he brain of Murphy's old friend, Lt. Martin Woodrie.Only Murphy and Virginia survive, despite numerous attacks by the cyborg. At the end, the cyborg corners Murphy in the jungle and shows him how to initiate his self-destruct sequence. And that's that.Even I can't defend the fact that I waste nearly ninety minutes of my life watching this movie. On my deathbed, I will pull my family close and whisper, "I only regret one thing. Robowar." Hopefully, they realize that I mean a Bruno Mattei movie and don't think that it's a Rosebudian cipher and they have to go on a quest to discover what I mean. I also hope that none of them watch Robowar.

Not wishing to go down the road of the late eighties Italian haunted house films of Lamberto Bava, Umberto Lenzi, Lucio Fulci, Marcello Avallone and Fabrizio Laurenti, Bruno Mattei instead relocates the slasher film to the jungle, and instead of screaming teens pits a bunch of muscle bound soldiers against an unstoppable killing machine. Believe me, you haven't seen anything like this before.Reb Brown (Strike Commando) stars as Reb Brown (Strike Commando), leader of the Big A*s Muthf*ckas, a squad of soldiers hired to go into the jungles of Venezuela to stop guerrilla activity. What a line up! You've got Romano Puppo (Street Law, Bronx Warriors 2), Jim Gaines (After Death), and a buffed up Massimo Vanni (Street Law, Bronx Warriors 2 and After Death). Some other guys too, including an ethnic guide in touch with nature (Where does Bruno get these ideas?), a doctor and a mysterious gentleman along for the ride that Reb is suspicious of, but judging by the skin tight, half-t-shirt Reb's wearing when he gets off that boat, I'm guessing Reb doesn't think about things too deeply so he lets him come along anyway.Things get strange for our macho mo-fos the moment they discover a pile of human bodies torn to bits. What we the audience know but Reb and co don't is that there is an experimental soldier/robot on the loose, killing everything in sight, and that guy who's joined them is its creator. I know, it sounds a bit like Robocop, but Bruno has the insight to inject a bit of originality to the film, including Reb going head to head with a bunch of guerrillas and picking himself up a chick sidekick into the proceedings.The lads start to get the idea that they're being stalked, which leads to several scenes of Massimo et al firing wildly into the foliage, no doubt a satiric remark on Mattei's part regarding the futility of US military might versus guerrilla warfare in Vietnam. Also, Reb (and Jim Gaines!) scream like girls every time they fire their machine guns, a reference to Strike Commando. Reb also gets in a couple of quips, saying 'Don't move' to a guy he's impaled with a machete, complete with a wink to all the ladies out in the audience. Hollywood take note: this is how you do an action horror film.Okay, okay, I'll level with you. This film bears a lot of similarity to another film you may have seen, set in the jungle and involving marines facing something they've never encountered before, being picked off one by one in various gory ways. And that film of course is After Death. Not only does the hospital from that film turn up here in an unforgettable home made napalm set piece, but the very soundtrack from that film turns up at various times. As an even more glaring example of the intricities of Bruno Mattei's conceptual continuity, the director of that film here plays the killer robot. Vast legions of fans devote themselves to finding all these 'clues' in Mattei's film.So, although Massino, Romano etc put up a good fight, you know the film is going to boil down the Reb being the Final Girl. There's a few twists at the end I won't reveal here, and I'm sure Mattei's making some comment about the faceless terrorist threat the West faces every day by having the Venezuelan extras played by Filipino actors, but that's just the multi-layered complexities of a Bruno Mattei film (hell, I'm still finding things in Zombie Creeping Flesh after all these years).This film is crying out for an American remake, probably starring someone weedy and terrible, like Adrian Brody. I can't think of single person who could replace Reb in such a role. Also, check out the mixed up credits for Jim Gaines and Massimo (Alex McBride) Vanni – another little in-joke for us uber-fans.

Major Murphy Black (Reb) and his team are sent into the jungles of the Philippines to track down and destroy a rogue robot.Much has been made that this is just an Italian knockoff of Predator (1987) and Robocop (1987) (but especially Predator)...that's all well and good, but, that aside, is this movie worth seeing? The answer is definitely yes! For a movie with almost no plot, it's surprisingly fast-paced, and rather than have a lot of dialogue, it's mainly yelling and shooting machine guns. However, there are some gems, such as "You walk like a ruptured duck!". Maybe something was lost in translation, but we're sure glad it was. There are other silly one-liners, but this was our favorite.Fan-favorite Reb Brown is out in force here - looking especially ripped in his child-size half-shirt, he gets to command his team with his trademark screams. But let's not forget about the cool nicknames of the people he's stranded in the jungle with - "Blood", "The Hunter" and "Papa Doc". Naturally, they were picked for this mission because they're "The Best". As for the robot, we get some pixelated "robo-vision", and it seems like a guy in a motorcycle outfit. But he also has a confused, scrambled, "robo-voice" as well, which seems heavily influenced by Buck Rogers' Twiki and his famous "bidi bidi bidi". It doesn't exactly inspire terror, but hey, who's to say how we'd feel if we were in that situation? As if this wasn't awesome enough, the robot can shoot lasers. Of course, they're of the "pew pew" variety! That alone raises the coolness quotient of this movie. And because this never received a VHS release in America (maybe they didn't want to roll the dice with rights issues?), we were sadly deprived of this minor gem in the 80's and 90's. Honestly, it's still pretty hard to find, presumably having been released largely in Japan and Italy, and we thank Sutekh over at Explosive Action for hooking us up with a copy.If you ever wished Predator was an Italian-made Exploding Hut movie shot in the Philippines, and had a robot instead of a "Predator", this is surely the movie for you. Featuring a great synth score by Al Festa and released in the golden year of 1989, Robowar is shameless...ly entertaining fun.For more action insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com

Viewing this film on Japanese video, I can see why this film never made it to America. (I hear bootleg copies are now on sale, so be warned). There is some scenes that rip-off PREDATOR as Reb Brown and Catherine Hickland battle a mumbling robot that doesn't stop. Romano Puppo (aka Gus Stone) being in this film was a tip-off that this was another italian film. This is one of the last few films made before the italian action craze ended in the late 80's. It's a shame for Italy had lot to offer, but United States video companies stop picking them up.