Son of the Revenge of the 31 Days of Cheese - War of the Robots

We’re going to take a little 4 film side bar into the world of Italian cinema Cheese – one because I want to, also I have the films to hand which always helps.

The first film is 1977’s War of the Robots.

I think a good case can be made that the director of this film, Alfonso Bresca,  is the worst director in Italian cinema  -the Italian film industry has thrown up many many talented even great directors including Sergio Leone but the bell curve will insist that there are some god-awful directors at the other end of the tail. Mr. Bresca is one, if not the worst of those.

This film is one of a series of 4 films he made in quick succession to cash in on the success of Star Wars and to a lesser extent of Star Crash – S.O.P. for the Italian film industry. These films are notable for their laughable effects, their serial use of props and sets and costumes in a way that would shame Ed Wood, and story lines that suggest habitual drug use combined with Multiple Personality Disorder and Adult ADD.

In this film one professor something and Lois are kidnapped by alien robots. Well we’re told they are robots – what they look like are guys in blonde blonde BLONDE prince valiant style wigs wearing gold colored suits – Imagine if you would Lady Gaga’s father. The director had used these  wigs and costume in the prior film and they serve as the films storm troopers -  in that after a momentary show of competence in kidnapping the professor and hot babe Lois their function is to get killed.

Why kidnap the professor and Mary Anne, sorry Lois – seems the professor is close to discovering the secret of making life and the aliens are old and withered kept alive by organ transplants but they are looking for another way. Hence the kidnapping.

Meantime, it seems the professor left a reactor going as part of his studies but nobody knows how to turn it off. The world would appear to be menaced but it’s not clear. Nothing is clear -other than the director likes reusing costumes – as in case of the valiant space crew flying after them – we’ve seen these suits before.  Captain John Boyd and the crew (one of which is a lady named Julie who has short hair and is not blonde she is pining for Captain John who used to, did, or still does have a thing for Lois) are in hot pursuit of the Aliens.  

After a boring space flight – this is the kind of film you watch a bit at a time – go clean the bathroom then come back – I can’t imagine what it must have felt like being in a theater watching this – there are only so many times one can go for popcorn – and it had to been shown as the bottom of a double bill so you were really watching this movie because you were waiting for the other film which is the one you wanted to see but you have to sit though this mess. One would start to feel trapped your brain would look for a leg to gnaw off or something.

I digress.

After the boring space flight and battle the crew lands on an asteroid – we are treated to aliens with weird eyes – all but their leader who looks more like he’s escaped from the WWF except he’s painted a sort of gold color for some reason. The crew are captured by then but then the aliens fall down on the ground and wiggle. No I’m not kidding. Then the gold guys show up and take the aliens prisoner (for organ harvesting it seems) the crew rescues them and the alien leader and the crew attempt to rescue the professor.

In plot twist that suggests the writer had suffered multiple blows to the head the professor is no longer a prisoner and Lois is now empresses of the aliens but she still has the hots for Captain John  she frees them (the crew and Captain John are captured with almost embarrassing ease in this film) and drugs the professor and after killing the same 5 gold guys about 15 times,  they all get on the ship – along with the alien leader to head back to earth to disarm the reactor (remember that?)  the folks on earth spend a bit of time chewing the scenery about the reactor. Then they stop.  

Then in another plot twist – Lois brings the gold guys onto the ship and attempts to take it over– the professor is killed – the alien is killed then there is a long long long but not good space battle which ends up with  Captain John destroying Lois in her Tie fighter and ending up with short haired Julie (actually it looks good on her I don’t know why folks in other web sites complain about her hair) I think the reactor blows up and destroys earth – no of course  it’s stopped somehow but I forget and I’m not going to watch this again – not unless I get paid.

Boring – stupid and filled with mistakes – one scene has the crew shoot the five robot all of whom drop to the ground but they didn’t put the sound of their laser blasters into the scene in post so it looks like the gold guys just fell down. There is comedy relief that I refuse on general principle to write about suffice say it make Robot L of Starcrash look like Shakespeare. There are sets and costumes that would be sued at least twice more by the director and this is film I would really like to forget

Enjoy (sorry you can’t really enjoy with this but it’s the formula) with antipasto.