S01E10 - Robot Holocaust

Plot

Short: Commando Cody...does something?

Film: The world has been plunged into an apocalyptic wasteland after a terrible war with machines poisoned the atmosphere. The remaining humans live in sheltered areas and serve the leader of the robots, the Dark One, by supplying his power lest their breathable air get cut off. But there are those who have found ways of not being affected by the poisonous atmosphere, and these brave souls will lead a small band to the Dark One's power station to destroy him once and for all.


Movie Review

As much as I would love (hah!) to review Commando Cody's latest serial episode, it seems that the creators of MST3K finally got sick Mr. Pre-Rocketeer and decided they were no longer going to show any more episodes of Rader Men from the Moon. To rub it in, this episode airs only part of serial episode nine before abruptly cutting off (which the Mad Scientists claim is due to the film breaking). And so ends the exploits of Commando Cody with an inglorious halt to his generic serial. Though admittedly there is a small part of me that would've liked to have seen the remaining episodes, this part is overwhelmed by the joy of no longer witnessing more hammy fist fights and inane dialogue.

So that leaves us with the feature film itself, an absolutely delightful artifact of the 80s entitled Robot Holocaust. This is the type of B-movie that I love to watch without Joel/Mike and the bots and drink in its terribleness, the type of movie that should be watched with friends for the proper experience. But what makes a film like this different from all the other terrible films that are shown the Satellite of Love?

It's the small things, really. It's the terrible acting that's somehow even worse than the schlock you'd see in a creature feature from the 1960s. It's the full color that "vibrantly" displays the lack of budget, as opposed to black-and-white films that can obscure things a bit more easily. It's the realization that even though film-making technology has improved leaps and bounds since their humble beginnings, there are still crackpots in the 80s that think they can make a film. It's the fact that in the 80s, there are a more films that others can (and will) rip-off. For more on this subject, see also: Gymkata, R.O.T.O.R., and Deadly Prey.

And so it is with all of these factors that we have Robot Holocaust, a blatant rip-off of countless sword-and-sorcery and post-apocalyptic flicks like Mad Max and Conan the Barbarian. The lack of originality permeates every facet of this film, from the characters to the dialogue to the plot. Then there's the lack of effort, which can be seen in the scriptwriting, the costumes, the plot holes (and forgotten plot devices) and even the locations. This film is just bad, but it's entertainingly so.

There is so much to say about this film. How about first the plot, or the strung together scenes that barely make a plot? From what the internet tells me, this film was written and directed by Tim Kincaid, who was a prolific porn director. If this is true, then the reason for why the plot is so poorly written makes complete sense. Mr. Kincaid doesn't know how to tell a story at all if Robot Holocaust is any indication. Several big examples can be throughout the film, including:

- The main hero can use telepathy, but it never comes into play outside of a worthless exposition sequence.
- The hero says he comes from a rebel society that has amassed an army to defeat the Dark One, but he heads out to defeat the Dark One with only a few new recruits; the army is never mentioned again.
- The hero also says he is looking for a friend at the Power Station, where the Dark One resides; naturally, this friend is never referenced again.
- It's made clear that only the main hero and heroine can survive in the poisonous atmosphere, and yet several ordinary humans follow them through the poisonous atmosphere without any damage.
- One of the Dark One's minions, a robot called Torque, is sent out again and again to stop the small group from reaching the Power Station. But Torque never even does anything to the group - like the shotgun that is pumped a dozen times before being shot in Masters of the Universe, Torque has to be told over and over again to stop the group before actually meets them.

This is but a small sampling of the film's continuity errors, and they are made worse through atrociously cliched dialogue spoken by some of the worst acting imaginable. The heroes deserve no quarter for their over-the-top performances, but special mention must be made of Valaria, the Dark One's human servant. Fans of season 9 of MST3K will have images of Werewolf's Natalie flash before their minds upon hearing Valaria's indecipherable accent as her actress chews the scenery over and over again with her performance. But the most "memorable" performance outside of Valaria's comes from Klyton, a blatant C3PO knockoff whose voice has an annoying echo effect and is hands down the most annoying character in the film.

And what of the special effects? Since this film obviously lacked a budget, the robot costumes are laughable. Torque, the strongest robot in service to the Dark one, looks like a human-crustacean hybrid than a machine. The other robots (all three of them, seemingly) and Klyton look like poorly pasted together pieces of cardboard. The monsters that populate the deadly wasteland, from mutants to killer worms to a giant spider, all look like puppets or bad makeup. And it's difficult to have a post-apocalyptic wasteland when the heroes are walking through what looks like Central Park with the New York City skyline in the background.

And how about the soundtrack, which is a droning synthesizer that is all too common in films of this pedigree? You can always spot an 80s piece of tripe when incomprehensible synthesizer notes blare over the action as the composer tries to emulate the classic Terminator score and only succeeds in finding a decent rhythm button on his Casio keyboard. 

I could go on and on about this hilarious piece of cinema dreck - about how characters die and no one cares, about the plot holes too numerous to list - but this is not the place for that. All that needs to be said is that Robot Holocaust is a masterpiece of 80s wretchedness and has to be watched by cinephiles who eat this garbage up, like me.



MST3K Review

This movie is so hilariously bad that Joel and the bots may not even be needed to mock it - the film basically mocks itself. But they do mock it, and I'm sad to say that the riffing is not up to par compared to previous episodes. Oh, there are definitely moments - there are always moments with this show - but Joel, Tom, and Crow sound hesitant in their jokes in this episode, as if they are unsure about what exactly to mock. Undoubtedly there is a goldmine of material to riff here, but they barely scrape the surface and leave a lot of potential material hanging. It seems that the still-noticeable laid back riffing format of the earlier seasons doesn't work as well for a movie like this, a movie that deserves the rapid-fire jokes that are found more readily in later seasons.