Review by Ben Bussey
Alright! Back to the 90s! Roboteers, stand by – here comes enthusiastic commentary from Craig Charles, post-battle interviews with Philippa Forrester fraught with sexual tension, and… oh, wait, it’s not Robot Wars the TV show, beloved of all British tech-nerds for playing host to death matches between homemade, remote-controlled miniature killing machines, and immortalised on one of the best episodes of Spaced?* Well, shit. But wait – instead it’s a 1993 Full Moon production, and a semi-sequel to Stuart Gordon’s awesome mecha movie Robot Jox (and its own tepid follow-up Crash and Burn)? We needn’t put the Apple Hooch and Carling Premier back on ice after all…
Regardless of whether or not you’ve seen Robot Jox and/or Crash and Burn (thoroughly recommend the former, not so much the latter), you know the drill anyway. It’s the future, America’s an irradiated wasteland bearing an uncanny resemblance to the deserts of California, and the principal mode of transport/source of military power/status symbol is a giant robot, such as the big mechanical spider piloted by Drake (Don Michael Paul – a man for whom one first name could never be enough). The powers that be are their usual selves, bullshitting the plebs that everything’s hunky dory, whilst behind closed doors doing their best to sell their wares to other nations – in this case the Eastern Alliance, represented by Danny Kamekona and Yuji Okumoto, who were also a villainous double act in The Karate Kid Part II (hey, it was the early 90s, that American paranoia about Japan hadn’t quite died down yet). But while Drake may be the best robo-pilot there is, he’s also a hot-shot, gung-ho, maverick, stick-it-to-the-man type who bucks authority, doesn’t take orders and doesn’t take any crap (okay, enough superlatives, you get the point), so he when he smells something is up he has to investigate. And happily he’s not alone, as archaeologist Leda (played by everyone’s heroine, Barbara Crampton) is also onto something.
Quite what the big conspiracy is… I’ve honestly forgotten. Look, Robot Wars is classic straight-to-video crap specifically designed to put your higher critical faculties to sleep, and it had just that effect on me. But hey – who cares about the plot so long as it means giant robots get to fight at the end, am I right?
Robot Wars is one of those movies which makes me feel like I’m really not doing my job properly as I can find so little to say about it beyond the old clichés: does exactly what it says on the tin/what you see is what you get etc. The new artwork used by 88 Films is obviously aimed at suckering less observant consumers looking for Pacific Rim, and as an early 90s Charles Band production it’s obviously nowhere near as lavish – but there’s no denying it’s in much the same spirit, with fairly two-dimensional characters and waffle-heavy exposition paving the way for some supersize smackdowns. Happily though, where Del Toro’s mecha/kaiju showdown blathered on for the best part of two and a half hours, Band’s movie (actually directed by his father Albert) is barely 75 minutes of undemanding cut-price fun. It’s stuffed with agreeably silly dialogue: at one point Drake is told “you’re so negative you’re a walking minus sign,” whilst Barbara Crampton is quietly complimented on her “sweater puppies” (though we might note the sweater stays on at all times; this is pretty family-friendly stuff).
Of course, the real draw of Robot Wars is the old school robot action, brought to life via a blend of close-up puppetry and stop-motion animation. As a 1993 production, Robot Wars is a product of the last era of filmmaking in which this approach was still the norm, before CGI took over. I don’t want to sound like a boring old fogey moaning about how things ain’t what they used to be (too late), but there’s such a charm to these traditional FX – particularly given that it’s utilised without the sense of irony which inevitably comes when low-budget movies use stop-motion nowadays.
It’s not a patch on Robot Jox (which I would say remains the greatest American giant robot movie), but Robot Wars is still a perfectly agreeable bite-size chunk of popcorn. And who knows, it’s legacy just might stretch beyond Pacific Rim: I can’t help noting that Danny Kamekona’s antagonist is named Wa-Lee…
Robot Wars is released to Region 2 DVD on 17th February 2014, from 88 Films.
*For the benefit of those unfamiliar with the episode in question…