Review by Ben Bussey
High concept filmmaking is alive and well in the 21st century. Whether it’s a megabudget studio theatrical release or a microbudget straight-to-DVD, if you can sum it up in a sentence chances are you can sell it. Pacific Rim? Monsters versus robots. Megashark Vs. Giant Octopus? Erm… there’s a clue in the title. And now we have Battle of the Damned, with a set-up pretty well guaranteed to stir the loins of fans everywhere, thanks to its three key attributes: zombies, robots, and Dolph Lundgren.
Yep, you’ve got the measure of Battle of the Damned from that sentence alone, but here’s a smidgen more synopsis anyway. Seasoned mercenary Max Gatling (Dolph, obvs) is sent into an abandoned city in south-east Asia which has been quarantined off due to a rather nasty biological experiment gone wrong; that’s right, an evil corporation has turned all the townspeople into zombies (fast ones, just so that’s out of the way). Max’s mission is to locate and retrieve the corporate boss’s daughter, who is lost somewhere in the city. However, once Max tracks her down, he finds she’s not alone – and the ragtag band of survivors she is shacked up with don’t know the truth about her daddy. Their chances of getting out don’t look great – until Max crosses path with another potential threat in the form of some killer androids, deployed to clean up the streets. But with a little reprogramming, these may be just the allies they need to fight their way to freedom.
That’s right – this is a good old fashioned, dumb-as-shit-and-don’t-care-who-knows-it sci-fi action fest with a squirt of horror for good measure, oozing with self-awareness, but also with a not-entirely expected emphasis on plot and character. While it sadly lacks the budget to really do justice to its madcap vision, it doesn’t neglect to bring us a likeable cast and plenty of breezy banter. The end result isn’t likely to become anyone’s new favourite movie, but it’s a diverting enough 90 minutes.
I’ve long sung the praises of his Dolphness (having once penned a lengthy and positively gushing article on the subject at the now sadly defunct B Through Z), and there can be little doubt that the relative success of Battle of the Damned owes a great deal to his presence. One of the great things about Dolph, by contrast with many of his fellow 80s survivors, is his comparative lack of hubris; he’s always seemed as happy taking small parts in big movies as taking big parts in small movies. Obviously he’s on very familiar ground here as the grizzled man on a mission, but sensibly they don’t avoid the pressing issue of his advancing years; we have him putting on glasses to read maps, getting dismissed as “old man” by his mostly younger co-stars, and perhaps most refreshingly there’s no tacked-on love story with a woman young enough to be his daughter as we so often find in movies of this ilk. The gloriously named Max Gatling isn’t exactly a wisecrack-a-minute kind of action hero, but there’s a nice underlying droll wit throughout. The supporting cast also do themselves proud; for once, there are no real stand-out awful performances here, and the soap opera-ish subplots are actually handled far better than we might anticipate. Of course, many people of my age will be as bewildered as I was to see Dolph at one point rescued by Damian from Home and Away…
Unfortunately, given this is a movie about robots fighting zombies, the zombie and robot action really leaves a bit to be desired. The many chase and fight sequences are handled quite sloppily, with no real sense of scale or threat. It’s curiously low on gore for a modern straight-to-DVD B-movie too; we see zombies swarm and screaming victims disappear under them, but that’s about it. And unsurprisingly, the robots aren’t exactly the most impressive we’ve ever seen, and the obvious lack of funds means they are not utilised as often or as well as we might have hoped.
So, while Battle of the Damned may not be the monster mash-up to end all monster mash-ups, it’s a respectable enough addition to the oeuvre, and it’s decent enough midnight movie material.
Battle of the Damned comes to UK DVD and Blu-ray on 26th December 2013, from Entertainment One.