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Released by: Scorpion Releasing
Released on: March, 2019.
Director: Tim Kincaid
Cast: Jennifer Delora, Norris Culf, Nadine Hart, Joel Von Ornsteiner, Angelika Jager
Year: 1986
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Robot Holocaust - Movie Review:
Directed by Tim Kinkaid in 1986, Robot Holocaust is a fairly horrible, yet somehow loveable, low budget science fiction film set in a post-apocalyptic future. Here we meet Neo (Norris Culf of Necropolis and Breeders, the latter also directed by Kincaid), a drifter type who winds up getting into trouble when he tries to help out the slaves being forced to work at a factory for The Dark One. The Dark One? Yes, he's a mysterious robot overlord of some kind. See, in this future, the robots have successfully rebelled against their one-time human masters and now it's the humans that are slaves!
Neo and his sad-faced robot pal, Klyton (Joel Von Ornsteiner), meet a foxy lady named Deeja (Nadine Hart) who talks them into helping her save her father, a scientist, who is a wanted man due to his invention… some device that will allow the slaves to overpower whatever sort of mind control it is that The Dark One is exerting over them. Together, they gather up a rag-tag group of survivalist types and head out to face The Dark One and save the day…
The film was skewered on Mystery Science Theater 3000 years back (and was included on the Shout! Factory DVD release of Mystery Science Theater 3000 Volume XXV), and it isn't hard to see why as it's a pretty ridiculous outing. Made fast and cheap in and around the New York City of 1986, Kincaid and company get bonus points for finding some pretty effective post-apocalyptic locations, the ruins of the old smallpox hospital on Roosevelt Island getting plenty of screen time here (the same ruins were used in the first live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film!) as well as certain areas of the Brooklyn waterfront facing Manhattan (where, what were once old warehouses, we now have mostly expensive condos).
Kincaid (better known in gay porno movie circles as Joe Gage), paces things reasonably well but the script and much of the acting is a big ol' sloppy mess. It's fun to see Jennifer Delora, probably best known for Frankenhooker, show up in the film. She and the rest of the cast look fairly ridiculous in their different costumes, but really, it's the genuinely beautiful Angelika Jager, cast here as Valaria, the Dark One's assistant, who truly steals the show. Her performance reaches Tommy Wiseau levels of strangeness, her thick accent overpowering what little acting ability she has, making for a completely absurd delivery style. She's a lot of fun to watch here, though not for the reasons that she should be fun to watch.
Production values were pretty low on this one, but there are fun amusing effects and set design on display. Most of this occurs during the last half of the film and there's a genuinely surprising reveal towards the end of the film that you have to see to believe. Yeah fine, the whole thing is a big, jumbled mess of post-nuke style clichés and bad acting but this is worth seeing just for the weird scene where our rag tag group of heroes have to fight off some sewer worms!
Robot Holocaust - Blu-ray Review:
Scorpion Releasing presents Robot Holocaust on Blu-ray in a nice looking AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed at 1.85.1 widescreen on a 25GB disc. This is a pretty solid image, showing good detail and really nice color reproduction. There's a reasonable amount of depth to the picture, though the outdoor scenes fare better here than the interiors, which tend to be dark and grimy looking (intentionally so). Skin tones look good and the film is clean, showing very little print damage, while retaining the expected amount of natural film grain. No problems with any noise reduction, edge enhancement or compression artifacts to complain about. The movie looks quite good here!
The English language DTS-HD Mono track is also quite good. Optional subtitles are provided in English only. The dialogue is perfectly easy to follow and the track is clean and properly balanced without any obvious hiss or distortion.
The main extra is a candid interview with Jennifer Delora that clocks in at just short of eighteen-minutes in length. She's quite jovial here as she speaks about how she got to know director Tim Kincaid and what he was like to work with (she also appeared in his Bad Girls' Dormitory, made the same year) as well as how she wound up appearing in this film. She also talks about some of the more unusual costumes that she wore in the film, how she got along with her co-stars and more.
Rounding out the extras are bonus trailers for Panga (a.k.a. The Curse III: Blood Sacrifice), Iron Warrior, Shredder, Gas Pump Girls, and The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood, menus and chapter selection.
Robot Holocaust - The Final Word:
Robot Holocaust is enjoyably nonsensical cinematic garbage but, when you're in the right frame of mind for something like this, it's also pretty fun. Scorpion Releasing brings this turkey to Blu-ray looking and sounding really good and with a decent interview as its main extra. The film's fan base - and it is out there - will appreciate this one.
Click on the images below for full sized Robot Holocaust screen caps!
