:: a world of zombies ::

:: Friday, February 6 ::

WAR OF THE PLANETS/WAR OF THE ROBOTS

I was going to review these movies separately, but I decided that separating WAR OF THE PLANETS from WAR OF THE ROBOTS is a bit like separating Corey Haim from Corey Feldman. It can be done, but the result is, well, not very pretty.

Anyway, some of you may remember that in 1977, a little movie called STAR WARS came out, and apparently enough people went to see it to spawn two sequels, one actually superior and one vastly inferior. And then over twenty years later, it spawned two feature length video game previews that a lot of people deluded themselves into actually enjoying. Oh, it also spawned a made-for-television holiday special full of bad songs, badly sung. One of them by Jefferson Starship. Actually, that was spawned by Satan, but he wouldn't have done it if STAR WARS hadn't been a hit.

And like just about any other hugely successful film, STAR WARS spawned imitators. Lots of them. And one of them, a little film from Turkey that's already been examined here, was the greatest movie ever made. There was also MESSAGE FROM SPACE, a fine Japanese film from the late, great Kinji Fukasaku (BATTLE ROYALE, BLACK LIZARD, and THE GREEN SLIME! Clearly he was much better than me). Japan also gave us Godzilla director Jun Fukuda's WAR IN SPACE, which is also known as WAR OF THE PLANETS, but isn't the WAR OF THE PLANETS that we're here to celebrate today. No, that particular WAR OF THE PLANETS comes to us from that magical wonderland known as Italy.

It's pretty common knowledge that nobody can imitate a hit quite like the Italians. Also, nobody can flog a dead horse quite like the Italians, but that's neither here nor there. Within just two years of the success of STAR WARS, the Italian film industry had given us Luigi Cozzi's awesomely entertaining and important STAR CRASH (featuring der uberstar David Hasselhoff himself), the underrated Aldo Lado's curiously underappreciated THE HUMANOID, and today's subjects, both of which came from Alfonso Brescia, under the pseudonym of Al Bradley, which is nothing compared to the pseudonym given to Aldo Lado's pseudonym for THE HUMANOID - George Lewis! I kid you not.

I've been assured by my physician that attempting scene-for-scene plot synopses for these films could result in massive brain hemorraghing, so I won't really try. WAR OF THE PLANETS, the first of these films, stars British actor John Richardson (ONE MILLION YEARS B.C., BLACK SUNDAY, countless other Italian films. He was also apparently a serious contender for the role of James Bond at one time) and a bunch of people I haven't seen in anything else. It also features, according to the credits, a special guest appearance by Mickey Pilgrim, who isn't anywhere to be found at imdb.com. Anyway, Richardson plays a hotheaded spaceship commander who, if this were a cop movie, would be referred to as a 'loose cannon' by his superiors at least once. His ship goes into action to defend Earth from an alien attack. They're successful, but during the battle, the ship is damaged and has to land on a remote planet where they discover a race of aliens who are being oppressed by a robot controlled by a giant computer of some kind. Anyway, lots of stuff happens, and then the movie ends with one of those twists that's meant to be shocking, but it's actually pretty silly.

WAR OF THE ROBOTS, however, is a totally different movie, starring Antonio Sabato (he was in BARBARELLA, but the more culturally refined among you will no doubt remember him as Toblerone in Enzo Castellari's ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX, which isn't meant to be confused with ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. No, not at all.) as the heroic Captain John Boyd. It also features the same people that I didn't know from the first movie and Giacomo Rossi-Stuart as Hey Wasn't He In Kill Baby Kill?. Oh, and the elusive Mickey Pilgrim. Our hero's a hotheaded spaceship commander who is trying to rescue his girlfriend and an old professor from some androids in silver jumpsuits and blonde Prince Valiant wigs, which make them look like the coolest garage rock band who never existed. His ship goes into action to defend Earth from an alien attack. They're successful, but during the battle, the ship is damaged and has to land on a remote asteroid where they discover a race of aliens who are being oppressed by the androids. Anyway, lots of stuff happens, including a great fight involving these really cool swords, one might even call them sabres, that are made of light. Man, I wish I'd thought of that. That Alfonso Brescia is one creative guy. There's also a space dogfight in which Sabato, Rossi-Stuart, and another guy have to defeat the overwhelming alien attack force, which is under the command of General Gonad. I wish I were making that up.

While they lack the flashy, pulpy appeal of STAR CRASH, both WAR OF THE PLANETS and WAR OF THE ROBOTS are just cheap, disjointed, and stupid enough to qualify as avant-garde, and that's quite an accomplishment. Really, there's one scene in ROBOTS where our heroes are led past these creepy old people in black robes to the throne of their queen while some spacey synthesizer music plays that I swear could have been shot by Kenneth Anger. If he made goofy sci-fi films. Both films toss in lots of hand-held shots, seemingly at random, that make it even harder to tell what's going on much of the time. Both films also have a nice low-rent look that seems derived more from Gerry Anderson's wonderful series SPACE: 1999 than STAR WARS, which is fine with me. The costumes in particular owe a lot to the Anderson show. Like many other Italian films, even the cheap and stupid ones, these movies do have some nice colors. I mean, we're not talking Mario Bava or Dario Argento nice, but nice nonetheless. They also share a lot of special effects footage. And actors. And sets.

Okay, so they're hardly 2001 or SOLARIS (the punishingly slow but brilliant Russian one, not that new thing), but I still love these two movies, just as I occasionally think that BUCK ROGERS is the greatest series in the history of television, or at the very least the greatest work of randomly blinking light sci-fi ever, even though deep down, I know that's not right. The greatest series in the history of television is Gerry Anderson's UFO. WAR OF THE PLANETS actually seems to borrow more from Bava's PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES than STAR WARS, only it's not nearly as pretty as Bava's film. WAR OF THE ROBOTS is closer to being a ripoff, what with the light swords and dogfights. They're both endlessly entertaining, but I would have to say that I prefer PLANETS, because, well, it's shorter. And the characters wear those silly red helmets all the way through. Both films do have cool electronic scores, and the piece that plays during the credits of ROBOTS could possibly pass for early Human League, or that stuff that seemingly hundreds of people make on their laptops nowadays.

Both of these films can be had on DVD pretty cheap from Fred Olen Ray's Retromedia, and although I lose sleep over why these are available and STAR CRASH is not, I have to admit that there's something strangely comforting about that.

And who is Mickey Pilgrim anyway?
:: Jason Hyde 3:46 PM [+] ::
...

WAR OF THE PLANETS/WAR OF THE ROBOTS

I was going to review these movies separately, but I decided that separating WAR OF THE PLANETS from WAR OF THE ROBOTS is a bit like separating Corey Haim from Corey Feldman. It can be done, but the result is, well, not very pretty.

Anyway, some of you may remember that in 1977, a little movie called STAR WARS came out, and apparently enough people went to see it to spawn two sequels, one actually superior and one vastly inferior. And then over twenty years later, it spawned two feature length video game previews that a lot of people deluded themselves into actually enjoying. Oh, it also spawned a made-for-television holiday special full of bad songs, badly sung. One of them by Jefferson Starship. Actually, that was spawned by Satan, but he wouldn't have done it if STAR WARS hadn't been a hit.

And like just about any other hugely successful film, STAR WARS spawned imitators. Lots of them. And one of them, a little film from Turkey, was the greatest movie ever made. There was also MESSAGE FROM SPACE, a fine Japanese film from the late, great Kinji Fukasaku (BATTLE ROYALE, BLACK LIZARD, and THE GREEN SLIME! Clearly he was much better than me). Japan also gave us Godzilla director Jun Fukuda's WAR IN SPACE, which is also known as WAR OF THE PLANETS, but isn't the WAR OF THE PLANETS that we're here to celebrate today. No, that particular WAR OF THE PLANETS comes to us from that magical wonderland known as Italy.

It's pretty common knowledge that nobody can imitate a hit quite like the Italians. Also, nobody can flog a dead horse quite like the Italians, but that's neither here nor there. Within just two years of the success of STAR WARS, the Italian film industry had given us Luigi Cozzi's awesomely entertaining and important STAR CRASH (featuring der uberstar David Hasselhoff himself), the underrated Aldo Lado's curiously underappreciated THE HUMANOID, and today's subjects, both of which came from Alfonso Brescia, under the pseudonym of Al Bradley, which is nothing compared to the pseudonym given to Aldo Lado for THE HUMANOID - George Lewis! I kid you not.

I've been assured by my physician that attempting scene-for-scene plot synopses for these films could result in massive brain hemorraghing, so I won't really try. WAR OF THE PLANETS, the first of these films, stars British actor John Richardson (ONE MILLION YEARS B.C., BLACK SUNDAY, countless other Italian films. He was also apparently a serious contender for the role of James Bond at one time) and a bunch of people I haven't seen in anything else. It also features, according to the credits, a special guest appearance by Mickey Pilgrim, who isn't anywhere to be found at imdb.com. Anyway, Richardson plays a hotheaded spaceship commander who, if this were a cop movie, would be referred to as a 'loose cannon' by his superiors at least once. His ship goes into action to defend Earth from an alien attack. They're successful, but during the battle, the ship is damaged and has to land on a remote planet where they discover a race of aliens who are being oppressed by a robot controlled by a giant computer of some kind. Anyway, lots of stuff happens, and then the movie ends with one of those twists that's meant to be shocking, but it's actually pretty silly.

WAR OF THE ROBOTS, however, is a totally different movie, starring Antonio Sabato (he was in BARBARELLA, but the more culturally refined among you will no doubt remember him as Toblerone in Enzo Castellari's ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX, which isn't meant to be confused with ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. No, not at all.) as the heroic Captain John Boyd. It also features the same people that I didn't know from the first movie and Giacomo Rossi-Stuart as Hey Wasn't He In Kill Baby Kill?. Oh, and the elusive Mickey Pilgrim. Our hero's a hotheaded spaceship commander who is trying to rescue his girlfriend and an old professor from some androids in silver jumpsuits and blonde Prince Valiant wigs, which make them look like the coolest garage rock band who never existed. His ship goes into action to defend Earth from an alien attack. They're successful, but during the battle, the ship is damaged and has to land on a remote asteroid where they discover a race of aliens who are being oppressed by the androids. Anyway, lots of stuff happens, including a great fight involving these really cool swords, one might even call them sabres, that are made of light. Man, I wish I'd thought of that. That Alfonso Brescia is one creative guy. There's also a space dogfight in which Sabato, Rossi-Stuart, and another guy have to defeat the overwhelming alien attack force, which is under the command of General Gonad. I wish I were making that up.

While they lack the flashy, pulpy appeal of STAR CRASH, both WAR OF THE PLANETS and WAR OF THE ROBOTS are just cheap, disjointed, and stupid enough to qualify as avant-garde, and that's quite an accomplishment. Really, there's one scene in ROBOTS where our heroes are led past these creepy old people in black robes to the throne of their queen while some spacey synthesizer music plays that I swear could have been shot by Kenneth Anger. If he made goofy sci-fi films. Both films toss in lots of hand-held shots, seemingly at random, that make it even harder to tell what's going on much of the time. Both films also have a nice low-rent look that seems derived more from Gerry Anderson's wonderful series SPACE: 1999 than STAR WARS, which is fine with me. The costumes in particular owe a lot to the Anderson show. Like many other Italian films, even the cheap and stupid ones, these movies do have some nice colors. I mean, we're not talking Mario Bava or Dario Argento nice, but nice nonetheless. They also share a lot of special effects footage. And actors. And sets.

Okay, so they're hardly 2001 or SOLARIS (the punishingly slow but brilliant Russian one, not that new thing), but I still love these two movies, just as I occasionally think that BUCK ROGERS is the greatest series in the history of television, or at the very least the greatest work of randomly blinking light sci-fi ever, even though deep down, I know that's not right. The greatest series in the history of television is Gerry Anderson's UFO. WAR OF THE PLANETS actually seems to borrow more from Bava's PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES than STAR WARS, only it's not nearly as pretty as Bava's film. WAR OF THE ROBOTS is closer to being a ripoff, what with the light swords and dogfights. They're both endlessly entertaining, but I would have to say that I prefer PLANETS, because, well, it's shorter. And the characters wear those silly red helmets all the way through. Both films do have cool electronic scores, and the piece that plays during the credits of ROBOTS could possibly pass for early Human League, or that stuff that seemingly hundreds of people make on their laptops nowadays.

Both of these films can be had on DVD pretty cheap from Fred Olen Ray's Retromedia, and although I lose sleep over why these are available and STAR CRASH is not, I have to admit that there's something strangely comforting about that.

And who is Mickey Pilgrim anyway?
:: Jason Hyde 3:46 PM [+] ::
...