War of the Robots (1978)
Good gravy! Another indescribably heinous late 1970s Italian science fiction movie! I must be a sadist! Well...
This bomb was dropped by the Italians in 1978, exploding over Europe in a fireball of technocolor and polyester. It very quickly ended up on ultra-cheap-ass home video and late-night cable stations, appearing in various cuts and lengths under such names as Reactor, Robots and Stratostars. Once it was hurled into the black hole that is legal public domain status, it was snatched up by b-movie experts Brentwood Communications, who released it on dime-bag DVD in 2003 under the title War of the Robots. This is what I will be reviewing today.
War of the Robots is a "sequel" to 1977's Cosmos: War of the Planets. I put sequel in quotes because it's not the type of sequel that results from a desire to extend and continue a storyline that one movie started. No, this is the type of sequel that results when a director looks around his company's prop rooms and says, "Hey, we still got all this stuff from the last movie lying around taking up space. How about we make another movie, using all this stuff again, so that we can save some Lira and I can buy my third wife that Mercedes?" Since most of the actors from Cosmos: War of the Planets went back to their jobs at Taco Bell, it was easy to get them to come back and dress up in the same silly costumes. And I'm sure they had some old rejected scripts lying around they could use to fake a plot. Mix in a healthy dose of stock footage from the first movie and WE HAVE A FILM!
And now on to our show...
First off, in my review of Cosmos: War of the Planets I went with a Star Trek theme, which worked pretty well. After watching War of the Robots now, I feel confidant in continuing that theme, as this movie is really just a 100 minute long episode of The Original Series, albeit a badly-made rip-off. I know this will offend a lot of Trekkies, and since Enterprise got cancelled, they really have a lot of free time on their hands to write hate mail to me.
Along that line, we see that Starfleet has had some upgrades since the last movie. The uniforms are a different cut and style and the computers and weapons seem a generation advanced. Much like the difference between The Original Series and the 1980s movies in Star Trek. The characters will remain generally the same, and the La Enterpriza is still the same old ship, but time has definitely passed.
We open on Starbase Sirius, orbiting Earth. We see that the Starbase is home to a famous genetic scientist named Professor Carr, who has been working hard on a potentially world-changing project to create life. It's basically the Genesis Project from Star Trek II, but with a lot more watery techobabble attempting to shore up the fragile scientific framework.
The Professor is played by nearly-famous French actor Jacques Herlin, who is totally slumming in this horrible movie. His bio says he was 46-years old here, but he looks 86 at least, with deeply sunken eyes and leathery wrinkled face. Herlin had made 80 movies before this one, most all of higher quality, but his career was clearly on the downslide for him to have agreed to this role. He looks amazingly like Christopher Lloyd from Taxi.
The Professor.
The Professor has a hot chick lab assistant (don't they always...well, no, only in movies) named Lois. She's played by 28-year old Malisa Longo, the legendary Italian exploitation movie star. I have seen this woman do some of the most hideously gruesome and strangely erotic things on film that you will ever see, depravities against men and women that would make most normal people puke. A staple of the nunxploitation genre, she would do enough lesbian nun scenes to gratify the most depraved 40-year old man living in his parents' basement (that's not me...I'm only 34). She will be forever known for these brutal exploitation movies, including 1972's Naughty Nun, 1975's The Erotic Adventures of Robinson Caruso, 1976's Salon Kitty and Emmanuelle Black and White, and 1977's Helga, She Wolf of Spilberg and Fraulein Devil. She also had a bit role in Cosmos: War of the Planets, appearing near the end in all her boob-bouncing, hair-flying glory. Here she's a Farrah Fawcett-lookalike with an impressive body to counteract her minimal acting ability.
Hot lab assistant Lois.
There's a weird dynamic between Lois and the Professor, and clearly he has the hots for her. In this scene alone, he twice grips her shoulders and pulls her close to talk to her, and once rubs his shoulder accidentally (right...) against her breast. Lois, however, just happens to be boinking Captain James T. Kirkini, Starfleet's most famous commander. Kirkini is stationed here at Starbase Sirius at the moment, the La Enterpriza idling in short term parking.
While the Professor and Lois chat in his lab, we go outside where four silver-suited guys are creeping around the lab in the dark. They're all wearing matching silver vinyl body suits and these ridiculous looking wigs like Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction, only gold. Actually, and this is a stretch, but they remind me of Jeff Daniels' character from Dumb and Dumber. They're armed with these ray guns that shoot an invisible bolt of energy. We see them zap and presumably kill four sentries, then dragging their lifeless bodies out of the way.
The Androids.
The security breached, the four silver-suited men enter the lab with their guns drawn. They're here to kidnap the Professor, which they do with the aid of a "stun ray setting" of some sort that leaves the poor man unable to resist. They also nab Lois, and bring them both to their waiting spaceship. Blasting off, they race into space and away. There was a witness, however, and the man reports the incident to Starfleet Command.
So Starfleet calls in Captain Kirkini. In our movie, Kirkini is played by 35-year old Antonio Sabato, Sr....yes, that Antonio Sabato, Sr., star of numerous mafia crime dramas, spaghetti westerns and post-holocaust action movies. Here he looks like a shorter, slightly strung-out David Hasselhoff circa Knightrider.
Captain Kirkini.
Kirkini and the Admiral do some brainstorming and they conclude that the aliens disabled a sentry satellite in "Sector H" to facilitate their entry into the Sol System. Not having any information about these aliens or their ship, they suggest that they go to the satellite and see if they can retrieve any info from it's memory banks. So Kirkini leaves immediately on the La Enterpriza.
The model for the La Enterpriza, and most all the external footage of it, is stolen from Cosmos: War of the Planets. The ship is shaped like an Apollo moon rocket with two engine nacelles attached. It's a fairly detailed model, certainly better than anything else we will see in this movie, and I again suspect that it was from some other movie altogether.
The La Enterpriza.
The La Enterpriza crew has had a bit of a redress here, with new uniforms and head gear, which are much better than the ones from the last movie. We again will only get to know the bridge crew, but that's fine, too many ancillary characters would just muddle things up. We have a nice group here, about half women, which must make for interesting downtimes. Of note, there is a big blonde Texan (!) who speaks with the thickest and fakest Texan drawl this side of J.R. Ewing, a young kid who looks like Alfalfa from The Little Rascals, and a dark-skinned woman with a wig who is clearly channeling Nichelle Nichols from Star Trek V.
Two random crewmembers (all the ladies).
Ok, so they reach the disabled satellite and pull out the relevant data and analyze it. Captain Kirkini himself does the EVA work to retrieve the data cards from the satellite. This entire sequence is 90% stock footage from the last movie, which is just egregious.
The results of the data are discussed with the Admiral. Kirkini says he can tell which planet they're headed for by tracking their current course. He says the planet is located at "North Pole Earth, 90 degrees west, and 810 north"...really, that's what he said, word for word. Skipping over that mush for a second, how can you tell exactly where they're going just by plotting their course? If I see a car driving west out of my town, headed for Decatur to the west, can I say with certainty that they're going to stop in Decatur, or continue on the same course, through Decatur and on to the next town down the road? See what I'm saying? In addition, the satellite recorded the speed of the alien ship as it passed, and from this Kirkini determines that it has a top speed only a quarter of the La Enterpriza. Again, that makes no sense. If I see a Lambourghini Diablo drive by me going ten miles and hour, can I logically assume that the car can't go any faster, and in fact is woefully slower than my Dodge Intrepid with the bad valves? Anyway, I'm thinking too hard about this crappy movie. Even at full speed, with the head start the aliens have, it will take four days to catch up to them.
With cockpit displays like this, I hope they have windows.
I guess I should also mention here that there's a MacGuffin side plot to all this. It seems that the Professor had a research nuclear reactor on Starbase Sirius that he was using for his experiments. At the time he was kidnapped, he had locked the reactor into a mode that only he could disable. If the Professor isn't returned to do so, in about nine days the entire Starbase will go boom. So they're going to be cutting it close.
Ok, let's recap. The kidnapped Professor and Lois are aboard a spaceship fleeing fast out of the galaxy. The La Enterpriza is hot on their tail, gaining rapidly. They're on their own apparently, there's no other ship in the area that can assist them. Once again, just how small is Starfleet that the La Enterpriza is ALWAYS the only ship to do the job? They should consider building less large cruiser-class ships and more smaller destroyer- or frigate-class ships. That way they could cover more area, and if the frigates run into something they can't handle, then you could have a strategic reserve of cruisers to plug the holes. Can you tell I used to play Starfleet Battles?
Anyway, while they chase the alien ship, we have a few moments for some personal time. We see Captain Kirkini relaxing in his cabin with the lovely Yoeman Randachetti. She is played by Italian actress Yanti Somer, a pretty young girl with long firm legs and a tight butt. She has her blond hair in a crew cut, however, which is very unflattering. Somer's career is fairly unremarkable, but she did have major roles in 1977's Cosmos: War of the Planets and later in 1979's Star Odyssey.
Yoeman Randachetti.
This movie really, really doesn't need this, but we have a love triangle going here. Kirkini loves Lois, Lois loves Kirkini, Randachetti loves Kirkini, but Kirkini is dumbass-blind to her affections. So blind, in fact, that he keeps lamenting the loss of his fair Lois to Randachetti, who clearly is dying on the inside. Bastard man-pig! Apparently, the rest of the crew knows about Randachetti's unrequited love for the Captain, and occasionally tease her about it.
Thankfully, this excruciating personal moment is interrupted by the appearance of two alien spaceships on an intercept course. Red Alert! Charge up the phaser banks! Load the photon torpedoes! Buckle up! It's determined (how?) that a third ship carrying the Professor and Lois is fleeing, while two escort ships have turned back to scrape the La Enterpriza off their tail.
The fight is short and brisk, and about 85% stock footage from the last movie. Lasers zip, phasers arc, photons race, and both alien ships are destroyed. However, the La Enterpriza takes a hit in the engineering section, damaging the reactor water tanks, reducing her to emergency power.
They check the logs and nearby is the planet Azor (well, they call it an "asteroid", but all the onscreen visuals are clearly of a spherical planetary body). I'm not sure why, but they decide to land on this planet. The La Enterpriza's forward crew cabin detaches and it lands on the planet's surface like Apollo 11.
So, on the planet Azor, five crewmen get out and wander around a bit. What are they looking for? Who knows, because I thought they were trying to find a place to fix their busted spaceship, right? And they said the natives were friendly but primitive, right? So maybe they're just looking for a Starbucks. They all have those Starfleet-issue highway road lanterns and metal detectors, which is cool. What's not so cool is the "anti-radiation suits" which are nothing but leather motorcycle suits, dark green for the junior crew and shoot-me-first blaze orange for Captain Kirkini. No helmets, oddly enough, which might make keeping out dangerous radiation a problem. On the shoulders is a patch with "Trissi", which by the way is the actual name of the La Enterpriza in this movie. You might let that flash right by, but sharp eyes will note that these are off-the-rack motorcycle suits made by Italian clothing company Trissi Sport, Ltd. Yes, that's right, they picked the name of their spaceship based solely on the labels on the suits the costume department bought. That's quality filmmaking.
Check the sleeves.
Anyway, eventually they wander into a cavern, where they're jumped by a bunch of locals. These are hunched, cloak-wearing, mask-sporting, mute hominids who surge around our crew and capture them. Captain Kirkini is the only one who puts up much of a fight, swinging for the fences before being collared.
Up comes the leader of this particular band (or maybe the whole planet?), a beefy dude named Kuba with some scary face make-up and skin paint. I think those bad European teeth are all his, though. Kuba at first wants to kill the humans, believing them to be "Anthorians", a race of bad guys who has apparently been enslaving them of late.
Kuba.
The situation is decided when a whole bunch of Anthorians (who, to no one's surprise, are the silver-suited gold-wigged dudes from before) come around the corner. Despite being woefully outnumbered, Captain Kirkini decides to engage in a gun battle. Thankfully for them, the Anthorians have all the tactical combat sense of my four-year old, and they just run at them in waves and are cut down like wheat. The La Enterpriza crew is armed with these pistols that make a flash of light and a spacey sound. I guess this is scientifically correct (you can't see laser beams in most conditions) and it also means they don't have to spend the Lira to put bolts in frame-by-frame during post-production. That is, if there was any post-production done on this movie at all, sometimes it doesn't look like it.
Fight!
In the end, 25 of the silver-suited Anthorians are killed, with no casualties amongst the humans. As well, we see that the lander module has shot at and destroyed an alien spaceship lurking nearby. We never really learn, but I assume this ship brought the group of Anthorians that were down in the cavern.
All that shooting and murdering and killing and stuff over, Kuba the native leader gives us a healthy bite of exposition. It seems that the Anthorians live on a nearby planet and have found the secret to "eternal life". Unfortunately, it depends on harvesting organs from other species, in this case the Azorians. Basically, the vastly more superior Anthorians use the Azorians for slave labor to build things, and for "spare parts". They kidnapped the Professor because he was working on the problem of creating artificial life.
Kuba says that he was part of the construction team that built the Anthorians Imperial Palace before he escaped back to his homeworld (how did that work out?). He volunteers to lead the La Enterpriza crew there and help them raid the Palace for the hostages (mighty white of him).
So they all go back to the lander, load up, and reconnect with the engineering section of the La Enterpriza. They then head off towards the Anthorian planet (Anthoria?). They find a spiffy new uniform for Kuba, and he struts around looking all boss in his new threads. Oh, by the way, on the surface of the planet, while the rest of them were in the caverns, someone "found a water supply" and they "filled up" the damaged reactor water tanks.
Apparently, the Anthorians have no concept of external monitoring or defensive security at all, because they're able to basically just cruise into orbit and send down the lander. Once on the ground, Captain Kirkini, Kuba, and five other crewmen work their way into the construction tunnels beneath the city.
Just come right in.
Hmm...this is way too easy, even Kirkini wonders aloud why these tunnels are unguarded. Taking a side passage that leads to "the labs", they come out in a large open room holding a massive computer bank against one wall. Yes, this is the same room we just saw in Cosmos: War of the Planets, the one holding the Skynet master computer.
They're surprised to see that Professor Carr is here! And he's wearing some long flowing sorcerer's robes stolen from some low-rent Renaissance Fair. It seems that the old man is working for the Anthorians now, or maybe just under some spooky mind control. Either way, after some lame and painfully-unwitty banter, he sics a bunch of silver-suited gold-haired dudes on our team, who seem to take this turn of events in stride.
The Professor in his new gig.
The ensuing battle royale is one for the books. First off, the sound department fell asleep during post-production (ok, maybe there was a little post-pro work done here), and for about half the gun battle there are no Zweeps! and Zwoops! foleyed in for the guns. The humans point their guns and the Anthorians dutifully fall over dead, but there are no sound effects at all. As well, we see that someone had watched Star Wars the night before filming this movie (and it probably did take just one day...) and decided to give the Anthorians some cool light sabers. Unfortunately, they only had a 20 Lira note left in the budget so the best they could come up with is just reflective paint on sticks filmed through a high-lighting filter.
Light sabers!
In the end, eight Anthorians are killed, again to no losses on the human side. Just when things are looking good, however, we see that the remaining three crewmen of the La Enterpriza are hauled into the room surrounded by gun-totting dudes. It seems they "snuck up" on the lander, captured them, and now if they don't all surrender, there's going to be a massacre. Captain Kirkini reluctantly gives it up and all of them are led away in chains.
They're led to see the Anthorian Empress, who (shocker!) is Lois. Acting all imperious and bitchy, she orders the humans (including her former lover, Kirkini) locked up to be used as guinea pigs for the Professor's bloody experiments. Bitch!
Lois, in her new job.
A bit later, we see Lois and the Professor in the lab alone. Here they tell each other (and us by extension) that they're faking this whole bit about being evil. Well, it seems the Professor is really evil. From what I can gather, he decided to switch sides to the Anthorians sometime after he was captured. Perhaps they made him an offer he couldn't refuse, maybe unlimited grant money and his pick of graduate students to do the hard work while he sat back, signed the papers and collected all the accolades and honors. Maybe he won't list the name of the one grad student who actually did the fucking research on that fucking lipid solution, and instead give credit to that fucking bitch Megan Foster just because she looks like fucking Brooke Shields, who missed every other fucking lab because she was fucking drunk, and then have the fucking nerve to only give me a fucking B for the fucking semester......wait, I seemed to have digressed. I'm not bitter.
Lois, however, seems to be good still, and is visibly worried at the direction the Professor has taken. Desperately looking for a way to get the Professor to not suspect her motives, she takes the ultimate step. Knowing that he has always had the hots for her, she offers herself to him sexually! Oh, gross, ick, ick, stop it! The Professor looks to be about 178 years old and Lois is a hot young girl, this is the stuff that has made the Internet so popular. Thankfully, we don't see anything other than a short (albeit disturbing) kiss, but the implication of more to come lingers in the air with the miasmal stench of doom.
Oh god, they're going to kiss!
Lois does coerce the Professor (with her boobs pressed up against him) to let the La Enterpriza's crew go back to Earth. At that moment, he would probably agree to just about anything. They have to be sneaky about it, however, as the Anthorians would not approve of letting them go. Apparently, they are using these two humans for their own gain and still hold the reins of power. I have to marvel at how far these two have gotten in just a few days since they arrived on Anthoria. They went from being unwilling hostages to being Empress and chief scientist virtually overnight. The Anthorian leadership must be as gullible as their storm troopers are retarded.
So the La Enterpriza crew is being held in a room, cuff-locked to poles and guarded by two gold-hair dudes. In sweeps Lois, acting all Anthorian Empress-ish. She slips Randachetti a weapon and whispers for her to kill the guards when she distracts them. Lois then walks over and gives Kirkini a long sloppy French kiss. Randachetti visibly boils at this, but she takes the opening and fries the two Anthorian guards. Lois then frees them all and tells them that she's really a good girl and they need to hurry up and escape.
Back in the lab, however, we see that the Professor was watching the whole thing on a monitor. Enraged at the tongue-swapping kiss she planted on Kirkini, he looses his mind for a moment and orders the Anthorian troops to kill them all. In a short fight in the corridor, seven Anthorians are killed to no human losses.
Fight!
Hmm...bad editing here, like something was edited out. I don't know how long it's been, but I guess that our humans are now hiding in the tunnels under the city. We see that Lois has returned to the labs and the Professor. He is mad still, but she convinces him that the kiss was fake and she only loves him. Lois then gives the Professor (ick, ick, ugh) a drooling slobbering kiss, which placates him good (I feel like I should have my credit card charged $29.99 just for watching that...). She takes the opportunity to inject him with a sedative of sorts that leaves him all glassy eyed and helpless. Clearly, Lois has a plan.
Hmmm...ok, our heroes just ran into the lab, I thought they were trapped in the tunnels? They say they can't get out of the city and need Lois to guide them. She agrees, and they take the dazed Professor and leave. Before they go, however, Kuba wanders over to the workbench and pockets a random computer disk thingie that belongs to the Professor. Keep this in mind.
So, led by Lois (who apparently has mapped the entire layout of the city, secret passages and security systems included, in the last few days that she has been Empress...), they bust out of the Imperial Palace, engaging in a series of running gun battles and block-paced sword fights. The Anthorians attack in Banzai waves, showing their typically suicidal tactics, and a whopping total of 34 of them are killed. Two La Enterpriza crewmen are also lost, both of them small, petite blonde girls who so far have had about two lines of dialogue between them and I don't think were even named. As such, their deaths are meaningless to us (and to the rest of them, as when the second girl dies they just keep running like they never knew she was even there).
We also learn here that these silver-suited gold-haired dudes are really androids! A few dismemberments with light sabers shows them to be full of wires and electrodes. Why did they make them so many different styles, then? Sure they all have the same wig and body suit, but they're all clearly different sizes and shapes. I'd think they would just make "Anthorian Soldier Template Number One" and churn them out like Toyotas.
Sean Penn as Android Number Sixteen.
The survivors make it to the outside, where they blast off in the lander, reconnect with the engineering section, and start on the long trip back to Earth. Their escape from the planet was so easy, you have to wonder if something fishy is going on...
We see that the Professor is now in the sick bay, being tended to by Doctor Bonesettelli. Left alone, the Professor regains his evil senses with the help of some strange little pills he sneaks. He then tricks (!) Bonesettelli into killing himself with a destructor box!. Dumbass.
The good doctor aint so smart.
The Professor is then shot dead by Lois! What the hell! Back on the bridge, Kirkini and Kuba go to see why no one is answering the phone in the sick bay, and find the two dead bodies. Heading back to the bridge, they're quite surprised to see that Lois and a dozen gold-haired Anthorian troops have taken over the ship, holding the crew hostage on the bridge. Ah, so Lois in fact DID NOT give up her evil ways. She snuck a force of soldiers on the La Enterpriza when all the crew was held captive in the Palace. And she staged all this crap just to get a way to invade Earth by using the La Enterpriza as a Trojan horse to breach the defenses for an armada of Anthorian spaceships! Bitch!
The Quisling Lois in command.
Now, apparently there is a ring of killer satellites surrounding the Earth that cannot be penetrated. Earth ships must enter a special code tape like an IFF, or they too will be blasted to bits. Lois needs Kirkini to turn off the killer satellites so her armada can get through. Without that, she says, they cannot invade the Earth. Hmm...then explain how they got through the satellite ring in the beginning of the movie? Well, I guess that was just one ship on a carefully planned commando mission, not a full-scale invasion.
Well, now, Kirkini is not going to take this laying down, no sir! In a couple of rounds of poorly-staged fisticuffs and sound effect-free shootouts, the ship is retaken. All twelve of the Anthorians are killed and Lois is knocked unconscious by Randachetti, just as she was about to kill Kirkini. This makes the Captain see the love Randachetti has for him and they hug and get all gooey for a bit. Is that all it took? He was blind as a bat until she saved his life?
However, being the dumbasses that they are (and this movie really makes our entire species out to be about as intelligent as plywood), they don't even notice when Lois regains her wits and sneaks right past them (!) off the bridge. She dons a spacesuit, pops out an airlock and drifts off into space as the La Enterpriza flies away. At no point in the ensuing action does anyone on the bridge think to ask where Lois went, even after they realize she's now gone.
Anyway, Lois is picked up by the armada of Anthorian spaceships, which are tailing the La Enterpriza. Counting through to the end, I can estimate that there are around 26 of these ships in the group, all the typical flying saucer-shaped type. She boards the command ship, which is led by, and I'm not making this up, a "General Gonad". The new plan is to blast the La Enterpriza to little bits and then make an assault on the Earth's defenses. I don't see how this is going to work, as they've been telling us for the last ten minutes that nothing can get through that satellite ring. I hate this movie.
The alien ships.
All this sets up one of the most lame space battles in film history as the armada of alien ships swarm over the La Enterpriza. The whole thing is paced like a sleeping snail encased in a block of cement, dragging out for the entire last 20 minutes of the movie. It's excruciating to watch, your finger constantly tabs the fast forward button, you keep begging the movie to hurry it up, to finish, dammit! But it just keeps going on and on, the same two synthesizer marches played in the background over and over and over and over...
The fighters attack!
We see a lot of "homages" to Star Wars here, especially from the final attack on the Death Star. The La Enterpriza carries at least four single-seat fighters (which fly out of the engine nacelle pods like on Battlestar Galactica), and these engage in a series of dogfights with the Anthorian ships. Several sequences are clearly "reinterpretations" of scenes from the Death Star attack, including when Luke saves the other X-Wing by bouncing the Tie that was about to catch it, when the fat dude tries to keep his crippled X-Wing flying just before he gets blasted, and numerous insert shots of Starfleet Command as they tensely monitor the battle back on Earth. I'm not saying it's bad to rip off Star Wars (hundreds of movies have done it), and looking for these bits was the only thing that kept me calm while watching this interminable "space battle".
This is so not the opening battle of Revenge of the Sith...
While the fighters furball, the La Enterpriza fends off more attackers. We see that Kuba, who before now was a simple humanoid from a primitive planet, is now Fire Control Officer for the ship! He's not a very good shot, however, and gets whiney and mopey after a while. Most the action on the bridge consists of medium shots of crewmen watching monitors as the same footage of aliens ships fly by. Thrilling. Computer graphics so lame that they make the first generation stand-up Asteroids game look like Doom 3 complete the misery for the viewer. The La Enterpriza eventually breaks the stalemate by using torpedoes that "contain hundreds of energy grenades that all explode simultaneously".
Trust me, that's high quality.
Oh, yeah, Randachetti is out in a fighter at some point, and her and Lois engage in some one-on-one combat for the love of Kirkini. Lois' ship has her dead on, but Kirkini comes in and saves Randachetti, blowing up Lois. There at the end, he had to make a quick decision to save Randachetti or allow Lois to kill her and escape. Clearly he made the right choice, Lois might be hot and all, but she's also a sadistic bitch out to rule the galaxy. Randachetti still really needs to let her hair grow out if they are to have a lasting relationship.
In the end, the humans win. Yea for them. All 26 of the Anthorian ships are destroyed. Two of the La Enterpriza's fighters are destroyed, however, and we loose two more nondescript crewmen (Alfalfa Boy and some dude who looks like a 1970s porn star). The La Enterpriza heads for Earth as everyone celebrates. Kirkini closes us out by saying, "When I think about all that's happened, it makes life fantastic!" Kill me.
Oh, yeah, at some point in the last 45 minutes, they figure out that the disk that Kuba swiped actually holds the Professor's notes on the runaway reactor. Thus, the scientists are able to shut down the reactor, saving the planet. That whole subplot was kind of a waste in my opinion.
The End, thanks for sticking it out with me.
BTW, there was really no good place in the review to mention this, but we really have to talk about the Starfleet Admiral's assistant. This woman gets a lot of screen time, and even a fair amount of expository dialogue, and always is in frame when the Admiral is talking. She's played by 19-year old Licinia Lentini (here credited as "Lilian Lacy"), who would also shine as Miss Sheba in the classic Fulci western They Died With Their Boots On, released the same year. She's a rotten actress and seems to be reading her lines off cue cards taped to the backs of chairs and consoles, or simply making them up as she goes along. That's not the point, though, the point is that, while everyone else in at Starfleet Command wears v-necked tunics with high turtleneck shirts underneath, this woman just wears the tunic. This results in a plunging open neckline that shows off a stunning amount of cleavage. She's a tad heavy, so her boobs are sagging a bit, but still quite impressive. She's also clearly not wearing a bra and her nipples poke through the thin fabric notably in several scenes. Since she's the only one who is dressed this way, you can't help but notice, and wonder why. Was she boinking the director? Was she boinking some film company executive? Did the producers take a look at her and say, "My god, nice rack, maybe we should have her stand in frame a lot showing off her boobs."? This is one of those unanswered questions that a crappy movie like this always leaves me asking.
Bonus! Some handy statistics on the War of the Robots:
29: Number of Anthorian spaceships confirmed destroyed.
88: Number of Anthorian androids confirmed killed (plus an unknown number of spaceship crewmen).
2: Number of Starfleet fighters confirmed destroyed.
4: Number of La Enterpriza confirmed crewmen killed.
4: Number of Starfleet security personnel confirmed killed.
A pretty one sided war, eh?
Written in October 2005 by Nathan Decker.
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