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The all-time favorite movie of director Bruno Mattei – may he rest in peace – undoubtedly must have been "Predator". One of the last films Mattei made before his death was called "Cannibal Ferox 3: Land of Death" and it was an extremely blatant imitation of "Predator" where he simply replaced the intergalactic hunter with a tribe of cannibals. When I watched that film, I didn't even know yet that "Robowar" existed and was thus unaware of the fact that Mattei already pulled off the exact same trick nearly twenty years earlier! This is, again, a shameless and outright rip-off of the classic 80's action flick starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, yet this time replacing the alien with an out-of-control robot that was initially designed as a – surprise, surprise – hi tech secret warfare weapon. Every other even remotely memorable element of "Predator" gets copied here, like the testosterone-driven lead characters, rotting human cadavers lying all around the jungle, the blurry computerized view from inside the robot's helmet, entire pieces of dialogs and even the who-played-who end credits! Needless to say this is a terribly inept and laughable B-movie exploitation product, but it is guaranteed entertainment to watch; especially in case you're an avid fan of typically Italian trash. Bunch of beefcake mercenaries, all of them with bad-boy attitudes and carrying around heavy artillery to compensate for their lack of brain capacities, are sent into to the jungle to complete a mission they know absolutely nothing about. They end up facing a practically indestructible handmade killing machine, although it suspiciously looks like a guy in a latex suit talking like he's a defect cassette with songs for children on it. The Robo-Soldier wipes out everyone before the replacement Arnie leader (Reb Brown) discovers it was constructed using spare body parts from his buddy who died in the Vietnam War. End of story. Obviously "Robowar" is just an insignificant and utterly brainless popcorn Sci-Fi/action/War flick with nothing else than explosives and violent shootouts. Speaking of which, I guess Bruno Mattei spent most of the nearly non-existent budget on explosives and ammunition! These dim-witted mercenaries literally fire off gazillions of bullets. Multiple sequences exist of one hireling randomly starting to shoot at trees and the others joyously join in and waste an entire arsenal. But hey, giving the quality of the acting performances, a serenade of bullets is actually less painful to listen to than the atrocious dialogs. The robot is hilariously cheesy, especially when he produces noise and recollects his past. I cannot possibly reward this movie with a rating that is any higher 3 out of 10, but please rest assured it is recommended and guaranteed entertainment! * note: if you are, like me, a sucker for old movie posters and DVD illustrations, you might have noticed that the cover image depicted here on this page is not "Robowar" but for "Robo Man", an even obscurer 70's Sci-Fi sleeper.
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