Robowar

Eine italienische C-Movie-Kopie von Predator von der gleichen Bande verdienter Künstler, die das Meisterwerk Contaminator... die Mordmaschine aus der Zukunft schuf (welches vor allem Aliens - Die Rückkehr kopierte). Leider aber bei weitem nicht so witzig. Es werden konkrete Szenen, Aufnahmen, Gesten der Schauspieler*innen sowie Dialoge aus dem Original kopiert. Diese Elemente werden durch Aufnahmen der Soldaten ergänzt, die in Begleitung eines billigen elektronischen Soundtracks mit Rockgitarren durch den Dschungel gehen. Aber Vorsicht! Man bekommt hier auch eine andere, schockierende Pointe – der Weltraumjäger ist nämlich nicht nur ein gewöhnlicher Außerirdischer! PS: Sie werden viel Geduld und Selbstbeherrschung brauchen. (16.10.2021)

The Italians were a lot of fun in the '80s. As far as "originality of authorship" goes, they rode the same wave that studio Asylum have been doing for the last two decades: they picked up on a film trend, probed its most prominent representative, and quickly made a shameless ripoff, and to make it look good on store shelves (and in its day on VHS rental shelves), they changed the title slightly, but in a way that was still familiar to the viewer. So while today the Asylum guys are churning out treats like Transmorphers, Atlantic Rim, etc., some of the most prominent 80s trash masters, Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso, worked in tandem to concoct this total rip-off of Predator. Here, they copy the characters (the leader, the Indian/Latino with hunting instincts, the tough black guy, the intellectual, the fighter with no pain), the scenes (the attack on the mercenary settlement) and their succession, even the camera shots and the actors' perspectives at precise angles. Only the tension-filled final half-hour of John McTiernan's film, when Arnold wordlessly sets traps for the predator as in the days of the Neanderthals, was omitted, and instead a female element was inserted, a silly motif of a supposedly deceased comrade from the war, his transformation into a super robot, his later epiphany, and a plea to the Italian Arnold of Wish to send him out of the world forever. You can take this as a spoiler and it won't hurt anything, because I don't believe anyone can take this cockeyed approach to making movies seriously and be interested in what's happening on the screen. And more than anywhere else, the saying "When two people do the same thing, it's not always the same thing" is true. These are two completely different universes - the legendary one, with top action and full of invention, and then the Italian one, where a bunch of nobodies run around in the woods and play soldiers, with a production design like a second-rate TV studio. Actually, not even that. (13.12.2023)

The Italian purveyor of dreck Bruno Mattei again went to see his friends in the Philippines, but instead of watching the second Rambo, this time they put on Predator and reminisced a bit about RoboCop. And just like a lot of little boys, they were inspired to run off into the woods and make their own version. Except in their case, they had cameras and, instead of sticks, actual weapons and piles of blank cartridges. To insult the movies that Bruno Mattei, Rossella Drudi and Claudio Fragasso foisted upon the world by calling them mere copies is the absolutely wrong way to look at them. While some VHS trash flicks try to look like original works, albeit while parasitising on popular hits in every possible way, Mattei’s best remake-sploitation larks provide wild entertainment by thoroughly adhering to the models on which they are based, transforming their key elements and scenes through ultra-cheap production with a bunch of somnambulic amateur actors. Mattei's copying almost rises to the level of sweding, but instead of zero-budget DIY creativity, it is appropriate to admire the low-budget foolishness and deduce the production circumstances that led to the distillation of copied scenes, characters and various details into the vastly futile form that his movies present to us. Seen through that particular lens, Robowar is an epic spectacle (though in that respect, it plays second fiddle to Mattei’s later Shocking Dark), enriched with the most magnificent example of absolute framing in the history of cinema (i.e. the scene in which the characters pretend not to see something that is right next to them, until it appears in the shot). By the way, they shot their own local copy of Predator, called Bangis, in the Philippines eight years later. (29.01.2021)

Dieses Mal war das endlose Kopieren nicht so lustig. Robowar ist zwar eine ultimative Kopie des amerikanischen Predators, aber leider ist es eines der weniger aufregenden und am meisten vernachlässigten Werke aus der Werkstatt des legendären italienischen Kopisten und Pfuschers, Bruno Mattei. Seine Filme können sehr unterhaltsam sein (Virus,  Riffs III - Die Ratten von Manhattan) und sogar zum Schieflachen (Terminator II), aber bei diesem langweiligen Spaziergang durch den Dschungel gibt es wirklich nichts zu holen. (18.11.2021)

The Italian science-fiction horror movie Robowar is one of those productions that simply does not care about ripping something off and becoming successful off the back of someone else's work, and the result is very bad indeed. However, on the other hand, channels like SyFy or Asylum do the same thing, albeit not as successfully. Of course, it is a bad B-movie, although it is still quite easy to watch despite that. (20.05.2020)