Empire Pictures is best known for their many low budget horror films of the 1980's, later to become Full Moon pictures around the early 90's with the perfect storm of A) the death of Albert Band, B) the crumbling of the Italian film industry, and C) this financial disaster. At $10 million, this film is and certainly feels like a cheap B-movie, but at the same time was a touch too ambitious and ridiculous to attract the audience necessary to breathe any life into the dying studio.
Oddly enough, if you talk to most people who saw it, they actually look back fondly upon ROBOT JOX. Like with most Empire pictures, it's not so much a good movie as one which engenders good memories of itself years later. Sure, it has colorful cinematography, lots of delicious overacting and cornball dialog, and of course some impressive David Allen stop-motion effects, so its easy to see what makes this innocuous little film so attractive.
Unfortunately when looked at closely, the film is severely hampered by its low budget on numerous occasions; there are only about 5 sets used in the film (notice how they keep coming back to that same bar they used in ARENA). The show-stopping effects are also in dangerously short supply. Much like in PUPPETMASTER or other films Allen supervised, the stop motion is only used as a last resort when the effects can often be achieved much more easily by manipulating the models off-camera. This makes the highlighted robot fights feel pretty stiff as they often just stand around completely immobile, and a special effects movie can't be marketed if its effects are cheesy and didn't even hold up the year it was made in. This is disappointing to me as I could just watch stop-motion robots stomp around all day, especially when they're given that magical "David Allen touch", but you get more stop motion's worth in CRASH AND BURN and (the otherwise quite abysmal) ROBOT WARS.
However this film is a lot of fun owing to Stuart Gordon's fun childlike approach to the campy material. All the players act their parts with tongue firmly in cheek with a lot of fun cameos by low budget Italian genre film staples like Al Yamanouchi, Alex Vitale, Larry Dolgin, Geoffrey Copleston, and even Jeffrey Combs in an odd throwaway bit part. It's edited quite cleanly and the music vaguely echoes Basil Poledouris's work on ROBOCOP.
One of those flicks that just has to "hit you" in the right way when you're in the right mood. Otherwise you might just laugh it off the screen. Gordon came back to similar territory with the just-as-silly but much darker and more 'adult' FORTRESS a couple years later.
Oddly enough, if you talk to most people who saw it, they actually look back fondly upon ROBOT JOX. Like with most Empire pictures, it's not so much a good movie as one which engenders good memories of itself years later. Sure, it has colorful cinematography, lots of delicious overacting and cornball dialog, and of course some impressive David Allen stop-motion effects, so its easy to see what makes this innocuous little film so attractive.
Unfortunately when looked at closely, the film is severely hampered by its low budget on numerous occasions; there are only about 5 sets used in the film (notice how they keep coming back to that same bar they used in ARENA). The show-stopping effects are also in dangerously short supply. Much like in PUPPETMASTER or other films Allen supervised, the stop motion is only used as a last resort when the effects can often be achieved much more easily by manipulating the models off-camera. This makes the highlighted robot fights feel pretty stiff as they often just stand around completely immobile, and a special effects movie can't be marketed if its effects are cheesy and didn't even hold up the year it was made in. This is disappointing to me as I could just watch stop-motion robots stomp around all day, especially when they're given that magical "David Allen touch", but you get more stop motion's worth in CRASH AND BURN and (the otherwise quite abysmal) ROBOT WARS.
However this film is a lot of fun owing to Stuart Gordon's fun childlike approach to the campy material. All the players act their parts with tongue firmly in cheek with a lot of fun cameos by low budget Italian genre film staples like Al Yamanouchi, Alex Vitale, Larry Dolgin, Geoffrey Copleston, and even Jeffrey Combs in an odd throwaway bit part. It's edited quite cleanly and the music vaguely echoes Basil Poledouris's work on ROBOCOP.
One of those flicks that just has to "hit you" in the right way when you're in the right mood. Otherwise you might just laugh it off the screen. Gordon came back to similar territory with the just-as-silly but much darker and more 'adult' FORTRESS a couple years later.