ROBOT HOLOCAUST (1986)
Article 4705 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-10-2014
Directed by Tim Kincaid
Featuring Norris Culf, Nadine Hartstein, J. Buzz Von Orsteiner
Country: Italy / USA
What it is: Awful sci-fi epic

After the Robot Holocaust, humanity is enslaved by an evil being known as the Dark One. A band of fighters decide to invade his power station and defeat him.

One of the biggest factors that played into whether a movie would be given the MST3K treatment was the affordability of the movie; that’s why they did so many public domain offerings. What does it say for this movie that it became affordable enough for them to use a mere four years after its release? Yes, it’s atrocious; it’s devoid of suspense, the action scenes are embarrassing, the script is a compendium of poorly-executed cliches, and the characters fall into one of two categories – devoid of personality or actively annoying. There is, however, one element of this movie that makes it stand out from the crowd, albeit not in a good way, and that is the awesome ineptitude of Angelika Jager’s performance as the Dark One’s female henchman, Valaria; she makes the rest of the cast look good, and they aren’t. It’s really hard to decide what aspect of her performance is the worst; her body language is twitchy, unmotivated and inappropriate, her facial expressions give us the impression that she’s trying to look hot in a model session for some fashion magazine, and her poorly-enunciated line deliveries come across as if she’s trying to project a stylistic and aggressive boredom. Throw in a pathetic comic-relief robot and some horrible special effects, and you have a stinker of the first class.