“Peekaboo, I kill you!”

Justin’s rating: Rock ’em, sock ’em movie

Justin’s review: It’s really hard — if not darn near impossible — to ignore a combat robot movie from the era of practical effects, even if it’s made by low-budget schlocksters Full Moon. That meant, sooner or later, I was going to need to take myself through all 71 thrilling, generic, and out-gassing minutes of Robot Wars.

This is the third of an unofficial trilogy of fighting mech movies made by Charles and Albert Band after 1989’s Robot Jox and 1990’s Crash and Burn.*

It’s a post-apocalyptic 2041, and yet people are still dressing in the bright colors of the early ’90s. With raiders all over the desert, civilized society seems a little over-dependent on the only surviving mega-robot — MRAS-2 — which looks like a giant scorpion.** MRAS-2 not only defends against raiders but acts as a transport to take people on what must be a very fuel inefficient tour across the wasteland.

The pilot of the robot, Captain Drake (Don Michael Paul, who directed three of the more recent Tremors sequels) wants out of the big ol’ mech business once he finds out his superiors are corrupt. Drake seems like a generic ’80s action hero recently thawed, complete with feathered hair, maverick attitude, and a quip for every occasion.

Drake also butts heads with Dr. Fanning (scream queen Barbara Crampton), who’s on a mission to find evidence of some secret weapons stash. He’s also best buds with a mechanic named Stumpy, whom I assume based on name alone has never known the touch of a woman.

It’s too bad that the budget had to be sparing with the fights and not give us credits-to-credits robot throwdowns. Instead, this film — which, I remind you, is scarcely over an hour long — had to inject a lot of padding with several confrontations between Drake and his superior, a mystery that’s not that interesting, and a tour around a perfectly preserved 20th century town (because future sets are more expensive).

This plods on for too long before the two important pieces are fitted into this very small puzzle: The exact same two bad guys from Karate Kid Part II show up to hijack the MRAS-2 while it’s carrying civilians, and Drake and Stumpy find and reactivate the much cooler MEGA-1 for a showdown in the wasteland.

Hey, look at that. Now we can have a wars.

I have this rule of thumb that says if the only worthwhile part of a movie can be viewed in a five-minute YouTube clip, it’s not worth seeing. And no matter how cool stop-motion robot fighting may be, when it’s only tucked at the very end of the film, that’s simply not enough to justify sitting through what amounts to be an incredibly long prelude.

That said, Robot Wars is not without a dash of early ’90s cheesy scifi fun. And if you want to watch this as a bizarre sequel to Karate Kid Part II, more power to you.

*Rumor is that a follow-up to Robot Wars was discussed. It was to be called Battle Jox and would’ve focused on dinosaur robots. I think we can all agree that that would’ve been the most awesomest movie ever made.

**Because giant robot designers have never left their childhood toy phase, apparently.

Intermission!

• His nickname is “Stumpy?”
• Frosted cube glass is always the future of decoration
• HYPER ZOOM
• It’s the bad guys from Karate Kid Part II!
• Bike helmets are probably not going to save you if a missile slams into your mech
• “We will smash them like tortillas!”
• Bringing passengers into a war zone seems a little silly
• “And you… have a great set of lips.”
• “I hope he gets his balls shot off.”
• “That all will give those nerds a bionic boner.”
• Even adult men like to play with robot toys
• Ladders go up
• Puppet Master 54 on the marquee sign got a bark of laughter from me
• “Hot diggity damn, this was an excellent robot demonstration!”
• “Next time I bow to you, you can kiss my ass.”
• “Remember the Alamo!” is such a weird battle cry for this guy to have