| Robo Vampire (198) |
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| Director: | Joe Livingstone (alias) |
| Writers: | William Palmer (alias) |
| Starring: | Robin Mackay, Nian Watts, Harry Myles, and Joe Browne |
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The Plot: Somewhere in Hong Kong (presumably), there is a gang of drug peddlers who are at war with the law. There is one man in particular that seems to constantly get in the way of their nefarious goals, and that man is Tom. The mob are soon working with a witch doctor, of sorts, who devises a plan to create the ultimate vampire in order to defeat Tom. This ultimate vampire looks a lot like an ape… so yeah, the ape man’s former girlfriend comes back from the dead as a ghost in order to marry the ape-man-vampire which is supposed to soothe his spirit. This has no bearing on the plot, but it’s fun to mention. Tom does eventually fall in combat to the ape-man-vampire, but thanks to the miracles of modern medicine he comes back as a Robo Warrior, complete with a spray-painted outfit that is supposed to look like metal. The Robo Warrior, with his arsenal of firearms, begins blasting hopping vampires and random goons for the rest of the movie. Also, there’s some subplot from another movie cut into the action that I could not figure out how it was supposed to work with all of the Robo action. |
| The Review |
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Surprisingly, Robo Vampire has far more original content than audiences may at first suspect. Although it does manage to cut a Thai movie into the midst of all the robot/vampire action, these scenes don’t seem to find their footing until somewhere around the halfway point in the movie. This is similar to the movie Ninja Operation: Knight and Warrior, which comes from IFD and manages to also pack a great deal of new footage. This is always a welcome surprise when looking into the back catalog of either of these companies, but these movies seem to be rather rare. If only these companies knew that in the future the things that they would be remembered for would almost always end up being their own creative endeavors. Sure, many of these Taiwanese/Thai/Filipino action films were good in their own right, but within the context of the IFD/Filmark formula, the most memorable bits always focus on the white ninjas or, in this case, the ape-suited villains and fake robots. When the Thai movie footage starts to really roll during the second half of this movie, viewers are likely to feel a little turned off. The original movie actually looks like it might have been entertaining in its own right, so this isn’t to disparage it. There is a brilliant shot featuring a dummy who gets launched off of a roof and also an exploding lift that sees two of the cast members taking part in an insane stunt where they fall from an outrageous height and then land inside of a river. Still, the footage is so shoddily incorporated into the movie that these sequences feel completely out of place and off-topic. In other words, it’s another day in cut-and-paste land.
| The Conclusion |
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