Sam Panico An Italian ripoff of both Predator and Terminator starring Reb Brown (Yor Hunter from the Future), directed by Bruno Mattei (The Other Hell), from a script by the husband and wife team of Claudio Fragasso and Rosella Drudi (who concocted Troll 2, a movie that is at the same time not a sequel and not about trolls)? You had me at Italian ripoff.Major Murphy Black (yep, Red Brown) is the leader of a team of commandos that are on a mission in the jungle. Only Mascher knows why they are really there - to test his new invention, Omega-1 (who is played by writer Claudio Fragasso), a robot that looks like a BMX racer with scuba gear.But first, they have to rescue Virginia (Catherine Hickland, Witchery) from soldiers who are overtaking her hospital camp. Just like Predator, the team easily kills all of the terrorists/evil guys/generic villains, but it's just to set up the real story. Yep, Masher wanted to see how his creation would stack up against Murphy.The robot is smart enough to kill everyone, even his creator, and destroy the one device that is supposedly the only thing that can kill it. Also, Omega-1 is really a cyborg with he brain of Murphy's old friend, Lt. Martin Woodrie.Only Murphy and Virginia survive, despite numerous attacks by the cyborg. At the end, the cyborg corners Murphy in the jungle and shows him how to initiate his self-destruct sequence. And that's that.Even I can't defend the fact that I waste nearly ninety minutes of my life watching this movie. On my deathbed, I will pull my family close and whisper, "I only regret one thing. Robowar." Hopefully, they realize that I mean a Bruno Mattei movie and don't think that it's a Rosebudian cipher and they have to go on a quest to discover what I mean. I also hope that none of them watch Robowar.

Bezenby Not wishing to go down the road of the late eighties Italian haunted house films of Lamberto Bava, Umberto Lenzi, Lucio Fulci, Marcello Avallone and Fabrizio Laurenti, Bruno Mattei instead relocates the slasher film to the jungle, and instead of screaming teens pits a bunch of muscle bound soldiers against an unstoppable killing machine. Believe me, you haven't seen anything like this before.Reb Brown (Strike Commando) stars as Reb Brown (Strike Commando), leader of the Big A*s Muthf*ckas, a squad of soldiers hired to go into the jungles of Venezuela to stop guerrilla activity. What a line up! You've got Romano Puppo (Street Law, Bronx Warriors 2), Jim Gaines (After Death), and a buffed up Massimo Vanni (Street Law, Bronx Warriors 2 and After Death). Some other guys too, including an ethnic guide in touch with nature (Where does Bruno get these ideas?), a doctor and a mysterious gentleman along for the ride that Reb is suspicious of, but judging by the skin tight, half-t-shirt Reb's wearing when he gets off that boat, I'm guessing Reb doesn't think about things too deeply so he lets him come along anyway.Things get strange for our macho mo-fos the moment they discover a pile of human bodies torn to bits. What we the audience know but Reb and co don't is that there is an experimental soldier/robot on the loose, killing everything in sight, and that guy who's joined them is its creator. I know, it sounds a bit like Robocop, but Bruno has the insight to inject a bit of originality to the film, including Reb going head to head with a bunch of guerrillas and picking himself up a chick sidekick into the proceedings.The lads start to get the idea that they're being stalked, which leads to several scenes of Massimo et al firing wildly into the foliage, no doubt a satiric remark on Mattei's part regarding the futility of US military might versus guerrilla warfare in Vietnam. Also, Reb (and Jim Gaines!) scream like girls every time they fire their machine guns, a reference to Strike Commando. Reb also gets in a couple of quips, saying 'Don't move' to a guy he's impaled with a machete, complete with a wink to all the ladies out in the audience. Hollywood take note: this is how you do an action horror film.Okay, okay, I'll level with you. This film bears a lot of similarity to another film you may have seen, set in the jungle and involving marines facing something they've never encountered before, being picked off one by one in various gory ways. And that film of course is After Death. Not only does the hospital from that film turn up here in an unforgettable home made napalm set piece, but the very soundtrack from that film turns up at various times. As an even more glaring example of the intricities of Bruno Mattei's conceptual continuity, the director of that film here plays the killer robot. Vast legions of fans devote themselves to finding all these 'clues' in Mattei's film.So, although Massino, Romano etc put up a good fight, you know the film is going to boil down the Reb being the Final Girl. There's a few twists at the end I won't reveal here, and I'm sure Mattei's making some comment about the faceless terrorist threat the West faces every day by having the Venezuelan extras played by Filipino actors, but that's just the multi-layered complexities of a Bruno Mattei film (hell, I'm still finding things in Zombie Creeping Flesh after all these years).This film is crying out for an American remake, probably starring someone weedy and terrible, like Adrian Brody. I can't think of single person who could replace Reb in such a role. Also, check out the mixed up credits for Jim Gaines and Massimo (Alex McBride) Vanni – another little in-joke for us uber-fans.

Coventry The all-time favorite movie of director Bruno Mattei – may he rest in peace – undoubtedly must have been "Predator". One of the last films Mattei made before his death was called "Cannibal Ferox 3: Land of Death" and it was an extremely blatant imitation of "Predator" where he simply replaced the intergalactic hunter with a tribe of cannibals. When I watched that film, I didn't even know yet that "Robowar" existed and was thus unaware of the fact that Mattei already pulled off the exact same trick nearly twenty years earlier! This is, again, a shameless and outright rip-off of the classic 80's action flick starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, yet this time replacing the alien with an out-of-control robot that was initially designed as a – surprise, surprise – hi tech secret warfare weapon. Every other even remotely memorable element of "Predator" gets copied here, like the testosterone-driven lead characters, rotting human cadavers lying all around the jungle, the blurry computerized view from inside the robot's helmet, entire pieces of dialogs and even the who-played-who end credits! Needless to say this is a terribly inept and laughable B-movie exploitation product, but it is guaranteed entertainment to watch; especially in case you're an avid fan of typically Italian trash. Bunch of beefcake mercenaries, all of them with bad-boy attitudes and carrying around heavy artillery to compensate for their lack of brain capacities, are sent into to the jungle to complete a mission they know absolutely nothing about. They end up facing a practically indestructible handmade killing machine, although it suspiciously looks like a guy in a latex suit talking like he's a defect cassette with songs for children on it. The Robo-Soldier wipes out everyone before the replacement Arnie leader (Reb Brown) discovers it was constructed using spare body parts from his buddy who died in the Vietnam War. End of story. Obviously "Robowar" is just an insignificant and utterly brainless popcorn Sci-Fi/action/War flick with nothing else than explosives and violent shootouts. Speaking of which, I guess Bruno Mattei spent most of the nearly non-existent budget on explosives and ammunition! These dim-witted mercenaries literally fire off gazillions of bullets. Multiple sequences exist of one hireling randomly starting to shoot at trees and the others joyously join in and waste an entire arsenal. But hey, giving the quality of the acting performances, a serenade of bullets is actually less painful to listen to than the atrocious dialogs. The robot is hilariously cheesy, especially when he produces noise and recollects his past. I cannot possibly reward this movie with a rating that is any higher 3 out of 10, but please rest assured it is recommended and guaranteed entertainment! * note: if you are, like me, a sucker for old movie posters and DVD illustrations, you might have noticed that the cover image depicted here on this page is not "Robowar" but for "Robo Man", an even obscurer 70's Sci-Fi sleeper.

HaemovoreRex Well, well, well.....this is a mightily shameless knockoff even by Bruno Mattei standards! Despite the great cast of Italian B-movie stars assembled here including Reb Brown, Massimo Vanni, Romano Puppo and Max Laurel, this film never raises above the decidedly average mark due to its obvious lack of imagination and ambition other than to be a blatant Predator clone (sans the budget).Not content with ripping off just the basic premise either, Mattei has directly lifted a number of scenes and lines of dialogue from the previously mentioned Hollywood blockbuster with the result at times being frankly cringe inducing.In addition the main bulk of the film here is comprised of budget saving, boring padding tactics which usually comprise of our heroes plodding around the jungle aimlessly interspersed with some intermittent gunfire as they catch a fleeting glimpse of their hunter (a rather poorly conceived looking robot named Omega 1) Certainly not one of Mattei's better efforts and curiously lacking the usual 'so bad it's good' charm that his work usually comprises, Robowar is overall, a fairly bland affair. A real shame.