Anno zero - Guerra nello spazio/War of the Planets (1977)

People have asked me why I watch bad movies.  Some are entertaining in their own right.  I watch others because they’ve become cultural icons.  (Plan 9 From Outer Space is pretty much only famous for being bad..)  My reason for watching War of the Planets is that I had it laying around.

When my brother cleaned out his storage unit, he left me with a set of movies that seem to be mostly Italian-produced, cheaply made science fiction movies.  I’m going through these to see if any of them have any redeeming qualities.  If there is one, this one isn’t it.  How bad is the movie?  I’d describe it as the most horrendous assemblage of random scriptwriting ever.

I’m not even absolutely certain that I have the correct IMDb page listed below.  May of the user and external reviews seem to be talking about the same movie.  The problem with movies like this is that there are often several different cuts and each cut can have several dubs.  For instance, there seem to be at least two first names for Captain Hamilton.  He’s either Fred or Alex, depending on who you ask.  Also, the title on the DVD is Cosmos: War of the Planets, whereas IMDB simply has it listed as War of the Planets.  (Apparently, Cosmos is used in the English title for boxed sets in Japan.)  This should have told me something going in.

The movie starts with some random stuff, including a guy fixing an ancient satellite alone, which he’s not supposed to do.  There’s a very strict buddy system in place and he’s just violated it.  Anyway, he’s reprimanded.  Rather than being punished, he’s given command of his own ship.  Eventually, that ship is told to go to the source of a strange transmission.  Captain Hamilton, if that is his real name, refuses because he can do that under the new rules.

At some point, the ship winds up at the planet.  I’m not sure if he changed his mind, if he stumbled upon the planet by accident or there was some other motive.  Anyway, the ship almost crashes, right up until it doesn’t.  The crew makes it to the ground safely, but the ship needs repairs if it’s going to fly again.

So, the crew explores the seemingly uninhabited planet.  Several crewmembers find some strange Stonehenge-looking thing and disappear.  In reality, they’re transported to the other side of a mountain where a giant robot attacks them.  Also, there are people on the planet who are supposed to be painted blue.  (In the version I had, they looked dark grey.)

The captain manages to find the robot, or a computer resembling the robot, and is instructed to replace a circuit board, which he does slowly to stall.  It turns out that this is the only repair that the machine needed.  Now, he can make more machines and board the ship to take over Earth.

Captain Hamilton manages to undo this by throwing a rock at a red button.   How does Hamilton know to hit the red button?  His onboard computer said that there would be a machine and its undoing would be a button that would probably be red.  Anyway, the robot blows up, apparently taking the planet with him.  I’m not sure, really.  There were a lot of explosions and stuff.

However, the crew does make it back with one of the planet’s inhabitants.  He doesn’t seem too broken up about the destruction of the planet or the rest of his people, so maybe it wasn’t that bad.  Either way, he looks good in an Earth uniform.  That is, until he gets blown out an airlock.  Why?  Because he’s in the same room as a mutated crewmember who starts attacking people.  No one seems to be broken up about it.  At least Earth is safe.  Or is it?

The only reason I might want someone to watch the movie is so that they might explain it to me.  If you have seen this movie and understand anything about it, please leave a comment.  For instance, there was supposed to be a ship above Antarctica.  Did I miss this?  Was this removed in one of the cuts of the movie?

Also, why did the robot need humans?  I get that the inhabitants of the planet weren’t too bright.  The Evil Robot Overlord may have tried, only to find them not good enough.  However, he could apparently move around.  If he did have a ship over Antarctica, couldn’t he have gotten himself to Earth or another planet?  For that matter, this robot is supposed to be the one that makes all the other robots and machines.  Why not make one to repair the main computer.  That would seem like a good plan.  Make sure that you always have one or two of those around.

If you can tolerate really horrid movies, this one may be for you.  It seems perfect for Mystery Science Theater 3000, although I don’t see it listed under the movie’s connections.  I’d say that there may be a copyright issue, but movies like this one tend to have lapsed or nonexistent copyright.  That’s how they find their way into the movie packs to begin with.  If you’re looking for a movie with a coherent plot and decent acting, I’d say keep moving.  There’s nothing for you to see here.

IMDb page

La guerra dei robot/War of the Robots (1978)

Certain things can be forgiven if a movie is at least entertaining.  I can overlook one or two factual mistakes.  Anachronisms can usually be let go.  Sometimes, a movie is so bad that the only entertainment value is in seeing how bad it is.  Take War of the Robots.  Does it have high production values?  No.  Does it have a coherent plot?  Not really.  Is the acting good?  It has its moments, but not many of them.

The movie starts with Professor Carr and his assistant, Lois, being kidnapped by a bunch of guys in blonde wigs.  Normally, this might not be a pressing issue.  However, the professor forgot to turn off his nuclear reactor and it’s going to blow in eight days if someone doesn’t enter a code.  No one on base can make heads or tales of it, so the good ship Trissi is dispatched to bring back the professor.

The good news is that the kidnappers went in a straight line, making it easy to find them.  The bad news is that it will take four days to catch up with them.  This doesn’t leave much room for delays.  Capt. John Boyd and his mostly unnamed crew manage to make it to an asteroid where they encounter a group of aliens led by Kuba.  Kuba doesn’t trust Boyd at first, but eventually agrees to join him in getting the professor back.

It turns out that the professor is being held by a group of immortal aliens.  Their immortality has come at a cost in that they can’t reproduce.  That’s why the kidnapped the professor; he’s perfected the ability to create life at will.  When Boyd encounters Carr, it turns out that he’s willingly working for the immortal aliens.  And Lois?  She’s been made their empress.

Either way, Boyd has to bring them back.  Unfortunately, the professor winds up dead before they can make it back to their star base.  Not to worry, though.  It turns out that Lois might know the code for the reactor.  It’s too bad that she gets killed in battle.  As luck would have it, Kuba grabbed the one memory card that happens to have the code on it.  This enables the ship to transmit the information back to the base and save the day.

Whatever plot the script has seems to serve stringing together a few cheesy fight scenes.  Of course, when I say fight scene, I mean a few of the good guys killing a bunch of the robots with laser pistols and laser swords.  I’m not even entirely convinced that there was a script.  I think that when Alfonso Brescia ’wrote’ and directed the film, he may have just been filming a scene and telling the actors what to do.  (“Ok, you…Um…say something about not hitting the target or something.”)

One thing that sticks out is that the professor left the nuclear reactor on at all.  I mean, if you’re going to kill the entire local population, why not kill them and get it over with?  I imagine that there’s some reason why the reactor is always on the verge of destroying itself.  Maybe it has to do with his work.  Maybe he got a cut-rate reactor.  I don’t know.  If leaving it on was unintentional, why not just give the code to the good guys just to make them go away?

It’s also not clear if the Carr and Lois defected.  It would seem so.  There’s no evidence that they were coerced.  Then again, no explanation is given as to what they were offered.  Carr and Lois didn’t seem to want for anything and no one seemed to make fun of them.  A little detail would have been nice.

As for the special effects, there are none.  The pistols don’t actually seem to fire anything.  A little light goes on and the enemy falls down.  The laser swords seem to be little more than aluminum foil and cardboard.  In one scene, someone has to float from one ship to another.  I’d say that he has a star field behind him except that you can just make out the stars on his space suit.

According to IMDb, this is the third of five movies in a series.  I haven’t seen the other four, so I don’t know what kind of connection there is.  There doesn’t seem to be a lot of overlap with the characters.  They might at least give some context, but I doubt it.  Speaking of which, I’ve never seen so many actors credited as something else.   (Writer/director Alfonso Brescia is credited as Al Bradly, for isntance.)

You know a movie is going to be bad when the dub varies and the camerawork is shaky.  In fact, the image was so shaky, the opening credits move relative to the background.  I wish I was kidding.  I was also wondering where the ship got it’s name from.  Apparently, uniforms were provided by Trissi Sports.  Ok.  That’s a bit unusual for product placement, but I can live with that.  However, did Lois reference a General Gonad?  Again, I wish I was kidding.

IMDb might have had this on their Bottom 100 list except that it has about a third of the ratings necessary to make the cut.  I think the ultimate sign that it’s a bad movie is that you can’t even get enough people to sit through it to give an honest rating.

IMDb page