Written by: Paul Bales
Directed by: Joseph L.
Lawson
Starring: Dominique Swain,
Jake Busey, Josh Allen
I really should have known
this was an Asylum movie when I first saw the cover. Then, of
course, my reaction at seeing that name was, “Ah, dammit”, and I
almost shut the flick off. For some reason I didn't. And then I got
to wondering, why is it we all hate Asylum movies so much? I mean,
they suck, of course. No one's debating that. I think perhaps it's
the crass cash-in factor. Ah, they just come up with a gimmicky
title or a flashy poster and then write the movie later.
Well, yeah, but so did a huge number of those movies from the
fifties, sixties, and seventies that we all love. That's kinda what
exploitation is all about. Granted, the head of Asylum once referred
to the studio as a, “sausage factory”, where they just cranked
out the movies as cheap and fast as they could. Again, nothing new
there. The producers of cheap, trashy crap from forty years ago
didn't care about their product any more than the producers of cheap,
trashy crap from today. But the filmmakers did.
Then
again, who knows. Maybe the filmmakers who work for Asylum really
care about their craft and hope that this is simply a step toward a
career where they'll be able to flex their creative muscles and put
their personal stamp on a piece of art. I can't imagine anyone's
absolute highest aspiration in the movie business is to make slapdash
direct-to-video ripoffs of whatever big ticket flick is raking it in
at the box office. The owner of the record store I used to work at
always used to say that he didn't do it for the money (although the
store made plenty), he just loved owning a cool music shop and that
every day when the shipments of new CD's came in it was like
Christmas, opening up the boxes and looking through all the promos
and posters and stuff. But he had a friend who didn't have any
interest in doing something he loved, all he cared about was making
money. That guy owned a ball bearing factory, and that's what he did
every day; went to work and watched ball bearings being made and
counted his cash. So it's entirely possible that every – or almost
every – single person who works at Asylum is just making ball
bearings, and that's why the movies are such uniformly flavorless
loads of crap. But there must be a few people who want to have a
little fun, because otherwise I don't think this movie would end with
Hitler's head on a robot body shooting laser beams out of its chest
at fighter jets.
The
story, such as there is, follows a team of genetic research
scientists working at an Antarctic outpost looking for prehistoric
microbes or some damn thing. One of their core samplers hits metal
where metal has no business being, and suddenly they find themselves
taken prisoner in an underground base run by Dr. Josef Mengele
(played by just the finest K-Mart brand Jurgen Prochnow substitute
money can buy). How the hell are he and his squad of soldiers still
alive after all these decades, you ask? Mengele has been working on
an immortality formula, and wait til you see who else wants to be
immortal! Oh, wait, I already told you. Apparently, you'd already
have known if you played the old Wolfenstein video game, but as I
didn't grow up on Nintendo, seeing RoboHitler was a pleasantly wacky
surprise.
Aside
from one Nazi zombie whose makeup and performance both suggest
somebody watched one too many Twiztid music videos (that's right, not
even Insane Clown Posse, but one of their even more retarded
progeny), the acting is acceptably workmanlike (and who did Dominique
Swain piss off, didn't she used to be a real actress?). The
supposed-to-be-a-threatening-snarl-but-looks-like-he's-huffing-dead-fish
look that seems to be the only expression the dude in the RoboHitler
helmet can muster is pretty damn funny, and the bit where you think
rescue has come in the form of some fighter jets only for him to
shoot them down with a no-really-we-didn't-steal-this-from-Iron
Man chest laser is a
hoot, but in the end, knowing they ripped it all off from a 20-plus
year old video game makes it a lot less special.
In
the end, it's better than most Asylum movies. Take that as you will.
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