Robowar

Director– Bruno Mattei

Starring – Reb Brown, Catherine Hickland

Country of Origin- Italy
 

Distributor - Severin

Number of discs –  2

Reviewed by - Scott MacDonald

Date- 07/08/2019

    The first Bruno Mattei film I had ever seen was his zombie epic "Hell of the Living Dead. At the time I was largely unimpressed, and saw it as the "dark side" of Italian horror cinema. How times have changed, Mattei is now one of my go-to directors if I'm looking for Italian genre films, with sheer unadulterated entertainment value, and Hell of the Living Dead has become a firm favorite.

    Outside of Mattei's works in the horror genre, he was a director that loved to work in the realm of science fiction, and action. His films from the late 80's onward, seem to have been heavily influenced by films like The Terminator, Predator, Commando, and Aliens just to name a few. Even his last few films (Released by Severin's Intervision arm) shot on SD seemed to heavily reflect this influence. Mattei's masterpiece of action sci-fi during this period would be his Terminator 2 - Shocking Dark, which Severin Films lovingly restored for Blu-ray last year. Now, Severin those lovers of all things European exploitation have come back with another dynamite release with Mattei's Robot/Predator riff Robowar.

    Robowar opens with an experimental robot being dropped into the jungles of the Philippines. It goes haywire, kills its controllers, and begins to take out the population in the area. Into this comes Dr. Mascher (Mel Davidson), who alongside a group of guerillas known as the BAM (Baby-Ass-Motherfuckers) are sent into to take out the robot. Mascher knows this, but the group does not. They go into the jungle, and began to take out terrorists, and also save the life of a nurse Virginia, but soon after begin to suspect something more extreme is behind everything. It turns out that the group are the ones truly being hunted by a robot warrior bent on destruction.

    GODDAMN, I love Robowar. The film is packed with crazy Italian/Filipino action that is completely over the top and a joy to watch. The outfit for the Omega 1 robot is not great, but honestly, I loved it. It looks like a crazy space-biker on a rampage. The cast do decent work with the material, especially Strike Commando's Reb Brown who brings his typical drive and intensity (I MEAN IT), to this role. The cast is pretty much a duplicate of characters seen in Predator and Aliens, but they work for the situation at hand quite well. The screenplay is written by Italian cinema icons, Claudio Fragrasso and Rossella Drudi who distill the basic elements of the film's influence into a wild Italian action package.

    Robowar is loaded with extras and derived from an uncut 4k scan. The new transfer from Severin films is truly a thing of beauty, everything looks wonderfully realized and organic, detail is excellent, colors are well-represented. Audio is handled by DTS-HD mono in Italian and English, and similarly sounds great with no obvious issues. Extras  include interviews with Fragrasso and Drudi, and actors Catherine Hickland, John P. Dulaney, and Jim Gaines Jr among others. There is some interesting BTS footage from the set provided by Hickland, and also a trailer.    Severin Films Blu-ray of Bruno Mattei's brilliant sci-fi action flick is absolutely an amazing release, the film is such an amazing good time, and the restoration and extras just push this one over the top. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.