Outstanding Watch: RoboVampire (1988)

Watched:  06/07/2019
Format:  Amazon Prime (also on YouTube)
Viewing: First but certainly not the last
Decade:  1980's

So, a couple of weeks back JAL DM'd me and deeply recommended a small film from an overseas production company, and as a patron of independent and international cinema, I leaped at the opportunity to use a free Friday evening to finally watch RoboVampire (1988).


I was five minutes in and, honestly, I just wanted to back up and rewatch everything I'd just seen.

90 minutes later, I was perhaps more shell shocked and 1000% more baffled, but... no less a fan.

Drug dealers, anti-drug agents, vampire-zombies, witches, gorilla things, cyborgs and the most unnecessary boobs in a movie you're gonna see this year... RoboVampire has it all!

You've seen the poster, so you know the movie is cashing in on RoboCop mania (and who could blame them?).  And, indeed, a cop is killed and they shove a car battery into a mannequin, mess with some dials and soon we have a guy walking around, weighed down by silver hockey pads and a safety helmet that's had some stuff glued to it.

Now, before we go laughing about mixing genres and silly notions, a movie about a lab experiment, a Norse god and a mad scientist fighting a purple alien and his magic rocks with the help of magicians, futuristic pulp African warriors, space pirates, a talking raccoon and a green Mr. Hyde is nearing $3 billion at the box office. So, you know, it's all about the execution.

And, boy howdy, is there some fine execution here!

I do want to mention - look, I am 99% sure this movie was really boring actioner about fighting drug lords that they cut to about 50 minutes, then added on the vampires and robot stuff well after the fact, because there are between 2 and 4 entirely different movies happening in this movie from scene to scene, and nothing about the robot stuff even begins to touch on a b-plot (that goes on and on) about drug dealers chasing a couple through the woods.  I am also not entirely convinced that the vampire stuff was yet another movie, and the robot stuff a third tacked onto the vampire stuff.  30-odd years later, who knows?

But as single movie it's fascinating to watch!  And wildly quotable.  And, I learned that there's a concept of a sort of zombie-vampire that hops because corpses are still, and so, of course that makes it tough to walk around like a normal person.  So you gotta hop!  And apparently in formation, attacking in groups of four!

There's also a romance between a witch and a gorilla man ghost vampire, but I've said too much already.

Check. It. Out.