The War of the Robots (1977)

‘Yes, I understand. Thanks to this electronic translator.’

Alien robots kidnap a famous scientist and his assistant, who are on the verge of creating artificial life. The Earth Security Forces send a brave captain and his crew in pursuit but when they catch up with the miscreants on a remote planet, they find that things aren’t quite what they seem.

George Lucas is to blame for a lot of things. Not just those dreadful prequels but also the slew of cheap ‘Star Wars’ (1977) knock offs that emerged from continental Europe hot on the heels of his global success. Director Alfonso Brescia made 5 of them and proved that, although the concept had travelled, the technical expertise definitely had not.

Laydeez and gentlemen, the Human Lightbulb!

Brescia’s 5 space operas were mostly interchangeable (apart from the one that was a porno!); Yanti Somer turned up in most of them, the spaceships are toys, the plots dull, the dubbing dreadful, there’s lots of over-explanatory dialogue, the girls wear black skullcaps or silly blonde wigs, there are low rent lightsabers, lots of running around in underground tunnels and underwhelming space battles that look like bad arcade games from the 1980s.

Apart from that, they’re great. This one isn’t even particularly coherent, with characters reveals having no credibility, either plot or performance wise. Yes, something may have been lost when the movie was translated into English but it’s hard to see exactly what that might have been.

This is simply a dire and cheap rip-off, a mechanical exercise in cashing in on the Science Fiction boom of the late 1970s.

Buy ‘The War of The Robots’ here. I would.