Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Directed by Stuart Gordon
• Written by Joe Haldeman
• Starring
  • Gary Graham
  • Anne-Mary Johnson
  • Paul Koslo
  • Robert Sampson
• Produced by Albert Band
• Executive produced by Charles Band

Remember that odd blip of giant robot movies in the early ’90s? There was Crash and Burn (with Charles Band himself directing), and Robot Wars (with his father Albert). But the most anomalous is Robot Jox, directed by none other than Stuart Gordon, best protege of the Bands.

So how did Gordon, one of the forces behind The Dentist and Castle Freak and The Pit and the Pendulum and even Honey, I Shrunk the Kids produce such lifeless fare as Robot Jox?

In the not too far-flung future, war has been abolished; all nationalistic disputes are settled in the great arenas in Siberia and Death Valley, where giant robots from the two super-powers (the Confederation [them] and the Market [us]) duke it out. The Confederation’s best warrior, Alexander (Paul Kosvo from Xtro 2 with a crummy Russian accent), has been decimating the ranks of the Market’s robot jox; now the only one left is Achilles (Gary Graham of Alien Nation), and his ten-bout contract is almost up.

In a battle over the sovereign state of Alaska, Achilles tries to protect the spectators from one of Alexander’s sneaky weapons gone wrong, and ends up toppling his robot onto the crowd, killing three hundred. He hangs up his gloves, insisting that he’s fulfilled his ten-battle deal, even though the referees have called that bout as being inconclusive. It falls to one of the new “tubies,” gen-enhanced fighters, to train in one week for one to become the newest robot jock.

This actually sounds a lot better than it was. Everything as notably lifeless; emotional attachment was at a surprisingly low level for Gordon, and the low budget didn’t help things. Now, I know that the production values on this were miles above anything that Charles Band has produced recently, but it seems they cut corners on the salary of the production designer himself, and were left with sets that would have served on one of the lesser episodes of The Outer Limits.

Technical aspects were distracting, too. At least in 1995’s Robo Warriors, the robot SFX were accomplished with actual 9′ suits duking it out. Here, we have several half suits (torsos, miscellaneous legs and arms, etc.), plus a lot of stop-motion. And I don’t think there were any actual location shoots involving actors; Gary Graham supposedly running around Death Valley looked as fake as any of the planet sets on the original Star Trek.

Again, this would be a disappointing movie from any director (and just what you’d expect from Albert Pyun), but especially disappointing from Stuart Gordon. It most resembles a poor American version of a Japanese anime — and as Gordon’s frequent partner-in-crime, Brian Yuzna, has shown, it’s easy to botch such an adaptation.

Maybe it’s just the initial premise. Maybe it’s impossible to make a movie concerning single combat between massive robots. Now, massive armies of robots, fighting an all out war on a decimated planet — that’d be a movie! It’d would also require a real budget, unfortunately; and I doubt we’ll be seeing robot warriors clumping through downtown Budapest any time soon.