“We always remain all the people we’ve been. The oldest man has a child inside him.”
Even on his worst days, Stuart Gordon was still capable of pumping out compulsively watchable genre fare, the kind of glorious inanity that will provoke a smile if not an impassioned defense of the work itself. But maybe he deserves both.
After beginning his career with a provocative one-two punch of triumphant if barely faithful H.P. Lovecraft adaptations—Re-Animator and From Beyond—he circled the wagons and decided to set up camp, operating in that off-the-radar area of pulpy B movie shenanigans for more or less the rest of his career. Even as a dedicated pulp-meister, though, he proved to have a sharp wit and good instincts, executing his goofiest projects with a wry tongue-in-cheek attitude, simultaneously reveling in the schlock while remaining fully aware of its inherent silliness, but always committing to his work in earnest.
Working in this mode, he would produce delightfully absurd films like Robot Jox, a cheerfully dumb post-apocalyptic sci-fi romp that features giant mecha robots and is equal parts wonderful stop-motion animation, vibrant ‘80s style, cheesy dialogue, and dystopian concepts courtesy of sci-fi author Joe Haldeman (in his sole screenwriting credit). In Haldeman and Gordon’s quirky potential future, war has been outlawed. In its stead, international disputes are settled via televised one-on-one combat between gigantic robots, controlled by revered athletes/soldiers known as “jox.”
The film centers on one such contest between the two major socioeconomic factions that have emerged in the aftermath of the nuclear holocaust—the American “Market” and the Russian “Confederation,” each vying for control of Alaska. Both of the champions, the Confederation’s bloodthirsty Alexander (Paul Koslo) and the Market’s conscientious Achilles (Gary Graham), have won the first nine of their ten contracted fights and are looking to go out on top. However, the Market mecha team doesn’t trust the Confederation. They suspect Alexander has a spy inside their operation that has tipped him off to all of their robotics innovations and led to his wild success. Without hard evidence to accuse his opponent, Achilles warily heads into battle with the support of weapons specialist “Doc” Matsumoto (Danny Kamekona) and former jox Tex Conway (Michael Alldredge), the only fighter to retire with a perfect record of 10-0. Though Achilles gains the upper hand, foul play by Alexander leads to deaths of several hundred spectators and the fight is declared a draw, forcing a rematch. (One might wonder why hundreds of people would want to get up close and personal to watch gigantic killer robots duke it out.)
After Achilles declares that his contract has been fulfilled and that he will not return for a rematch, a new, genetically engineered jox named Athena (Anne-Marie Johnson) is chosen to fight Alexander in his place. Even though she was bred to feel no emotions and there’s an evident lack of chemistry between them, Achilles overcomes this romantic obstacle by sheer force of will. Compelled to protect his beloved, he returns to Market and says he will fight, which, of course, infuriates Athena, which leads to confrontation, which leads to PG-rated sexy times. They tag-team Alexander in the mecha rematch; root out the traitor in their midst (who hilariously shouts “GERONIMO!” as he plummets to his death); and convince their opponent to become peacetime buddies, sharing a fist bump and the jox catchphrase “crash and burn.” There’s also a brief space battle mixed in there for good measure.
The pleasures of Robot Jox stem primarily from watching Gordon juggle his disparate elements. On the one hand, he’s making a cheap action film with a primary target audience of seven-to-ten year old boys. On the other, he’s working with a legitimate science fiction author who has sketched out a future world with stunning depth and provided serious anti-war commentary in his screenplay (Haldeman is best known for his 1974 novel The Forever War). So you’ve got your one-dimensional characters, awkward melodrama, garish leotards, zebra-striped referees, awful hairstyles, easily hackable electronic devices, a chainsaw phallically emanating out of a mecha’s crotch, and so on. But you also must contend with Haldeman’s inclusion of a devolution into societal illiteracy, nuclear fallout-induced subterranean dwelling, genetically engineered soldiers, an infertility epidemic, and rampant foot shortages (for a special occasion, Achilles’ family splits a hot dog).
Or not. I suppose you can just let that stuff exist in the background. That’s apparently what Gordon did, concluding only after the fact that Haldeman had written a mature film that was appropriate for children while he directed a kids’ movie that adults might enjoy. Looking back on the project, Haldeman said, “it’s as if I’d had a child who started out well and then sustained brain damage.” Ouch. Don’t worry, though. It’s not all that bad, especially if you are willing to be persuaded by nostalgia. Gordon occasionally struggles to balance the tonal mismatch of campy goodness and dead-eyed anti-war commentary, but all of that kind of takes a backseat to the herky jerky stop motion animation which gives the big battle scenes a pleasantly quaint feel to them. There’s definitely a lack of intensity and fluidity to the action, inherent in the production methods of the time, but that only adds to the charm. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s that loving embrace of a chintzy homespun quality that sets Robot Jox and other great B movies apart from their mainstream counterparts. In the years since its release, we’ve seen numerous big-budget versions of similar scenarios, but they’re generally presented with a self-conscious cynicism that precludes you from enjoying them for their gimcrack excess, leaving only ironic enjoyment or—if they fool you (and boy have they become adept at that)—earnest investment in cheap stories. That’s not to say that Gordon et al. are not self-conscious here. They are. But they embrace rather than exploit the cartoon nature of their film and do not try to dupe the audience into believing they’re presenting anything other than lo-fi sci-fi pulp. There’s no need to pretend it’s a work of great emotional depth or to pretend that you only like it ironically. It gives you the option of shamelessly enjoying it on its own terms.
Sources:
McGraw-Herdeg, Michael. “Prof. Haldeman’s Novel ‘Forever War’ Picked Up By 20th Century Fox Film”. TheTech.com. 17 October 2008.