Many filmmakers profess their goal is to be the next Walt Disney. They talk about creating great animated features that inspires a theme park. Normally their first animated film comes out and tanks. Their Fantasyland exits through bankruptcy court instead of a gift shop. But the filmmakers the idolize Roger Corman might not create an amusement park, but they don’t get taken for a ride. Charles Band’s such a filmmaker. He understood how to work a budget to create an entertaining film that would be profitable in the glory days of mom and pop video stores. While his Robot Jox proved to be an expensive failure theatrically, it gained cult status on VHS in the early ‘90s. Band took this lesson and decided to cash in on Robot Jox without breaking the bank. Giant Robot Action Pack: Robot Wars / Crash and Burn are two “not quite” sequels that skipped the big screen for the VCR.
Crash and Burn (1990 – 84 minutes) isn’t a working giant robot movie. There’s a giant robot in the film, but it’s busted. This about a human-sized robot. Paul Ganus rides his motorcycle through the post-apocalyptic landscape to deliver stuff to a remote TV station run by Ralph Waite (the dad on The Waltons). This film is best known as the debut of Megan Ward (Dark Skies, PCU and Joe’s Apartment). She’s the young camera girl that has a knack for patching together the junk around the TV station. The regular robot is a cyborg that’s lose in the TV station. It’s killing off the humans. Who can it be? It’s kinda like Alien without an alien killing everyone. Monster suits cost money! Not to spoil the film, but the most expensive actor gets killed first.
Robot Wars (1993 – 71 minutes) really does deliver giant robot action. Don Michael Paul (The Hat Squad and Models Inc.) controls a giant robot that looks like a scorpion. It’s the last operational mega-robot. They use it to bring tourists to a resort near a preserved pre-apocalyptic American city. Turns out local rebels like to fight the mega-robot during it’s regular commuter rounds. Paul gets sick of it and mouths off to management. The Karate Kid II‘s Danny Kamekona and Yuji Okumoto end up taking over the scorpion robot. It’s up to Don Michael Paul to reactivate a human-shaped giant robot and battle it out in the final reel. Melrose Place‘s Lisa Rinna will astonish you with a pre-plastic surgery disaster face. The robots are stop motion wonders since this was back when CGI cost real money.
Giant Robot Action Pack: Robot Wars / Crash and Burn brings together two films that you can watch without a clue about what happened in Robot Jox. They’re wonderful in the sense that if you remember that film, you’ll swear you need to see these two non-sequels. This insures high VHS tape sales to your local mom and pop video shop. These low budget wonders are the forefathers of the SyFy original features. The covers promise a bit more than they deliver which was the key to getting kids to rent the videos. Halfway through the film, you forget the cover and focus on the robot weirdness. Charles Band understood the ultimate lesson of Roger Corman: make a movie so you can make more movies.
The video is 1.33:1 full frame. Seeing how neither movie appears to have had a theatrical release, this is how most viewers remember originally watching them. The transfers appear to have come from video sources. It’s not bad for a low budget production. The audio is stereo on both films. The mix is about TV show grade.
As for extras – nada.
Giant Robot Action Pack: Robot Wars / Crash and Burn are bound to give you flashbacks to the strange VHS covers that lurked around your local Video Vault. Neither film is a sequel to Robot Jox, but at least they both have giant robots in them. Whether they move or not isn’t a given.
Shout! Factory presents Giant Robot Action Pack: Robot Wars / Crash and Burn. Directed by: Charles Band & Albert Band. Starring: Megan Ward, Don Michael Paul and Lisa Rinna. DVD Contents: 2 movies on 1 DVD. Rating: R. Released on DVD: June 14, 2011. Available at Amazon.com.
