Robo Vampire (1990) - By Danny Runion

Film Reviews: Robo Vampire (1990) - By Danny Runion
Posted on Sunday, August 01, 2004 @ 00:17:10 Mountain Daylight Time by Duane

Can you imagine two movies meeting, falling in love, marrying, trying to conceive and failing miserably? To convince other movies they had a child, they amputated a bit of the mother and the father and sewed them together. It kind of looked like a leg sewed to a hand. The other movies would try to keep from pointing at it and laughing. That abomination would be this movie. Robo Vampire was made from the pieces of several other movies. Why else would plot lines never really converge and main characters never encounter each other?

If a guy in a gorilla suit wearing a diving helmet can be villain in Robot Monster, why not a vampire wearing a gorilla mask? How many think that sounds ridiculous? And, the scariest thing of all is that isn't what makes the movie really bizarre. How could a cheap rip-off of Robocop, hopping vampires, evil Taoists, and a mercenary group belong in the same movie? The short answer is they don't belong in the same movie. The longer answer is these plot points go together as well as transmission fluid and orange juice. These totally different movies were edited together which is a guaranteed way to create a truly haphazard mess. Characters wander around never encountering other plots. Tomas Tang is widely known for combining different movies together during the Ninja craze of the 80s. Eventually, the bottom fell out of Caucasians wearing shiny ninja suits with headbands adorned with the word "NINJA" genre. Tang continued buying incomplete movies and mixing them into new movies hoping to cash in on another buck. Thus, the reason Robo Vampire exists.

The first question anyone should ask. Why is Robocop on the cover of this movie? Well, a drug agent is killed and transformed into a Robo Warrior, an "android robot" wearing a foil asbestos suit. If you imagine Robocop's inbred cousin from a junkyard, you've just hit the nail on the head. He is sent to rescue another agent. But, Robo never goes on that mission. This is where another movie is spliced into it. A crack team of mercenaries are hired to rescue the agent. The movie consists of alternating between the mercenaries, Robo, and the drug-dealing vampire creators. In the course of the mission, Robo must battle many hopping vampires and the fearsome Vampire Beast.

Most people have some idea of vampire mythology. Apparently, none of it applies to Asian hopping vampires. Cards with symbols paralyze the vampires while rice powder is like a "power up" to them. Taoist priests apparently are able to create vampires. Ghosts and gorilla faced vampires apparently can as well, so as Judge Mills Lane best said it, "Let's get it on!!!”

This is a hard movie to follow for a complete of anything resembling logic, plot, etc... But, Roman candle hurling vampires battling a guy in a foil suit has to be given some leeway. Many movies are easy to watch for being entertaining. However, the works of Tomas Tang among his partners are not to be watched for the preceding reason. A better reason would be like license plate tag to guess when the movie has switched to another film or to spot the random white guys inserted throughout the movie.