Convincing a friend to watch ROBO VAMPIRE is an exercise in trust. It's near impossible to explain in any great detail what's so fun about it. It's something that has to be experienced first-hand. I had zero knowledge of what to expect when I first sat down to watch this beauty. It was one of 50 public domain Z-grade movies in a cheap collection I grabbed for $10. Then an Internet search brought me to the cover art of Robocop clutching what I assumed to be the titular vampire in the foreground while the world exploded behind them. I was sold, if cautious. What I proceeded to watch was beyond words. I was often so wracked with laughter that I was forced to pause the movie so I wouldn't miss a minute of it. It's hard to put the plot of ROBO VAMPIRE into words with any sort of confidence but I'll try my best to give you an idea. It's about heroin smuggling in Asia. There's a drug kingpin who's grown tired of a particular "anti-drug agent" (I'll assume he means DEA) named Tom, and he's hired a Taoist to train vampires to handle it. Tom dies in a bust gone wrong and, before his corpse has time to cool, he's turned into a robot cop. A sort of
Robo-Tom. Meanwhile, in another potentially unrelated storyline, another "anti-drug agent" named Sophie is taken hostage by what may or may not be the same drug operation and a special team is sent to bring her home.
When the movie was finally over and I had endured the hurricane of pure insanity that was ROBO VAMPIRE, I found some info that gave some context to what I had just watched. There's a very distinct feeling that you're watching two entirely separate movies play out through ROBO VAMPIRE and that's because you essentially are. It was a product of Filmark International Ltd and producer Tomas Tang, who would shot a bunch of random martial arts footage and insert it into half-finished movies to create a cinematic Frankenstein. Once you're aware of that, it's impossible not to notice. It didn't click with me the first time I watched it but now I can't help but notice the whole Robo-Tom plot thread never once crosses over with the Sophie rescue thread. Not a single character crosses the border between stories. ROBO VAMPIRE is about 65% rescue and 35% robot versus vampires. This is all wrong. It needs to be 75% robot/vampires. Maybe more. The rescue operation has its moments. There's a great stunt dive when Sophie does a running jump through a window and we see a stocky, hair man in a bad wig and nightgown nail the landing. There's plenty of bloodless gunfights and martial arts battles with stuntmen throwing themselves around. The dubbing is generic action movie dialogue and characters are interchangeable because no one is anything more than one-dimensional. It serves its purpose but the real gold is to be found in the rare occasions when we rejoin Robo-Tom and the vampires.
Where to start?! Well not that anyone will be surprised but Robo-Tom looks nothing like Robocop. He's a no-budget rip-off, covered in silver-painted safety padding with goggles and a helmet. The vampires wear some sort of traditional Chinese dress and are at least given a little makeup to give the impression of decay on their faces. And they hop! These vampires can only movie via hopping, jumping, leaping, or straight up teleporting. Their attacks include corrosive smoke and bottle rockets fired from their sleeves. In addition to the hordes of regular vampires, there's one super vampire of which the Taoist is super proud. You can tell he's more powerful than the rest because the character has a gorilla's face (i.e. a gorilla Halloween mask). The super vampire is also in love with a ghost woman who is mad because she was hoping to live eternally in the afterlife with her beloved only to watch him become a vampire slave. The Taoist agrees to marry the two together as long as they are under his command. Meanwhile, Robo-Tom proves to be effective against vampires but still can't handle a direct bazooka blast. That's totally fine though because, even when he's melted to a puddle of liquid aluminum foil, all he needs is a little soldering a maybe a new battery before he's back on the beat. ROBO VAMPIRE is totally bonkers and, even when there's no robot or vampires on screen, never let's you get bored. The best news of all? There's two "sequels" out there from Tomas Tang that I haven't seen yet.
Bucket list updated.
