FlashCallahan 50 years after a nuclear war, the superpowers handle disputes in a different way. Giant robots fight one-on-one battles in official matches, each piloted by a man inside, known as robot jockeys. The contest for possession of Alaska will be fought by two of the best. Achilles for the USA, Opposing him is a Alexander, a ruthless Russian adversary who has killed his previous nine American opponents. With a traitor feeding the Russians secret weapons information and new, genetically- engineered jox looking to take his place, Achilles faces obstacles at every turn in the hardest battle of his life.....Like Arena, and Crash and Burn, the movie is cheaply made, badly acted, and choc full of bad effects. But its like a really bad accident, you cannot keep your eyes off the screen.The film is set in four locations, Achilles Room, the local bar, the holding wing for the robot, and the fighting arena. It ventures off to space once where the Russian can fire a rocket, and that's it.Its fun when the robots fight, as the actors don't really say anything, but other than that, its pretty pants. Almost like a really poor relation to Rocky IV, in its layout, its novelty soon wears off after a while, leaving you with a film that has nothing new to offer you.But it is the best film ever featuring a traitor in a Stetson jumping from a height and still screaming long after he landed and died....

Michael A. Martinez Empire Pictures is best known for their many low budget horror films of the 1980's, later to become Full Moon pictures around the early 90's with the perfect storm of A) the death of Albert Band, B) the crumbling of the Italian film industry, and C) this financial disaster. At $10 million, this film is and certainly feels like a cheap B-movie, but at the same time was a touch too ambitious and ridiculous to attract the audience necessary to breathe any life into the dying studio.Oddly enough, if you talk to most people who saw it, they actually look back fondly upon ROBOT JOX. Like with most Empire pictures, it's not so much a good movie as one which engenders good memories of itself years later. Sure, it has colorful cinematography, lots of delicious overacting and cornball dialog, and of course some impressive David Allen stop-motion effects, so its easy to see what makes this innocuous little film so attractive.Unfortunately when looked at closely, the film is severely hampered by its low budget on numerous occasions; there are only about 5 sets used in the film (notice how they keep coming back to that same bar they used in ARENA). The show-stopping effects are also in dangerously short supply. Much like in PUPPETMASTER or other films Allen supervised, the stop motion is only used as a last resort when the effects can often be achieved much more easily by manipulating the models off-camera. This makes the highlighted robot fights feel pretty stiff as they often just stand around completely immobile, and a special effects movie can't be marketed if its effects are cheesy and didn't even hold up the year it was made in. This is disappointing to me as I could just watch stop-motion robots stomp around all day, especially when they're given that magical "David Allen touch", but you get more stop motion's worth in CRASH AND BURN and (the otherwise quite abysmal) ROBOT WARS.However this film is a lot of fun owing to Stuart Gordon's fun childlike approach to the campy material. All the players act their parts with tongue firmly in cheek with a lot of fun cameos by low budget Italian genre film staples like Al Yamanouchi, Alex Vitale, Larry Dolgin, Geoffrey Copleston, and even Jeffrey Combs in an odd throwaway bit part. It's edited quite cleanly and the music vaguely echoes Basil Poledouris's work on ROBOCOP.One of those flicks that just has to "hit you" in the right way when you're in the right mood. Otherwise you might just laugh it off the screen. Gordon came back to similar territory with the just-as-silly but much darker and more 'adult' FORTRESS a couple years later.

LivingDog R O B O T J O X.Burn the master.Grotesquely horrible.No ending; no closure.Completely and utterly the worst movie ever made.Replaces "The Adventures of Pluto Nash" as the worst movie of all time.I hate this utterly unacted, unedited, unscripted, undirected, unproduced mess of a thing called "Robot Jox" - and I just found out - THEY MADE A SECOND ONE!?!? I apologize to Adma Sandler (Zohar the Beauticin) and Eddie Murphy (Pluto Nash) for hating their movies. This mess of a thing makes those movies only bad - not terrible horrible and grotesque like this thing. This is the only movie for which I have ever said this - REMOVE IT FROM NETFLIX - NOW!!! 10,000 out of 10 people found this comment helpful.

Scourgeofomnius OK this movie had a terrible premise. Be serious according to the movie they had just been through an apocalyptic war yet they have money to buy huge robots and pit them against each other. Each country decides instead of investing into rebuilding their country they would rather fight with robots no one could afford. Here's a better idea, lets rely on our most inept resource,jocks, to fight our battles. Everyone says what about the director, what about him. He makes a good movie, he makes a bad movie. There is no reason to give this movie some credit just because of the director, maybe he was asleep? I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, because it was so cheesy and ridiculous I had to laugh. I actually had a good time watching it, well except for the cowboy mentor who turns out to be an assassin(trust me no one would see this guy as an assassin, so it is a surprise, however lame) What kind of training exercise is a jungle jim anyway. I was sad to see Mst3k had not done this one. I am giving a two star rating however because nothing could be as bad as "manos the hands of fate."The budget does not matter either, I have seen plenty of reasonable movies that had nothing for budgets like cube. The storyline was not even plausible and I have seen better acting in school plays. Surly they could have afforded an eleven year old from any middle school play.Anyway pick it up, it is a fun movie to watch.