ROBOT JOX

   Film (1990). Empire. Dir Stuart Gordon, starring Gary Graham, Anne Marie Johnson, Paul Koslo, Robert Sampson, Hilary Mason. Screenplay Joe HALDEMAN, Dennis Paoli. 82 mins. Colour.

   The people ("jox") who pilot the future ROBOT colossi with which wars are settled in single combat are popular idols. The hero (Graham) is traumatized when he accidentally crushes a spectator stand and quits, but returns when the biologically engineered, test-tube created woman he loves (Johnson) endangers herself by entering the field of combat. A long-cherished project of Charles BAND's financially troubled Empire Pictures, and his most expensive, RJwas several years in the making and is disorientingly inconsistent in its production values: top-of-the-line effects by David Allen in the robot combat, but low-budget interiors and a few wobbly matte fringes. Gordon, scaling down his gore effects after RE-ANIMATOR (1985) and FROM BEYOND (1986), handles the subtly humorous pulp-sf angles very well and gives thefilm a pleasantly uncluttered comic-bookish look, while Haldeman's sf-writer touch can be traced in the neat background details (ad-campaigns for pregnancy, bigotry against "tubies") and in his distinctive blend of military-hardware expertise and anti- WAR attitudes, the latter being especially apparent in the surprisingly emotional climax.

   KN