Robo Vampire is about a heroin cartel in Asia that employs a mystic who can turn corpses into vampires, and he creates an army of vampires to protect their shipments. On one occasion the vampires kill a DEA agent, and through a breakthrough procedure, he's turned into a robot cop. At the same time, one of the corpses the mystic turned into a powerful gorilla vampire has a dead girlfriend who wants revenge on the mystic for ruining their plans in the afterlife. All while this his happening, over in Thailand another DEA agent has been captured by other elements of the cartel, and they send in a special agent and his crew to try and break her out and take down their operations there. Will it all work out for everyone?
Does anyone care? As it was termed in a Den of Geek article, it's "cinematic anarchy," or maybe better put, "cinematic bouillabaisse," as anything you can imagine is tossed into this. Just look at our robo cop. He's a mix of the actual RoboCop, a samurai, and the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz, with a dash of silver lame 80s ski suit tossed in. The team of scientists who perform the procedure to make the robo cop are an 80s British synth pop band moonlighting while waiting on their big break--alas, by '88, if it hadn't happened for them yet, it wasn't going to happen, as the market was changing here in the States. We have the classic footage from another film cut in Godfrey Ho scenario, but to be honest that second film, an 80s Thai actioner, ain't half bad; and the fights between the mystic and the ghost girlfriend of the gorilla vampire are actually pretty spectacular. But then we have vampires who move by hopping around with their hands out in front of them like kids pretending they're riding a horse, and one of their vampire powers is they can shoot missiles out of their hands. And how do we even get a gorilla vampire? I guess its the vampire scarring he has on his corpse face, but the scarring, hair, and fangs make him very gorilla-y. I don't know that the art of cinema gets any better than our robo cop guy slowly getting surrounded by a gang of hopping vampires, his stilted movements accompanied by the requisite robotic sound effects, as he takes in his impending peril. This either works for you or it doesn't, but if it does, God it so works.
This is our seventh Godfrey Ho film on the site, though here he's credited as "Joe Livingstone"--not to be confused with "Ron Livingston," aka "that guy from Office Space." By my count on IMDb, this is one of maybe 40 films he had released in 1988, it's hard to count them all, and normally that would be astounding, but he was recycling old footage and splicing in other films to make them all, so it wasn't like he was out shooting 40 films in one year. It sounds crass, but when I watch one of these, and see the ways he dubs over the original dialog and edits the pieces to make the film at least somewhat coherent, it's pretty remarkable. From that oft quoted by me Den of Geek article, it really is cinematic anarchy, and I don't really know from an artistic standpoint what the equivalent would be. Maybe sampling during the dawn of hip hop in the late 70s and early 80s? Even that though doesn't fit, because you'd also be talking about the rappers laying down one or two tracks, and then those tracks also being recut into myriad songs. It shouldn't be understated though that this is art, it's almost this pop art kind of thing, like a cinematic Andy Warhol giving us Elvis silkscreens or paintings of soup cans. "Americans like vampires and RoboCop? I can give them that, I have the tools here to make it happen." And the "make it happen" is this stunning bouillabaisse that no modern AI could recreate.
The thing is Godfrey Ho does the mash-ups that Hollywood either can't do due to rights restrictions, or because they take themselves too seriously to come up with it themselves. I mean who wouldn't want RoboCop vs Vampires? Imagine RoboCop walking into some cutesy Eastern European night club, taking out a bunch of leather-clad Euro Trash vampires? Or hell, mash it with Twilight, have Robert Pattinson hopping around with all his angst and his hair. We could even borrow from The Wizard of Oz and have RoboCop's joints get rusty with all the precipitation in Oregon. But no, Hollywood takes themselves too seriously, so we have to hope Godfrey Ho will do it for us, but he gets it all wrong because he doesn't understand how any of these things work in American culture, and while the gets it all wrong is a ton of fun to watch, why can't someone who does get how it works get it all right for us? Like look at the actors dressed to look like an 80s British synth pop group? Hollywood could actually get the guys from Duran Duran! Or hell, imagine Human League or the Thompson Twins in lab coats designing RoboCop so he can blow up the kids in Twilight. Yes, the results of Ho's films are often goofy, but he tells us what's possible in cinema if we just go for it. Why can't we go for it more instead of just pumping out the same franchise drivel?
As I mentioned above, I asked ChatGPT to write a review on Robo Vampire, and posted screens of the results on the DTVC Facebook page and Twitter account if you want to see them. Part of the reason why I did that, beyond wanting to see what it could give me, is that AI is seen as the next bastion of the Godfrey Ho Effect, but a lot of times the way people discuss it, they act like this is AI thing sui generis, because they have no idea who Godfrey Ho is or what his films are like. One of the things I saw from the ChatGPT review, is it's a solid enough review, but it doesn't have the artistic soul that a review written by a human does, the same way if AI did a mash-up of Twilight, RoboCop, and the Human League video for "Human," it couldn't give us something as fun as Robo Vampire. It works in a pinch if you're a high school kid who needs to get a paper done--and I remember myself in high school in the mid-90s when the world wide web was new, finding some Truman Capote fan sites and copying details from their breakdowns of In Cold Blood on the Geocities pages to do my book report, my junior English teacher none-the-wiser as he gave me an A, so I get that part of it--but in terms of replacing actual art, even in this bouillabaisse form from Godfrey Ho, there's always going to be that need for the soul of the artist to drive it.
Finally, look at that, is that a White Castle? The design is all off, but I can just taste those fantastic sliders at the mere mention of it. I haven't been to one in forever, since they closed the one near Penn Station in NYC. My wife told me when she went to high school here in Philly, there was one near her school, but that one's since been closed, and there aren't any more in the Philly area. How can that be? I'm going to a Mets game in July, maybe I'll need to make an extra stop on the 7 train on the way back. Some people say the ones you get frozen in the grocery are just as good, and they do work in a pinch, but I can never get them to come out the way they do when I'm getting them freshly made. Recently there was a Wawa on the corner of 12th and Market that closed, and it looks like it's still vacant. Put a White Castle in there, and it would do a killing with all the tourists--though maybe that's not a good thing, because every time I tried to go I'd have to deal with the tourists like I do when I want a snack at Reading Terminal Market.
And with that, let's wrap this up. Here in the States you can get this on Tubi for free. It's just the taste of Cinematic Anarchy or Cinematic Bouillabaisse you're looking for. And if you want to hear more about Godfrey Ho, you can check out episode 99 in the archives that I did with Mitch from the Video Vacuum, and episode 69 that I did with Jon Cross from the After Movie Diner, which is where he first references the Den of Geek article I was talking about.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121694
And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!
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