Robotrix

This low-budget paraphrase of RoboCop with a touch of Terminator and Russ Meyer’s optics is impressive in its guileless trashiness. Instead of striving for believability, it works with sincerely naïve elements that, unlike contemporary American genre productions, are rooted rather in the wooden days of cinematic fantasy. A handful of cardboard locations and extravagant costumes add a vague futuristic feel to the natural locations of seedy side streets. Instead of pseudo-sophisticated techno-babble, the narrative makes do with straightforward motifs like those found in classic monster movies, so there is a cheerful transfer of consciousness into robotic bodies while lightning bolts fly around like in Frankenstein. Like the trashy pastiche The Blue Jean Monster released in Hong Kong cinemas a week earlier, Robotrix brings an element of earthiness into the framework of otherwise superior Western genre flicks. Whereas Western androids think only of work, Hong Kong’s down-to-earth heroes and heroines think only of that one thing all the time. With its male protagonist, The Blue Jean Monster mainly address the issue of the undead erection, and the lewd Robotrix lets its robotic heroines find out if sex with a mechanical body is as good as sex between actual people. As a film built on the attraction of nude female bodies, the film then gives a nod, through all of the male characters, to whoremongering and voyeurism. The most notable thing in this respect is the sequence in which the robot played by Amy Yip poses as a prostitute in order to catch a murderer. Not only do her fellow cops, including the protagonist in love with the central character, snoop on her with overacted verve, but one of them steps out in disguise and wants to have his way with her. So as not to merely remain a renowned “Yip-tease” (Amy Yip built a career on never fully revealing her great assets), there is also the Japanese video star Chikako Aoyama, who willingly shows off everything without hesitation, as well as a number of nameless actresses in various episodic parts. However, it is necessary to acknowledge that, in the deluge of CAT III-rated exploitation flicks of the time, Robotrix still rightfully stands out as the more imaginative and diverse genre hodgepodge offering a dubious relief valve for the anxiety of the day. In this respect, both the motif of the superiority of Hong Kong robots over foreign models and the various elaborations of the motif of greed and venality at the core of Hong Kong society are what make the film appealing. (15/08/2021)