"It's machine vs. man in the ultimate battle for the future" when Scorpion Releasing dusts off ROBOT HOLOCAUST for Blu-ray.

In the aftermath of Robot Rebellion 33, a nuclear spill has decimated most of the world and poisoned the air. The residents of the surviving city of New Terra are known as Air Slaves who fuel the Power Station under orders of The Dark One who controls their healthy air supply. Twice a year, the strongest Air Slaves are pitted against each other in a fight to the death. The winner is taken to the Power Station to be rewarded; that is, killed so as to discourage the rise of leaders in a rebellion. Into the latest match comes nomadic wanderer Neo (Norris Culf, BREEDER) who has evolved to withstand the poisoned air outside and learns all he needs to about how things work in New Terra through telepathic communication with a thieving robot Kylton (Joel Von Ornsteiner, SLASH DANCE). When scientist Jorn (Michael Downend) and his daughter Deeja (Nadine Hart, NECROPOLIS) stand up against the senseless violence, they are exposed as also being immune to the poisonous air via an implant Jorn has developed when The Dark One shuts off the clean air to subdue the angered crowd. When Jorn is taken by The Dark One's chief henchrobot Torque (Rick Gianasi, FATAL FRAMES) back to the Power Station for interrogation by sadistic beauty Valaria (Angelika Jager), Deeja and fellow Air Slaves Bray (George Grey, TERMINAL BLISS) and Haim (Nicholas Reiner) agree to accompany Neo and Klyton to the Power Station to rescue her father and fight The Dark One. The dangers of the Wastelands including mutants and flesh-eating sewage worms are nothing compared to the Amazon warriors of the She Zone lead by Nyla (Jennifer Delora, DEADLY MANOR) whose flock kidnap men, cut out their tongues ("They chatter so"), and use them for breeding before killing them. When Nyla loses in a fair fight, she agrees to show them how to get to the Power Station, bringing along mute hunk Kai (Andrew Howarth). At the Power Station, Valaria has been monitoring the progress of Neo and the others, and decides that Deeja's life would be the ideal leverage to make Jorn give up his secrets.

Produced specifically for video by Charles Band's Wizard Video, ROBOT HOLOCAUST can be likened to the productions of Band's Empire Pictures sister company Urban Classics like CREEPOZOIDS and SLAVE GIRLS FROM BEYOND INFINITY but somehow even sillier. New Terra is a New York in which dodgy glass mattes and the hills and trash mounds of the Brooklyn Navy Yard are creatively employed as foreground compositional elements to suggest an engulfed metropolitan city while the various hazardous areas the adventurers travel through include shots grabbed in Central Park turned into a wilderness by throwing creeping vines over signage. While the male protagonists are all rather bland (and the C3P0 clone outright annoying), Delora and the narcotized Jager are provide the right amount of camp to elevate the shoddiness of the production. Writer/director Tim Kincaid – known in the porn world as Joe Gage – directed a handful of cost-efficient and cheesy genre films in the late eighties including the wonderfully sleazy BREEDERS and RIOT ON 42ND STREET.

ROBOT HOLOCAUST was first released on VHS by Wizard Video and languished in that format apart from its MST3K airings. Scorpion's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray is sourced from an HD scan provided by MGM that strips the haze off the old video transfer and revels in vivid primary colors in the gel lighting and wardrobe while pulling out the grit and grime of the warehouse settings and greenery of the Central Park bits. Some speckling is present throughout but this is easily the best this film has looked on home video. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track boats clear dialogue and occasionally effective effects, but the thin synth score is typical of the era and budget and only enlivened by interjections of Richard Band's orchestral score from THE ALCHEMIST. Optional English SDH subtitles are included.