Long after a great war that wiped out human civilization, a robot named Omega Doom (Rutger Hauer) enters a nearly empty town where an uneasy peace is kept by the remaining robot gangs, the Roms and the Droids. Omega Doom meets with Zed (Shannon Whirry), the Droid leader, and Blackheart (Tina Cote), the Rom leader, and plays them against each other to in order to destroy both sides.
One of the many (too many) low-budget, apocalyptic robot movies of director Albert Pyun, Omega Doom is more interesting than his normal kickboxing fare, but don’t get too excited by that.
Not so much based on Yojimbo and A Fistful of Dollars as it is written from Pyun’s vague memory of watching those films, Omega Doom is a film that can only be enjoyed by fans of spaghetti westerns. It has the same slow pacing, numerous close-ups, long pauses in dialog, revolving shots, and pretence that each moment is deeply meaningful that I’ve come to expect from 1960s gunslinging flicks. This is a film for the very patient.
It is also a film that only a B-movie fan can put up with. It looks like it was shot over a long weekend in the first set of ruins the filmmakers could find while driving though Eastern Europe. And the special effects are primitive. I wonder if Pyun ran out of money before he was finished with them.
For such a cheaply made picture, the cast is surprisingly competent. Rutger Hauer is always interesting, and I have a soft spot for Shannon Whirry, who is as beautiful as ever, but keeps her shirt on. I am curious how Hauer signed. He prefers low budget work over large Hollywood productions as it gives him more time to relax on his boat, but this is low even for him.
With the killer-chicks-in-spandex-looking Roms, some reasonable actors, and lots of wrrrring sounds whenever the robots move, this could have been a fun bit of schlock. But it is far too pompous and plodding.