User Reviews

This film is hard to find. If i told you how i got it you probably wouldn't believe me. I have a VHS copy with clearly printed gold ink that reads NOT FOR SALE. Must have been some kind of library rental or something. Years ago i had this friend who had an impossible collection of Video and audio recordings. He would always hook me up with weird stuff that might spark my mind. I remember being at his house and talking about movies and docs, and he ran his finger along his collection and stopped, pulled this off the shelf and handed it to me. At the time i thought, "well this is interesting" but i didn't have the kind of perspective i have now. Well i just re-connected with an old friend of his who just as magically reached from the abyss of under his bed to throw this one at me with the verbiage "i know you like robots so, here you go!". Well this is great, its about this research group of mostly Americans who travel around the world making these robots/machines that do nothing but break stuff and destroy eardrums. These guys and girls are Machinists. They love their craft and are bent on doing that above anything else. Most of the movie takes place in Amsterdam. The crew seem to like it, they get a big empty building to work in and spend all their time acquiring materials necessary to make their sometimes giant destruct-o-bots. There's footage of the group performing all over the U.S. and plenty of interviews with the crew in attempts to explain what, and why they do their thing. Some of the bots breathe fire, some look like cannons from a battleship, there's a clip of one robot towards the end with a doll head and a funny body with skinny arms windmilling two sharp steak knives. The crowd is just barely safe during these performances, which adds some real tension to the viewing. About ten years or so after this film was made there was a show where bots actually fought each other and seeing that always reminded me of this movie. What i really like about what these people do is there is really no reason for doing it. They talk about how there getting paid ten bucks a day in Amsterdam to do their thing, and their living in these old trailers but it doesn't matter cause their all doing what they love, and what their working on doesn't leave much time to do anything else. These are people with bright minds and serious devotion to the art of destruction. They could have worked in the defense industry, as one of the crew points out. But instead as he hopes, what the survival institute would like is that more people get involved with doing what they love, and not getting into the business of making MORE machines and technologies that help empower mankind to destroy each other. If your out there reading this Jason, thanks for finding this tape and showing it to me. And to my bro Dave, thanks for hooking me back up with this imaginative, rare doc. Hopefully in the future it will be more widely available as it's imperative we all see it. Ten stars.