I’m a huge fan of the Alamo Drafthouse theaters, and the clips they show prior to the films.
I also love their no talking / texting / disrupting adds that occur prior to the movies.
Not too long ago though, I came across this one:
Which has a series of . . . visually distinct shall we say droids, who for reasons (likely caused by insanity) I want to identify the source of. Google lens of course thinks it’s C-3PO. There are multiple Star Wars rip offs it could be by description, but I’m looking for one of you fine citizens who can link not only the original movie, but a visual confirmation of the source. Because I MUST KNOW!
I’m not exactly sure what you’re asking. The droids in the clip are obviously rip-offs of C3PO and R2D2. Are you asking which specific Star Wars movie they were in? Because the answer is “pretty much all of them.” If you’re asking if there is a specific scene from one of the movies that they are spoofing, I don’t think there is one.
The language the people are speaking sounds like it might be Chinese, and the film quality looks like old chop-socky flicks (I hope that’s not offensive) from the 70’s and 80’s. So my guess is some cheap comedy ripoff movie from that era, not intended for export (probably due to copyright issues).
Oh, I’m sure there is. Alamo Drafthouse often has their pre-show footage on repeat, and if it’s before a movie that’s part of a large and storied franchise (think “Star Wars”), they’ll have a bunch of really absurdly awful clips of Star Wars knockoffs from other parts of the world with, shall we say, lesser production values, combined with stuff like 1970s Star Wars themed commercials, variety show appearances (the dancing Stormtroopers from the Donny & Marie show crack me up), and various fan films. Sort of a celebration of all things Star Wars, no matter how wretched or awful.
My guess is that that bad clip is from some low-budget Star Wars knockoff made somewhere in Asia.
Exactly. And sorry to @Shoeless - I shouldn’t post after midnight, I become far less coherent. It is a PSA from Alamo Drafthouse, and a fellow fan and I were watching a reel of various pre-movie PSAs to enjoy all of the horribleness to fight off IRL horribleness.
The scenes are most frequently taken, as Bump said above from various low grade knockoffs, often from Asia and Indonesia. In this particular case, we were wondering just WHICH terrible knock off it was from, to later try to track down and mock in more detail (or just watch in all it’s horror). We were surprised, because we found (prior to it’s release in RIfftrax version) even such horrible pieces as RoboVampire and it’s ilk, but this one has us stumped so far.
Hoping someone here can identify the specifics, because as pointed out, there are a LOT of knockoffs, most of which never see the light of day, especially if they would fall afoul of powerful Corporate Empires, I mean overlords, I mean . . . what’s the difference.
When my boys and I saw Rise of Skywalker, we saw it at Alamo. We got there earlier than we expected, and we sat there and watched about a half-hour of the pre-show stuff. A big chunk of it was small clips of campily awful Star Wars knockoffs from around the world- like so bad that 3 high schoolers and a iPhone could do a better job.
This “no talking” PSA clip is absolutely in line with the pre-show stuff. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was in the pre-show stuff in fact.
Bumping this thread with relevant information. No, my friends and I haven’t given up on tracking the source movie down, and now we have a name!
James Band 007 The Real Thai Pepper
So according to the above blog, its actually a crazed James Bond ripoff that happens to feature some very familiar looking bots. From Thailand. My friends and I have now started scouring the internet for a copy, for something this weird MUST be watched, but outside some dead links to youtube, have had no success. If any of you fine fiends… I mean friends track down a working copy, or link, or even a place to buy a legit copy, I will be ever grateful.
