By Robert Scucci
| Updated 1 hour ago

When I fired up 1987’s Robot Holocaust on Tubi, I was expecting a Mad Max-style scenario with a bunch of clankers running amok and wiping out humanity. Instead, I got a weird, loincloth-laden odyssey where the most expensive special effects are red lights, and the villain is basically a giant, walking, talking Dr. Zoidberg from Futurama. I know I’m being anachronistic by comparing a 1987 film to a character that didn’t exist until 1999, but that’s the comparison I’m making, and I’m sticking with it.

Let me have this, because the other reality I have to live with is that this movie is pretty rough. There are barely any robots, and what transpires hardly qualifies as a holocaust. The male-to-female buttcheek ratio sits at a clean 50:50, and the nudity isn’t even the good kind. Everybody’s wandering around in punishing heat all day, so you just know the smell is so bad you can almost taste it.

It’s Listed As A Sci-Fi But It’s More Of A Fantasy Quest

The best way to describe Robot Holocaust is an ill-fated cross between Mad Max and the original Star Wars trilogy. You’ve got a ragtag group of city-dwelling slaves living under the thumb of the Dark One, with his laws enforced by Torque (Rick Gianasi), the robot who looks like Zoidberg.

These wasteland slaves are trying to overthrow the Dark One, and their plan mostly involves a lot of unsexy walking as they run into enemies, obstacles, and, occasionally, robots.

Leading the charge is Neo (Norris Culf), a New Terra drifter accompanied by his C-3PO-esque companion, Klyton (Joel Van Ornsteiner). Along the way, he links up with Deeja (Nadine Hart), Nyla (Jennnifer Delora), Bray (George Gray), and Kai (Andrew Horwath), all of whom are fed up with the Dark One’s evil machinations and willing to trudge half-naked through asphalt and overgrown wasteland to do something about it.

Alliances and wills are tested, but the goal stays the same. Our heroes, and there are too many of them to really invest in, especially given their almost aggressive lack of charisma, need to find the Power Station where the Dark One resides and wipe out him and his goons once and for all.

Amateur Hour, But Not Without Its Charm

While Robot Holocaust mostly plays like a college film project with no budget, I can appreciate what writer-director Tim Kincaid was going for with limited resources. Most of the exterior shots look like people wandering around the outskirts of NYC, and most of the interior scenes feel like they were filmed inside a Spirit Halloween. A lot of my enjoyment came from the production notes I made up in my head, like, “Places, everybody! This fog and these fake spiderwebs set us back $25, making it the most expensive scene we’re shooting!”

That said, I’ve got to give the cast credit for committing to the vision, even if they’re reaching pretty far to get there. The robot costumes actually look decent from a distance, but the illusion falls apart in the close-ups, which we get way too often.

At the end of the day, Robot Holocaust is perfect home-viewing material. It’s only 79 minutes long and packed with a healthy dose of camp. It doesn’t make much sense, and when the primary antagonist is finally revealed, it’s basically just a guy dressed like an egg. For that reason alone, it’s worth a watch because it’s just so random.

As of this writing, you can stream Robot Holocaust for free on Tubi.

By TeeJay Small
| Updated 24 seconds ago

When Netflix first made their pivot from DVDs-by-mail to home streaming, they revolutionized the way that people consume media. At the time, consumers were raving about a seemingly unlimited library of movies, TV shows, and even some proposed original programming. This came with zero ads, for a monthly subscription fee that cost less than the price of a single movie ticket. Streaming exploded in popularity, so much so that numerous studios and production companies rushed to develop platforms of their own.

In 2026, there are dozens of streamers, mostly offering small libraries of mindless junk sandwiched between more ad space than Times Square. The golden era of streaming might be dead for the likes of Netflix, but some streamers are still new and fresh, providing a glimpse into that short, sweet period when prices were low and production values were high. For my money, I’d say Apple TV+ is one of the best streaming services currently on the market.

A Worthwhile Loss Leader

Apple TV+ was first launched back in 2019. At the time, the streamer had very few original projects, and needed to quickly establish itself as a worthwhile investment. To do this, they priced their subscription at just $4.99 per month. They also included a free one-year subscription with the purchase of any new Apple hardware.

Over time, Apple producers began snatching up fresh, original IPs with reckless abandon, spending hundreds of millions on projects such as Oprah’s Book Club, The Banker, The Greatest Beer Run Ever, The Problem With Jon Stewart, Ted Lasso, and more. They even courted famed auteur directors like Martin Scorsese to opt for Apple exclusive premieres over the more traditional full theater release.

Today, Apple TV+ is rapidly becoming the premiere streamer for fresh new sci-fi shows. Severance is probably the most popular example of this, but Apple also has projects like Silo, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and Pluribus, created by Vince Gilligan. While this suite of high-quality shows is impressive, Apple’s real value is in their propensity to reinvent what a streaming platform is capable of. They’ve integrated the now-defunct iTunes Store into the streamer, so you can rent or purchase movies that aren’t streaming anywhere else. They also host podcasts, behind-the-scenes featurettes, and myriad other forms of bonus content.

There’s a larger reason why Apple TV+ is so good right now, and unfortunately, it’s sort of doomed to disappear. The truth is, the entire service is a loss leader. This term usually refers to things like $5 rotisserie chickens or Costco’s $1.50 hot dog meal, but it applies just as well to the landscape of streaming media. Apple TV+ is designed to get you invested in other aspects of the tech company, and they can afford to take a loss on it because they sell millions of iPhones each year. Netflix was also capable of burning through capital in its infancy, which is why we all fondly remember when it didn’t have ads and didn’t cost twice as much as a trip to the theater.

Right now, Apple TV+ costs $12.99 per month. That’s still a great price when compared to other streamers, and it’s well worth the price for Severance alone. While I have no doubt that Apple execs will tighten the leash on the streamer down the line, the service is currently in its experimental era. The bottom line is that it’s always good to get in on the ground floor of something. Streaming services seem to have a distinct life cycle, and Apple is currently living in the sweet spot.

By Robert Scucci
| Published 16 seconds ago

If you want to be humbled by decades worth of unhinged creativity that somehow slipped past your radar, I strongly advise firing up Tubi at least once a week. This is not a paid ad, but if you can get me in contact with the head of programming over there, I’d love to send them an Edible Arrangement for never failing to entertain me with hidden gems like 2010’s Beyond the Black Rainbow, and unhinged sci-fi horror comedy neo-noir mystery thrillers like 1986’s Eat and Run. If that sounds like a mouthful, wait until you hear what this punisher is about.

This movie only showcases a handful of recurring gags, and they’re all run into the ground. The primary antagonist is a 400-pound humanoid alien who only eats Italian people. Our hero is a hapless detective who narrates his life out loud in hard-boiled private dick fashion. His boss is always snacking and yelling, and he’s dating a judge with a habit of releasing dangerous criminals from prison, noticing the uptick in murders, and failing to connect the dots. It all plays out like a second-rate Police Squad, but it’s still charming despite its shortcomings.

This Guy’s A Fool For Gabagool!

Eat and Run keeps things simple, and it’s best not to think about it too much while watching. When morbidly obese Murray Creature (R.L. Ryan) inexplicably arrives on Earth, he immediately takes to hitchhiking. He gets picked up by an Italian merchant, who he then eats. We never actually see Murray eating, though. He smiles, reveals his pointy teeth, the camera zooms in on his face, then on his victim’s, and it cuts to him spitting out what’s left, usually shirt buttons.

Meanwhile, Detective Mickey McSorely (Ron Silver), who compulsively narrates his life in real time, is getting chewed out by his Captain (John J. Fleming). The Captain, no matter the time of day, is always pigging out at his desk, and this gag escalates throughout the film. First he’s digging into ice cream cake, and by the end he’s berating a delivery boy for bringing a six-layer cake when he clearly asked for a seven layer cake.

When dozens of Italian men from competing crime families go missing, Mickey takes the case, eventually leading him to Murray, though he can never catch him in the act. He sets up elaborate sting operations in between romantic rendezvous with Judge Cheryl Cohen (Sharon Schlarth), whose record on the bench is questionable at best, and who constantly excuses herself after sex so she can take matters of self gratification into her own hands. Mickey, the great detective that he is, remains completely oblivious to his shortcomings on this front.

When our Italian-eating antagonist is finally caught and cross-examined, his lawyer has him dress like a Boy Scout to appear innocent. This only complicates things further when he’s granted bail and his buffet-style rampage continues, and becomes smitten with Cheryl.

This Shouldn’t Be A Movie

The above scenarios are stretched to absurdity in Eat and Run, repeating the same bits over and over, escalating just enough each time until the film reaches its climax. It reminds me of most SNL-based movies that do the exact same thing. Think 1994’s It’s Pat, but instead of endless jokes about androgyny, it’s about a fat guy eating mobsters.

While it sounds like I hated Eat and Run, I actually had a good time with it. At 85 minutes, it feels like writer-director Christopher Hart was padding the runtime to reach feature length by overworking the gags, but I can’t help but wonder how much better it would be if trimmed down to sitcom-episode length, or even a series of recurring skits.

I’ve always been a sucker for neo-noir narration, so every time Mickey narrates, only for the camera to pull back and reveal he’s been talking out loud in a room full of people, I let out a hearty chuckle. It’s stupid, but relatable. The number of times I think I’m thinking to myself while puttering around the house, only for my family to ask what the hell I’m talking about, is high enough that I felt seen.

Eat and Run is totally stupid, built on a razor-thin premise, and runs its gags into the ground before the first act is over. It’s also really funny, not because those things make it funny on their own, but because the humor somehow loops back around and works anyway.

As of this writing, Eat and Run is streaming for free on Tubi.