The Dark One makes his airslaves fight each other. The winner is taken to the power plant and never heard from again. When a group of airslaves decide there should be no fight winner, The Dark One removes their oxygen as punishment. Three people are unaffected by this: a scientist, his daughter (Deeja), and Neo of the wastes. Neo hides with a freebot, and Deeja fakes being affected. The Dark One is surprised to see the scientist unaffected by his removal of breathable air, and asks Torque to capture the scientist and bring him to the power plant.
Torque is a large red robot with an underbite face covered with a mouth veil. Or perhaps they are feeder tentacles. There are freebots and guardbots and … well … Torque. The freebots are sort of homeless robots without a place in the society post-robot-holocaust. Guardbots work for The Dark One. We only ever see them in pairs because apparently they only had two actors.
Robot Holocaust has two different vibes, and rather than competing with each other, they enhance. One vibe is that of the third movie in a trilogy. Characters are introduced, speak their backstory as though they’re summarizing from what happened before, and get on with the plot. There is no attempt to explain any of this backstory, for the hero Neo, for the villain The Dark One, for the apocalypse that left New Terra as the last remaining city. It just is. The second vibe is a sort of low-tech bizarre creepiness. As the movie keeps going on, there are more and more small details, characters, and images that would have been stark nightmare fuel as a child. Cut the scene with the pleasure chamber and the fight with the mutants where heads go flying, and it’s a third or fourth Doctor story of Dr Who.
Deeja explains that her father invented a device to protect humans from The Dark One’s air control, but only had time to build two of these. She needs to get to the power plant to save her father from The Dark One. Neo is looking for a missing friend, and also needs to get to the power plant. Neo, Deeja, a couple of the airslaves, and the freebot Klyton head off to the power plant.
On the way, they pick up travelling companions (the leader of a fierce tribe of female fighters, and the mute male these warrior amazons were just about to kill), fight dangerous foes (irradiated mutants, sewer worms), and cross perilous landscapes (one of which is ominously labeled CENTRAL PARK).
They are observed remotely by The Dark One and his minions Torque and Valaria. Valaria’s actress has no other imdb credits, so we must be satisfied to watch her wear bizarre outfits and chew vast quantities of scenery here. Torque and Valaria attempt to torture, scold, and threaten the secret of the scientist’s air tolerance, but he is resistant (even to Level Seven), so The Dark One forcefully merges with him.
At a key moment as the travelling group is reaching the power plant, the airslaves stop feeding the furnaces, leaving Valaria to deal with the resulting power shortages. Many of the adventuring group succumb to the terrors of the post-apocalyptic landscape, but in the end, Neo discovers that his friend — his father — was killed by The Dark One. Neo kills the hybrid Dark One / Scientist, and Deeja tells him to leave and never attempt to talk to her again. Neo and Klyton leave the power plant and New Terra to return to the wastes.
I will leave Valaria’s final fate unspoiled, except to say that her trajectory would have been one of those nightmare fuel moments if I’d seen this movie around age eight or so.