The Science!? 12: Cosmos: War of the Planets (1977)

Captain Kirk Hamilton is a man's man. In an age when most of humanity loves peace, he solves interpersonal difficulties with fisticuffs. In an age when most of humanity doesn't like all that icky touching their ancestors used when having sex, he prefers the old fashioned approach. In an age when most of humanity lets their thinking be done for them by machines, he hates those gigantic things with their blinking lights. Still, when an alien signal disrupts the communication systems of Earth and two or three small alien vessels attack, his ship is the one closest to the signal's origin, so he and his crew are mankind's only hope. After crash-landing on the source planet, the intrepid adventurers learn that it was once the home of a thriving civilization, until the civilization's machines rebelled and made their creators their slaves. Later, an atomic explosion seems to have destroyed most of the machines and started the natives on their way of genetic regression to a point where it seems sensible for them to eschew the use of all clothing except loincloths. (And no, they don't seem to have any women, sorry.) This is the point when the movie's plot becomes more or less impenetrable, but I am relatively sure that the terrible machines consist of one killer robot that the production designers of early Doctor Who would have been ashamed of and a computer who really likes to use the word "Earthlings" a lot. Also, there is a kind of twist ending.
Of course, words can hardly describe the singularity of the SF work of Alfonso Brescia. War of the Planets starts quite innocently and linear, though soon silly and unnecessary details, circumcisious scenes that don't seem to belong where and when you are seeing them, important plot points that are never explained and leave the viewer with the vague, uneasy feeling of having fallen asleep for a few minutes without realizing it, the slapshot and deeply strange production design and the puzzling and hysterically funny dubbing, push the film into the realm of the deeply unfathomable.
A possible explanation for all this is another theory I have about Brescia's work: In truth he was a member of a secret order of avantgarde film makers who effectively infiltrated the Italian filione production system and unleashed their experimental works on an innocent viewership. This makes War of the Planets a highly metaphorical work about a man named Alex Hamilton (or is even his name a delusion inspired by space opera writer Edmund Hamilton?), who cannot cope with the alienation and automatization that sets the tone of modern life and tries to escape from his troubles into a better life, in which he is a helpless cog in a machine, but a man of action who is able to cope with anything life throws at him. But even in his fantasies Alex can't escape a reality that slowly conquers even them.