Beyond the three terror-filled tales that Last American Horror Show has to offer — Night of the Sea Monkey, Lamb Feed and Homewrecked — it also has horror royalty in the cast like Felissa Rose, Lynn Lowry and Arch Hall, Jr.
Yes, that’s right, the star of Eegah and The Sadist is in this as the grandfather of an entire town of cannibals ready to sacrifice any folks that wander in. Between that and Felissa going on a date with a man who claims to be Christian and ends up being anything but — and oh yeah, Lynn Lowry dissecting a sea monkey with an electric carving knife — there’s some fun stuff in here.
All of these stories started off as shorts which were assembled into an overall longer film with the Felissa-starring framing sequence.
Of course, it’s in no way as great as Amicus films or Trilogy of Terror, but you know that going in. In the old video rental days, this would have been a fine fifth film for your five for five bucks for five nights stack. And really, that’s high praise around these parts.
Oy! This movie. Once I became sentient, I couldn’t get it out of my head.
Courtesy of Sam the Bossman devising another “Apoc Week,” I came to review Games of Survival, and its psuedo-sequel-cum-remake, Badlanders, which lead to my first learning — and for my first watch — of this post-apoc’er slopper, courtesy of the acting common denominator of martial artist Michael M. Foley (also of Karate Cop and Desert Kickboxer fame).
Musings of a Video Rental Youth
Now, in all my years — and all of my video store memberships and cut-out and close-out VHS dumpster dives — I’ve never encountered Cybernator*. Or maybe I have and, because the covers are so awful, I passed on it? And the cover on the left is the BEST of the covers, trust me. And . . what the hell? Is that a Windows 3.1 “Wing Dings” font on the alternate cover? At least the he-ain’t-Plughead-from-Circuitry Man-cum-Blue Man Group dude with the head hoses and light saber-gun is giving me something to strive for . . . but friggin’ DOS-based “Dingbat” fonts?
Oh, by the Kobol Lords, this is going to rock!
Okay, so . . . Cybernator is the type of film where it strives to be a cross between James Cameron’s The Terminator and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner on a Grandma’s and Auntie’s birthday money budget — where Los Angeles in the far-flung year of our SOV 2010 looks a lot like our Los Angeles in the year of our present-day, late 1980s (when this epic was shot; and probably not on video and actually on film, but it sure do looks like an ’80s SOV’er, Jethro).
2112: After the Fall of Los Angeles: When the best part of your movie is your gouache-on-hot press board matte painting. Hey, is that the Temple of Syrinx in the background? This isn’t Mega City One, Dorothy.
I Am Asking Too Much From This Movie . . .
And soak up that “effects” shot of the big city, because once we get down into those mean streets of L.A., we get a whole lot of red brick buildings and ’80-era Japanese motor vehicle imports. Which begs the question: If you can’t effectively set design your film to look like it’s nineteen years in the future, why not just set your film in the present day? At least the absolutely WORST of the The Terminator-cum-Robocop knockoffs — yes, it is WORSE than Cybernator — 1987’s R.O.T.O.R, had the good common sense to keep it in real time.
Better cover . . . worse movie.
As with my argument concerning David A. Prior’s exploits of John Tucker in Future Force and Future Zone: Cybernator is a whole lot of “futuristic” Jeep Cherokees on the apoc-prowl. For if you’re going to set up a 2010-futureverse, rent out the repurposed Death Race 2000 Calamity Jane from Claudio Fragasso used in Interzone or Scorpion’s bubble-topped Camaro from Enzo G. Castellari’s Warriors of the Wasteland. Hit up Charles Band and rent out some of the props from Trancers, and his not-Mad Max-or-Star Wars romps Spacehunterand Metalstorm, from the Full Moon backlot.
Even better cover . . . still worse movie**.
Heck, even Band’s future cop romp repurposed the Spinner from Bladerunner, which was also repurposed in Solar Crisis (1990) and Soldier (1998). Call Universal and borrow a DeLorean. Call Cinema Vehicles or Paramount Picture Cars, for there’s bound to be “futuristic” rides on their lots. Even Don Coscarelli knew to call up 20th Century Fox to rent out their lot of tombstones to create Morningside Cemetery in a park. What’s with all of these four-door sedans and Hondas and Toyotas and panel vans? What’s the deal with my Aunt Martha’s 1950s era apartment furnishings? If there was a cemetery in Cybernator, would it be of the grey-painted plywood grave markers variety? Ed called and he wants his wood back.
Yes, alas, I am asking too much from a movie . . . with gouache-on-hot press board matte paintings and Windows DOS 3.1 poster fonts. But at least the he-ain’t-Plughead-from-Circuitry Man-cum-Blue Man Group dude with the head hoses and light saber-gun is giving me something to strive for. . . .
Los Angeles 2010: The New Gladiators. No, the Vespa doesn’t fly, à la Stallone’s Judge Dredd. “Drokk it!”
Finally, the Plot!
Okay, so between the voiceovers, expositional babble, and newscasts — and video box copywriters — we’re in a world where the economy collapsed, the government has fallen, and riots and violence run rampant across the good ol’ U.S.A. But don’t worry, the bastardly Colonel Peck (ubiquitous screen heavy William Smith doin’ the Eric Roberts put-a-name-on-the-box role) has dispatched his military-trained cyborg assassination squads to kill off all the terrorists and scumbag politicians and corrupt military officials that have ruined America. QAnon! Trump! March 2021! Viva America! Ack! Kamala Harris is a cyborg plant! Governor Coumo’s master plan is to turn Manhattan Island into a prison to dump the enemies of Nancy Pelosi! (And, in that short sentence, I just plotted a better movie than Cybernator.)
Fire up the Gullfire, Hauk, I’m going in! (Courtesy of Grimoo via FunnyJunk.com) Come on, know your Escape from New York trivia!
Anyway, one of the borg’s targets is Senator Overstreet — and his (overweight) collateral damage stripper girlfriend (warning: there’s a lot of gratuitous strippers and long-lingering stripping in this movie, so there’s that). Another borgie target is the tech guru who dreamed up the “Blackhawk” project that unleashed the cyborg assassination squads on the citizenry.
Oh, there’s more. . . .
So, Detective Brent McCord and his partner Jim Weaver are the kind of cops who like to kick back at the local flesh repository for some all-you-can-eat wings and lap dances — oh, right: Blue the Stripper is McCord’s girlfriend . . . and McCord is a “racist” that hates cyborgs (#cyborglivesmatter) — then find themselves in the middle of a Spirit Halloween-dressed cyborg shoot-em up that leads to them — and not the cyborgs — blamed for the murders of our corrupt Senator and the Project: Blackhawk guy.
Yawn.
During an apocalypse, who you gonna call: Dr. Fauci or Maestro Fulci?
So, who’s the “Cybernator,” already? The Blue Man Group hosey-head guy? (Played pretty well by Michael M. Foley in pretty decent, budget-effective make up by Steve Patino — yes, the same guy who did the Silver Sphere’s in Phantasm II, as well as Stuart Gordon’s From Beyond, Re-Animator and the first Predator.) Oh, is it William Smith’s Colonel Peck! Is the big plot twist that he’s a cyborg? (And back to the cars? You had Steve Patino on set; he could have come up with something better than a Vespa and a Toyota two-door.)
Well, yeah, Peck is a cyborg. But it also turns out, during the course of his rogue investigation — yeah, our “bad ass” McCord quit the force — McCord discovers, like Rick Dekkard before him (I know . . . I know), that he, himself, is a cyborg . . . cop who’s now forced into destroying the cyborgs — and confronting his ol’ pop, Colonel Peck. Or are they brothers? And does McCord come to grips with his technocratic racism? Is Blue, his stripper squeeze, a cyborg, too? Does Earth become part of the Solar Federation?
Hey, we don’t “plot spoil” here at B&S About Movies. You’ll have to watch.
Wait . . . does Voivod perform “Technocratic Manipulators” as the stripper bar’s band? Does the jukebox play “Cygnus X-1” by Rush? Is “Where’s Harrison Ford?” by alt-metallers Altered State on the soundtrack? Nope, because McCord ain’t no Harrison Ford and this ain’t Blade Runner.
Your resistance to the Cybernator is futile.
See? And you thought this movie was going to suck apoc ass steaks in between all the strippers, cheezy after-effects lasers, long-winding staircase chases, and squishy-scowling face emoting. Oh, and don’t forget the cyborg Samurai . . . or Samuraborg . . . Cyberai . . . or whatever it is. You will watch. For as the black hole of Cygnus X-1, the Cybernator will suck you in.
Who Wrote and Directed and Acted in This Mess?
As it turns out, this was writer-director Robert Rundle’s debut feature film, so ye streamer, cut him a generous amount of slack, okay? For his next movie, The Divine Enforcer (1992), he secured the dual services of Jan-Michael Vincent, Erik Estrada, and blaxploitation vet Jim Brown — and it was written by Randall Frakes of Hell Comes to Frogtown and Roller Blade Warriors fame — so there’s that B-Movie enticement. Then there’s Vampire Hunter (1994) with B-Movie screamer, Linnea Quigley, Run Like Hell (1995) with Robert “Maniac Cop” Z’Dar, and the return of William Smith in Raw Energy (1995). He hasn’t made a film since 2005 and, according to the IMDb, Rundle had a website, but it’s lost in the 404 error-verse.
Lonnie Schuyler, who stars as Brent McCord, actually did alright for himself from such humble, first-movie beginnings by booking a three-year recurring role on FOX-TV’s Models, Inc. and Melrose Place. He later produced, wrote, and directed his own acting showcase with the comedy Bottom Feeders (1997), and is still in the low-budget indie business. Some of the retro-reviews of Schuyler’s work — his debut, mind you — aren’t kind, but hey, the dude is trying and certainly better at the thespin’ game than Richard Gesswein in R.O.T.O.R.
It’s been a while since I’ve enjoyed Dr. Coldyron drink a big ol’ cup o’ joe and yank out a tree stump, so guess what I am doin’ later today: watchin’ R.O.T.O.R. And I’ll watch Lonnie Schulyer’s McCord-inator before I watch crazy ol’ Trump-obsessed Mark Hamill in The Guvyer and Time Runner or Slipstream again, because, well, those movies aren’t as fun as Cybernator and Hammy the Ham ain’t no Harrison Ford, either.
Where to Suffer . . . Watch It
Now, if this original-release trailer and clip montage doesn’t deter you (damn you, vanishing embeds making us hyperlink) . . . well, maybe, one day, Mill Creek Entertainment will come up with an “Apocalypse” or “Android Invasion” box set and put this out on a DVD. Tinkers to Evers to Chance, Mill Creek, for Cybernator must be preserved for all hard-digital eternity.
In our DVD reality: Cybernator is out as a standalone DVD and a DVD two-fer with the Phillppines-shot Aliens ripoff Hyper Space and a Troma DVD two-fer with Digital Prophet, aka Cyberstalker starring Jeffrey Combs. As of July 2023, we can eschew the since deleted, You Tube fan-rip and suffer the wrath of the blue man hosehead guy as a proper, free-with-ads stream (of the Troma-released version) on Tubi.
* Disclaimer: Cybernator: The Movie is not be be confused with the 1992 Super Nintendo mecha-game Cybernator. No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited. Those offended by off-color political parodies required to “chicken salad” the review of a chicken shit movie, need not apply. Cyber Samurai Warrior action figures sold separately. Copyright, 2021, B&S About Movies, Inc., P.O Box 0 Boston, Mass., 02134. Sent it to ZOOM!
Uh, oh. Here comes those alternate titles and artwork, again, with this Ruggero Deodato time waster that’s also known as Fistful of Diamonds and Flash Fighter. Now, while the first title may evoke a little of the ol’ Clint Eastwood spaghetti squint in your eye, do not let the second title confuse you into thinking you’re getting a repack of Micheal Sopkiw in Blastfighter. Or Micheal Sopkiw in Fireflash, which was a repack of 2019: After the Fall of New York.
But, if you’re confused into thinking you’re possibly watching a ripoff of Patrick Swayze in Steel Dawn — which wasn’t even released yet — don’t worry. It’s an Italian-made post-apoc movie: confusion is part of the dusty terrains, which, in this case, is in Morocco.
So, hopefully, you’ve got strong eyes can read the VHS box image — and save me from typing anymore about this movie than it deserves. If not, right click and hit “view image” on your pop-up menu, to make it larger, since the box copy pretty much tells it all. However, since I’d be remiss in my journalistic duties to you, ye B&S reader, here we go.
We’ve got our ubiquitous B-Movie beefcake Miles O’Keefe from Tarzan the Ape Man, ack! No! The Miles we love was Ator in Ator, the Fighting Eagle, The Blade Master, and Iron Warrior. And maybe you don’t remember Miles as the not-Snake Plissken Python Lang in Philippines war flick Phantom Raiders, but I do.
So, with a pinch of Swayze and Eastwood, and a dusty pair of cowboy boots and a white overcoat — and don’t forget the crossbow — the singular Garrett is our “Lone Runner” of these desert proceedings. He spends his days picking off Arabs with exploding arrows via horseback — since this “future” can’t afford the obligatorily 1970s-era Mad Max rust buckets — to free a kidnapped princess being ransomed for her daddy’s diamond interested.
Lots of explosions and “hiya-ahhh”-styled kills, ensues.
Honestly, I was so bored by it all and FF’in through it, that I don’t recall if we are in the Arabian Nights’ past or a post-apoc future. And you won’t care either, since this is more Ator in a western and less Ator in an apoc — courtesy of all of the galloping horses and sword fights and flying arrows. In fact, this isn’t really an apoc at all, since it reminds of Enzo G. Castellari’s Tuareg: The Desert Warrior from two years earlier — which isn’t an apoc flick and is just a desert adventure flick that feels more like a Philippines war flick. Not even the presence of familiar British actor John Stainer (Tenebrae) and Italian cinema mainstay Hal Yamanouchi (Rat Eater King in 2019 After the Fall of New York and Red Wolf in 2020 Texas Gladiators) can save it.
Yes. The guy who made Cannibal Holocaust made this. If you must, you can watch it this (poor) English dub with Russian subtitles on You Tube.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Everyone in Alpha City wants Raphaela but no one more than Frank, a karate kicking dude with something to prove. There’s also a guy called The American, a handsome gangster that she’s also into. All three of them only exist in the neon night of West Berlin, in the shadows of the Metro nightclub, which was the location for Demons.
Written and directed by Eckhart Schmidt, who also made Der Fan, this is less an end of the world story — although much like Tenebre, it certainly seems like not all that many people are left alive — and more one about sex complicating relationships or maybe even humans complicating relationships. I don’t think that Schmidt could make a normal movie if he tried and we’re all the better for that.
Phil Tucker invented a rotary engine known as the CT Surge Turbine that he successfully patented and unsuccessfully tried to sell to the automobile industry as a more efficient alternative to the internal combustion engine. And years after directing movies like this and The Cape Canaveral Monsters, he did actually contribute to some movies as an editor, including Orcaand King Kong.
Yet we’re all going to remember him for this movie and to be honest, whenever life gets me down, I remember that at some point, people got together and decided to make a movie about the end of the world and threw a monkey suit with a TV set for a head in it and I think about the startling ridiculousness of that and you know, it’s all better.
That monster is known as Ro-Man Extension XJ-2. He’s played by George Barrows, who made his own gorilla suit to get roles in movies. He’s already used his Calcinator death ray to kill everyone on Earth except for the eight people we meet in this movie.
I mean, that’s pretty through. There were 2.6 billion people alive in 1953, so to wipe out that many people, much less be able to find the eight you missed is pretty good work, if I can commend the outright annihilation of a planet.
Sure, this movie outright rips off the ending of Invaders from Mars and recycles footage from One MillionB.C., Lost Continent, Rocketship X-M and Captive Women, but it’s in 3D, shot all over Bronson Canyon and was made in four days for $16,000. That is also worth celebrating.
It also has a score by Elmer Bernstein, who was currently being held back from major movies because of his liberal views. He also did a score for Cat Women of the Moon that year, but soon would be one of the biggest names in movie music.
Look, this is a movie that has a Billion Bubble Machine with an antenna being used for Ro-Man to communicate with the Great Guidance, the supreme leader of his face, who finally gets fed up and blasts not only that gorilla robot but the child hero before he causes dinosaurs to come back and then uses psychotronic vibrations to smash Earth out of the universe. If you can’t find something to love there, you are beyond hope.
After an ecological disaster, our planet has been divided and decimated into survivors and mutant degenerates. There also exists the rumor of a museum that has all of the information of the past that can only be found when the tides are at their lowest.
Directed by Konstantin Lopushanskiy, this is one of the few examples of Russian post-apocalyptic film that I can think of. It’s also one of the bleakest ones I’ve ever seen, a movie that establishes a soul-crushing mood from the first frame and only getting rougher from there.
So about that museum. There’s only one day a year when the tides are low enough to walk along the ocean floor to visit the place where information still exists and humanity still has part of its soul. Perhaps there’s something more inside that place. There could be a portal that leads to another — and better — world away from this burned-out hell.
This isn’t one of those fun end of the world movies, but that doesn’t mean that you should skip it.
Released as Forbidden Fruit: The Golden Age of Exploitation Pictures, Vol. 9 as part of the Something Weird/Kino Classics line, The Lash of the Penitentes is an astounding bit of before your grandparents exploitation sleaze, a report on a murder within the hidden non-English speaking New Mexican cult of Catholic masochists known as Los Hermanos Penitentes.
Hey, happy easter a few days late, because these guys and ladies went absolutely wild during Lent, basically whipping the sin out of themselves before crucifying for real one of the lucky ones of their close-knit group.
Somehow, cinematographer Roland Price (Marihuana: Weed With Roots in Hell as well as early censor-baiting titles like How to Take a Bath and How to Undress in Front of Your Husband) was able to film the rituals and worked with Harry Revier (the maker of Child Bride) to make a murder mystery film that could go all over the country as an exploitation film, whether in a censored 35-minute version of a fully berserk 48-minute epic of Catholicism mixed with ecstatic devotion.
I love that Kino is releasing things like this, pieces of exploitation history that once only lived in dusty old film cans. Seeing them on my shelf makes my heart grow several sizes larger due to joy.
You can get The Last of the Penitentes from Kino Lorber.
Hey, you know how much we love Dennis Devine around the B&S About Movies’ cubicle farm, with our reviews of the slasher-rock epic Dead Girls, two reviews for Fatal Images, a “Drive-In Friday” tribute, and a review of Double D’s latest, a contribution to the indie Blood Camp franchise.
And for their joint, third feature film, Dennis and his longtime scribe, Steve Jarvis, went post-apoc.
Load the friggin’ tape!
Sigh. That dot-matrix printed VHS sleeve feels like home.
Okay, so taking into account this is a Cinematrix Releasing apocalypse — made for $750,000 . . . wait . . . are we sure that’s not an IMDb typo and the budget is $75,000 or, more likely, $7,500 . . . where’s the other $740-plus thousand? We ask, because, there’s no apoc-automobiles in this. Just lots of animal-skinned lingerie and walking. And talking. Lots of walking and talking (through the dusty woods of Palmdale, California). And horny, rape-inclined male chauvinists. And cardboard swords. And dirt. But at least all the S&M stores weren’t wiped out when the “Big One” dropped, because all those men would be naked as the day they were born. And there are not, despite the prehistoric look of it all, any dinosaurs. Not even a guy in bear suit. But there are tubes of lipstick. Or maybe they’re were just rubbing berries on their lips? And with all of that outdoor lingerie gear, is there sunblock to protect everyone from the SPF fallout? Well, obviously, there’s still hair care products to be found. . . .
Get it at the Apoc Swap Shop!
Anyway, after a voiceover’d Windows Movie Maker-pixled apocalypse, we come to meet a camp of Amazon women. And instead of banning together to make a new world, the usual Mad Maxian bandits slaughter everyone in the village — sans one child. Now a mercenary for hire, Tara takes a job escorting two princesses of a powerful warlord. And in the throes of protecting her charges, our mighty Tara comes to face to face with General Steiner: the one who slaughtered her people all those years ago. Lots of cardboard swordfights with combat-inept men, ensues.
Oh, and by the way: Amazon Warrior comes in three cuts: a “clean” 71-minute cut and the if-you-want-all-of-the-titilation-hanky panky 76-minute — and even pankier — 83-minute cuts. Which means that, as is the usual casting mystery with most Devine/Cinematrix releases, the actresses are probably incognito adult film actresses. So there’s that.
You can watch a VHS rip of the clean, 71-minute cut of Amazon Warrior on You Tube — and here’s the trailer. Many thanks to Cinecurry Hollywood for preserving this Dennis Devine obscurity. Be sure to spend some time on their page, as there’s a lot of great VHS oldies to enjoy.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
I discovered this I-never-heard-of-it before and somewhat newly-uploaded ditty back in September of last year during one of my many You Tube-rabbit hole excursions. And knowing a B&S About Movies’ movie when I see one . . . I left it on my “need to watch” back burners, waiting for the right moment . . . then Sam the Bossman came up with another apoc-theme week. So blame him for this review. And video purveyors Trans World Entertainment for releasing it.
Paul at VHS Collector comes through again with the clean JPEG of the VHS.
At first glance at the VHS sleeve description, you want to call out this direct-to-video writing and directing debut by Scott Pfeiffer as a ripoff of Kevin Costner’s The Postman — only Costner’s apoc romp was released a decade later. You may know Scott Pfeiffer’s work courtesy of his next effort, the Asian white slavery romp Merchants of Evil (1993) — and that’s only because no one ever passes up a film starring William Smith (his B&S resume). After that, Pfeiffer produced a dozen other low-budget direct-to-video features, the best known of those being a sequel to Hell Comes to Frogtown. And, in a David A. Prior twist: Scott cast his brother, James, as the lead in his two writing-directing efforts.
In this apoc-obscurity, we meet a bickering husband and wife (James Pfeiffer and Janice Carraher; she vanished from the biz shortly after) — she wants a divorce and he won’t give her one — as a radio station voice-over advises us the world is on the brink of world war. Then the ubiquitous phone call: we come to learn hubby is not only a dickhead of a husband, but a dickhead of businessman involved in a nefarious South American business deal that has “the feds sniffing around.”
Luckily, our fair lady runs off into the mountains to be with her grandad. And in those same woods, a merry band of prisoners commandeer their police transport van. And hubby has to hightail it to South America to cover up his company’s corruption, because, well, everyone needs to end up in the same patch of woods. . . .
So, all of our key players are in place. Cue the apocalypse.
America is wiped out by a voice over and stock footage nuclear war. And our just another run-of-the-mill businessman in the pre-apoc world sees the all-new, wiped-out America — well, at least west of the Rockies — as the land of opportunity. Now, is it possible that Scott Pfeiffer read David Brin’s The Postman source novel released in 1985 (Costner greatly detracted from the novel in his film version) . . . because we have another psycho-businessman (in The Postman, General Bethlehem, played by Will Patton, was a photocopier salesman) with aspirations to become the land’s new neo-fascist ruler with his merry band of warriors — courtesy of those less-educated escaped prisoners. And as they travel the countryside, the rules are simple: join us or die, just like in The Postman. Meanwhile, our ex-wife and ‘ol grandad are the leaders of a peaceful, wooded enclave. And she finds love again in the arms of — not a postman — but Wilkes (co-writer Butch Engle), a wandering trader.
Do you see where this is all going? If not for the holocaust, we’d have ended up in divorce court or ended up in a ripoff of Kramer vs. Kramer — or worse: one of those psycho-husband romps of the ’90s. Now their divorce plays out — the husband’s Raiders vs. the wife’s Traders (and let’s not forget the poor Radiated People) — in the wooded battlefields of Northern California.
Is this as bad as the Canadian in-the-woods-talking SOV apoc-romp Survival: 1990? Nope. Is it any better than the Gary Lockwood-starring South America-doubling-for-Texas apoc slop that is Survival Zone? Nope. Did this all need a touch of David A. Prior? God help me, but yes . . . for once, where was David A. Prior when we needed him with his fleet of post-apoc Jeep Cherokees and his celluloid partner-in-crime David Winters’s concrete-blocked wall space ships (i.e., the not-the Battlestar Galactica Southern Star in Space Mutiny).
The end.
You can watch Fire Fight on You Tube and here’s the trailer.
About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook.
If this movie had been made a few years earlier, it would have been a Star Wars ripoff. Instead, it’s a post-apocalyptic Mad Max-influenced film and for that, I love it that much more.
To be honest, I’ve been dying to see this movie for, oh, forty years. Why did I not choose to watch it on HBO or rent it or, you know, watch it online? It’s a mystery because this is a movie that is beyond up my alley, between starring a pre-stardom Molly Ringwald to the special effects, the fact that it was in 3-D and the fact that Michael Ironside plays a character named Overdog.
Director Lamont Johnson’s career went the whole way back to TV in the 50’s and here he is making a low budget blockbuster with Ivan Reitman producing and a script by six writers, including Jean LeFluer (who was the original director when this was to be called Adventures in the Creep Zone and was also the editor of Rabid), David Preston (The Vindicator, Are You Afraid of the Dark?), Edith Ray (Breaking All the Rules), Daniel Goldberg (Heavy Metal, Stripes, Meatballs, Cannibal Girls) and Len Plum (Private Parts).
Three women have been taken by pirates, which sends Wolff (Peter Strauss) and his engineer Chalmers (Andrea Marcovicci, The Stuff) to Terra XI, a colony that was destroyed by a plague and internecine battles.
After his partner is destroyed — turns out that she was a robot — Wolff gets help from Niki (Ringwald) and meets up with his old friend and now rival Washington (Ernie Hudson).
Seeing as how most of the crew was fired two weeks into filming and the script and tone of the film changed as the movie was being made, what ended up on screen isn’t all that horrible. I kind of like its shaggy dog nature, as this is a perfect 3D movie in that you don’t really need much of a story, just an excuse for lasers to blast and things to be shoved in your face.
That said, this is a drive-in movie as well, which is kind of funny, because drive-in screens aren’t usually silver-coated, which means that they would have to show the 2D cut of this film.
Also, you may have confused this with Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn. We’ll get to that soon enough.
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