Verdict
Summary
At 81 minutes, this movie is over pretty quickly, and maybe that’s a good thing. The script by J.S. Cardone (who later wrote the scripts for the remakes of When a Stranger Calls, Prom Night, and The Stepfather) is weak and clichéd. Megan Ward is cute as the heroine, but she was far too inexperienced an actress at this point in her career to seem up to snuff in the dangerous world this movie presents. The hero is average, but nothing special. That’s how I feel about this picture, which was directed by genre specialist Charles Band, who’s always known how to stretch a dollar.
Plot:
In a post-apocalyptic world, a killer cyborg hunts survivors in a TV station.
Review:
In 2030, the world is hot and people tend to stay indoors if they can. This means that most of the movie you’re about to watch is going to take place in indoor sets … and there’s typically only a few sub-genres that have subterranean / indoor settings. One type is when a mutant or cyborg (and this could mean that it looks human) is going to go on a killing spree. That’s what happens in this movie. The hero, played by Paul Ganus (with perfectly coifed 80s hair), is on a mission for Unicom, the corporation which “helps” the world in its rebuilding after an “econo-collapse,” and he is waylaid at a makeshift television station with four hot babes (two are playing porn stars) and three other men. Some information gets out that Unicom is planning to eliminate all robotic life forms, and suddenly during the night, one of the men turns up dead. It isn’t long before several of the characters are getting killed off, and the plot requires (does it always have to be this way, though?) all of the remaining characters to sit at a table and draw blood to find out which of them is the homicidal cyborg. Not much happens in this movie, although the climax is mildly cool with Terminator-style effects and stunts. A huge robot (a leftover special effect from Robot Jox and Robot Wars, movies produced by Charles Band) is revived from a junk heap and is put to use against the murderous cyborg.
At 81 minutes, this movie is over pretty quickly, and maybe that’s a good thing. The script by J.S. Cardone (who later wrote the scripts for the remakes of When a Stranger Calls, Prom Night, and The Stepfather) is weak and clichéd. Megan Ward is cute as the heroine, but she was far too inexperienced an actress at this point in her career to seem up to snuff in the dangerous world this movie presents. The hero is average, but nothing special. That’s how I feel about this picture, which was directed by genre specialist Charles Band, who’s always known how to stretch a dollar.
Full Moon has just released a great looking Blu-ray for this one, looking far superior to all of their previous DVD releases. Available in sharp widescreen now in high definition, the disc comes with a new audio commentary by Band and co-star Bill Mosely, a making-of feature, a blooper reel, and more. it’s numbered #65 on the spine.
