Cyberzone

me and a coupla friends form university - alberto lopez, dave hall, celina alcock (we graduated from uea, norwich, uk in 1997) still get together and watch b-movies once a month.

We are consummate experts in the art of bad movie-making, and this film was quickly placed in the top 10 of awful/brilliant movies.

so if you've just got the beers and weed in, and need a film to laugh like a drain at, DROID GUNNER aka PHOENIX 2 is the film for you! Marc Singer is totally aware he's in a turkey of a film here, and milks it for everything he can! Matthius Hues is sublime in his wooden acting and musclebound moronity (is that a word??) as he grunts "But I want my 20 thousand!" Pure Shlock Gold! If you liked this, also see: TRANCERS, THE RUNESTONE, DOLLMAN and anything by Charles Band or Fred Olen Ray.....(but be warned: some of their films are completely and utterly without merit and you'll be screaming for those lost hours of your life!!!?!).

A futuristic bounty hunter is assigned to track down four female androids smuggled to Earth for illicit purposes.

Busy director Fred Olen Ray's Cyber Zone aka Phoenix 2, Droid Gunner is as bland and heavy handed as they come. In this cheap Bladerunner and The Terminator rip-off Marc Singer is his likeable usual nonchalant self. Rochelle Swanson along with Singer know what type of film they're in but Matthias Hues (Dark Angel) looks uncomfortably duped and disappointed.

While borrowing lines and plot points from other better films, it feels DTV rather than B-movie. Some sound effects are not in sync but the score delivers. The sporadic action is clunky, the effects limited, but some miniatures, notable the underwater segments look pretty good. Ray offers a lot of nudity and soft-core moments pushing the adult rating. The locations and sets are a mixed bag, some backdrops are interesting while others look as if they were filmed in a hotel lobby or stage.

Overall, if script-less, stolen droid and cyborgs with super low budget Total Recall-like mutants is your thing, you may want to take a look. But be warned Ridley Scott, James Cameron and Paul Verhoeven maybe be disappointed with you.

Don't be misled by the phrase "rated R for nudity and strong sex scene". The scene in question is not strong (though it is a bit lengthy for no apparent reason) but does have a bit of humor at the end.

Rochelle Swanson turns in a strong performance as a technician assigned to assist Marc Singer in recovering 4 "pleasure droids" which have been smuggled into Phoenix for eventual shipment to New Angeles. Have I lost you? Ok, from the top.

In the future, Earth suffers a strong earthquake, which causes California and Nevada to slide into the ocean. It seems that most of America's beautiful women were in California at the time of the tragedy and so technology has created android human-lookalikes to serve Man's carnal pleasures (no, no strong sex scene here, either). There are 3 civilizations in the future: a) a cloud city where the wealthy, intelligent people live; b) the surface, where mutants and the dregs of society live; and c) New Angeles, a new community being build under the sea, which forbids sinful activities. So where are the droids being sent? Yep, New Angeles, where a crimelord is going to set up a monopoly on sex, gambling, booze, drugs, and more sex.

Singer is hired to recover the stolen pleasure droids by the owner, who also assigns Swanson to tag along with Singer to make sure he doesn't blow the droids away. Swanson does a good job playing the beautiful technician and most of the humor comes during her scenes. For example, Singer has entered the throne of the surface crimelord to recover a bounty on a dead droid. The crimelord offers Singer 10,000 for Swanson. Singer looks over at her (her expression is great here), and declines the offer. After exiting the throne room, Swanson asks what that was all about, and Singer replies "Down here, your value is reduced to the worth of your body, sometimes just the value of a watch." Since Swanson knows that she is worth 10,000, she asks Singer what he's worth. "About 5,000. Too many bullet holes."

The quality of the film is about average for a "B" level film. The supporting actors do a passable job, but don't look for a range of emotion from anyone. Swanson is a dead ringer for television's "Wonder Woman" Linda Carter, but no, she doesn't have any nude scenes. Singer does a good impersonation of Harrison Ford's "Blade Runner" character (though I didn't like the porkchop sideburns they stuck him with). Mathias Hues does a good job as the smuggler who becomes Singer's assistant in recovering the droids when the New Angele crimelord double crosses him. And look for Brinke Stevens as a mutant strip dancer (took me a second to recognize her - I never forget a pair of, ah, er, arms).

See this film for Swanson's performance. The rest is just the stuff needed to give the film a plot.

Cyberzone slaps a bit of Blade Runner and a bit of Star Wars together and throws plenty of boobies into the mix. Of corse, the notorious movie crimelord Fred Olen Ray is behind the film.

The plot fits on a coaster: German powerhouse Matthias Hues steals a couple of horny brothel androids and Marc Singer is supposed to collect the Sexbots programmed for total lack of bras.

The main actors do a pretty decent job, but the lack of craftsmanship and the cheap tricks and props are once again hair-raising. Nobody can tell me that 2077 looks exactly like 1995! They've recreated a small alleyway and another wooden façade and they keep strolling past it. They blow a lot of smoke into the studio, so nobody notices that the dystopian metropolis is only 15 x15 feet in size.

The space battles aren't any better. They must have been made by a child using a vintage Atari. And why do people wear motorcycle helmets in space? Does that protect you in the event of a spaceship crash?

Oh, why do I ask such stupid questions? Anyway, the movie is definitely entertaining. Check it out!

This film is a "B" movie impersonation of "BladeRunner", but without the great acting of Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer, the fantastic cinematography, and the character development of the original story. Instead, we have Mark Singer doing a decent job at imitating Harrison Ford's character but there really is no character to match Rutger Hauer's android portrayal. The closest thing is Matthias Hues playing a smuggler-turned-sidekick. There's Rochelle Swanson in the role of the hero's love interest instead of Sean Young, and Swanson does a much better job of keeping my interest in the film than any of the other actors. I counted three opportunities for Rochelle Swanson to take off her clothes: a) when she sneaks into the brothel as a prostitute; b) when she comes running out of the brothelowner's room; c) when she's alone with the owner of New Angeles and he's trying to judge her qualities as a "pleasure droid". I guess they just didn't pay her enough money to do the nude scenes. They should've written the space battle parts out of the script and offered the money savings to Rochelle, because, really, she's the best reason to see this film.

Most of the other female characters get naked, including a part at the beginning where Brinke Stevens is dancing on the local bar's stage, but nothing very erotic or adventurous. Nobody gets tied up or beaten, there's no gore (except for some wires coming out of an adroid's mouth), no scary parts, and no suspense. The big fight scene is just like any other gunfight scene out of a 1970's tv show - a couple guys crouching down shooting their pieces at a couple of other guys crouching down shooting their pieces. At least we're spared any goofy space suits or costumes.

Worth watching twice. First for the plot, then for Rochelle.