Robotor

There are bad movies that are funny. Bad movies that are boring. Bad movies that are offensive. And then there are bad movies that are just plain incompetent. You can't get angry at these movies, because it's obvious they were made by people who simply didn't have the talent or the budget to make something even halfway decent. "R.O.T.O.R" is one such movie. You know where you stand right from the beginning, where you can spot the most ludicrously mismatched day-and-night shots since "Plan 9 From Outer Space". Thankfully, the "filmmakers" don't take themselves too seriously, as is immediately evident by the continuous flow of campy and corny dialogue (about half of which is hard to understand anyway, due to its mumbled delivery). The leading actor gives an amazingly narcotized performance...and as for R.O.T.O.R., well, if Robocop had been so inept he wouldn't have lived to be in the sequels. I'd give it 0.5 stars out of 4.

R.O.T.O.R. is one of those films us Homo sapiens should put into a time capsule so that future generations/civilizations can witness a glorious achievement in 'film' which captures the zeitgeist of the nineteen eighties. Forget the Berlin wall falling or the end of the Cold War, R.O.T.O.R. is the greatest achievement of 1989 and director Cullen Blaine was Man of the Year. Not only is this the cinematic gem the worst thing ever put on celluloid, it also shares the dichotomous distinction of being the funniest film ever made. A perennial favorite at 'bad movie nights with friends', this piece of solid gold belongs in a film museum somewhere.

I have seen many terrible movies, most of which can be fun to watch if only to make fun of them. This movie is worse than those. The dialogue is terribly delivered (the best delivery is from the comic-relief robot!), terribly written (contrived, preachy, and generally painful). As an example, the dialogue is littered with things like "I am going to make more noise than two skeletons making love in a tin coffin." And by littered I don't mean a sprinkle, I mean virtually wall to wall, most of it is even completely gratuitous. Also any movie that has a line like "what is this some kind of bad sci-fi flick". Just avoid this movie. It sucks you in. I sat watching wondering how it could get any worse... and it does. Each twist and turn takes this movie deeper into the abyss. 1/10 (which is as low as it goes!)

Police robotics expert Captain Coldyron (Richard Gesswein) attempts to track down R.O.T.O.R., a renegade robot cop who punishes every crime with death.

R.O.T.O.R. has me completely baffled: it's a dreadful 80s sci-fi film that rips off other better known classics (notably RoboCop and The Terminator), but while there's nothing particularly unusual about that, it is so thoroughly terrible in every imaginable way that it's hard to understand how such a dire film actually came into being. Gesswein's charmless performance; the pitiful action scenes; the lousy 80s music; the embarrassingly bad stop-motion endoskeleton that practises karate; Dr. Steele, the muscle-bound female scientist with the 'skunk-stripe' hairdo; Shoeboogie, the moronic 'American Indian' lab assistant; Willard, the comedy-relief police robot with the peaked cap; the diabolical dialogue (my favourite line being from Coldyron's strangely poetic account to the police "a buttery morning sunlight painted a golden glow through the ranch house windows"; the man sure has a way with words): so much cringe-worthy nonsense in just the one film is hard to take.

Although part of me would like to believe that R.O.T.O.R.'s awfulness was intentional, a calculated attempt to appeal to B-movie fans who lap up such trash, I sincerely doubt it, the film alternating too wildly between complete inanity and total seriousness; part of me would also dearly love this to be a genuine case of bad film-making (the 80s being THE decade for such drivel), but I find it impossible to accept that people can be THAT untalented.

My friend Dave and I went to our local newsagents to see if we could hire out RoboCop. This was back in the days when you could rent videos from newsagents, before laws were introduced to stop the assistants from recommending films. Unfortunately for us, such laws had yet to be invented and this lady behind the counter said that they didn't have RoboCop yet, but they had R.O.T.O.R. Now being young and naïve, we looked at the box and saw that both films had similar letters in their titles and R.O.T.O.R. had a picture of a robot man jumping off a bike and firing a gun. WE WERE SOLD!!

My therapist thinks that a lot of my current problems stem back to this film and our decision to hire it. I have tried to block it from my mind, but it's burned in there and it won't go, it just flashes images from the film at me from time to time.

Here's what it just flashed at me:

There's a stainless steel Desert Eagle in it. How do I remember that? Because I think it's the only pistol they had in the film. Watch for the bit when R.O.T.O.R. is in the boat and he's going to fall I the water, and the DE turns into a toy Colt Python. I could just imagine some redneck off screen saying `You ain't getting' my sweetheart, I mean Desert Eagle, wet. That gun an me have a special relationship. She's real pretty.'

From what I remember of the story, this woman makes some kind of driving violation, so R.O.T.O.R. chases her across the country and tries to kill her. His programming has gone wrong so he'll kill anyone who gets in his way. Harsh? Yes it is, but if the punishment for speeding was death then we'd all drive a little more carefully.

Well, the budget isn't quite up to that of Water World, and I think that it was made by a group of friends (one of who was going through that transition of man to woman), but I can't really get mad at these guys 'cos at least they tried.

However, heed my warning. If a motorcycle cop who looks like a bulimic Ned Flanders ever stops you, then run for your life! You might just have met the R.O.T.O.R!!