Droid Gunner

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.

Cyber zone, as this DVD was sold in Oz, is about the worst B-Grade junk I have seen. Apart from a restrained deadpan act from Singer, indicating he knew how bad the movie was going to be, the other actors sway about genuine attempts at line delivery (Swanson and Quarry) or absurd imitations of classic movies scenes. Mathius Hues makes the most ham-fisted portrayal of dying since Jim Carrey's Mask. All of this with no real thread to suggest an attempt at a spoof by genre, period or any common vein is plain annoying. Don't even try to join the dots with the plot. It is Blade Runner, thinly disguised with no content, actors or scenery due to a very limited budget. "You gets what you pay for" is never more apparent. There is repeatedly annoying re-use of limited sets, with no attention to set dressing and a spew of special effects that would have hit the cutting room floor for Dr Who in 1976. The Helicopter explosion is worth a rewind to demonstrate my point. Of course there are masochists that will lap up this tripe but if you are watching this movie for a bet, make sure you get more than your pay rate. At $2 this DVD will make a cheap and interesting beer coaster.

I was given this film by my uncle who had got it free with a DVD magazine. Its easy to see why he was so keen to get rid of it. Now I understand that this is a B movie and that it doesn't have the same size budget as bigger films but surely they could have spent their money in a better way than making this garbage. There are some fairly good performances, namely Jack, Beth and Hawks, but others are ridiculously bad (assasin droid for example). This film also contains the worst fight scene I have ever seen. The amount of nudity in the film did make it seem more like a porn film than a Sci-Fi movie at times.

In conclusion - Awful film

With Matthias Hues on the cover and only $3.00, i had to buy it. I enjoyed some moments, like Hawks annoyance with the pleasure droids, but i only really watched to see Matthias Hues' scenes. I particularly enjoyed the showdown at the end. It was a cross between Clint Eastwood's "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" and "For a Few Dollars More" (a 3 man quick-draw showdown, with a musical pocket watch used as the countdown timer). Apart from that, there's really nothing more I can add. The actors gave good performances, (all except the "Assassin Droid" whose performance was nothing outside of comical) but the movie really lacked depth and purpose; simply not enough to fill up 1hour and a half of standard movie time, so we're stuck with the main characters aimlessly wondering around from place to place for an hour or so, until the ball gets rolling. For example, the main character returns to the same strip club about 4 times, taking up two-fifths of the movie.

The scenery really lacked depth and creativity, probably due to the films budget. I don't think we ever did get to see this "perfect city" of New Angeles that was always talked about, in fact, when the main characters finally reached New Angeles, its set in a factory or warehouse full of pipes and walkways; hardly the kind of "kingdom" the owner/creator of an entire city would dwell in. The "super-high security" of New Angeles was also always talked about, but only a total of 15, maybe 20, security guards were counted, even when the alarm went off; not even close to Matthias' approximation of "at least a hundred men out there".

If you are a fan of any of the actors/actresses in this film, then you may want to watch it, simply to "add it to the list". However, if you value 1 and a half hour of your time, or $3.00 of your money, you may want to give this one a miss.