Manborg

Manborg looked hilarious! The box art (although not as its IMDb poster) was enough to grab my attention immediately and it looked like I was on to a winner!

As an indie film director, and huge fan of grindhouse madness, I was so excited to get watching this.

Having sat the husband down for the night and promising him a good time, via Manborg, I found myself apologising after 20 minutes and turning the film off after struggling through another 15.

It was just too much!

I could see and understand where the film makers wanted to go with this, but to me, it just looked like they forgot to put the paintbrush down and continued touching things up more and more, until they had actually covered up the picture they had really wanted to show.

I'm glad it has done well though, I appreciate the work put in and look forward to seeing more from the team!

In the all-too bleak future, mankind has been defeated by the armies of hell. Now, the eeevil Draculon (Adam Brooks) and his malevolent minions rule from a hideous fortress-city.

Enter MANBORG (Matthew Kennedy), a cybernetic being, constructed from a soldier and various spare parts. With help from #1 Man (Ludwig Lee), Justice (Conor Sweeney), and his sister, Mina (Meredith Sweeney), MANBORG seeks to destroy Draculon and all he stands for.

Dark, ultra-gory, and absolutely hilarious, this movie takes its low-low-budgeted absurdity seriously, making what could / should have been an abysmal failure into a brilliant spectacle of intentional idiocy! From the Mina-smitten Baron (Jeremy Gillespie), to the Dr. Strangelove-inspired, Dr. Scorpius (Brooks again), and just about every other character / demon / monster / etc., this is insane moviemaking done right!

FAVORITE SCENES: #1- The gladiatorial matches! #2- Any scene with the Baron! #3- Justice and #1 Man making macaroni and cheese! #4- The fabulously fun-tastic, gut-unraveling, skull-exploding final conflict!

Is this movie an homage? Parody? Homarody? Hmmm.

P.S.- Be sure to stick around after the credits for the COMING ATTRACTIONS!...

Once upon a time, films with heavy red titles, bad electronic music, and zany special effects were all the rage. These would appear on VHS Video in the early 80's,they were totally entertaining, usually made on a shoestring budget,usually badly dubbed and had bad one liners galore. Back to the present day,we have big budgets, we have the technology, but do we still have the imagination? Manborg certainly does! This is a wild,wacky, weird,zany trip back to these days where the only thing that mattered was killing as many pizza faced baddies as you could whilst spouting bad one liners! It's not big budget, but hey, it doesn't have to be, it's non stop mayhem with many laugh out loud moments! Matthew Kennedy is brilliant as Manborg ( "i am Manborg"),Adam Brooks as the ace baddie Count Draculon,for me steals the show..closely followed by "number one man"(Ludwig Lee complete with classic bad dubbing!) This is either "hate it" or "love it" territory...i loved it!!

The horror/cult revelation of the still very young new decade is undoubtedly Astron-6. This outrageous five-headed coalition (Adam Brooks, Jeremy Gillespie, Connor Sweeney, Matthew Kennedy and Steven Kostanski) accomplished their modest breakthrough in 2011 with no less than two long feature films that appeal to the craziest of horror fans around the globe, namely the superb "Father's Day" and this demented little thing named "Manborg". I can only describe "Manborg" as a totally absurd and bizarrely creative throwback to the era of primitive video games, grotesque Science-Fiction blockbusters of the 80's and early 90's and the result of a bunch of weirdos brainstorming crazy ideas. The set pieces and decors of "Manborg" intentionally look terribly cheap and amateurish, the acting performances are deliberately and over-the-top inept and the special effects & make-up qualify as hilarious camp. The story is slightly less "all over the place" as the case in "Father's Day", but still very incoherent and chaotic. In a (distant?) future, the last remaining humans are at war against demons, zombies, vampires and a whole lot of other monstrous species from the underground. One soldier, who died at the battlefield, wakes up again in a laboratory, rebuilt as a cyborg and still in captivity of the horrendous demonic leader Draculon. Together with three other humanoid survivors (two crazed siblings and one deliciously bad-dubbed Asian martial arts hero) Manborg is forced to fight as a gladiator in a futuristic arena, but they are skilled and headstrong enough to revolt against their enemies. This is the ideal entertainment to watch at a Film Festival; together with a chock-full theater of equally avid and enthusiast freaks. The crowd literally goes wild upon being exposed to such a massive amount of gore, camp, deliberate incompetence, craziness and smut! The sound and light effects catapult you straight back to the days when you were playing "Space Invaders" on a prehistoric thick green-screen computer and the awful English dubbing of the #1 man character caused the entire audience to laugh out loud every single he opened his mouth. The screenplay is stuffed with tiny imaginative details, tongue-in-cheek references and lovely gimmicks. The design of the demons and garden variety of other creatures is quite phenomenal and they could actually qualify as genuinely horrific if used in a less light-headed scenario. Doctor Scorpius, for instance, is a much scarier looking villain than all the creeps in big budgeted blockbusters. This shouldn't come too much as a surprise, since most of the Astron-6 members have a background in special effects and/or animation. "Manborg" is marvelous and warmly recommended cult entertainment, if you have a bizarre sense of humor and a good sense of tastelessness, of course.

"Manborg" is a delightfully dopey post-apocalypse flick, played with tongue firmly in cheek. The guys keeping cheesy Bs like these alive are the Canadian collective "Astron-6", who are also responsible for "Father's Day" and "The Editor". In the world of the future, humans have been fighting the armies of Hell for some time, and are losing the war, although some people refuse to give up the fight. Matthew Kennedy plays an unnamed soldier who dies during battle, and is reincarnated as the half-machine "Manborg". He hooks up with three other warriors: feisty Mina (Meredith Sweeney), Australian-accented chatterbox "Justice" (Conor Sweeney), and the truly hilarious # 1 Man (Ludwig Lee / voice of Kyle Hebert).

Although it's not meant to be taken seriously, one has to admire some of the actors for playing it straight, which is the right way to play this sort of material in the first place. The whole thing is a marvel of visual design; it often looks like a video game. It's been stylized to a great degree by director / producer / editor / effects artist / actor Steven Kostanski, and does have an agreeable sense of humour. One of the baddies is a goon named The Baron (Jeremy Gillespie), who pines after the adorably cute Mina.

There's not a particularly big story to tell here, but that's not necessarily a bad thing; it helps to make the movie clock in at barely over an hour. (On the DVD, a promo for an Astron-6 short called "Bio Cop", and a priceless spoof of those FBI warnings on tapes and discs, helps add to the running time.)

The biggest laughs come from Hebert, a riot as the voice of # 1 Man. Adam Brooks (as the primary villain Count Draculon, and the scientist Dr. Scorpius), and Andrea Karr (as a hench woman named Shadow Mega), co-star, and they, like everybody else, play this for everything that it's worth.

The ending is rather abrupt, but in a mindless, gory, funny little diversion like this, that's not such a big issue.

Filmed in my hometown!

Seven out of 10.