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!!!?!).

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

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!