User reviews

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.

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.

You've heard the phrase "so bad it's good!" Well, most of the time it isn't true. It's so bad, it's just bad.

But this movie truly IS so bad it's good. The dialog is horrendous and sometimes nonsensical. And they really did try to be clever with it, for instance, there's a scene where the hero is giving a presentation on his robot to some scientists - each scientist's last name, along with the name of the place they work, is the name of a Beach Boy, and the dialog in the scene is full of really labored Beach Boys song references.

Once the robot starts following one woman and she calls the police, none of the decisions made by the hero make any sense at all.

Truly a prize turkey.

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!!

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.

This movie gets a 5 out of 10 not because it deserves five points, in fact, I don't think the quality is such that it deserves one point. But it is just so god damn bad that I love it enough to boost up the points.

To begin with, Richard Gesswein is the worst leading man ever to grace the silver screen. They had to get someone to pull a voice-over for his role, Coldyron (Yeah, that's a tough name), as well as his leading lady, Dr. Steele's part. Dr. Steele, by the way, is a bodybuilder woman with a skunk on her head.

The opening scene reveals the end of the movie immediately telling you that you are wasting an hour and a half. These three guys (the director, writer and star) came up with enough money to take RoboCop, The Terminator, and Judge Dredd (which was merely in comic book form at the time) into one completely awful masterpiece.

When we go back to the beginning of the story, the clock strikes 5:00 and Coldyron wakes up. Just as a quick note to the viewers, the filmmakers then had the clock read 4:50, as if to say, "Please, it's not too late for you, turn off the TV and RUN!" Of course, I didn't follow the directions, I just laughed. Shortly thereafter he fills up a cup of coffee with far too much sugar and you're thinking, "Wow, he sure likes sugar." (This is a joke that you will soon be hoping the filmmakers didn't find to be funny). He grabs carrots from the fridge and heads outside, to his horse. You think the carrots are for the horse, right? But he gives the horse the coffee! THAT'S why there was so much sugar! Then HE eats the carrots himself! AHA! SO FUNNY!! This is about how great the entire movie is.

Absolutely nothing makes sense in this movie. Gesswein says that ROTOR will be ready in 25 years, then says he needs at least 4. Shortly thereafter a Native American character named Shoeboogie puts his headphones in the wrong place and sparks ROTOR. It just makes no sense at all.

I won't go into too many more details, but the worst part of the entire movie must be the fact that ROTOR can take off his sunglasses AND SEE INTO THE PAST! Apparently a function called SENSOR RECALL was built into his system, but it is so insanely dumb that the screenwriter didn't even bother trying to come up with some sort of half-assed explanation. None of the technical jargon even sounds like it makes sense, but he didn't even try going into sensor recall.

You have to see SENSOR RECALL in action to truly appreciate it's sheer madness.

At the conclusion of the movie, Coldyron utilizes a technique Shoeboogie spoke of earlier to kill ROTOR, as if to tie everything together in some sort of nice neat way. One of the problems is that Shoeboogie never spoke to Coldyron. Another is that a few pieces of string defeat this unstoppable supercop.

Another is that I am trying to make sense of a movie in which the comic relief is delivered by a Robot who can think on his own, but the supercop won't be ready for another 25 years.

ROTOR is the worst movie ever made. If you can find something worse, please bring it to me, because I need it.

Please see ROTOR. It is so bad, you will hate me for making you watch it.

And then you will make all of your friends watch it...and you will love me once more.

"Look at these cheekbones: I'm either an Indian or a sissy. And, heh heh, I sure ain't no sissy." (or something like that...) -Shoeboogie

Say what you want about something like "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel" or "Wolverine", but at least they were made by people who knew the basics of movie making. Ya know, little things like making sure that it doesn't suddenly go from day to night to day again from one shot to the next, or the benefits of having two consecutive lines of dialogue that are related logically to each other, or finding actors who don't literally read from cue cards or stare at the floor to make sure they hit their marks.

After hearing about this movie's pure awfulness for so many years, I finally got to catch it on On Demand. I was hesitant to watch it because I didn't think it could possibly live up (or down) to my expectations. Needless to say, it did.

If you do choose to subject yourself to the pure bliss (or pure torture, depending on your tolerance for really bad movies) of ROTOR, make sure you stick around for the very end of the credits. No, there's no post-credits scene or anything, but you can amuse yourself with the fact that they even managed to mess up the copyright frame at the very end of the credits. It just says "(C)" with no year next to it, followed by "MPAA #" with no number next to it. My guess is that the MPAA sent it to the producers and nobody knew that they were supposed to fill it in before they inserted it. For we bad movie aficionados, it's just one more gift from the gods.

Richard Gesswein is Dr. Coldyron (if there's one thing I love about this movie, it's that name), a scientist working in the tactical / robotics department of a Texas police force. His big baby is the cutting edge robot R.O.T.O.R., which (accidentally) gets put into commission way ahead of schedule and predictably goes on a rampage. The good doctor must now go out and find his Frankenstein monster before it can harm too many people.

Man, I've seen a number of "so bad it's good" low budget B movies in my time, but this one really takes the cake. While silly and tiresome at times, it's SO bad it holds a certain fascination. It will likely have its viewers scratching / shaking their heads regularly. It's wall to wall with laughable performances and genuinely bad dialogue (and even some supposed attempts at profundity!). The action is pretty rote: our robotic villain barely roughs up a few people, kills even less, and spends most of the movies' running time relentlessly tracking down Sonia a.k.a. "Sony" (Margaret Trigg), who witnessed the killing of her ex-fiancée.

Gesswein is a dopey, mildly macho hero with a ranch and acres of goofy exposition to deliver. The memorable Jayne Smith plays an unlikely scientist who comes to the assistance of our hero. Trigg is a lovely woman and definitely appealing enough to keep us reasonably engaged through her protracted ordeal. Michael Hunter, who'd had a small role in "RoboCop" (viewers new to this one will likely automatically be reminded of that much more popular film), is the crooked commissioner Buglar, and he's a real ham.

"R.O.T.O.R." must be seen to be believed. If prospective viewers have a high tolerance for general cinematic stupidity, they just might have a high old time with it.

Five out of 10.

I've seen my share of bad movies and when I read the entertaining reviews of a truly awful film I am amazed that there always seem to be some knucklehead that gives the film a ten rating even though there is no redeeming value whatsoever. The woefully inept Ben & Arthur is a prime example. Now is the time for me to become said knuclehead as R.O.T.O.R. is one of the most entertaining bad movies ever.

Professor/Cop/degreed sci-fi writer Coldyron performed by Richard Gesswein and dubbed with the voice of Loren Bivens (Why? Did he have a British accent?) has created the prototype cop of the inevitably lawless future with the help of man/woman/beast Dr. Steele (Jayne Smith) the only scientist in the world with a skunk mullet. After an accident at the Tactical Operations Lab, which also happens to be the Dallas Hilton, R.O.T.O.R. becomes operational a full twenty five years too early. Somehow he acquires skin and a uniform complete with porn star mustache and desert eagle and begins his tour of duty. When a couple is pulled over for speeding by R.O.T.O.R. he executes the driver causing the passenger Sonya (Margaret Trigg) to flee the scene with the maniacal machine in pursuit. This is the bulk of the movie. Poor Sonya has to drive nonstop for hours on end while Coldyron and Dr. Steele babble in lame pseudo-intellectual speak about how to stop R.O.T.O.R. Lucky for her that it takes at least 5-7 seconds before R.O.T.O.R. can aim and pull the trigger. The ending is even more absurd as R.O.T.O.R. is defeated quite easily with the right combination of car horn and thin rope.

The dialogue is what makes this movie so much fun. There is a scene where Coldyron meets the "L.A. scientists" and the inclusion of Beach Boy references makes the whole thing sound absolutely bizarre. The cast and crew of the Dallas Tactical Operations Lab are a hodgepodge of stereotypical eighties characters, hipster janitor, dorky scientist, and his comic relief sidekick in the form of the annoying Willard the Robot. One quip has Willard asking a female secretary for "those seven digits" which begs to ask what he would do once he had them. The pacing of the story takes some interesting liberties as Coldyron gets a call from his boss and is suddenly fired yet he is still a cop? This scene is followed by an inexplicable montage of Coldyron and his girlfriend going to lunch with the synth-heavy "Hideaway" song. Did they really think that the viewer needed to see this? As bad as this all seems I found myself with a smile on my face as this ended which is the ultimate purpose of this movie, to entertain. Those of you who remember the eighties ought to give this epitome of a good/bad movie a view.

ROTOR is an absolutely beautiful disaster. It is astoundingly hilarious because every other decision made in the making of the movie will make you scream "WHY?!" or questioning your sanity, or both.

The premise is that Captain Coldyron has created ROTOR, AKA Robotic Operations Tactical Operations Research.which as the movie goes on makes less and less sense. Instead of exciting or thrilling action or chase scenes, we get a board room meeting where Coldyron explains his project to a bunch of people, followed by a scene where he's on the phone with a jackass politician forcing him to get ROTOR ready way ahead of schedule.

About 13 hours into the movie, we're finally introduced to ROTOR, whose one weakness is of course... car horns. His first act of breaking his ethical subroutines involves murdering a whiney speeding doofus, leaving his poor fiancé to fend for herself for the rest of the film.

In all the scenes with ROTOR, things are just laughable, especially where somehow the character Sonya escapes from him with no explanation whatsoever!!!!(It's something you'll have to see for yourself). Oh, also, ROTOR apparently has Doctor Strange's time stone because he can see through the fabric of space and time. There's also an absolutely hysterical scene with Coldyron having lunch with his lady friend and instead of advancing the plot, it just serves to waste our time, especially since the only thing we hear is an obvious 80's song.

ROTOR is an absolutely laughable mess. It's great to watch with a party of friends or just when you're home alone looking for one of those movies that truly fits the bill of "So bad it's good."

What would happen if you gave a sixth-grader $50 and told him to shoot a movie based on his short story that incorporates his favorite elements of THE TERMINATOR and ROBOCOP? You'd end up with R.O.T.O.R, a direct-to- video gem from 1987. This movie is amazing in the worst way possible. R.O.T.O.R. seems to have been a joint collaboration between Budd Lewis (who wrote the script and performed as production designer) and Cullen Blaine (who directed the film and conceptualized the "story") with hopes of capitalizing on the two far more popular/successful films. The movie follows Captain Barrett Coldyron (Richard Gesswein), head of the Dallas Police Department's technology lab. As the story begins, he's presenting a status update on his current project, R.O.T.O.R. (an acronym that stands for Robotic Officer something something), to a boardroom of suits. R.O.T.O.R. will be the ultimate law enforcement of the future but it won't be ready for another twenty-five years. But twenty-five years is far too long, according to Coldyron's boss. Investors want results now, so Coldyron needs to finish this project in the next sixty days. Knowing that's a bunch of crap, Coldyron quits. Within hours of Coldyron's dismissal, a janitor accidentally awakens R.O.T.O.R. with his Walkman and the robot officer jumps into action. But, uh oh, someone accidentally set this robot to evil and he murders a man for excessive speed in his first traffic stop. When the victim's fiancé goes on the run, R.O.T.O.R. makes it his mission to find her and put a bullet in her head and it's up to Coldyron to find the machine and put him down before he can do any more damage.

There's so much to love about R.O.T.O.R. Short of doing this as a bullet-point list, it'd be impossible to mention it all. Let's start with the plot. The writing in this movie is atrocious. The character of R.O.T.O.R. is a lazy blend of the Terminator (a seemingly unstoppable mechanical killing-machine) and Robocop (a robotic police officer meant to be the wave of the law enforcement future). The main differences being that R.O.T.O.R. lacks the humanity of Robocop and, whereas the Terminator was sent from the future to kill the woman who will birth a powerful anti-machine resistance leader, R.O.T.O.R.'s mission over the course of this film is to hunt down a woman and execute her as an accessory to excessive speeding. R.O.T.O.R. is slow, stupid, and vulnerable to loud noise (e.g. car horns). That's right, the world's most advanced technology and future "peacekeeper" is easily defeated by the noise of rush hour traffic. I suppose we should keep in mind that R.O.T.O.R. was awoken twenty-five years too soon and his programming wasn't complete. But then, why does he already have a locker (fully-stocked with uniform and sidearm) and his own personal motorcycle (on display in the lobby behind a velvet rope) if he's not even scheduled to be completed for another quarter- century? Why is Coldyron, the man in charge of the R.O.T.O.R. program, surprised to discover that the robot is programmed to be evil? Its prime directive is set as "To Judge and Execute"; it's even got it printed on the side of his R.O.T.O.R.-cycle.

Oh man, that Coldyron. He looks like Ted Danson in a blonde mullet wig and he's the only character in the movie redubbed in post-production. Why is that? Did Gesswein speak a foreign language and needed to be dubbed in English? I feel like this movie was too cheap for that. Was the performance bad enough to warrant redubbing? Am I to understand that the dubbed voice is somehow the "better" performance? Oh man, I've just got so many questions that will go forever unanswered. Did Cullen Blaine and Budd Lewis know they were making a bad movie? Was it done on purpose as a gag? We get hints of it in the film with some self-aware humor from the character of Houghtaling (Stan Moore, who was also the production manager and in charge of stunts), the man who takes control of the R.O.T.O.R. program when Coldyron quits ("What do you think this is? A low budget sci-fi flick? What could go wrong?"). I hope this movie isn't awful on purpose; movies like this are more fun when they were done in earnest. Someone, somewhere was proud of this movie. They were sure not to waste a single cent of the budget, using every little bit of aerial helicopter footage they had on hand and forcing us to listen to an entire (horrible) country tune from start to finish. That country tune, by the way, plays through a painful sequence where we live out an entire morning on Coldyron's farmstead. Just padding that run time with a whole lot of nothing.

I hope this all sounds as crazy to you as it appeared to me. I haven't even gotten to some of the best parts yet. There's a perpetually-stoned wise- cracking police robot and a sassy Native American janitor named Shoeboogie who uses white guilt to hit on women. There's a fantastic stop-motion robot skeleton when Coldyron is demonstrating R.O.T.O.R. to the boardroom. There's a mind-boggling three minutes of exposition in the very beginning (in the form of text crawl and voice-over narration) just to explain what this movie's about. It's nuts. This movie is straight-up nuts. Am I recommending R.O.T.O.R.? 100% yes. Go watch this movie. I'm sure it can be found online somewhere. Get your friends together, get wasted, and watch this movie.

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!)

Brace yourself! If you decide to watch R.O.T.O.R., you're in for a unique and once-only journey into an obscure dimension of unequally bad B-cinema. This movie is awful beyond all known definitions of the term. People with a low tolerance for inept cinema are likely to faint or even die from a stroke during the first half hour already and even experienced bad movie fanatics will, in fact, face severe difficulties to sit through R.O.T.O.R from start to finish. Imagine everything – and I do mean every slightest thing – that can go wrong in a film, and you pretty much have an apt description of R.O.T.O.R. We're talking basic story ideas that desperately attempt to cash-in on previous blockbusters ("The Terminator", "Robocop") abominable acting performances from a largely amateur cast, completely incoherent narrative structure (with flashbacks within flashbacks etc…), errors in continuity that are as large as life itself, miserable dialogs and pathetic attempts at inserting comical elements, a soundtrack that makes you want to rip off your ears, "special" effects accomplished without any budgetary means and– hands down – the most pathetic depiction of a cyborg ever. The guy has a naturally grown mustache, for crying out loud! Scientist slash witty copper Coldyron is working on the ultimate mechanical policeman; the so-called Robotic Officer Tactical Operation Research or, as you guessed, R.O.TO.R. Due to an overload of complaints and work pressure from his superiors, Coldyron abandons the project (how devoted he is…) and his incompetent assistants take over. Needless the say the incomplete android breaks loose and goes on a relentless killing spree. Although …"killing spree" might be a bit exaggerated since he chases a girl in a car most of the time. At some point, still early during the production, I presume the cast & crew realized R.O.T.O.R was going to become a gigantic failure and so they started adding ridicule self-parody and even hugely irritating jokes about everything resembling a "Bad B-Movie". Especially the stupid android – behaving as annoying as C3PO from "Star Wars" and wearing a police cap on his metal head – ought to shut up! This is surely one of the dumbest movies ever made but, as several of my fellow reviewers already pointed out, it's almost impossible to really hate the film. You mostly feel sorry for all the people involved and continuously hope they got psychiatric help afterwards.

I watched this movie a while ago because the poster image is so amazing. That's one of the best posters ever (even though it's copying Mad Max). But that's the only thing good about the whole movie. Nothing works in it...

Some people seem to put it into "so bad that it's good" category but for me it didn't do even that. I just found it to be one of the most painfully boring movies I've seen. If you want an action movie that is so lacking of any action that can be, then check it out. If you decide to watch it, be prepared for a slow, boring bad movie. Then you might be in for a funny weird experience. Don't ever, ever watch it when you expect cool action.

This is a train wreck of a movie. It starts bad and finishes even worse. Someone must have seen the Terminator and Robocop and thought, "I can do that for less money than that". The acting is BAD, (not bad meaning good), and includes an obvious transvestite playing a female engineer, which could have been a great example of "camp" casting, except that the movie expects us to believe that this is a real woman!!! The reason that this film doesn't work as a piece of "camp" is that the movie takes itself too seriously -- a good camp film must inherently know it's campy, and be able to convey that to the audience to work.

There couldn't possibly be 67 films worse than R.O.T.O.R ! WHAT'S UP SUPERDOC is, but no-one seems to have heard of that one!

Packed with actors still trying to crack the "Z" list and inexplicably looking like an early seventies release, this cinematic flotsam rules supreme. Dumb and insultingly stupid from go to whoa, this pathetic ROBOCOP for dummies must have been produced inside a $2000 budget, including the actors salaries. They were WAY overpaid, as was the special effect(s) person. R.O.T.O.R. himself/itself would be at long odds to control a children's crossing....freaking out was the only sensible option left to take.

Not campy enough to be funny, not "bad" enough to be memorable, not worthy enough to make any further comment!

One night in a barn a cow took a dump next to a pain inducing triangular seat. A witch with a long arm came in the room with the word 'no' strapped to the side of her head as she eats a fresh sandwich. She or he (a tiny god engine) opens a truck hood and trys to operate a brocken on/off switch with the firmness of a candycain. The witch slides over on the floor in a laying down position with a goodhearted dog chasing her. At night when all the films characters (some attempting to signal others) are watching a sliver moon together, a mattress and tumbleweeds drifts down i-13 and into a wal-mart check out line and ask, "do you got a good mother i could have?"

OK, most of the idiocy here is obvious, but here's what I want to know:

How could anyone be so dumb as to think a robot cop who is programmed to act as judge, jury, and executioner would catapult its sponsor to the White House, even if it worked perfectly?

Now, I can see how a talented demagogue might be able to whip up a temporary popular enthusiasm for such a thing. However, party apparatuses have a great deal to say about who gets nominated to run for President.

The intellectuals, activists, and theoreticians of *both* major parties would be horrified at the prospect of such a vigilante robot army; the Democrats on left-libertarian rights-theory grounds, the Republicans based on conservative suspicion of the Leviathan state and the concentration of power. There is simply no way that the ROTOR project would boost its sponsor's political career. If anything, rather the opposite.

So how is this guy going to become President?

Yeah, I know, I know; if *that's* what bothers me about ROTOR...