R.O.T.O.R.

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."

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.

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.

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 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!)