R.O.T.O.R.

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.

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.

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.