Manborg

Knocked unconscious in battle, a young soldier wakes up to discover that he has been turned into a cyborg capable of fighting the (literal) demons of hell in this affectionate homage to the sci-fi themed action movies of the 1980s. The film owes a particular debt to 'RoboCop', but the movie brings a lot of humour of its own beyond spoofing the likes of 'The Terminator' with a particularly funny running gag involving a lovesick baddie with artificial eyes. Creative as 'Manborg' is, it is certainly not a film for all tastes. The deliberately shoddy green screen special effects take time to get used too; same goes for the intentionally over-the-top dubbing of an Asian man and the stop motion monster effects. It is really quite a magnificent achievement though when one considers its parodying of 80s cheese; the film even opens like a VHS tape and has a comical copyright warning at the end that is worth sitting through. There is even an awesome trailer for the most over-the-top cop film ever after the end credits roll. None of this ingenuity can quite make up for the loose character development and thin plotting of the actual film, but this is not the type of movie that one really watches for something deep and meaningful. It is a fun tribute to the films of yesterday and a surprisingly thrilling one at that with some well crafted action sequences when one gets over the cheesy special effects.

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!

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.

Imagine an awe-inspiring vision of an inferno descending onto Earth, with machines and demons decimating the last vestiges of mankind. Such an apocalypse brought to life on the big screen could be something brooding and chilling. It could be epic.

This is not that movie.

Manborg is a cheap, silly, ridiculous little film, and it knows it. It has action, certainly, and plenty of gnarly bloodshed and gratuitous special effects. However, the delivery of the action, dialogue, and the overall story is so over-the-top, so silly, and so cheesy that it's hilarious. Most of the characters here sound like they came from a Mortal Kombat video game, thanks to the overdubbed dialogue. One character even tries to fight MK style. One lady fights like she came straight out of an anime, complete with cheap sound effects and streaky lines behind her. Most other special effects look like they came from the original Doom PC game, because they are that cheap. The film is short and pretty fast, but more importantly, it made me laugh pretty often.

The story for this is not an inherently bad idea: I kinda do wish somebody in Hollywood would make a big-scale apocalypse story like this, with the actual forces of Hell being unleashed on the planet (they totally blew it when they adapted Doom). If this same movie was handled with a big budget, big stars, and a distinguished director, it probably would have been awesome. If this movie was a video game instead, it would have been awesome as well. But as it is, the film plays things well within its limitations, keeping things purposefully small-scale and cheap, and simultaneously silly. There are scenes that reminded me a lot of other movies or games - The Terminator, Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein, The Running Man, Fist of the North Star, and other stuff all came to mind. Regardless, the film is pretty fun, even if it lacks depth or originality.

This film is very cheaply shot and edited, with gaudy and weird special effects that looked like they came from the stone age. Acting is very silly and over-the-top, and with dubbed dialogue, it's rendered even more hilarious. Writing is very silly. This production uses some very cheap sets, props, and costumes. The music score tries so hard to be cool.

If you're looking for something awesomely cheesy and funny, this film will satisfy.

2.5/5 (Entertainment: Good | Story: Marginal | Film: Awful)