Cybernator (1991) Starring Lonnie Schuyler, Jeff Jenkins, Christina Peralta & Jack Senior Written by Robert Rundle & Edward Sanchez Directed by Robert Rundle

Thank the devil for 1991's CYBERNATOR. 'Cause around the 6-minute mark, that's exactly who shows up, grinding n' writhing like the professional harlot she no doubt is, in front of a gathered collection of apathetic extras whose "futuristic look" is achieved by gluing random refrigerator replacement parts all over their faces.

Where Ridley Scott failed, Robert Rundle succeeds, control-alt-deleting Scott's much vaunted striking imagery, layered narrative, visionary sci-fi trailblazing, moving character moments, and provocative ambiguousness, ...in favor of scantily clad women, poorly choreographed fight scenes, garish lighting, a production budget roughly equal to that of BLADE RUNNER's craft services budget, and more action movie clichés than Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal, or even Dolph Lundgren could ever possibly stomach in a single motion picture.

Thank you, Mr. Rundle, for reminding us that every angel has a demon, and every whip-smart, brilliantly crafted, modern cinema masterpiece has a low brow, haphazardly constructed, blue collar bad taste-laden counterpart. I tell ya, it is guys like Robert Rundle who keep film a truly democratic, populist artform. Hail!

Seriously, CineMasochists should take note, 'cause CYBERNATOR (no relation to the S.N.E.S. game of the same name) is a doozy. Regular visitors to the Satellite Of Love will eat this loveably mangy mongrel movie up like Velveeta-smeared Spam from the can (mm-mmm, every bit as tasty as it nasty, just like this movie!). This is a grade-A piece-of-shit "Bad Movie" with a capital B and a capital M. And I love, love, looooove it.

CYBERNATOR takes place in the "tomorrow world" of 2010. Ha! That's one of those things about older "futuristic" science fiction movies I never get tired of. At the same time, I tend to be pretty bummed out by the fact that the era in which I live is nothing at all like what flicks like BACK TO THE FUTURE 2, THE RUNNING MAN, or CYBERNATOR have promised me. No hoverboards, no televised deathsports, and no cyborgs. Major let-down, eh?

Anyway, our story is set in a bleak, futuristic metropolis (and when I say the thing looks bleak and futuristic, I mean that we get one shot of what has to be the least convincing "future cityscape" matte painting these ol' eyes have ever seen, and then a lot of shots of people running around during the daytime just outside some godforsaken Los Angeles suburb). In the opening scene, we find a craggy ol' politico hamming it up big-time whilst cheatin' on his wife with a bubble-headed bovine prostitute, before ultimately gettin' offed by a trio of borgs, one of whom is a supremely sexy android floozy, and another of whom looks like a bottom-dollar hybrid of a Cenobite and one of those mummified Sutekh-worshippers from RETRO PUPPERMASTER, wearing a black vinyl poncho and a bunch of plastic tubes stapled to a bald cap, giving his portrayal of Roy Batty by way of Adrian Zmed (ouch). This scene sets the tone for the whole movie, in that it's absolutely atrocious, but in an ecstatically enjoyable way. The scene, as with the entire film in general, is rife with bad acting and even worse dialogue, which (I think) is supposed to be "slyly" humorous, but really only succeeds in being humorous by how terrible (and terribly pun-laden) it is.

We then meet our heroes, trigger-happy detectives Brent "Generic Rogue Cop" McCord and Jim "Human Shield" Weaver, ogling naked girls like any self-respecting officer of the law, at a strip club set which looks left over from a grade school play (why a grade school would ever put on play set in a strip club, I'll never know). You can tell McCord is the hero because he's got the classic disheveled "maverick" look, complete with trenchcoat, stubble, and stylishly mussed hair. This square-jawed buffoon is your standard "renegade officer" stereotype. You know the type, the kind of guy who "doesn't play by the rules," and who comes complete with the requisite mysterious past, dark demeanor, and headstrong attitude. There's not a scene that goes by where he's not sportin' a five o' clock shadow and a glower that makes him look as though someone just shit in his cereal. I guess he was going for "pensive," or perhaps "hard-boiled." Personally, all I got out of it was "dagnabbit, there's dookie in my Kix again." Kid tested, mother approved.

Speaking of McCord's vacuous visage, I have to point out the fact that the actor playing the role is a rather enthusiastic practitioner of an, ahem, "interesting" acting technique. A kind person would say he has an expressive face. I, meanwhile, prefer to put it like this: the man looks like he's got extreme medical spasticity in his facial muscles. The guy's mug is always going in nine different directions at once.

While McCord is busy looking like Michael Biehn's self-hating second cousin, his straight-laced African-American partner (who is naturally doomed to die by virtue of his skin pigmentation) Weaver is apparently pursuing a side career as a fucking ammo magnet! In the first half-hour, we get two different shootouts, and Weaver gets dropped in the crossfire in the first six seconds of both of 'em. It's a riot. You get the sense that this type of thing happens to these guys every friggin' time they step out of the squad car.

I now present to you a transcript of the never-before-seen, previously thought lost, deleted prologue scene from Robert Rundle's undisputed masterpiece, CYBERNATOR:

-McCord and Weaver are riding in their squad car-

"Hey, McCord, pull over at that K.F.C. I'm gonna get me some orange soda and good ol' fried chicken. Yes suh!"

"Sure thing."

-car parks, door opens, Weaver gets out and start walking toward the entrance of his beloved fast food eatery-

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

"Oh my god! What was that? Weaver, are you okay?!?"

"Yeah, McCord, I'm just fine. Just got shot a few times."

"Oh, alright."

"Yeah. Same old, same old."

"You want me to call the paramedics?"

"Nah. Just give me a minute to grab me one o' them succulent Double Down sammich thingies. Thems is some gooood eatin', yes suh."

"Well, I sure hope none of those eleven herbs n' spices fall out of any of those big-ass bullet holes decorating your abdomen after you eat 'em. Then again, that might help you to lose some of the pounds you been puttin' on since you started eatin' lead on a regular basis. Oh ho ho ho ho ho ho!"

"Ha ha ha ha ha! McCord, you is one crazy cracker!"

-end of scene-

Even funnier is the fact that his partner McCord, our hero, doesn't even check on him until much, much, much, much later, nor does he even call for an ambulance. No "medic!" No "officer down!" Nothing.

The first gun battle occurs at the aforementioned strip club, when our intrepid protagonists find their night of lecherous entertainment interrupted when a couple kill-crazy cyborgs with bad attitudes (and worse wardrobes) show up and assassinate a senator who was gettin' some naughty stripper lovin' in a back room.

After that, the coppers start snoopin' around to see what the heck is goin' down, much to the chagrin of their hardcase police chief who (surprise, surprise) is constantly complaining about McCord's methods. The chief by the way, is instantly recognizable as Jay Richardson, of HOLLYWOOD CHAINSAW HOOKERS, SLASH DANCE, WIZARDS OF THE DEMON SWORD, DEMOLITION HIGH, and DEATH ROW DINER non-fame (for the record, I especially recommend HOLLYWOOD CHAINSAW HOOKERS and DEATH ROW DINER to anyone and everyone currently owning eyes), who is one of the best Bad Movie actors to ever wade through the stinkin' sewers of Video Boom anonymity.

Anyhoo, all this gumshoe gallantry leads McCord and Weaver to the office of some army guy. There, McCord develops a hunch that something called "Blackhawk 2000 Project" might be worth investigating', after a scientist (you can tell 'cause of the lab coat he wears despite the fact that he works in an office) barges into the army guy's office whilst the detectives are interviewing said army guy, screaming at the top of his lungs about the Blackhawk 2000 and waving a file folder right in McCord's face. The best part is when the army guy responds to this scene by basically murmuring "ix-nay on the ackhawk-blay" to the scientist and then practically shrugs, raises his eyebrows, and proclaims "fuck if I know" while crossing his fingers behind his back when the detectives inquire about what the Blackhawk 2000 even is.

CYBERNATOR is nothing if not an exercise in subtlety.

Now if you guessed that the Blackhawk project has something to do with cyborgs, I'm not going to say whether you're right or wrong, but I will say this: duhhhh.

In any case, as McCord and Weaver start getting a little too close to uncovering a nefarious conspiracy and government cover-up perpetrated by a corrupt military regime (or something... whatever... who cares?), things get more and more dangerous for the tried n' true contradictory-yet-complementary buddy cop duo. All this, of course, eventually leads to the second gun battle in what is still just the first 30 minutes of CYBERNATOR's slim, yet somehow grossly overplotted, story.

Anyway, during this second shootout, Weaver takes a bullet. Again. I know what you're saying: "Whoop-dee-doo. Another firefight. Who gives a shit? This sort of thing happens to Weaver all the time." Well, this time's different, 'cause this time he actually croaks. Which sucks for McCord, really, because Weaver pretty much attracted 100% the gunshots 100% of the time. McCord just lost his most reliable bulletproof vest!

Evidently bummed out by the loss of his mostly ignored companion, who seems to have shared a grand total of ten words directly with McCord over the course of his entire movie lifetime, our hero decides to throw himself even deeper into the thick of things, get to the bottom of this mess, and avenge his fallen comrade. All this, despite the fact that everyone's tellin' him to do the opposite. Seems like everybody in the world is against him doing what, in his mind, must be done. From his girlfriend, who doesn't want him risking his life, to his boss, who basically sums up this futuristic police force's entire policy as "keep your head down and don't fuck with the army... ever."

So, yeah, McCord goes all badass, loses his badge, finds out that he himself is a secretly a high-tech, highly advanced, mechanically enhanced super-soldier (sorry for the spoiler, but if you don't see that coming from reeeeally early on in the movie, you're a fucking retard), learns the nature of all the cyborgs-gone-wild kookiness (the creations have turned on their creators, that's about the long and short of it), and arms himself to the teeth for one last climactic assault on the cyborg legions.

In the end, the bad borgs all get wrecked, Detective Weaver's children are orphaned and his wife is forced to take a crappy minimum wage job at the schnitzel stand at the mall just to make ends meet, the American taxpayers are out a shit-ton of money with nothing to show for it, half of the United States senate is in the morgue, the government's in shambles, the country's a hellhole, and the whole world is in the shitter. But at least McCord gets to ride off into the sun with his slow-in-the-head titty bar trollop girlfriend.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Except for the poor fool who rented this clusterfuck on V.H.S. back in 1991, because there weren't any copies of TERMINATOR left on the shelf, and, hey, at least CYBERNATOR still ended in the suffix "-nator." Pitiful bastard.

File this under "so bad, it's awesome." The whole time I was watching this craptacular slab of cinematic sewer sludge, I kept checking to see if Charles Band or Fred Olen Ray had a hand in it, because CYBERNATOR definitely seems like something either one of those infamous cult cinema titans would've put out during this period. As a whole, the picture is more irrepressibly tacky, skeezy, and low-rent than Bruce McCulloch's notorious Cabbage Head character from the ol' Kids In The Hall sketch comedy T.V. series (totally off-topic note: if you ain't got no love for the Kids In The Hall, then I ain't got no love for you... word).

Without a doubt, CYBERNATOR belongs in every b-movie addict's collection, lovingly nestled between your bootleg D.V.D.-R copy of MUTANT HUNT and your TEK WAR box set (come to think of it, I bet Kincaid and Shatner would fuckin' love this movie).

Of course, this being low, low, lowwwwwww budget, CYBERNATOR has more in common with the former than the latter. It also means that, despite the fact that this is ostensibly an action movie, genuine action scenes are few and far between, and the ones that do exist are inept. The first 20 minutes and the last 20 minutes are the most fun, showcasing as they do the most cyborg action and the most laser battles n' hokey F.X. chicanery. But CYBERNATOR is hardly as "high octane" as it purports to be.

Unfortunately, deprived of all the juicy violence, bullet ballets, and kung-fu fisticuffs we expect from an action flick, we are left only with dialogue, character, and plot to impress us. And impress us, they do not. The ineptitude which colors most of the action scenes similarly invades everything else in this motion picture. The plot is hackneyed and almost devoid of any imagination whatsoever, as if CYBERNATOR was meant as an intentional "rip-off" genre study. It shamelessly cherry-picks plot points from everything from CYBORG, BLADE RUNNER, and ROBOCOP to LETHAL WEAPON and INDIANA JONES. In short, the film is shockingly formulaic, and feels almost aggressively pro-active in its apparent desire to be as derivative and predictable as possible.

The characters aren't much different, nor is the dialogue. As an aside, I must make mention of the fact that one of the movie's biggest dialogue scenes (the whole "let me explain the plot to you" scene), featuring a camo-clad military man spoutin' hard-assed "top secret" army mumbo-jumbo, is, hilariously, split between a white-walled bedroom which looks like a co-ed dorm, and a homey living room with floral pattern furniture.

And since we're on the subject of setting, it's impossible not to notice the way that much of the movie appears to take place in the same two rooms, clumsily redressed over and over again. The rest of the scenes, meanwhile, are dumped into random crew members' parlors and a variety of badly designed cardboard sets which resemble the kind of stuff you'd find on public access television. Then there's the soundtrack, which seems to make ample use of a sample stolen from the "vine rape" sequence from the first EVIL DEAD (!). How bizarre, how bizarre.

As for the direction, at times, the style changes so wildly from scene to scene that it seems like CYBERNATOR was, in actuality, directed by two different people (which wouldn't surprise me, really), with one of these hypothetical directors being noticeably better than the other. According to the credits, though, CYBERNATOR was directly solely by Robert Rundle, who I'm guessing was on drugs half of the time, and sober the other half (presumably those narcotics-enhanced days were the more fruitful ones).

Truth be told, there are a few comic book-esque visual touches that aren't necessarily bad. Crudely done, yes. But moderately enticing nonetheless. On occasion, Rundle makes heavy use of multicolored lighting gels (one visual element, I confess, I've always had a weakness for), and appears to be trying to mimic the dark, slightly smoky, dim-but-colorful "cyberpunk noir" ambience Ridley Scott masterminded so brilliantly in BLADE RUNNER. However, where BLADE RUNNER was steamy and ethereal, CYBERNATOR is seedy and tactless.

That's not to say the domain of "seedy and tactless" doesn't have a certain appeal all its own. Nor is that to say that the domain of "seedy and tactless" doesn't have a place in cinema. In point of fact, where else is its place, if not in the realm of z-grade science fiction schlock garbage-plates like GALAXIS, CYBORG COP, ROBOTRIX, or (be still my beating heart) CYBERNATOR?

What really sells CYBERNATOR as a perverse treat for sadomasochistic Bad Movie junkies, though, is not merely the ineptitude of its craftsmen, but also the misplaced sincerity of its cast members. The fact that these actors are trying so very, very hard to make the best movie they can, while failing so very, very hard, and seemingly overlooking the fact that the movie they're making never had a snowball's chance in hell to begin with, only makes the experience of watching CYBERNATOR even more disgustingly delicious.

Everybody just seems so damned earnest, so oblivious to the kind of gooey, grimy gristle they're grinding out here. And, aside from Jay Richardson and William Smith, no one here is any good. They're all terrible actors (the strip club bartender is probably the worst, keep your eyes peeled for his Shakespearean fuckin' line readings), and the actors stuck playing cyborgs are especially horrendous, the lot of 'em being little more than talentless hacks whose wardrobes consist entirely of black pleather and spandex and big-ass, junkyard-salvaged hunks o' scrap metal arc-wielded to their ugly mugs.

Richardson, as I just mentioned, does stand out as being not only good but also aware. Aware of what it is he's doing, and willing to have fun doing it (which is something that Richardson always brings to his roles, and is, in fact, what generally makes his performances so enjoyable). On the opposite end of the spectrum, William Smith stands out for being good... and for being completely unaware! Then again, maybe he's aware and just figured he'd go for broke any way. Now, you might remember William Smith (who plays CYBERNATOR's big final villain) from HELL COMES TO FROGTOWN, UNCLE SAM, or RED DAWN. Or you might not. Regardless, he steals the limelight every freakin' time he waddles into frame, delivering his soliloquies about Project Blackhawk and cyborg-this and cyborg-that with the kind of scenery-chewing swagger normally reserved for would-be thespians reciting the Saint Crispin's Day speech. The fact that Smith is simply too good an actor to be in a slagheap like this just makes the act of experiencing said slagheap all the sweeter. Nothing quite like watching a talented actor shoot his own filmography in the foot. Yes indeedy. His bad choice is my mildly misanthropic delight.

Of course, no bad actor would be half as bad without an equally bad character. And this flick is full of 'em. We've got offensive stereotypes aplenty (such as the passive Weaver, who might as well call McCord "massa," and the Indian coroner, who sounds like Apu from The Simpsons). Really, the most believable character in the whole movie is the Ginger Lynn-lookin' strip club hussy from the beginning.

CYBERNATOR stinks. It's a double-decker barfburger with extra cheese. Seriously, this flick smells so bad I had to smear deodorant on the goddamn disc before my D.V.D. player would even consent to accept it. And afterwards I had to throw said D.V.D. player out and buy a whole new one. It was ruined! Now, I have to keep my copy of CYBERNATOR in a special odor-killing container packed full of pine tree air fresheners, instead of with the rest of the D.V.D.'s on my shelf, or else the whole house is clouded with the foulest stench this side of Courtney Love's cooter.

All this, yet I just can't bring myself to part with it.

Do you want to know a little secret, one of the reasons why I like this movie so much? Okay, I confess. Robert Rundle didn't write CYBERNATOR. I did. In fact, I wrote this movie when I was seven years old, playing with action figures in front of the T.V., imitating the movies my mom had taped off of cable for me. If I had seen CYBERNATOR when I was that age, I probably would've thought it was mostly awesome (although the dialogue scenes would have probably been even more boring for me then). Then I would've grown up, and been mortified and embarrassed by the notion that I'd ever thought of this flick as good, entertaining, or enjoyable in any way. Then I would've grown up even more, would've stopped taking myself seriously, and learned to embrace the baddest of bad movies, warts n' all, with affection and adoration and maybe just a hint of smug postmodern irony. And that would bring me full circle, and I'd feel no different than I feel now without having any sort of real-life history with CYBERNATOR. 'Cause really, growing up with a Robocop figure in one hand and a Han Solo figure in the other, that gave me all the warm-up I'd ever need to prepare myself for something like CYBERNATOR.

Well, maybe a few dozen viewings of TROLL 2 have helped a bit too, over the years.

Y'know, as I write these words, and evoke the name of the so-called "best worst movie ever made" (which also just so happens to be one of my top three favorite movies of all time), it occurs to me that CYBERNATOR might very well qualify as a TROLL 2 for the Star Trek set, the contemporary science fiction genre's answer to the very definition of the title "Bad Movie."

Cluttered with robots, lasers, and toxic waste, plus a bunch of unattractive fat chicks distressingly cast in sexy seductress roles (::shudder::), CYBERNATOR may be poorly made ("poorly," in truth, is most certainly an understatement), but it's always entertaining in its ridiculousness and crudity. One-part political potboiler, one-part post-TERMINATOR pseudo-macho sci-fi action flick, and ninety-eight parts laughable shite, CYBERNATOR is insanely funny (even intentionally so, every odd now n' again). And, to add gravy to the cake (as Ray Wise might say, ::wink::), all my fellow meat-beatin' pervs out there will be giddy to find that there's no shortage of sluts here, whether they be hookers, strippers, or automated femme fatales.

In other words: what's not to like?

Until next slime...
Stay sick!
Your pickled pal,
William Weird.

Rating: 4 sword-swingin' cyborgs out of 5
Recommendation: buy it
Best moment: "Some of my best friends are toasters!"