This review has been ‘repurposed’ from my other site, theOneliner.com
Vernon Wells you may remember as the unwittingly hilarious Bennett from Commando. Here, having seemingly eaten a whale in the intervening time he assumes the role of Plughead, a cyborg type fellow who is inexplicably addicted to other people’s pain, extracting said feeling by use of some low-tech torture machines and then laughing maniacally. In a seemingly unrelated plot strand, he has created a chip which when plugged into a common or garden human extends their life by ten years.
Clearly this cannot be allowed to continue, so government agent Kyle enlists the help of Danner, the Circuitry Man to stop what turns out to be an evil plan to control the minds of humans everywhere. In a seemingly unrelated plot strand, two bumbling cops fly around randomly in a prototype land speeder thing in search of something, presumably. In a seemingly unrelated plot strand Plughead bribes and blackmails Traci Lords to continue making the life-extending chips. In a seemingly unrelated plot strand two convicts escape from their captors and stumble off towards Plughead’s Brazilian lair. They all join up at the end so at least they can stagger around unrelatedly in the same shot. Meanwhile, a falling safe crushes a guard. No, seriously. Can this movie overcome abysmal acting, a script that isn’t even worthy of ridicule, and special effects that Ed Wood would wrinkle his nose in disgust over to become greater than the sum of it’s parts?
No, it’s bloody awful.
I prefer to think of this more as an elaborate practical joke than a film, or at least an experiment into how bad a film can get before the celluloid it’s printed on gets too embarrassed and self-ignites. It’s rare that there is absolutely nothing positive to say about a movie, but this is truly a benchmark in awfulness. It isn’t even fun to dissect and poke fun at, unlike Cyber Tracker.
I hope everyone involved in this movie feels ashamed and dirty. This is the cinematic equivalent of a sharp kick in the balls but with more pain and less swelling, although the scars remain for so much longer. This film will haunt the viewer for years after the credits roll, taunting them with it’s ludicrous, ill-defined plot and almost indescribable stench of abject failure to do anything right. The Holocaust was less upsetting than this film.
Were I in the business of passing quantifiable judgements, this would make me give up. Death is the only true release from this nightmare.