#AtoZChallenge Cyborgs

Last entry I talked about how the popularity of some biker movies spawned imitators.  Similarly the popularity of The Terminator and Robocop spawned a lot of imitating cyborg movies.  Most of these are on Rifftrax, not MST3K.

Cyborg Cop 2:  The hilarious thing about this is that it's called "Cyborg Cop" and yet there are no cyborg cops in it.  In actuality the cop named Jack Ryan (like the Tom Clancy character but not) is a flesh-and-blood human who fights against evil cyborgs.  So I guess he polices cyborgs so that's close enough.

The evil cyborgs are led by a former gang leader who was supposed to be executed but instead the government turns him into a cyborg.  He immediately turns on his creators.  And only Jack Ryan and a female agent can stop him.  The effects are not great and like Star Games while it was made in 1994 it looks like something a lot earlier.  And our hero wears a fanny pack through the whole thing.  What more is there to say about how bad it is?

R.O.T.O.R:  One of my favorites.  I actually saw it on local TV years before the Rifftrax version.  Either way it's a hilariously bad movie.  The "plot" doesn't make much sense whatsoever.  A policeman/scientist/rancher designs a killer cyborg to be the cop of the future but in a lengthy conversation with his boss, the product is rushed into production.

The result of this is Robotic Officer Tactical Operations Research or ROTOR.  It makes itself active and immediately murders a speeder.  A speeder in the middle of nowhere when he starts out in the middle of Dallas.  I mean if you're a killer cyborg out to fight crime isn't there plenty of it in Dallas proper?  I mean earlier our hero thwarted a robbery at a convenience store going to get some charcoal so clearly there's crime a plenty.

The speeder's fiance is able to escape because she triggers ROTOR's one weakness:  car horns.  A weakness she forgets repeatedly through the movie.  Meanwhile ROTOR's creator, Captain Coldyron (Cold-iron), chases after them--until he goes to pick up another scientist, a woman named Dr. Steel.  Inexplicably she has to check into a hotel at like 7am so she can change from a dress into a tank top and cargo pants.  This while the speeder's fiance is on the run, leading ROTOR to a lake.  One of the many, many plot holes is that the woman on the run has a CB radio in her car that she never uses until Coldyron calls her on it.  For some reason she pulls over to call the cops when couldn't she have just summoned help with the CB?  And thereby made it harder for ROTOR to catch her?

And to cap it off, after Coldyron stops ROTOR (and Dr. Steel and the speeder's fiance somehow die), his boss shoots him in the back with a shotgun.  Because...why not?  It's not like they'd make a sequel.  I have to admit though the theme song "Hideaway" is OK in an 80s adult contemporary way.  So there's that.

Cyber Tracker:  This was made about the same time as Cyborg Cop 2 above but it does actually feature cyborg cops who are known as cyber trackers.  These things all look the same; they're all some big Mr. Clean looking dude.

The movie stars Don "The Dragon" Wilson (that's how it's listed in the credits) as a senator's bodyguard who foils an assassination attempt and then has to unravel some big conspiracy with the help of a rebel group led by some woman.  This leads to fighting a lot of Cyber Trackers and ultimately revealing the senator the guy was protecting was himself a cyborg!  What a twist!

Much of the movie is shot in overly blue light for some reason.  Sometimes because it's at night and sometimes just because.  While it's supposed to be like 2014 they use technology like big hulking computer monitors.  Though the voice-activated assistants they have are probably better than Alexa or Google Home or whatever.

Future War:  This is the sole MST3K entry on today's list.  It was one of the later episodes.  This is another of those movies that was pretty new yet at the time since it was made in the 90s.  The plot is fairly nonsensical like ROTOR.  An alien escapes from his jailers to crash on Earth and enlists the help of a woman training to be a nun and her friends.

The alien is pursued by a tubby cyborg played by the late Robert Z'Dar who also uses crappy claymation dinosaurs that are like mini T-Rexes or something as his henchmen.  It really doesn't make much sense.  Besides the crappy effects, the fight scenes are pretty badly choreographed and of course there's not much acting "talent" to be had.  Which is what makes it fun!