Mandroid
1993
Dir; Jack Ersgard
"Man and machine
are one"
An evil doctor sends a
mind controlled robot on a mini rampage in Eastern Europe
Not nearly as enjoyable as
it sounds, in fact I really don't know how this film ended up being
quite as dull as it did given its half decent plot and generous
budget. It suffers from the fate of many of the Full Moon productions
from around this time in which a cool idea which can be easily
marketed to idiots like me is given a decent enough budget and
produced competently but still manages to be boring as all shit. Lets
not beat around the bush, I am easily pleased, usually a film
featuring both a robot rampage and an evil doctor would be more than
enough to engage me for 90 minutes (or, as this is a Full Moon movie
and time is money, 80 minutes) but this just doesn't do it on any
level.
The movie kicks off with
an amazingly unsubtle rip off of the Terminator theme tune (instead
of going duh duh, duh, duh duh, it goes duh duh, duh, duh, duh) which
should have got Mr Band into hot water with the Governator (now that
would be a good plot for Full Moons next picture, Arnie Vs Charles).
The film makers treat their locations with some lovely post cold war
casual racism. The film is set in the country "Eastern Europe"
because apparently Americans don't realize that Eastern Europe is
actually a collection of diverse countries and different cultures.
Here "Eastern Europe" could be mistaken for a medieval
village filled with horse and cart riding savages. It is so
depressing that a muddy faced child walks through a train carriage
playing a sad song on a violin. In the middle of this wasteland sits
the town of Proheba where scientists are developing a new weapon, a
robot which can be programmed to carry out pointlessly dangerous
tasks by a human in a helmet with some wires coming out of it. The
robots name is, unsurprisingly, the Mandroid.
The scientists who
developed this piece of equipment are Dr Zimmer and Dr Drago with the
assistance of Dr Zimmers strangely American daughter and some other
bloke called Benjamin who, despite not doing much throughout this
movie, was apparently important enough to the story to be given his
own spin off sequel... Weird. Dr Zimmer plans to sell the Mandroid
and its secret, a new type of fuel called Superconn which gives
Mandroid its power, to a pair of dopey Americans. The Americans in
question are scientist Wade Franklin and the CIA agent Joe Smith
(come on, put some effort in Mr script writer). Unfortunately Dr Drago
doesn't trust the Americans and feels that the Mandroid's secrets
should be kept in Eastern Europe.
Dr Zimmer describes
Mandroid as "the ultimate tool" (oh how right he is). He
pointlessly sends the robot out to drive a car into a wall; it
wouldn't have been that dangerous a stunt except that he was driving
it in comedy fast forward. When the Americans arrive their new
friends take them out for a vigorous barn dance to celebrate. Wade
wears an XXL turtle neck and dances awkwardly with Dr Zimmer's
daughter whilst Benjamin jealously looks on.
Dr Drago decides that he
must steal the Mandroid to stop the Americans getting their fat
greasy hands on it. He breaks into Dr Zimmer's lab and fills an urn
up with Superconn. He pushes Benjamin into a fridge freezer but isn't
able to escape before Zimmer's daughter shoots Superconn into his
face. It makes Drago's face mutate into the shape of a herpes
infected penis. The fridge freezer eventually makes Benjamin turn see
through and later disappear all together. I'm not sure why really...
Oh yeah, the sequels called "Invisible", that's right, I
guess the poster had already been designed at this point.
Drago moves in with a mute
homeless man and continues to plot to get Mandroid out of the hands
of the Americans. Wade starts to help Dr Zimmer and becomes the new
controller of Mandroid, a job previously entrusted to slowly
vanishing Benjamin. When Benjamin finds out he cries into a pillow
like a girl. He is then taken to hospital in the worlds crappest
ambulance (basically a transit van with poorly scrawled red crosses
on the back windows). Wade insists on being called Wade-droid when he
is controlling the robot. They take the Mandroid out to a cave where
Drago takes over the controls and brings him back to the tramps
squat. Dr Drago wears a net curtain over his face to hide his penis
head. He works out how to control Mandroid with just his mind. When
he gets angry he slaps the tramp repeatedly and then uses his mind to
make Mandroid slap him too for good measure.
Drago learns that Zimmer
has a secret micro-film which contains all the secrets of Superconn.
He uses Mandroid to kidnap Smith and arranges a swap; the CIA agent
in exchange for the microfilm. Whilst captured, Smith proves that he
is such a massive prick that he can't even get on with the mute
homeless man. Dr Zimmer agrees to the swap but hires the local police
force (who turn up in a fucking tank!) to come along with them. The
exchange doesn't go down quite as planned and there's a bit of
running around and shooting of guns. The tramp and Smith shoot each
other over and over again at close range without either appearing to
get hurt. Franklin shoves a metal bar in Mandroid's eye which seems to
kill the invincible robot. Drago gets blown up.
Once all that shit is over
and done with we come to the real reason that we're here. Benjamin is
shown in hospital dressed up like the Invisible Man. Apparently the
explosion didn't kill Drago because we see him getting it on with a
grotesque Russian prostitute. Frankilin is in a wheelchair but has
fixed Mandroid so that he can be his new legs. Why? Because as the
credits role we're told that all these characters will be back in
"Invisible: The Chronicles Of Benjamin Knight" another
trash nugget from the Full Moon turd factory. Lets just hope
something exciting happens in that one. Oh look, its ended up on my
"to watch" list... Why do I do this to myself?
This movie is a
characterless, action-less slow motion bore draw. Its production
values are far higher than many of the movies you will see reviewed
here and yet no effort appears to have been put into any aspect of
the script or direction to make this enjoyable for the viewer. The
video cover is way more interesting than the movie and the whole
thing was clearly made as a desperate attempt to cash in on the
success of the recently updated Terminator series. Mandroid aint no
T1000, trust me, he looks like someone has taken a hoover apart,
sprayed its contents black and stuck them onto a skin tight onezie.
Its not a good look and the titular character is under used and
underwhelming whenever he does pop up on screen.
The actors trudge their
way through the half written plot with about as much interest as you
would expect from anyone given this material. They are given
characters so thin they would make an anorexic jealous. The only back
story we get for Franklin is that he has recently given up smoking
and as a result chews gum all the time. That's it? He's the hero of
the film and that's it? It didn't make me care about his character
much. But he is fully fleshed out in comparison to the others, I
would probably have entirely forgotten about the character of
Benjamin if I hadn't seen the advert for his spin off sequel in the
credits. His story in this film is so bizarrely separate from
everything else that is going on that it feels like the editors have accidentally spliced his final few scenes into the film by mistake. It
just makes my mind boggle. How can a production company like Full
Moon which, in comparison to most genre film makers has a great deal
of experience, talent and money at their disposal, not put in enough
effort to make an enjoyable movie about a killer robot? Its easy,
find an interesting setting, make some shit explode, throw in a
couple of memorable characters, make them explode, give the robot
something to fight and make that explode too. Hell, just make some
pretty people run about whilst things get set alight behind them, at
least I'd be able to see where the budget went.
