Forgotten Apocalypse: American Cyborg Steel Warrior

[00:00:00] The battle for the mind of North America will be fought in the video arena. The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain.

[00:00:29] All right. Welcome back to another episode of The Outer Reels. I'm Jason. With me, as always, is Sam. I'm happy to be here because I actually enjoyed this. I had a feeling you might. I enjoyed this a lot more than Steel Frontier, even though Steel Frontier was more post-apocalyptic-y. Yeah. Well, this one was. They just had a justification for why it didn't look like it is. You might be more normal.

[00:00:55] Well, you seem to think all post-apocalyptic stuff should look like Road Warrior. It kind of should, but I always appreciate it when they shift it. It doesn't have to always be a desert with cars. It's usually the most fun, but yeah. Sometimes they've got a damnation alley thing and women with two navels. So. I would like to say that you said we're watching American Cyborg Steel Warrior, as is the actual title.

[00:01:24] I would refer to it as tonight we're watching the live action adaptation of the video game Death Stranding. Sure. Yeah, I guess so. Because there is like a, I haven't played Death Stranding, but I know enough about it. There is like a fetus in a bottle. Yeah. You're transporting a fetus through Badlands. I'll give it that. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, this is just a chase movie. It is. It's very repetitious. It's very repetitious. So.

[00:01:50] I, I, I, I say the one thing I said before we even get into any of it. It's sad to realize that this is actually the very last film theatrically released by Canon Films. So I'd like to pour one out for Canon Films. I don't think it's the last one. I think it was. U.S. theatrical release for Canon. Okay. Cause, cause, um, yeah, cause well, Hellbound and Chain of Command came afterwards and Wikipedia says those had theatrical releases, but maybe they weren't in the U.S.

[00:02:20] Yes. So what's. Yeah. Cause it was kind of interesting too. I was like, I should have wore my Canon Films t-shirt. That's like. Dude, I love seeing that Canon Films logo. I know there is nothing that makes you more cozy up. Like you just, you just know what you're, it's like PE entertainment and stuff. Like you just know what you're in for. And it almost prefaces your suspension of belief and everything else. Cause I'm just going to be entertained.

[00:02:47] I know what I'm in for, you know, it, uh, that for such a long time, but I do love that logo. I'm surprised that for how good that Canon logo is that soul bass didn't design it. It's, it's good enough where it could be is, but at the beginning of the day, the beginning of this movie, you'd notice that it says global pictures and it doesn't actually say the Canon logo, but that's because we know for a fact, well, at least I watched this movie. I rented it off YouTube for three 99 in standard dev.

[00:03:14] And this is 110% of VHS or a broadcast tape copy of this movie because it actually has the global pictures logo, which would have been who went into the VHS distro, not theatrical. That's why it doesn't have the Canon logo because I didn't see the Canon logo at the beginning. And I was like, what? You know what? In hindsight, I'm starting to think maybe, uh, I think I saw the other one as well. I don't know. Yeah. It's, it's been a solid four hours since I've watched it.

[00:03:44] So who knows? Well, before it completely exits your brain, what, what is this movie about? It's chase movie. It's a, yeah, it's, it's just woman's got a, it's, it's like, um, let's take children and men and merge it with the Terminator, but make it crap. Yes. It's, it's really all it is because, uh, it turns out humanity is infertile and this woman manages to be fertile.

[00:04:11] So for whatever reason, they've got a fetus of hers growing in a jar and she has to feed it herself, um, periodically, but they're in a race to get it to a boat because a bunch of European scientists, turns out they're Germans. Um, spoiler alert, I didn't even pick up. They were German. Oh no. They were talking like, uh, I, I assume it was German. They were speaking, maybe they're Swiss. I don't know. Sure.

[00:04:38] But, uh, guys, you know, they have a machine that can keep it alive. Now why the things not inside of her? I don't know. Um, they don't really explain that same as they don't really explain what's so special about Joe Lara's character, which we'll get to. But, um, yeah, it's a chase movie there. She's got to get to the ocean because she's meeting a boat and he agrees to help her. Cause she's going to give him some pills or something.

[00:05:05] I have so much to talk about this movie and so much to discuss on everything you covered there, but I'll, I'll start traditionally with that. The official plot summary from INDB is after a devastating nuclear war, the last fertile woman on earth joins forces with a tough renegade warrior to fight a team of deadly cyborgs and save the human race from extinction. What I came up with Joe Lara post Tarzan in Manhattan, pre Tarzan epic adventures, escorts

[00:05:34] a fetus in a can across the post of a elliptic city while comedically surprised by her cyborg stalker who appears in the most perfectly timed random ways. Gayest looking, uh, cyborg stalker we've ever had too. Yeah. This is T-Move Roy Beatty from Blade Runner. A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. With, with a little attempt at Arnold and T2 thrown in, but, um, doesn't look anything doesn't come across as that way at all. This might be our, is this our newest film?

[00:06:04] We're, we're deep in, I mean, no, no. What do we do? The Steel Frontier is two years old. Two years old. Oh, you're right. So 95 is as deep. That's good though, because my cover is usually 96. So we're. Yeah. It was, I figured if I could keep it early, early nineties, Steel Frontier was as far out as I was. I will say with Joe Lara, I think he did a better job in this movie than Steel Frontier too. Yeah. I think he was kind of phoning it in at Steel Frontier. Yeah.

[00:06:28] So speaking of this movie is directed by Bose Davidson and like I said, I got a lot to talk about this movie. First time on the show, Bose Davidson. However, this will not be his last because I'll tell you why he is coming back. He's done a load of stuff and now he's a big time EP. He wrote Delta Force three, the killing Graham in 1991. Then he wrote this movie. I'm skipping a lot of his stuff. He has so much. Then he wrote this movie. Also director.

[00:06:59] He has over 250 credits. So I'll spare you all the details, but we're talking four movies a year. He's kind of like you really. He's just cranking them out. And I bump out more than that, my friend. I don't write or direct them. So. So recently he was the EP on the new red Sonya remake, which I will not be watching out of the new red Sonya remake. However, he was the EP on Rambo last blood, which I just dearly love very much.

[00:07:28] And among loads of other stuff. I don't usually like to spoil next week's movie, but I'm so. God damn excited about what I found. So the movie we're watching tonight again came up 1993. After this, our director, Bo Davidson directed a film from 1995 called lunar cop. Wait for it. Listen to this summary. Okay. A cop from the moon is sent to the earth now possessed by motorcycle riding Mad Max, like

[00:07:56] inhabitants to stop a serum from being released that believes is going to destroy the earth starring Michael Perry and Billy Drago. Oh, nice lunar cop. We will see you next week because that is absolutely the movie we're watching. It sounds incredible. It looks incredible. I'll spare you the view count on letterbox, but let me just say it's very low and you're going to be very happy. So I'm looking forward to that. Hopefully it's somewhere I can watch it. Yeah. I didn't even check if it's available.

[00:08:26] It could be man, as far as I'm concerned, just give me a lost. I got that. It is rentable on Amazon. I know that much. Yeah. I'm, I'm ready to pay a premium price for that movie already out of the gate. Just Michael Perry, of course, back to American cyborg colon steel warrior. So the film, of course, stars Joe Lara, who we did cover on our street fighter to character map season for steel frontier.

[00:08:50] He, I didn't think we deep dived on very much, but he's got 29 credits and he's in every movie. You think you've seen until you turn the back of the tape over and you're like, I haven't seen this. It's a, it's a weird thing. I don't know how else to explain it, but it's basically like, so 1999's operation Delta Force four deep fault. I'm like, of course I've seen this. I'm looking at it. And then I'm like looking at it more and I'm like, wait, no, I've never seen this.

[00:09:20] And then it's, this is every one of his movies. So do you remember hologram man from 1995? No, but neither do I, but I thought I'd seen it. And then of course I do. I look at it and I'm like, wait, I have no idea what this is, but we're probably going to end up covering on the show. Anyways, Joe Lara career long actor producer is born 1962 in San Diego, a certified diver, a licensed Falconer. It's pretty awesome. Yeah.

[00:09:49] And an accomplished marksman. He played the 18th Tarzan of all time being Tarzan of Manhattan. And then his followup on Tarzan Epic adventures for his 20th. So someone snuck in there in between him and actually has played the 19th Tarzan of all time, but it wasn't Joe Lara. So I know it's not riveting stuff, but I, uh, I did not search who the 19th Tarzan was because we don't really need to go that far.

[00:10:16] But if I ever host another trivia night at a movie theater, that's probably going to be in my questionnaire. Unfortunately, May 29th, 2021, he was piloting his Cessna taken off from Smyrna, Tennessee crashed shortly after into a lake with his wife and five other people on board who died. So yeah, pretty rough. The movie also stars Nicole Hanson playing Mary and you guys will know exactly why she's called Mary later on because they, uh, cram it down. You throw it visually a couple of times.

[00:10:46] Um, they do. I thought I knew she was out of something, but, uh, nothing. I mean, it looks like she's in a bunch of Hallmark looking TV romance. Curious. I mean, you probably worked with her. Uh, no, I, I looked her up cause I haven't cause I saw she was on. Oh, it looks like she's doing publicity for a whole bunch. Oh. And including, uh, one of the movies I've worked on. So she was an actor on a couple of the Chesapeake shores, but she's, was their web publicist for a number of years.

[00:11:15] So she's obviously been working for Hallmark. That's really the greatest wormhole of all time is that not only do we connect character, actors and characters and crew from our other movies. We cover now we've got one in a fourth dimension connecting directly to you. So John St. Brian plays our main villain, the cyborg here, which, and he's aptly just named cyborg. Yep. He was in a lot of eighties TV stuff.

[00:11:41] I didn't really, and I was like, so he appears to be this, his, his big first film feature film role for sure in any kind of feature. And then a bunch of bit parts, including Sequest 2032, the TV series, which is coming up soon as the anniversary. That would be something we could do in 2032 is actually watch Sequest 2032 from 1994. An episode of Mantis he appeared in, which seems to keep coming up a lot lately.

[00:12:09] And he was also a voice in the awesome animated TV series, Gargoyles from 95, 96. And then a bunch of stuff that we don't really care about, but one episode of the fact that he did an episode of Babylon five or was that? Oh, I missed that. Yeah. So he did a Babylon five and he also appeared in crusade, which was the followup series. I didn't see that. I was like, I recognize this guy. Oh, there you go. Techno mage in crusade, which is why I recognized him.

[00:12:35] He was, uh, listed as troublemaker in an episode of Babylon five. So I don't think I caught him on that. He was obviously. Oh, I should have caught that. I specifically put a note that he was in an episode of Buffy because I know you like that. My wife loves that very dearly as well, but I skipped over that once. So he appears to have been Sean Connery's stunt double on medicine man as well. Yeah. I still, I still have the meant that I still have the medicine man stunt credits as well.

[00:13:03] Did you know that the director of photography of that movie is also the director of photography from predator on McAlpine. So he was the director of photography on protect predator. He did medicine man. He did Peter Pan. I mean, he did a bunch of stuff, but I always thought it's funny hanging out in the jungle. Yeah. I always thought it was funny that, uh, he's an Aussie. My mom lived near him. So I got to visit his house and stuff like that when I was a teenager and it was cool. But I remember, I think I told you the story.

[00:13:30] He was the guy who was telling me that like for dailies, they were trying to watch stuff on set for Peter Pan. Yes. And then he bought like a $30,000 projector for dailies and rented it back to the studio and then paid for more than twice and then kept it to take it home back in the good old days of filmmaking. Anyway, yeah. If you look up Don McCallum, he's actually an incredible, fantastic director of photography stuff looks beautiful, but it's funny.

[00:13:55] He, he has all these great stories about all of the movies that he's worked on and stuff. And I asked him, I was like, but I still, still just being the predator fiend that I was, I don't care about me. I mean, I remember seeing medicine man in the movie theater and I'd gone to the beach earlier and like my shorts were wet and stuff. And I just remember sitting in the theater and being really cold and just like not enjoying that movie at all. But this was like the period when I was like, just watch anything. Right.

[00:14:23] I remember talking to him and he had all these stories about all this stuff and technical information. And anytime I bring up predator, he's like, wow, that was a long time ago. I'm like, so is medicine man. Like, come on, like tell me more. It's just, but I think it was, as everybody knows, it was a crazy shooting schedule and everything else that happened there and lots of reshoots and inserts. And they had like this huge amount of crew that showed up, but nobody had any film skills because they're shooting in Mexico. It was like all these weird union issues, but that's totally another story.

[00:14:52] Um, yeah, we're not here to talk about predator much as you might want to. I do want to talk about the opening of this movie. It is very much a Terminator feel wide panning shot. Yeah, you got that. Now, did you notice the reference? This is deep cut, but when the cameras panning across all this rubble, it looks like the opening of the first Terminator movie. There's just rubble and everything. There's no robots or HKs flying to the air or anything cool. Right.

[00:15:19] But there's a lot of decimated structures and steel and stuff. There's a camera that tracks up and there's a license plate just sort of like swinging dangling and the camera makes a very important point of framing that license plate. I didn't catch it. So tell me, tell me that license plate is YS 572. Okay. So it's from THX 1138.

[00:15:46] So SRT, SRT 572 is the black guy who crashes the car. He's like the guy who helped the hologram. Yeah. So I was, I was trying to dive into this a little more than I probably should because the 572 click, but I was like, why ask? But the license plate says South Carolina. And I was like trying to figure out like, maybe they figured out a way to write SRT with the other smaller letter, but I couldn't come up with from South Carolina or anything else. I couldn't come up with SRT. It's because the city's Charlton. Yeah.

[00:16:15] But it's like, it's still, it's just, yeah. If you're going that far, cause the reason it caught me is cause it looked like a fake license plate. Like it looked plastic. It didn't look real. And so I'm like, why, if you're going to manufacture a plate with 572, why would you not put SRT in there? Why would you just do YS? So I was trying to, in my mind, I was trying to justify why the YS came from.

[00:16:39] It maybe is some other reference that I'm not getting, but the 572 is 110% THX reference. It's not as good as the $20 and one cent on the gas pump from the last chase, which is, which is really incredible. It's the best of the best, but I got to give a props that that exists. Cause I don't think there's anybody else on planet earth right now talking about the license plate from American cyborg steel. Probably not. Give it that. Yeah.

[00:17:09] And I wouldn't have been either if it wasn't for you. So thanks. But it's yeah, it's the classic nighttime apocalypse establishing shot. It does have that little Terminator vibe. There is a voiceover, unfortunately, because now you guys have to listen to me. Corey, that I was waiting for this. I didn't pay much attention to it. Knowing full well that you would be reciting it to me again this evening. Like, I know you just tune them out. You know, I'll, I'll have to read it out to you. I got a drink.

[00:17:37] I had, I watched it. I didn't enjoy the, the, the voiceover in this is pretty bad. As far as the inflections and stuff, it sounds like somebody doing a voice for an intro of a fake movie. And it's, I don't know how else to describe it, but the inflections are almost comical in the way it's trying to sound tough and gritty. But the narration says, don't just read it for us and recreate it. It says, that's the thing. It says it in the weirdest way.

[00:18:05] It's like in the 17 years since the war, all human, it's basically goes online. But in the 17 years since the war, all human survivors were herded into cities now ran like prisons by a computer system imbued with an artificial intelligence. Rather than eliminate the infartic, infertile survivors, the system let them live out their lives until extinction.

[00:18:32] The cybernetic organism once designed to work for the human creators now work for the system as it enforces the new order. This doesn't mean anything. Nope. And you know, well, and they don't explain anything in this movie either. You don't know why the, um, you don't really know why they're doing the things they are. I guess we, we have a cyborg pretty early on in, uh, John St. Ryan and they may, you know,

[00:19:01] they do a cool effect where he holds his finger straight up and then like this little probe comes out of it. Um, very obviously coming, extending from the other side of his finger that the camera's on and not from inside his finger. I used to do that in math class with a pencil. It's like, it's the same. Exactly. Exactly. The same thing. And then he proceeds to stick his finger in a little like, well, he needs a handprint to open this thing up and then he sticks the finger and I guess this is where he gets the like orders from. Yeah.

[00:19:30] It just says eliminate the rebels or whatever. And he's, he's got this big shoulder pad looking leather jacket and the whole thing. And there's rain coming down and there's neon lights and it's, it kind of like it's, it's clearly meant to be like a blade runner type thing or syndicate or some reference to that because he is this thing. It looks even the font in the title sequence is actually looks kind of similar to demolition man.

[00:19:58] How, when the title comes up to, it says American cyborg and then it goes and he gets steel warrior on either side on the top and the bottom of that. But then it reads American steel warrior side, but like it's so confusing the way it reads steel American cyborg warriors after it's done. That's why they came out in two different ways. But if I remember right when you get that title again, or at the very end, but it's just all four, it's just the same thing again. Right. But not separately. Right.

[00:20:28] Don't it just, no, it's a slightly different size, but it's still easy to read it out of order and it just sounds so broken. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, but it's funny cause they fly it up at the end. So you realize that, Oh, the American, American cyborg steel warrior is not John St. Ryan. It's Joe Lara. Wow. Yeah. There isn't, there isn't a twist. You could see him coming a mile away by the way. I didn't see the twist. I mean, like I said, I'm a, I'm a pretty basic.

[00:20:57] She makes this comment about how, Oh, your head it's already healed. As soon as, as soon as I saw that. Yeah. Cause cause he gets a head injury and then it's like healed the next day completely. And we already know that because the, the cyborg gets stabbed in the throat and then you get the like nice white milky goodness that you get out of, uh, alien with a rep with their, their guys and probably the reference in blade runner too. And, um, he proceeds to rub his neck and heals it. Yeah.

[00:21:27] Well it's. Yeah. I, I think that was the weakest part of the film is foreshadowing the Joe Lara is a cyborg because the cooler part for it. Yeah. I don't have a problem with your layer being a cyborg though. They never explained why he's one. No. He says, he does say right at the end, he says something was wrong with me when I was born and they fixed me, but it makes no sense. Yeah. No, no.

[00:21:54] And they just said, he was like, Oh, must, you know, I was a reject because I had an affinity to help humans or something. No, none of that makes like, why would they make a cyborg and you not know you're one? Like, I mean, well, that's kind of the whole point of Android stream and electric sheep, right? It's a, the question is, is that, and you know, spoilers abound, of course, what I thought would be a better way for this to track is that they tease him being a cyborg.

[00:22:23] And then when the final reveal happens, you're like, Oh, he's a cyborg. It wouldn't be great to play it off. Like he's human the whole way. The better version is in virtuosity with Denzel Washington. Like, cause he's hunting cyborgs and he hates technology and hates everything. And right at the very end of the movie spoilers, he gets his arm trapped in like a, a door, like a big trap door. And then he breaks it off and it's rebutted. It's totally like ghost in the shell style where she's like wearing her arm off and you're like, no way. And it's awesome.

[00:22:52] And it's, it's a really good play on that. And this movie could have done that. Or in Blade Runner, you've got Decker hunting him and he's a replicant the whole time too and doesn't know it. I kind of get it except that, you know, the problem with it, with it is Joel Harris character, Austin has just been like hanging out in the wasteland or in the remnants of the city with everybody else acting like a human the whole time. And it's, you know, like in Blade Runner, Decker is a hunter of replicants.

[00:23:22] So it's fine that he doesn't know he's one. And I, and it, I don't think it's well known that like, I don't think anybody in the police force or anyone else is supposed to know it's him. Um, you know, John, or, um, what's his name from Battlestar Galactica? Who's in that movie as well. Um, Edward James almost knows he's, he's a replicant, but I think it's cause he kind of figures it out. Yeah. So because he's told or it's information. No, no, exactly. So it's cause there aren't supposed to be any on earth period.

[00:23:51] So he's designed as one to not know. He is when he's got fake memories and stuff implanted and everything else. So, and in virtuosity, it's kind of a similar idea, right? Like he's not, he doesn't need not supposed to know because he has to be able to hunt these guys and they don't want them to have any sympathy for him. Yeah. Cause they, Denzel goes into the board to chase down Russell Crowe. If only had he had a small scooter that he could take up the coast of Italy, like in the Pope's exorcist, he probably could have gone away.

[00:24:22] I don't know why that image sticks in my mind. And I, I, I, it's unfortunate. It's not, it's, it's, it's not terrible movie, but it is so funny to think that he hopped on this little scooter that, you know, goes about 45 kilometers an hour out of max. And he takes that from like Italy to Spain or whatever it is in the course of a day. It's like, you know, I know Europe small. It's not that small. Certainly people used to do it. That was their only option. Yeah.

[00:24:51] But, but I mean, and, and, and Russell Crowe's Italian accent. Really. So, but I still enjoyed it. Yeah. But well, I mean, thankfully now thank, well thankful to William Arthur and William Harley and Arthur Davidson. We have better ways to get places quicker. Okay. The Harley, the brother. Oh yeah. We do learn shortly after this airs, you're going to be driving around in a motorcycle. Or like whatever. That's true.

[00:25:21] Oh man. I can't wait. Um, we learn about this woman who's kept underground in this somewhat secret society. Cause we understand that humans are dying off and the computers apparently in the robots and the AI are happy to let them perish because they know they can't reproduce anymore. And they just see them as pests. And in this underground civilization, there is this woman and she has the only living fetus left on earth.

[00:25:49] They have it in a canister right now and nothing seems troublesome here. It's all a good intent. They are trying to keep this fetus alive. There's no nefarious actions or anything. I guess we know that humans are infertile because of what they've said, but we're led to believe this is going to be the comeback. This is humanity saving grace right here. This one can of fetus.

[00:26:11] And if I was watching this, cause it's got the, and it's a, it's, it's funny because it's it's funny because it's like, it's a rigid, like single, like vacuum formed baby prop in a tube and it doesn't move. But every now and then you get a closeup where it's clearly a puppet that they built in a bigger tank. And it's not a terrible looking puppet.

[00:26:37] I, I, I, I give them credit for that because it's that, that endeared me to the movie. I didn't mind seeing the puppet. Yeah. It's just when it's the wider shot and you could see, it's just this plastic baby sloshing around in a tube. You're like, this is ridiculous. This is when they throw in the ocean later. Yeah. And, oh man, I have some trivia about that ocean, by the way, I was watching this first time thinking like in 1993. First time. How many times have you watched it?

[00:27:06] But if I was watching this for the first time in 1993. Oh, okay. Okay. I was afraid that, you know, like you've watched it like three more times or something. It, I enjoyed it. It's a good movie. But if I was watching this in like 93, like as it was released, I'd not be thinking about Death Stranding, of course, but like, no 2026. I kind of have to. And that's the whole point of this thing.

[00:27:32] And I wonder if, if what's his name who made Death Stranding saw this. Hideo Kojima. Yeah. He makes me wonder. Cause I mean, if Kojima is crazy, right? Like he's, he does some insanely wild stuff. And we've, we've proven time and time again, he's influenced by so many of these American movies. We talked about it on gun head. Everything to do with metal gear solid is based off gun head right down to that girl crush you had.

[00:28:02] Like, so they load up the girl with the backpack and the fetus canister. And they're like, guess what? You've got 36 hours to cross the city and get to the port. The fetus can't survive longer than 36 hours in this tube. And this is temporary thing. There's a Europe. They say there's a European artificial womb and it's on the boat. If you get the fetus there in time, it'll develop safely is the conversation that's had. So that's the setup.

[00:28:31] And I, I'm not complaining about this movie at all. It is. The pacing of this movie is great. I was never eat. The couple of times it grinds to a halt. I'm like, here we go. Here's the problem. Maybe lost for a minute or two. I think this is going to be a 10 minute scene. And it moves. I do love that every time we think our, our leading couple are going to kiss, it's like a fist comes crashing through the wall and our cyborg is back. It's like three times. I know.

[00:28:58] He shows up on a comedic level. Yes. Yes, he does. Just inconvenience at every which way, especially the last time we will talk about it together, but it is the last time I actually jumped. Me too. I was like, Oh, it actually got me. I was like, wow. And I knew it was coming. That was the crazy thing. I knew that had to something like that had to happen. And I didn't know that was done. So preposterous.

[00:29:26] Well, I didn't know that was coming, but I knew he was coming back. Yeah. Yeah. You have to. Yeah. Well, they couldn't just be the end of the movie, especially when there's still 15 minutes left. But like, I knew something was going to happen. I laughed at myself for jumping at that. No, it's, this is a good movie. Again, I had a really good time watching this. I was just so happy to watch something that I hadn't seen from an era. I'm very fond of. And I was like, this is, this is great.

[00:29:56] Yeah. A little later for your timeline, but yeah, it's just outside. Yeah. And so what's funny about this is that they give her the whole spiel and they're like, you got to get here and take it to this port. And this boat from Europe is going to meet you. We've been talking to him with the ham radio. If you get this fetus here, they have the equipment and humanity saved is the, is the story. We learned this in like seven, eight minutes of the movie. Like this is, this is a good movie. This is good movie making.

[00:30:24] I know everything needs to happen and it's set up and as well, right when you get the download of all that. It's efficient storytelling. I don't know if I'd call it good movie making. Sure. Efficiency is good in my eyes. Cause I just don't want to. There are a lot of flaws with the movie making in this movie. Oh yeah. But, uh, yeah. But speaking of they get, you get the download of what's happening and she's got the baby in her backpack.

[00:30:46] And then immediately the wall explodes and team of baby from, um, from blade runner explodes through the wall. And it's like the chase is on. And I was like, okay, he's clearly like cyborg superhuman strong. Yep. Yep. And he's, he's, he's gunning everybody down. He takes a hit. He's, he's going ham.

[00:31:12] And then Mary and a bunch of the nurses, Mary's our main girl here, of course. And they escape. And then the nurses on the way, trying to escape the cyber, they all get picked off and shot. And by the end of this chase sequence, Mary's the only one left with the fetus in the backpack. And that's it. And, uh, our cyborg, like just, she climbs over this fence. It's got razor wire, it's raining and all this sort of stuff. And our cyborg just walks through it like the T-1000.

[00:31:42] But when the T-1000 does it in the prison, in the psych ward, he melts through the bars. This guy just walks through and the cage just explodes around him. It's a really weird effect. I was like, what kind of powers does this guy have? It's a strange thing. So, we go like seven, 17, 18 minutes in the movie. And she's on her own entirely. She's like quietly trying to sneak around and avoid this cyborg that's after her. It's in a warehouse, by the way. All of this takes place in a warehouse.

[00:32:12] And this is when I was like, I'm concerned at this point in the movie. I'm like, this whole movie is going to be stuck in a warehouse. I was, I was, I thought this at the moment. Don't think it's going to go outside. Yeah. I really thought this at the moment. And I was like, this isn't going to be a road movie. It's just going to be the crappy dread remake. And I was like, here we go. One building, one movie. But there are some cool shots of the cyborg, like in shadow when he's shooting at her and his eyes are glowing. And except there's-

[00:32:40] Except they make his eyes blink, which is kind of crazy. He's a terminator. He doesn't need to blink to have his eyes blink. No, exactly. And there's one shot where the tracking, the stabilization for the light up on the eyes, like Luke goes off his like eyes. Yes, I saw that. You saw that? I was like, oh no. They're bouncing around pretty good there a couple of times. Yeah. It was a pretty bad shot actually. So it feels like I'd seen this movie before. Again, like I said, all these Gerald Laira movies, I'm like, man, have I seen this?

[00:33:10] Everything looks familiar, but it's just the look. Like the warehouse and the blue and the light rays coming through the windows. This is just very typical early nineties film set dressing. Lots of smoke on the set. Yeah. Again, the pacing's fine, but she evades the cyborg and she drops like an engine box. They're in a warehouse. She drops like a, there's like a big casting on it on a chain and she drops on them. It squishes in flat.

[00:33:38] It's actually an okay effect, but she runs across some, she escapes the warehouse and then she's in an alley. She comes across these crazy like cross dresser Raiders, which are really wacky. Yes, they are. Like they look, they look like Frank and Furter from, um, from Rocky where a picture show. That's actually really good. I was going to say, it's kind of like post-apocalyptic Ruby rod from fifth element, but total Frank and for you're right. Yeah. Yeah. It's good.

[00:34:08] He's wearing negligee. He's got a ridiculous like cone bra on. Yeah. It's just like, it's funny though. Makeup's done well. And yeah, it's quite funny, but yeah. And they try to jump her and this was a great shot in the movie because like while they're attacking her, there's like four or five of them. One of them just gets a knife in the neck out of nowhere. And then like, this is cute, like awesome, like blues harmonica sting like plays.

[00:34:36] And then the camera like whip pans over and Joe Lara is standing on like a pile of junk and he's backlit. And there's like a neon blue tube next to him and like smoke coming out. I was going to say, he's got smoke coming up from behind. Oh dude. It was a great hero shot. It was really good. I was like, yeah, like I was into this. It was, it was energizing. So we finally get introduced to Joe Lara. His name's Austin. And she asked him for help to cross the city, of course, because he's like, what are you doing out here?

[00:35:05] And he's like, you gotta be crazy insinuating that it's going to be a hard journey even for him to do this for whatever. She looks at her wrist. I like this. She has a watch and this is very much the snake listing countdown watch. Yeah. A hundred percent, you know? And I thought that was kind of funny. So they arrive at, uh, this is where it gets weird because they go to another warehouse and I'm like, oh God, it's the same warehouse.

[00:35:34] There's a shooting at differently or something. And I'm really thinking this whole movie is going to be set inside a single warehouse, but also Joe Lara. Cause he's like, I don't want to deal with you lady. He bails on her and we meet Akmir and he's like building a weapon. And it's kind of, he's kind of like Q almost in James Bond. It's just, this guy's got the shop is like building stuff. And the weapons dealer in the apocalypse. Yeah. This is Yosef Shiloh. He was Khalid in Rambo three, which I love that movie.

[00:36:04] It remember the scene where Rambo gets the case. No, Sam, I don't. I've never seen Rambo three. Oh God. I hate you so much. I haven't seen Rambo. I've, I've seen first blood. So I have seen first blood. I should have known this, but I'd still, it just feels like an only scene. I only seen first blood. Well, there's a great scene in Rambo three at the beginning of the first act where he's getting a delivery of his stuff. Right.

[00:36:30] And Khalid is the guy who's fencing it for him and he gives Rambo these cases of stuff and Rambo's like opening him up in the back of his like little shop. And it's great. Cause like, he pulls out like a blue light, you know, like, you know, like a neon light that you snap and the chemical. And then it, you know, it becomes. And he like, the guy's like, what is this? Cause he's never seen all this stuff. Right. And he's like, what's this? What's this? And then like, he pulls out a blue light and he's like, what's that?

[00:36:57] And Rambo like snaps it and it starts blue. And he's like, it's a blue light. And he's like, what does it do? And Rambo just holds it. And he's like, turns blue. It's a great line. It's a really good moment. And it's such a serious movie. I really enjoyed that. But anyway, he's wearing this like really weird jacket. This guy, you know, so Sheila, he's wearing this like suit jacket with these big, like upturned shoulder pads and this weird under collar. Like they're really driving home.

[00:37:27] The futuristic look in this moment of the movie more than anywhere else. Like I feel like this is the one costume they tried to make it look kind of really weird, but it, it, it, it kind of looks like Moloch from odd world. Do you remember the Abe's odd world games? Yeah. We played a little bit of those, but yeah. Yeah. No, I, I think I know. I think I know what you're talking about. So this guy who's building weapons trading or whatever, he's clearly the, the, the guy in the wasteland and he's doing well for himself is the way they sort of set it up.

[00:37:57] And Austin has some batteries that he wants to trade for an RZB. We don't know what an RZB is yet, but they talk about it. But I liked that the batteries he's holding look like old Sony camcorder batteries.

[00:38:10] Like those little gray, like I was, that was the only thing they could be while they're discussing this trade about, I think this whole purpose of this scene is to discuss RZB, which we later learn what it is, but it sets it up because they get interrupted because our cyborg explodes through the concrete wall at this point. It's kind of awesome. It's just, Oh yeah. Yeah. He's like the Kool-Aid guy of cyborgs.

[00:38:35] Like every single time the movie tries to slow down, he explodes through a wall. It's pretty funny actually. We're more subdued because at a certain point it's just his fist punches through a couple of times and it's like, yeah. He just never bothers to just walk through the entryway they've walked through. It's always this grand entrance every time, which is kind of funny. So again, I liked the pacing of the movie. Everything's working.

[00:39:01] I think, I think the whole thing is that Mary shows up here because she's being chased by the cyborg. So the whole purpose of this scene is to get Austin and Mary back together and have to flee together. Essentially. I do talk a lot about how in the early nineties, the movies got a lot more vibrant and richer in color. I think this is a great example of that in this part of the movie. Mm hmm. It looks good. It's dark and it's gritty, but they're fighting like Joe Lara.

[00:39:29] Austin is fighting the cyborg and every in the warehouse and every single shot, there's like a neon tube of a different color with smoke behind it. Like every time you cut back and forth and it's like really, it's really sending home this, oh, this feels like the nineties for sure. Which again, a lot of people, when they remake stuff or try and make things look like the eighties, they really make it look like the mid nineties. But cause it's, there's that long. Yeah. We're carry over, I guess you could say.

[00:39:59] Um, yeah, well there's, there's definitely an overlap in style. There always is. Um, the nineties had a more, you know, fluorescent look to it. Yeah. Sorry. The eighties were more fluorescent. The nineties were more neon. If that makes sense. Gray, pink, and then neons like gray furniture, gray carpet. Yeah. Neon accents. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:40:24] And this is the first fight with Austin and the cyborg and the cyborg pukes, bullet, white goo. And then, you know, people would think like you mentioned alien, but the first thing that caught my head was like dark angel, like immediately. This is the same shit every time. So I forgot about that. Oh my God. I come in peace. I come in peace. Yeah. I love that movie so much. I saw that. She's theater. Oh God, you did. I'm so jealous.

[00:40:54] Oh yeah. I didn't know you. Well, I was, yeah. What was that? Like 1990 or something. Right? Yeah. I, I would have lost my, I think it was early in that. No, it was 1990. So I was like, uh, yeah, I was like 18, 19 when that came up. That would have been a great theater experience. What a great movie that is. I love that movie. I know. So good. And, but yeah, he's puking all this white stuff and that's what I was thinking.

[00:41:20] And, but as you like with any cyborg movie or with, there's an injury, it just gives the principal characters. It's the only way I can refer to these guys. Cause it's not really protagonist, but it gives the principal characters time to get away a little bit further. And that, that's how this whole movie plays. They injure him or, and it's not just this movie. It's every time of stalker kind of movie. They, they, they stop him for a minute. They get an advancement. Yeah.

[00:41:46] What I don't like about this movie is that when they stop him, they get away and he catches up in a weird amount of time. Well, it's, it's funny because the first time they get away, it's because Joe Lara managed to stab him in the neck. Yeah. Slices his neck open and he goes down and then they go, they escape and they realized he's, he's tracking them by their heat signature. So, cause he can see their footsteps as heat resident.

[00:42:15] So he's like, we gotta, we gotta continue on during the day. So they go off somewhere to sleep. It's like, they obviously haven't gone far and then they hole up somewhere to sleep and then they oversleep basically. And then, you know, Mary kind of wakes up a little groggy and looks around and you know, everything's quiet. Austin's still asleep. And then all of a sudden, boom, this comes through the wall. He explodes.

[00:42:39] As soon as they try and talk about something or as soon as things slow down just enough, it's like surprise, Cyborg. Yeah. Every time. When he first gets stabbed in the neck, I thought it was, it's like that classic nineties, like when digital compositing was starting to be a thing. Cause Joe Lara cuts him across the throat and then he puts his hand there. And as he drags his hand across his throat, it's healed and they just do like a wipe on it. It's horrible. It's like the worst effect.

[00:43:07] Like, I mean, at the time it looks fine, but in today's world, that's such a no, no for that type of effect. But yeah, we get this conversation where Julia Austin doesn't want to be involved in this. She's needing his help. And she says, look, RZB tabs. I can give you all. We learned that they're anti-radiation tabs and everybody basically needs these like they need food or water.

[00:43:34] And if you don't keep up on your tab, you're going to die from radiation from the presumable fallout. And Austin questions her here. Yeah. It's written well. Cause he's like, why is it coming off for you? If you're just going to the dock to get a full shipment of RZB tab cyborgs don't need RZBs, you know? And he's like, she's trying to defend why, but he's questioning it and questioning it the right way. He's like, well, why would a cyborg chase you if you've going to get a shipment of RZBs?

[00:44:02] Maybe you could argue the cyborg just wants humanity to die. And if he cuts off, which is set up. Yeah. But the setup is like, Hey, okay, we're going to go this way through the town. It's really dangerous. Let's take the sewer. And that's the first act is basically it's right. It's a little long cause it's a 30 minute first act, but the pacing is very well. And I was still entertained. Like I wasn't like at 22 minutes, like, get me out of here. Like keep moving.

[00:44:32] It's still, it's still moved on enough, but I'm like looking at this stuff and I'm like, these are pretty good sets. Like this, this looks good. Yeah. You know, it's kind of dumb. She, she escapes by going across this big metal ladder. And I, I did like it cause the cyborgs chasing her on it and he's obviously way heavier. Right. And then, you know, some of the rungs. Yeah. Yeah. He starts to follow through and then, but then they do it with her too, which was just like, it doesn't make sense.

[00:45:00] It's there's just so much repetition in this movie. Yes. There is a lot of that. It's because it's, it's like, again, they just, the, the number of times they, they get away and then he comes back and they get away. Yeah. It's like four times, right? Like it's right. So the fact that they do the, the rung break, rung thing on both of them within two minutes is it's like, come on guys, let's do something a little more clever.

[00:45:26] It's funny because you say that, but I remember specifically a interview with Brad Fidel talking on the Terminator one commentary. And yeah, he did the, he composed the music. Right. And Stan Winston does the commentary and he talks about when they screened it for Brad Fidel. And cause they're like, Hey, do you want to write the music for this thing or whatever?

[00:45:52] And Winston sat in the screener with Fidel and in the screening with James Cameron and with Stan Winston, after they kill after Sarah kills the Terminator. And in the, uh, in the press, um, in the, in the explosion, Brad says in screen, he's like, if he comes back again, I'm going to laugh.

[00:46:17] And then it comes back, you know, then they're just like, and he's like, and then he was like, I can't believe I said that to camera. Like I was trying to get this job, but he was even thinking it was ridiculous. So the, the idea of a cyborg returning is ridiculous. And even in Terminator one, the gold standard, it coming back is still ridiculous, but it's just played better. Cause it's more dramatic and it sounds better. And I love that score.

[00:46:42] Um, so the way that what happens here is they get in the sewer and they're trying to cross the city quickly. And then this is also the minute where the cyborg catches up to him. It's kind of like ravagers when we talked about how, when they get in the sewer, the raiders, the ravagers catch up with them so much quicker than their head time. It's, it felt like the same thing. You're just like, this is comical. He caught up, but I do like these shots of the cyborg walking through the sewer with the gun and the glowing eyes.

[00:47:12] These ones look really cool. I actually genuinely enjoyed that. I was like, this is good looking movie. Yep. There's a little drama here where Mary, like they're scrambling, trying to get away. And she drops her backpack and it lands on a landmine because like Joe Lara is like, Hey, by be careful. There's landmines in here. We don't see one until later in the scene, the low moment she drops it and it's sitting on a landmine. And then that sets up this intensity because the cyborg's coming and she's like, I'm not leaving without it. And he's like, what? You're an idiot.

[00:47:42] And she's like, I need to go. So he has to try and hold down the landmine and get her pack off it. He still doesn't know there's a baby in it, but it tries to build. I think this is where it falls apart more. It tries to build this intense situation. Yep. You could make this really intense, but somehow in this movie, it doesn't feel that way. Like it's a good gag. It's a good setup. Yeah. But it just, it's just not cut or shot in the way that makes you care or be like, Oh, like you're sweating bullets.

[00:48:11] Like, it's just not, it just doesn't feel like the cyborgs are really right there. I think is the answer to that. I agree. Like we said, we always find common ground in these movies. We get another camp out scene. Cause they escaped cyborg and then they rest for the night. And it's like, sure. Mary's is saying that, you know, she's running out of time and they have this conversation where Mary asks, like, what, what do people live for here?

[00:48:40] You know, which is, it's a weird segue, but Austin, he's just like, people have to do this. We'll have hope. He does this whole thing. He's like, maybe for a dream. It's, it's pushing the idea a little too much too early on in the movie too, that everyone kind of wants what she presumably is going to give them, which is, you know, bringing life back to the world. It just feels a little too obviously paired up in a way. Like she's asking, what do you people want? And he's like, we just want to be able to procreate.

[00:49:10] And she's like, well, I got one right here in a can. And it feels a little, but she doesn't tell him that. No. And, and again, like this is where, like, if you see a movie like children and men, where they do this aspect of society really, really well. Yes. Like you got, um, civilization is falling apart because there is no new generation coming. Right. And it's done so well in that movie with like the random terrorist bombing. It's fantastic.

[00:49:38] That it's just such, such a well done movie. And, uh, you know, and they got a pregnant woman, but again, you know, that didn't exist. Uh, unless maybe the novel, I don't even think the novel that it's based on was out by the time this thing was done. But yeah, yeah, it's just, it's, it's, it's a clever idea, but it's not executed overly well, but again, it's not, it's not what the movie's about really. No.

[00:50:04] And, and, uh, children and men does it so well because he feels hopeless. It, it looks and feels hopeless and there's ads everywhere for like a suicide drug and stuff like that. And it's just, yeah. I love that. I mean, I love that line in the Stallone judge shred when he's like talking to her Schneider and he's just like, you could have jumped out the window and he's like 40 floors. He's like, that's suicide. And judge reads like, at least it's legal. You know, it's so great. Yeah.

[00:50:35] Yeah. Um, but yeah. I mean, children and men though, I remember the first time watching that and all the buses that had the video screens on them and stuff. Yeah. Oh man, that's wild. We'll never have that. Four years later. I was going to, we were going to a Canucks game a couple of years after, um, hockey game for those who don't know. And, um, like they, they had redone the stadium, uh, in between seasons and all of a sudden there were screens everywhere. And I was like, oh man, did video screens ever drop in price? All of a sudden.

[00:51:04] Like it was just like all around the stadium. Everything was all this animated stuff. And I was like, oh wow. Like children and men. Yeah. I mean, I, I talk about a lot of movies that have predicted futures in a lot of way. And the one movie that not many people talk about is the sixth day, the short story movie, which I love. And he goes to the mall and then it's great. There's this holographic like fish tank above him in the mall for it's, it's like Panasonic or pioneer.

[00:51:34] And there's like fish swimming around, say advertising, like home AV stuff, but he goes to repet and it's a store in the mall and they clone your pet, you know? And it's like a thing, but so you, you can clone a pet now for like $50,000. It used to be 2 million. Like it's getting lower and lower to the point where it's not so ridiculous that that might be a consumer thing. The one thing it didn't. Your genome analyzed for like under a hundred bucks. I mean. Yeah. Well, but that's because it's the CIA plant really. That's what they want.

[00:52:04] So. Of course. Um, but I mean, but, but that was like a billion dollars at one point. Like it's just. You're right. Yeah. But yeah, the CIA subsidize it cause they want you to. It's just like the, the reason the FBI can't spy on anybody legally, but they can sure fund Google startup with $2 billion to make them spy on you legally. I'm sorry, Jace. Okay. Mm hmm. Um, we have multiple encounters with the cyber chasing him and breaking up every single time.

[00:52:32] They're going to have a moment and you're going to learn about the world again. He's just explodes through the wall. There's a scene where Austin cuts his fingers off and he falls and he regenerates them. So you kind of led to believe this guy's a pretty advanced cyborg cause he can regrow his fingers. Like they get cut off and it's just like the pencil, you know, that comes out of them. And they, they push up and they regrow. So you're like, this guy's a, but you don't hear Austin talk about, oh man, this, this thing's incredible.

[00:52:58] He just kind of keeps coming back a little more like the terminator versus a discussion of this thing's high technology. Why does it want you? But. Well, he makes a comment about, you didn't tell me a cyborg was after you and it's, and it's one of the new ones or something like that. Mm-hmm. He makes that kind of comment early on. And that's why he's questioning. He's like, why would it want you for your RZB, which is your anti radiation pills? It doesn't give a shit about that.

[00:53:23] So Mary admits halfway through the trip, by the way, there isn't any RZB. I tricked you. Right. Yeah. And he's like, what? And she's like, I've got a baby in a can. And he's just like. Well, he, he, he stumbles and then he kind of pulls back the backpack and he sees like, what the hell is this? Yes. And that's where she said, this is what I need to get to there. It's like, and there's just no RZB. There's just, and he's like, lied to me. I trusted you. He does it basically like that.

[00:53:53] And he's pretty boss. He's pretty bummed about this. I think this sort of sets up that he doesn't really care about the human race or humanity. He's just like, I just wanted to get my stuff. So you're on your own kid is kind of the way that it's set up. So of course they split ways. And now Mary's on her own. She walks into a church, by the way, she's wearing a blue shoal over her head right now. And she is absolutely looking like mother Mary right now. This is a hundred percent intentional and her with this baby and all this sort of stuff.

[00:54:22] So this is actually a cool moment in the movie. She walks into the church and then she gets attacked by this mummy. There's a guy just like in bandages and he's got an axe. It looks cool. I was like, whoa, this is like cool. And then she gets hoisted up in a cargo net and like trapped. And you're like, okay, what's, what's going on? She shoots the mummy in the head. Yes. And, and then, yeah, she gets pulled up in a net. We see then she's strung up on this crucifix, like presumably in the attic of the church.

[00:54:50] And there's all these mutants in like mummified wraps and they've all got like boils on their skin and everything like this. And the crucifix is cool too. It's like a real force perspective crucifix. It's not, it's not just like a plain one. It's like super stylized. Like it looks like it's out of some like MTV video or something like that. It's, it's very 90s. So these mutants are kind of like presumably threatening her. We don't know why, but they've captured her.

[00:55:16] And just before this is how fast the movie is before anything can actually happen or before we really know why and what they're doing. And then Austin just comes like swinging in from the ceiling. And then he just, he sets a bunch of them on fire. Like, I don't even know how it happens so quickly because it just moves there. They're all on fire. He saves the day. I not complaining. He keeps a crap out of everybody. Yeah. He's just blasting all of them. He's like throwing knives at them. There's like no time wasted here.

[00:55:42] So, but every single time these two go their own way within seconds, they meet up again, serendipitously. And then it's just a, it's, it's weird. So the weakest part of this movie at this point is the music. It just sounds like it comes from like a Casio keyboard demo or something. I, and I, this movie could really do with some cool music, especially like the hero moments when Austin comes in and saves the day. It just, there's just nothing memorable about the score of this.

[00:56:10] But, um, there's also a lot of tilted camera stuff. It kind of reminds me of the resurrected. Remember? We're like, damn, every shot is like tilted that early nineties MTV. Look where it's the old earth. Yeah. It's a good movie. That's angles. You gotta watch it. It's great. Um, you have to brush up on your psycho before you watch it though. Uh, let's see.

[00:56:38] So we do get a little story here about Mary's parents being killed by cyborgs, which is, I guess important. She's telling Austin all these problems that, that happened and how everything's bad. Of course, the cyborg, the cyborgs hunting them in the middle explodes through a wall once again and disrupts them. Well, we get, we get a little bit of backstory on Austin. I think at this point too, he says how he doesn't, you know, his parents are gone or something like that. Yeah.

[00:57:06] He tells virtually nothing, but it's all just doesn't really say much, but he kind of alludes that he did a, you know, a child at least that he remembers. It's trying to make them two similar people to give them some common ground essentially. Yeah. And so after this fight of the cyborg breaking this up, again, it feels like it's in the same factory cause there's a moment where they're outdoors, but then they're back into the warehouse and you're like, okay, I think I still feel like we're going somewhere, but I'm like, I know what you're doing here.

[00:57:36] And now you're sitting in another warehouse and I don't want the productions on. It's just, it's, I was impressed with all the stuff on the ground and crap. And I was like, man, they actually set dress the stuff really well. Like the warehouse and stuff, how a lot of crap in them and like stuff that's like big and lots of old cost iron. And so there, I was like looking at it, thinking, man, like between that and the sewers, like there's a lot of effort put in here in the right spots because it feels pretty good.

[00:58:05] Austin gets into a fight with the cyborg and they're basically hanging. It's kind of like the ultimate warrior with William Smith and Yul Brynner, where he's hanging down in the pit and they're holding each other's arm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And what ends up happening is that Austin rips off the cyborgs arm, but the cyborg rips off Austin's arm as well. Yeah.

[00:58:29] And surprise Austin's arm is robotic, which doesn't have any of the white stuff though. He does have blood. Yeah. So it's red. It's red. It's not blood, but I guess it's red, but yeah, he's, it's just like all of a sudden he's making like machine noises. And it's never explained why his blood is red and the cyborg is white. Nope. But it's supposed to be a big shocking moment. It's, it's something I didn't, I didn't expect it.

[00:58:57] Like his whole arm is ripped off and then like sparks and you're like, oh, cause it's glory at first. You think it's his real arm coming off. And I, I, I pay that to the filmmakers of making this believable. I was like, this is his arms really getting torn off here. How's it going to get out of this? And then the final spark. And I'm like, oh, it's there's ominous music playing and everything. And of course, Austin's like, no, you know, realizing he's a cyborg. It's, I already knew he was a cyborg.

[00:59:25] Cause like I said, they make a point about how he's healed so fast already. Yeah. So Mary's on her own now. Apparently she has a mile to go to get to the ocean or to the harbor. There's a scene with acid rain and everything's burning and Mary's trying to pour water on herself and stuff. She actually puts her, she finds a raincoat on the ground, puts it over again. It's a clear raincoat. So this is like a hundred percent blade runner nods here the whole way. Oh yeah. Yeah. Cause these pop up early on too. Yeah.

[00:59:52] But, um, yeah, she pops open a manhole cover and says, go down here. You know, you keep going. Then you make your first left. Then you make your second right. And then you'll end up at the ocean. And then of course it's like, oh, this is just the same sewer from before. So it's like, damn it. Like I feel like we're getting somewhere and then I've really pay attention and we're just using the same couple sets over and over, but yeah, it's not the film's fault. They're doing the best they can with what they got. And so yeah.

[01:00:21] And, and to their credit, they don't do anything with this sewer the second time. No, she just runs through it. And she ends up under a pier basically. Yeah. So this is really the moment she ends up under a pier. It's like a big concrete pier. And, uh, I just want to make sure I'm on my right. No, it's got some pretty cool binoculars, these little, little compact set of binoculars and she's scanning the horizon for the, for the boat.

[01:00:50] And then she finds it as a giant ass tanker. It's like, like this, this, there's nothing subtle about this thing. This is, this is like the same thing they have in Ravagers. Yeah, they do actually. It's like Ernest Borgin on like a Roz, uh, ship in Ravagers. Yeah. And then, uh, then she moves a little bit more and sees like, there's this boat coming and it looks like a swamp boat, like on the Florida Evergades or something. Yeah. And, uh, comes, comes cruising in.

[01:01:17] Well, it's a, it's a very small, but it has a plastic tent on it. Yes. A clear plastic tent on double, which we're supposed to assume is some kind of clinical thing on a boat for whatever reason, but I think it's the acid rain protection. Probably. Yeah. It's some kind of hermetically sealed thing. It's believable though, for what they've got on screen or for what they put on screen, you buy it. You don't question it. Like, you know, immediately, Hey, this is the boat that's going to secure the fetus.

[01:01:46] So it tells the story. It does it. But this is the moment though, is because we cut back to Austin and he's there just hanging out in the, in this pit, sewing his arm back on, but it's not his arm. He's sewing the cyborgs arm back on. Cause he ripped the cyborgs arm back off and it's not well shot. It, the, I mentioned Rambo three before, but Rambo three, I, I mean, I love first blood

[01:02:14] and the scene where he sews himself up after falling and he gets split up and on the tree and he's down by the river, pretty good sequence. But the better one of that is Rambo three where he's got a bullet hole in his abdomen and he actually quarterizes it with gunpowder and everything and sears it with low. It's a super intense scene. It's really good. You want something like this from this moment, even though he's a cyborg, he shouldn't feel pain or whatever. They just don't showcase it properly.

[01:02:44] It's just kind of out of frame and he's holding a needle. It's just, he's completely cut out of frame and he's just kind of working on it, but they don't show you what he's doing. He just, you just kind of know what he's doing. It's kind of just phoned in, but that's kind of the setup. And then we cut back to Mary under the pier and she's right at the edge now by the ocean. And then. The best really, it caught me. Like you said. Yeah. Yeah. And then our cyborg jumps out of the water straight up in front of her.

[01:03:14] Just pops up in the middle, essentially in the middle of the ocean out of the water. Like if he could have got her caught that far out there, he could have got her in any other state. The fact that he's got into the ocean, like it's so silly and got ahead of her. Really? It's crazy. I haven't, I haven't, I want to say, cause I haven't commented on this yet for whatever reason, our cyborg, the only sounds he makes, he never speaks. The only sounds he makes is like Frankenstein's monster. Yeah. From like the old, old thirties.

[01:03:44] It's kind of funny. Frankenstein movie. It's just like, I picked up all the time. And it's just like, okay. Yeah. It's, it's a, it's for how strong this movie was, this wraps up pretty in a pretty weak thing because what happens is that after he explodes out of the water, there's like a big concrete. He's managed to throw his arm back too. Again, I'm looking at it and there's like a big concrete dock and there's like old rusted cars, like hanging off them in the water.

[01:04:14] Like there's a lot of cool production design here. It all looks gritty and there's stuff. I'm like, where is it? You know? And then Austin shows up and of course his arm is entirely regrown. Now it doesn't look anything like the cyborgs one. He just has a little like strap around it. So it's regrown itself entirely in five minutes or whatever, but him and the cyborg fight in like waist deep water in the ocean and the fetus gets flung out of Mary's backpack

[01:04:45] into the ocean. She's scrambling for it. They're fighting back and forth. And I was like, man, there's 10 minutes to go on this movie. And he's slowly ripping the cyborgs face off and you see a little bit underneath and it kind of looks cool. But it's not terrible. I was like, okay, maybe we're going to like, he's going to really reveal the cyborg. This is going to look great. It never goes further than that. But I'm thinking, oh, maybe for my price of entry, I want to see a full on cyborg

[01:05:14] and I want to see the design, everything underneath because it looked cool with a bit we saw, but we don't get that far. But this fight goes pretty downhill, pretty. This fight goes downhill very quick because Austin just stabs him with a knife and then he pulls a bunch of like, look like old, like scuzzy drive cables out of his stomach with like white goo. It's the only way I can describe it as like some ribbon cable. The last thing you would ever want in some kind of high tech cyborg, all the cables get

[01:05:42] pulled out of the cyborg and then he just explodes. He's like floating on the top of the water. It just like explodes for whatever reason. Well, you need, you need something to know that he's finally done. He's not coming back. Austin admits to Mary that he didn't know he was cyborg. And he says, they must've screwed up when they made me. And Mary says, the baby's going to need a father because the boat's here now. And then, yeah, well, he, cause Austin's like, I'm going to go. Yeah.

[01:06:11] And she's like, stay, come back. Do you want some of that? Uh, you want some of that cyborg action? And then she also, he says, we both have a job to do. I know the system. We can beat them all back in the city. They need hope. I'm like, what? You know that you just stabbed the cyborg in the guts and pulled some cables out of him that that's how to defeat the whole thing. Nothing was learned here. It's really weird. No. And then Mary, he like double downs on Austin.

[01:06:41] She's like, I'm going to name the baby Austin. And as he grows up, I'm going to tell him all about you. And then they make out. And then there's the final. It's not like he's the dad. No, he's not. But she says he needs dad. And then the final show. We never, we never find out who the dad is by the way. No. And, and she's some kind of it's cause it's like some kind of immaculate conception thing. Right? Yeah. That's why she's married. She's wearing the blue show and all the stuff. Exactly. Exactly.

[01:07:10] And then we get a final shot of Joe Lara walking along the beach credits roll. He freezes. And then the credits roll. And then we get that big smash in title text that comes in, it crashes in steel American cyborg warrior is how it reads. If you read the top to the bottom, I was like, wait, what? Yep. Yeah. You realize that Joe Lara was the American cyborg steel warrior the whole time. It's. He didn't know that till the end.

[01:07:38] I'm surprised how good this movie was. It just, it just played really well. No. It's, it's not a good movie, Sam. It's just better than we expected. Maybe that's what it is. I just felt refreshed when I watched it. I was like, this is great. I had a great time watching it. It's like, but the weird thing is, is like, we know nothing about the cyborg. It's, which is by far the most interesting thing in the movie. Like how does this thing super strong? Where's it come from? Why is it looking for? I would like to know more about that. That's the biggest floor.

[01:08:08] We also know nothing much about the world that supposedly the AI they talk about that supposedly suppresses humans, presumably other cyborgs, but there's no other cyborgs in the movie. So we don't know how many other than Joe Lara. And we have no idea why he's why. And he has red blood. So it's like, it's weird. Yeah. Well, and why was he just kind of let, he's a mistake. Like, why is he just let to go loose? Like, yeah. Yeah. It's a dumb twist.

[01:08:38] Yeah. It's not great. I agree. It's for as good and as watchable the movie is, I expected more somehow, but it's, it's a weird mix because there's so much goodness about this, but there's these fatal flaws that just make it weird. It's all, it's almost like there's good filmmaking the way it's shot and the pacing. Yet on the other hand, you're just like, why is any of this happening? Which is kind of a rarity. Yeah. Cause you usually get either side.

[01:09:05] It just, it feels like it was so close to being good. Like I don't want to detract. I don't want to say Joe Lara is a problem, but I mean, if you put a couple of well-known people in this, it probably would have been okay. I don't know. Maybe not. I don't know. I think it's still got some major script problems. Yeah. It is a better use of an apocalypse genre type film. Like having to transport something that's perishable across a dangerous environment

[01:09:33] is, is just something you can do a lot more with in our, every time there's. Well, it gives us a ticking clock. We have, we have a finite amount of time to do it. Exactly. The stakes are high. We've seen the movie over and over or this kind of movie, but this isn't a bad version of it because we've never seen exactly this movie. You mentioned children of men. That's probably the best version of this case, but this is a lot earlier than that.

[01:10:01] So they're trying to do exactly that. Like as far as movies that do something with a living being that needs to be transported. I was thinking of, you know, in this case it's a fetus, but like ones with people, Clint Eastwood and Sandra Locke in the gauntlet, which is one of my dear favorite, my one of my favorite Clint Eastwoods of all time. Uh, children men's probably the closest, but you can even say Logan is kind of this movie too, you know? And then if you really want to go there, you can say Fury Road is the same thing too.

[01:10:31] It's a two hour road chase movie and they can have a thing that they will try, you know, it's the girl. Like, so, um, if you were doing this with inanimate objects, I think it's basically repo man. Cause it doesn't matter what they actually have. That's the whole point of that. Right. Pulp fiction to a degree as well, at least for one of the storylines. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know how I feel about that, but it's, um, I just, I just haven't seen it in its entirety in one sitting.

[01:11:00] It's always been on at somebody else's house, but we know I, uh, I don't know. Did you ever watch a Reservoir Dogs? No. That was his first one. Reservoir Dogs you should watch. I remember when it was playing in the movie theater and I went and saw Macaulay Culkin, Richie Rich instead. I, I don't know. I just never gravitated to those movies, but I, I, someday I'll get there, but I've, I got to finish.

[01:11:24] Um, I got to finish 184 episodes of SG one and then do all the original, the Star Trek original series is next, but maybe after that, I'll watch Reservoir Dogs. Who knows? It's a long way out. So the reason I was curious about this feels like the sets are good and everything's good. There's no sets. It's this is all shot on location, but it was shot in Tel Aviv. Oh, wow. Yeah. I would have never known. I was like, Oh, that's why I was like, cause you know, you look into that concrete pier and all the junk to cars are in there.

[01:11:53] I think they look so different. Yeah. And I was like, this just doesn't look like anything I've seen before. There's money and effort here, but it turns out it was Tel Aviv. So Nicole Hanson, uh, Mary in an interview in 1994 is femme fatale magazine. And one point she almost, you're laughing. Like you remember this, like you had a subscription to it. No, I do remember the magazine though. It was around the same time as a star log and yeah. Yeah.

[01:12:22] Cause cause I remember you told me that, uh, star log turned into Fangoria cause it was the same publisher and the same thing. I never knew that or it was turned into it. This is same, same publisher. Yeah. I never knew that. Yeah. Um, but I, I was, once I discovered star log, I was, uh, I was a regular reader. Yeah. Uh, no, the, the few times I've been given gifts of star log, like by friends and stuff. And I'm like, this is awesome. I wish I still had my old one. I wish that that would be in the magazine.

[01:12:50] I would have fiended over to have an Australian grownup. Like Fangoria when I used to have my mail subscription Fangoria and then the nineties was like $28 a month to get one magazine. Oh, I bet. Yeah. To my mailbox in Australia. But it was the most coveted thing I could have ever owned. Like, cause it was a different size and shape as all that. I printed magazine, like everything. And then the ads, you know how it goes. So yeah.

[01:13:16] Nicole Hanson in an interview with the 1994 femme fatale. At one point she said that she admitted she almost quit the movie. She said she was on a plane going to film in the locations, presumably in Israel. She was flying to. And she was reading a revised script and she'd been sent just before she got on the plane, which had nude sequences and sex sequences in it. And then as she says, dot, dot, dot, every five minutes.

[01:13:47] So she demanded the changes and Canon actually agreed immediately. Although she suggested just, Hey, like if you want to do this, cast a body double, like for the graphic scenes, that's fine. Whatever you want to do. She's like, I'm just not going to do the nudity. So all that stuff was eventually cut. And Bo is our director from there on out. He historically is known for accusing her to ruining his film. And I'm like, like I'm a big fan of this guy already.

[01:14:15] Like I like this movie and I cannot wait for next week because I, with lunar cop, I'm so excited for his stuff, but I can't really defend his take here because it's not that good of a movie, but maybe that's why it's so weirdly in fast pace because they had all this other stuff set up and they had to cut it out. Yeah. Maybe. But it sounds like he wanted to make a software porn and most likely it's like, yeah, that wasn't.

[01:14:44] And that's not what you hired her on for. So I can't blame her for saying no. Well, she was cost in this movie originally because she wrote a script called Tranquility and she pitched it to Canon and they said, that's great. We can make this movie for sure. And then they denied the movie two months later and said, you know what? We don't have the money for this movie, but there was a scene in that movie Tranquility

[01:15:07] where she was going to walk down wall street completely naked during rush hour was this whole thing. And she said in her take, she said, well, for that scene, I'm fine with it because that made sense for the character, but apparently the nudity that she was going to do in American Cyborg steel warrior was gratuitous. So it sounds like this just sounds like a Canon film to me. Like I don't know what the real story is somewhere.

[01:15:36] There's some, there's some real truth to it either side. I'm not really sure, but she also did say that she was really sick for the whole time they were filming because guess what the sewers. Now we know it was filmed in Tel Aviv weren't sets. So it was like there was filmed in real sewers. So, and then of course the whole ocean fight at the end is right where there was a sewage being pumped out into the ocean.

[01:16:04] So everybody got sick fighting in that fight scene. They all got E. Coli probably. Yeah, exactly. Uh, alternate release titles. These are fun. Actually, this is, this is, it's been a while since we had a movie that's had like a good spin on different titles. So in Germany, this is called American Cyborg, Portugal Cyborg Americano, which I really like. I think that's great. Um, Mexico Los exterminadores.

[01:16:30] And then also in Mexico, it was released as Cyborg two, which is like, damn, like you're really, this, this is like goes way back to when we were talking about the movie. We were talking about contamination being released as alien to in Eastern Europe, like saying, Hey, it's a sequel or whatever. This is clearly cashing in on the John van, in the, in the van damme. John clad van. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So except there was a Cyborg too. Yes. Jack Palance, Angelina Jolie.

[01:16:58] I love Jack Palance. He is just incredible. I'm God. I miss people like that so much. He was so great. So in he did the pushups on stage at the Oscars. He's like 70 something. Where can we get people like that again? We'll never have that. You can get somebody who's getting an Oscar at 20 that could do pushups on stage anymore. In Greece, however, it's released as American Cyborg three. I know this cracked me up, right?

[01:17:26] I was like, France was steel warriors and Argentina simply was non plural steel warrior. So these are all pretty great. Your room Globus was the executive producer on this film. This gentleman has been a producer on some incredible movies, including the flawless Cobra from 1986 and followed up right after with Hooper's life force from a year prior, which is pretty good.

[01:17:51] Gary Tungcliffe was the makeup effects supervisor on the film who went on to do the wonderful feast from 2005. There's a lot of problems about stipulations about the director. I do love that movie. It's a great creature feature. It was part of the initial project green light. It was one of the first movies that got, do you remember that? There you go. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome creature features got Henry Rollins in it. Just a great monster movie out of nowhere. I don't think it's not a movie, but I remember project green light. Super fun. Yeah.

[01:18:18] This movie is also cut by Alan Jakobwitz. So check this guy out. 105 credits in 1986. He cuts America 3000 coming soon. And then he cuts Invaders from Mars 1986, which love that poster, but just artistically a better poster, better than the movie. Every time on that case, he does after that Alan Quartermain in the lost city of gold, which is a classic.

[01:18:49] Richard Chamberlain doing Indiana Jones, but it's not, it's not terrible. Exactly. Yeah. I think that's exactly how I described that movie to people like people should see that movie. It's an inferior Romancing the stone, but still. Yeah. But a little more adventure because Romancing the stone slows down a lot. I love Romancing the stone seeing a lot, but yeah. Yeah. I'll take quarter man. If I have both tapes next to each other, I'll watch quarter man every time.

[01:19:14] He also cuts American Ninja two, which, which is important to me because I love all American Ninja films. They're none of them have problems. I think it's a great run of movies. Um, I wanted to mention though, in 1987, he cut penitentiary three. So we almost got a worm holder, but anyway, on that alternative to you for IMDB score, which I think it's low. Nah, it's about right.

[01:19:44] We usually say everything's too high. If everything's too high, this is low for, for no, I'm saying this is about right. Okay. It's not awesome. Uh, that's for 1800 views. We go over to letterbox. You'll be more happy. That's a 2.9. Yeah. Which would be like a 5.8. Yeah. I'd be happy seeing a three on this. Yeah. I don't know. I can't, I can't, it should be more than two. Uh, and that's for 11. Okay. It's in the wheelhouse.

[01:20:14] We're, we're well and truly on the continually scraping out bottom of the barrel. We watch these movies as always. So you don't have to, but I kind of recommend to watch this movie. If I mean, I had to pay $4 to rent off YouTube. If you find this on Tubi, you should watch it because it looks good. It has that nineties. Look, Joe Lara is better in this than he was in later to come steel frontier. But I think that's a directing thing because I'm already in love with this director.

[01:20:42] Can't wait for lunar crop next week. This is fast becoming my new favorite person, but as always, we appreciate you guys listening and tuning in. This is always anything but casino scene. And we are happy to hear from you guys as always appreciate the messages and we will see you at the movies. So,

[01:21:09] whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality and reality is less than television.