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Overview: OK, so you have Jean-Claude Van Damme – a guy that can’t show any emotions other than staring intensely or screaming anger – but at least he’s an awesome fighter. So all you have to do is provide a simple, semi-coherent story that allows the guy to show his two emotions and then spend the rest of the movie kicking ass. Simple, right? Unfortunately, Pyun’s Cyborg fails miserably in the story department. From beginning to end, the rationale for key events are completely non-sensical, which leaves us a steaming pile of crap with pretty good fight scenes.

 

 

The Story: In a bizarre dystopic future that has ultimate anarchy next to people apparently trying to build little houses on the prairie, a modern version of the plague has devastated an already crippled society. But a cure has been found. And for some reason, these people in one location need to get the cure from another location before it can be used. So…the answer to make this happen is to take one of their hot chick key engineers named Pearl Prophet(played by Dayle Hadden) and TURN HER INTO A CYBORG!!! Why the fuck do they turn her into a cyborg in order to play courier, you ask? Does this make her impervious to attacks? No…in fact, she’s completely worthless as far as combat is concerned. In fact, absolutely NO reason is given for this transformation. We are left to assume that somehow, hard drives only work in the future if they are embedded in people’s bodies (there is a focus on her cybernetic eyes, so perhaps they want us to believe that optical cameras only work in the future if embedded in cyborg eyes). Nor do we find out why the cure will be lost if this cyborg chick dies (gee – if this is a Johnny Mnemonic type thing, can’t they just upload it in chick #2?). In any event, her guardian is killed by the “flesh pirates” and now she needs another body guard. It just turns out that Jean-Claude Van Damme, hero extraordinaire’s one happy family moment was crushed by the flesh pirates, so he’s more than happy to go to the rescue. And for some reason, he’s taken a straggler, Deborah Richter, for the ride.

 

 

The rest of the movie is a tracking/confrontation movie where Van Damme tracks down Vincent Klyn, leader of the flesh pirates and engages them in fight after fight. Not surprisingly, Van Damme initially gets his ass beat a few times before we get to the predictable ending. In keeping with the whole incoherence theme, in one scene Van Damme is crucified on a ship’s mast (with nails through the hands – the whole bit), but is fully healed by the next evening’s final showdown. Even worse, we find out from Pearl Prophet, the cyborg chick, that her homies back at the fort can kill the pirates anyways, so we are left wondering why Van Damme even bothers.

 

 

The Bottom Line: The whole goal of the movie was to get Van Damme going at it with buff surfer Vincent Klyn. Why they even bothered to add a cyborg to this is beyond me, as it simply doesn’t fit with the story. Who knows, maybe this was the only thing they had available in their limited FX bag. Well, cool, why not spend the 20 minutes it takes to actually write a rationale for the cyborg’s inclusion? In short, this film was never going to be great, but with a little amount of coherence, it could have been decent. I do give one star extra for the fight scenes, which gives Cyborg 4 stars.

 

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Overview: Galerians Rion is a a low-quality animation - meaning video game quality with a semi-coherent story. Unfortunately, the story too plays like a video game. The star of the video game is a boy named Rion, who wakes up in a bizarre dystopic version of his former world. It turns out that this crazed supercomputer named Dorothy is attempting to become a God and only Rion can stop her. To do so, he needs to find his sister Lilia, who, along with Rion, has been given a virus that combined, can destroy Dorothy. As most RPGs, Rion’s powers grow as he fights the Galerians that Dorothy throws up to block his journey to finding his sister. You can tell the end of the segment, because, um, Rion fights a boss character. Yes, you really are watching someone play a video game here!

 

The Bottom Line: While I am impressed that Maesawa was able to produce an anime on such a limited budget (I’m guessing a game environment was used to make most of the visuals other than Dorothy), they just aren’t good enough to make for compelling viewing. The visuals are rather fascinating in places - Dorothy (see above) is pretty cool for instance - and certainly are cyberpunk, as is the story, but there just isn’t enough here, either in story or visuals to make this worth recommending. I will give it a point for attempting to do a full scale anime without a budget.

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Overview: Unlike the tagline (should not be missed…), I think its quite OK to miss Tetsuo II, especially if you’ve already seen the real thing. In Tetsuo II, Tsukamoto substitutes a larger budget in lieu of the unique and innovative narrative we find in Tetsuo - the Iron Man. The compromise is bad all around. For starters, this style of merging man and machine works FAR better in B&W than it does in color. The surreal believability factor of the FX drops significantly in color. As for the story, the whole idea of centering the conflict around a family setting significantly lessens the power of his earlier story, as does Tsukamoto’s attempt to add a more coherent narrative. While his point still seems to be the same one, its told with lots less force, in a far less interesting way, and also in a far less shocking way.

The Bottom Line: I can take screencaps of this if anyone is dying to see the visuals (I understand it’s out of print), but it’s just not a great movie. Tetsuo: Bodyhammer is OK to see this as long as you understand you’re getting a Japanese Cyberpunk movies that’s far less than Tetsuo - Iron Man, or even less than Rubber’s Lover, for that matter. I’ve heard people comment that Bodyhammer sucks so they aren’t interested in seeing the first one - don’t buy this reasoning. While the first screams uniqueness, Body Hammer whimpers “cash in on my earlier success by cutting back the edginess and going more mainstream.” It even stars Tomorowo Taguchi again, who attempts to reprise the same role and crazed scream faces - only this time it comes across more as the last show in a long day of staged repeat performances, similar to what you might find in a theater act at an amusement park late on a Sunday evening. In that sense, Body Hammer comes off as a sequel in true hollywood style.

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Overview: Japanese Cyberpunk films are always looking to extend the boundaries of humanity, but hopefully they do so within the constraints of a semi-coherent plot, with actions by the characters that make sense within the twisted view of the narrative. Android of Notre Dame does away with most of that, and instead goes for massive gross-out scenes with characters whose actions rarely make sense. Gooey substances of all colors and textures come spewing out of every crevice possible from this head in the above shot.

 

 

This story, such as it is, has a Japanese dwarf scientist playing a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein (well, Dr. Frankenstein as the hunchback of Notre Dame, actually) in an attempt to find a way to prolong his dying sister’s life. Yet, instead of going to the morgue, he goes out and finds associates, kills them in gruesome ways and then performs experiments on their various body parts. His most successful one is shown in the picture at the top, where he takes a guy’s head and hooks him up to a variety of wires and implants that allow the “android” (or really, we would call this a cyborg) to have facial movements, control a robotic arm and also can record his visual perceptions into a television. He also has his cyborg head kill this other chick so he can remove her heart in an attempt to fix his dying sister’s heart.

 

Image modified to obfuscate nudity. Go here if interested in seeing the unmodified image.

 

The Bottom Line: The idea behind Android of Notre Dame is rich, and, had it been executed better, might have yielded a pretty good Japanese Cyberpunk Flick. The ending scene in particular, where we see the scientist’s final failed solution is especially intriguing. Unfortunately, it seems that the Kuramoto was more interested in capturing gross-out scenes than he was in pursuing a promising, if limited story line.

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Overview: Cherry 2000 is about a guy named Sam Treadwell (David Andews) who gets too hot and heavy with his perfect android wife while wallowing in soap suds - unfortunately Cherry 2000 doesn’t take to water well and gets fried. After trying his hand at post-modern dating, Sam decides he needs a new body for his Cherry chip - unfortunately the only place they exist now is in a wasteland ruled by thugs. Sam hires Melanie Griffith as his tough-chick guide to navigate through the wasteland to get his new girl.

Truly, the majority of the movie is just not that good. In fact it’s worse than not good, and passes the border to unwatchable. The acting is absolutely horrendous, as are the outfits (intentionally though), as are the set pieces, as is the dialogue, as is the pacing, etc.

 

 

The Bottom Line: If you want to see Melanie Griffith’s worst acting performance, get Cherry 2000. But truly, the reason you might want to get this is, aside from the cool fried cyberchick love scene at the beginning and maybe the “select a love-babe” scene, is for Cherry 2000’s most awesome commentary on dating in the future. Dating in the future requires a lawyer (played wonderfully by Lawrence Fishbourne - the ONLY performance in the movie that shined) and LOTS of negotiations. That scene alone, also thankfully right near the beginning, is almost worth the price of the movie.

 

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Overview: While the budget for the animation is better than the original Armitage, the story is SIGNIFICANTLY worse. The place where Armitage III shines (identification with the characters) is exactly where the sequel is most lacking. They ramp up the cool explosions and fights while substituting mannequins for the lead characters. This was a sequel without a story - the message had already been communicated in the first one, and now there’s nothing left to do but rehash it, only with more incoherently and with more explosions. And really, I find the animation style in the first one lots better, especially for Armitage.

However, the two hot Armitage replicants in wings and skin-tight clothes are pretty cool. In fact, they were definitely the highlight of the movie for me.

Also, as an unintended plus (or minus, really), if you check out the English track, you get to hear the voice of Jar Jar Binks (Ahmed Best) reprise his famous role as a side-kick. Only this time he’s a cyborg doctor (but still sounds the same).