Overview: This has to qualify as one of the most misleading promotional photos ever. This movie has NONE of those cool cyborg stuff in it. Heatseeker is a low budget martial arts tournament fight movie wrapped in a cocoon of cheesy dialogue that calls the fighters cyborgs - but there is pretty much NO visuals to that effect. In this movie which takes place in the near-future, where cyber-corporations, emeshed in a global competition to be the leader in cyber technology have devised a martial arts tournament to see who has the best cyber-equipment. Chance O’Brian (played by Keith Cooke) is the martial arts champion of the world, and is going to marry his trainer, Jo (played by Tina Cote). Some evil, nasty, mean, rotten (did I get the point across) cyber corporation types abduct his wife and force him to fight in a tournament of cyborg fighters to give the fight legitimacy. Also, Jo has to have sex and train the evil, nasty, powerful, mean and rotten cyber-corporation’s champion, who just happens to be Chance’s chief rival. The tournament goes on, but I think you can pretty much guess how this goes.

The Bottom Line: From a story perspective, Heatseeker doesn’t even make an attempt to be anything but a low-priced piece of crap. The acting is downright horrid in places and the characters are the epitome of one dimensional. The only redeeming value in this are the fight sequences, which are usually decent. For this reason, I give it an extra star for the fight sequences, but I take one away for the misleading promotional picture, and another away from the completely non-believable ending sequence.

Overview: Based on Metatron’s thread in the Meatspace, I decided to review this. Some movies are so bad they’re actually good in a funny kind of way. Others are just truly bad with absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and are painful to get through. American Cyborg: Steel Warrior is one of those kinds of movies. This film is the epitome of horrid, cheap derivative. There isn’t an original idea anywhere in sight, nor is there even a whiff of good craftsmanship, decent acting, decent cinematography, set designs, etc.

American Cyborg: Steel Warrior takes place in a shabby dystopic future where evil assassin cyborgs reign supreme. Humanity’s hopes rest with a genetically engineered Fetus that supposedly has what it takes to beat the evil cyborgs, and now, for unstated reasons, its mother (played horribly by Nicole Hansen) is carrying it around in a bag to get it to Europe, which is apparently the safe place. She is protected by a mysterious dude (horribly portrayed by Joe Lara) who, SHOCKINGLY turns out to be a good cyborg. All the while, they are pursued by a truly bad Terminator knock-off shabbily played by John Ryan. Terminator gets the bulk of the rip-offs here, but there’s a good bit of Robocop and Cyborg thrown in as well (you KNOW it’s a bad movie if its imitating Cyborg!).

The Bottom Line: Truly, there’s nothing redeeming here. Perhaps the only amusing thing is that American Cyborg is so predictable that you can literally guess pretty much every scene before it occurs. In short: This is not the cyberpunk movie you’re looking for…move along…

Overview: Liquid Sky is another movie that makes a number of cyberpunk lists. Personally, I don’t think so. It has absolutely NO cyber aspects (it does have scifi aspects though). However, it’s so strong on the punk side that from a visual standpoint I suppose a case can be made for inclusion. This is a very low-budget art film that is emphasizes “weird” from the get go. If I were to rename it, I would call this “The movie where the Punks say Fuck!” as they do so every other word. The real effort here is NOT in the acting (most is horrible, but Carlisle is decent), or the story, or the pacing. The goal is to create a weird punk immersion that gives the film an other-worldly quality. This is emphasized by the completely non-sensical alien pie-plate spaceship.

Liquid Sky takes place in modern times (early 1980s) where a very small alien space ship is looking for a heroin fix and settles on top of a punk-apartment building where drug addicts are the order of the moment. The space ship “steals” the emotional state of the heroin addicts to give itself energy. We soon find out that the aliens can also get their fix from people having orgasms. In line with this, the aliens follow around Margaret (played by Liquid Sky writer, Anne Carlisle, who also plays the role of the androgynous Jimmy in the picture above), who is continually getting raped and forced into having sex with people she doesn’t like. She never orgasms, but her partners always do. At first, the aliens appear to steal this energy by impaling the victims with a crystal scepter, but later, the victims just disappear. Anne starts to think her vagina has the power to kill, and either tries to stop having sex with people she likes (which fails) or seeks out those she hates in order to kill them. All the while, a European scientist, who’s big on the narration (this is the only way we learn what’s going on) is tracking down the alien ship and is attempting to warn the punks.

Overview: This movie is a massive cheesefest in every sense of the word. It is quirky enough to be interesting though (hence the 5 stars instead of 4), and is certainly original to the point that I could certainly imagine some enjoying this multiple times. Again, for the moment I’ve decided to include it as a cyberpunk flick, but I’m sorely tempted to move it to the “not cyberpunk” category. Even though the visuals qualify in a strange way, there is no cyberpunk themes to speak of here.

Overview: This is one of the many cheesy soft-core porns where a woman in a VR simulation becomes “real” and falls in love with the VR system creator. This genius game designer creates a CD-Rom sex game called “Virtual Girl,” but somehow, the hot chick in the game becomes sentient and wants to boff his brains out. She does every fantasy he desires, and things are great until the programmer realizes he might be cheating on his wife (duh!). He tries to drop her, but the virtual girl then goes all Fatal Attraction on him, and decides to get back at him. The Virtual chick magically transforms herself into a real person in the real world and sets out to destroy his marriage, ruin his job, etc. Truly, there’s nothing all that great here (such as a coherent plot, decent acting and so forth), but there’s at least decent amount of cheesy Skinemax style love vignettes.

Overview: In pursuit of me desire to see all cyberpunk-like films out, I was seduced into getting this flick. Terminatrix is basically the original terminator movie remade with in naked Japanese chicks. In Terminatrix’s vision of the future, an evil artificial intelligence has taken over the human race, and sex is fully regulated to stop overpopulation. But one woman, seeing the injustice in this system, rebels (This is the John Conner stand-in) and starts the resistance by convincing everyone to have massive orgies of their own free choosing. To stop this, the AI sends a hot Japanese cyborg chick - the Terminatrix, played by Japanese Exploitation Queen Kei Mizutani, back in time to have find the father of the chick who leads the orgy resistance. The Terminatrix has the ability to make people impotent by fucking them and breaking their dicks off (this also seems to kill them as well). To find our future heroine’s father, the Terminatrix doesn’t know his middle name, so, um, she goes through the phone book in order to kill the male Sarah Conner stand-in. In an attempt to stop this foul plot, the resistance is able to send a single hot naked human chick (Reece’s replacement - I must say, she looks a lot better than Reece!) is sent back to stop her and to save the father (Sarah Conner substitute). Our Reece substitute can tell who Terminatrix is by checking out her ass, so she is forced to go around lifting up all the women’s skirts!

Yes, this plot is as cheesy as they come, but let me be clear about this - Terminatrix is a frickin RIOT!!! Why, you ask? On an extremely twisted level, Terminatrix so closely follows the Terminator story that you’re continually busting out in laughter. On top of this, both the writing and production values are far above what you’d normally expect from a movie such as this. Literally, if you’re as familiar with that movie as I am, and have a soft spot for over-the-top cheesefests, you will LOVE this movie.

The terminatrix’s cyborg vision lines are a riot. When having sex (they don’t get explicit here, just frontal nudity) with her victems, the Terminatrix’s “terminator screen” messages show things like, “Not cuming fast enough” or “Whip him.”. When the Reece chick finds the future father, she says, “The future of humanity depends on your penis!” At least he has the good sense to shut the door on her. Also, if Terminatrix’s future prognostication is any guide, the future is tailor-made for male chauvinists. In this “dystopia,” a computer calls you to have sex with random chicks - but here’s the bad part - you have to lay down while they to all the work! Hmm…come to think of it, I can probably imagine worse computer-dominated future scenarios than the one that prompted the revolution.

Funniest scene Hands down, the bathroom cyborg self-repair scene is a riot! You know the one I’m talking about - where Arnold has to fix up his face and stuff? In this version, the Terminatrix has been shot six times in her primary weapon (her vagina), and has to repair it. While rolling her eyes, she forces six bullets to come out of her vagina (they don’t show this other than by the dropping of bullets), then she recharges herself by putting electricity through her nipples. To make final repairs, she fixes herself down below by sitting on a mechanical dildo! In watching this, all you can say is “My God, what a bizarre flick!”

It Matters Where you Purchase This: IMDB doesn’t even have a listing for Terminatrix, so one would think its not easy to come by. At the time of this review, you can purchase it for $27 bucks at Amazon. While funny, $27 bucks is about least $18-20 more than you would want to pay for something like this. But you’re in luck as Deepdvddiscount has it for $5.99! That’s about as large a jump as I’ve seen in available DVD prices.

The Bottom Line Again, I’m rather shocked that Terminatrix has relatively decent production values. The acting isn’t bad either, so much so that it’s like they made a serious attempt at this! I didn’t attempt the dubbing track (I almost never do), but I’m guessing it’s something to stear away from. All in all, Terminatrix is a very fun entry into the cyberpunk (facade) soft-core porn market. And while this clearly isn’t cyberpunk, it is definitely a cyberpunk parody (of the Terminator). Fair warning - this movie will make you laugh out loud - it will not get you in the “mood.”

And my apologies for the lack of screencaps. I honestly tried to take screencaps but it was a waste of time, as all the cool scenes had nudity in them.

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.