Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: And today we have a pretty fascinating slice of low
Speaker 2: budget nineteen eighties New York City grimy genre cinema. It
Speaker 2: is nineteen eighty seven's Mutant Hunt, a movie just so
Speaker 2: so grimy, so covered in a patina of sleeves, but
Speaker 2: without really featuring much in the way of grimy or
Speaker 2: sleezy content. It is a near future dystopian cyberpunk adventure,
Speaker 2: full of many of the familiar bells and whistles, you know, cyborgs,
Speaker 2: bounty hunters, sunglasses at night, pleasure droids, advanced mobile personal
Speaker 2: computer devices. It's absolutely as derivative as many other entries
Speaker 2: in this subgenre. But at the same time, I just
Speaker 2: really admired the hustle of this film. You know it
Speaker 2: you know, clearly made with you know, gorilla style. I'm guessing,
Speaker 2: with a lot of you know, just finding locations, shooting it,
Speaker 2: trying for like really getting ambitious with some of the
Speaker 2: things that it attempts to do with a limited budget,
Speaker 2: but with you know, clearly some scrappy special effects artists,
Speaker 2: and it trots out a few genuinely coolerly and even
Speaker 2: thought provoking ideas and just really goes for it with
Speaker 2: wild plot twists and effects, even as you can just
Speaker 2: feel the budget strain underneath the vision.
Speaker 3: If only we lived in this movie's version of the future.
Speaker 3: When it comes to mapping software, where oh god, yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: they've got these mapping programs that tell you how to
Speaker 3: get somewhere, and it just shows basically an outline of
Speaker 3: Lower Manhattan from space with no streets or words or
Speaker 3: like text or any topography at all, just an outline
Speaker 3: of the land mass and then an X in the middle.
Speaker 3: Love it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh there, yeah, Manhattan Island and this is where
Speaker 2: I roughly am on it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's great because on one hand, the way that the
Speaker 2: this this technology is used in the film like it
Speaker 2: is actually spot on. This is exactly how we get
Speaker 2: around today, you know, and I think any of us
Speaker 2: that have gone to New York City, you find yourself
Speaker 2: moving around in New York this way, checking your device,
Speaker 2: seeing where you are, but with a lot more detail.
Speaker 2: So they I.
Speaker 3: Should have put the streets on there. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 3: good idea.
Speaker 2: Yea, the streets been a good addition, but yeah, instead
Speaker 2: of just Where's Land and wears Water?
Speaker 3: But yeah, there's a lot of good stuff in this movie. Actually,
Speaker 3: it is quite funny in how most of it is realized.
Speaker 3: But every now and then I was thinking like, well,
Speaker 3: that could be an idea from a much more complex,
Speaker 3: more interesting film. Specifically, I know you Flagged, and I
Speaker 3: have the same thought that the esp of the cyborgs
Speaker 3: was kind of interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, This idea that the killer cyborgs have
Speaker 2: some sort of limited esp so if you begin to
Speaker 2: hunt them, they will detect this and they will begin
Speaker 2: to hunt you back. Yes, kind of reminds me a
Speaker 2: little bit of some of these thought experiments concerning future AI.
Speaker 2: You know Roco's Basilisk, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Where like the danger occurs to you once you are
Speaker 3: aware of the of the robot as soon as you
Speaker 3: know about it, it knows that you know about it,
Speaker 3: and now it's coming to get you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you want like, at what point do they
Speaker 2: hunt you? Like, how serious do you have to be?
Speaker 2: Is it just like if you would it would have
Speaker 2: just a journalist suddenly be hunted by the Cyborgskau. They're
Speaker 2: investigating the cyborg killings.
Speaker 3: I don't know, what if it just crossed your mind
Speaker 3: that you might be hunting the cyborgs but you're not
Speaker 3: very committed to it, do they still come and get you?
Speaker 2: I don't know. It's one of these ideas that I
Speaker 2: think is probably here in large part to just sort
Speaker 2: of grease the plot things along, but it really does
Speaker 2: raise some interesting questions. Yeah, Also in general, I like
Speaker 2: this grizzly concept of cyborgs whose organic components have been
Speaker 2: mutated beyond recognition by altered like like futuristic altered rave drugs.
Speaker 2: It's I don't know, it's just such a bombastic concept
Speaker 2: and I don't know, and kind of thought provoking in
Speaker 2: its own ways. If you're dealing with a cyborg where
Speaker 2: it's not just terminator style where the flesh is on
Speaker 2: there just as decoration, but if you have an integrated
Speaker 2: system of organic and mechanical parts, then you know it
Speaker 2: makes sense that it would It could be messed with,
Speaker 2: It could be hacked on a technological level, but also
Speaker 2: on an organic level.
Speaker 3: I just had to go searching in my notes because
Speaker 3: I remembered something and maybe it's good to bring this
Speaker 3: up now. At the beginning, did you notice how it
Speaker 3: almost seems to be the case in this movie that
Speaker 3: there's a correlation between how gooey a cyborg is and
Speaker 3: how strong or formidable it is supposed to be. Like
Speaker 3: the more that a cyborg is dripping slime, the wetter
Speaker 3: it looks, the more powerful it is.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah, by the end of the film, we will
Speaker 2: see one that is supposed to be mutated quote beyond recognition,
Speaker 2: but is just a slimy, sneering ness of a cyborg
Speaker 2: at this point, just a real, real slimy, slimy creature.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's got kind of a flap that's got half
Speaker 3: of its mouth stuck together. It's just dripping orange juice concentrate.
Speaker 3: And yeah, this is the strongest one it's been incubating. Actually,
Speaker 3: the character Domina has it in like a mummy chrysalis
Speaker 3: in her room and is she's cooking it for a while.
Speaker 2: I guess that's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the other thing I love about the film is,
Speaker 2: of course the futuristic grave drug U four on being
Speaker 2: a major plot point. I'm kind of a sucker for
Speaker 2: any sci fi property that has a sci fi drug
Speaker 2: in it, and this one has it in space.
Speaker 3: Does it do anything all that unusual for the humans
Speaker 3: who use it or does it just turn cyborgs into
Speaker 3: mutant cyborgs? But in humans just makes you feel good?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think in humans it's just like some really
Speaker 2: good rave drug. You know, it's like some sort of
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's like an like MDMA or
Speaker 2: it's like an opiate or something, or some sort of
Speaker 2: combination of the two. But it makes you feel really good.
Speaker 2: And the people who are you four on enjoyers are
Speaker 2: really into it, and they they are offended if you
Speaker 2: if you actually try and disrupt the supply.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's administered in the ear. I thought that was funny.
Speaker 3: Real drugs you put in your ear with a little dropper.
Speaker 2: I mean yeah, if you have like ear problems. I
Speaker 2: guess I don't know about recreational drugs that go in
Speaker 2: the ear, but maybe I'm just naive, all right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: Mutant Hunt. I first saw this years ago. I think
Speaker 2: I found it amid the various B movies that used
Speaker 2: to populate Amazon Prime, back when they just seem to
Speaker 2: have like a dump truck of slock was unloaded into
Speaker 2: their servers and while they don't have the Sledge selection
Speaker 2: they used to, you can still stream Mutant Hunt there
Speaker 2: as of this recording, at least in the US, I
Speaker 2: don't know about other regions, still absolutely holds up in
Speaker 2: its sort of decayed format. This is like kind of
Speaker 2: grimy film quality cigarette stains, you know, cigarette burns, rather
Speaker 2: on the footage. But this is the sort of film
Speaker 2: where I absolutely believe it's rewarding in general to watch
Speaker 2: any film in the best quality possible, and I still
Speaker 2: stand by that, but with a film like this, it
Speaker 2: can also be rewarding to watch it in sort of
Speaker 2: grimy the footage as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it feels right to watch the stream that's available,
Speaker 3: which is it looks like a rip from a VHS.
Speaker 3: But if you go look up the stills that have
Speaker 3: been put out by the Vinegar Syndrome release that has
Speaker 3: this movie in high quality, it takes on a new
Speaker 3: level of comedy to see all these costumes and sets
Speaker 3: really crisp. But they were never meant to look this way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And at the same time, I have to say,
Speaker 2: in the higher quality stills you'll find some of it.
Speaker 2: You get a better you get a better sense of
Speaker 2: of what they were going for, and you can admire
Speaker 2: some of the lighting choices and the costumes and the
Speaker 2: tree definitely. Yeah, So you know it goes both ways.
Speaker 2: So yeah, this one's widely available for streaming or digital
Speaker 2: viewing right now if you want to see it for yourself.
Speaker 2: But yeah, Vinegar Syndrome put out a really nice looking
Speaker 2: blu ray with fun extras, and the film itself is
Speaker 2: scanned and restored in four K from its thirty five
Speaker 2: milimeter original camera negative. Looks great again. I watched the
Speaker 2: scuzzy video version of it, but now I really want
Speaker 2: to pick up this Blu ray as well next time
Speaker 2: I'm doing a Vinegar Syndrome order.
Speaker 3: Okay, should we talk about the connections? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. Starting here at the top with the writer
Speaker 2: and director, it's Tim kim Kay born nineteen forty four,
Speaker 2: a very interesting figure in genre film history. Kin Kaid's
Speaker 2: most notable contributions to cinema were actually outside of mainstream
Speaker 2: or even low budget genre features like this, and was
Speaker 2: actually that they were actually in the world of adult cinema.
Speaker 2: Under the moniker Joe Gage, he was one of the
Speaker 2: most influential and successful directors of gay adult cinema of
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties. This is a
Speaker 2: period often referred to as a kind of golden age
Speaker 2: of adult content before the full advent of video, a
Speaker 2: time when films tended to feature characters, plot, and sometimes
Speaker 2: proved quite ambitious in their vision. You know, there were
Speaker 2: attempts to do things that were artful, subversive, and so forth.
Speaker 2: At worth noting as well that gay hardcore material had
Speaker 2: only become legal in the US in the very early
Speaker 2: seventies on the heels of stone Wall, so Kim Kaid
Speaker 2: was really kind of a pioneer of sorts as well.
Speaker 2: And from what I've read, Kincaid's biggest contribution as Joe
Speaker 2: Gage was in his presentation of same sex encounters involving
Speaker 2: blue collar, working class American characters that defied stereotypes were
Speaker 2: at the same time validating and also depicted same sex
Speaker 2: encounters as not merely a gay thing, but a broader
Speaker 2: human thing, often involving characters that are not presented as
Speaker 2: expressly gay in their identity. As Conrad Brewster put it
Speaker 2: in a twenty eleven post at the Gay and Lesbian Review,
Speaker 2: Joe Gage films weren't trying to represent the entire spectrum
Speaker 2: of gay and bisexual life in the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 2: His focus was specific, but at the same time highly
Speaker 2: successful and influential, and his work could also apparently be
Speaker 2: subversive and artful in its own way, so kin Kaid.
Speaker 2: Before all of this, though, Kincaid's first film was a
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy three straight sexploitation film titled The Female Response,
Speaker 2: and this was right before his first ground raking foray
Speaker 2: into gay adult cinema with nineteen seventy six is Kansas
Speaker 2: City Trucking Company, starring Jack Wrangler and Richard Locke. This
Speaker 2: was the first of his so called Kansas City trilogy.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to go through all of his adult titles,
Speaker 2: but these are historically of significance. This era of his
Speaker 2: films he directed his gauge, occasionally directed under another pseudonym,
Speaker 2: and this continued till around nineteen eighty five, and this
Speaker 2: is when Kincaid made a shift to writing and directing
Speaker 2: low budget genre films outside of the adult industry. And
Speaker 2: I've read that at this point he was also married
Speaker 2: and had young kids and wanted to focus on work
Speaker 2: outside of that industry, and his wife at the time,
Speaker 2: Cynthia Depalla acted as producer. So the first of these
Speaker 2: films getting into this B cinema era, and this is
Speaker 2: definitely the era that we find Mutant Hunt in. The
Speaker 2: first of these films was eighty six Bad Girls Dormitory.
Speaker 2: This is a woman's prison exploitation film shot guerrilla style
Speaker 2: in New York City that he apparently offered to Charles
Speaker 2: Band and Band reportedly passed said thank you, but no thanks,
Speaker 2: but he was interested and he said, look, tell me
Speaker 2: what you have planned, and they started talking, and this
Speaker 2: led to Band serving as EP on several of his
Speaker 2: pictures from this period, including Mutant Hunt.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting to think how exactly Mutant Hunt fits
Speaker 3: in with the standard Charles Band world DNA imprint. It
Speaker 3: is not like movies like Metal Storm, The Destruction of
Speaker 3: Jaredson or Dungeon Master, where I don't know, you can
Speaker 3: watch a minute of it and you're like, this is
Speaker 3: Charles Band. This is like the Charles Band zone. You
Speaker 3: just know it's not like that, So I wouldn't have
Speaker 3: I immediately identified it as a Band associated film. But
Speaker 3: also it fits right in there when you have the
Speaker 3: knowledge that Charles Band World, that feels right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean it also makes sense that it's kind
Speaker 2: of adjacent to the Troma world without actually being a
Speaker 2: trauma picture or having that sort of the goofiness and
Speaker 2: self awareness that you often find in some of the
Speaker 2: Troma or maybe the most popular of the trauma films.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So he followed up Bad Girls with Breeders in eighty six,
Speaker 2: a grimy, sounds kind of nasty film about alien impregnations
Speaker 2: in the New York City subway system. And after this
Speaker 2: came nineteen eighty seven's Robot Holocaust, which MST three K
Speaker 2: fans know all too well. It's been a long time
Speaker 2: since I've seen the riff of that, but now I
Speaker 2: kind of want to revisit it on its own now
Speaker 2: that I've refamiliarized myself with Mutant Hunt.
Speaker 3: I think that's like Season one, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty early early days. Yeah, and then came
Speaker 2: today's film Mutant Hunt. After Mutant Hunt, he did the
Speaker 2: eighty seven film Riot on forty second Street. This was
Speaker 2: a crime movie starring Jeff Fayhee, And then nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: eight He's The Occultist, in which quote, a cyborg private
Speaker 2: eye is hired to protect a Caribbean president visiting New
Speaker 2: York City from Sadistic Sorcerers. I've not seen it, but
Speaker 2: that sounds amazing. I like all that. And then finally
Speaker 2: he did nineteen ninety one's She's Back, a supernatural, dark
Speaker 2: comedy that seems to be his most truly mainstream work
Speaker 2: about an electrician haunted by his dead wife's ghost and
Speaker 2: urged to take revenge on a gang of criminals. And
Speaker 2: it starred Carrie Fisher and Robert Joy.
Speaker 3: Hard to believe that the director of Mutant Hunt made
Speaker 3: a Carrie Fisher movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's crazy. Right after this, Kincaid returned to adult
Speaker 2: cinema from I believe two thousand and one through twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: possibly eighteen, as far as the main movie database listings go.
Speaker 2: Eventually one of his now grown up sons did some
Speaker 2: music scoring for some of these films, but at this
Speaker 2: point I believe Kincaid is retired. He also wrote a
Speaker 2: couple of novels and directed an off Broadway play called
Speaker 2: Naked Highway in nineteen eighty three. I was even able
Speaker 2: to find the playbill for this on eBay.
Speaker 3: You know, I want to say about Mutant Hunt that
Speaker 3: you never really know for sure, and maybe I could
Speaker 3: read stuff about behind the scenes stuff and find out
Speaker 3: I'm totally wrong, But this feels like a movie made
Speaker 3: on a set that was a lot of fun, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, Just that energy comes through. It
Speaker 3: seems like in between takes the actors were probably joking
Speaker 3: around a lot. It just feels like a fun, lively
Speaker 3: environment and maybe like they're not taking it too seriously
Speaker 3: and everybody's cutting up and having a good time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think probably also important to stress, I
Speaker 2: feel like this is a film where everybody was probably
Speaker 2: excited about filmmaking. You know, there were a lot of
Speaker 2: people that I think were maybe dipping their toes into
Speaker 2: cinema and maybe decided to get back out afterwards. But
Speaker 2: you know, that's an exciting time when you're trying something new,
Speaker 2: or you know, you're trying something different, and certainly with
Speaker 2: with the you know, presumably the gorilla style filmmaking that
Speaker 2: was being employed here, that's also going to keep you pretty,
Speaker 2: That's gonna keep you on your toes for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: All right, well let's get into the cast here. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna I'm gonna basically go in billing order, but also
Speaker 2: kind of divide things up among the factions. Because this
Speaker 2: is a cyberpunk film, you got to have your factions.
Speaker 2: First of all, let's talk about the bounty hunters, Matt
Speaker 2: Reiker and associates, starting with Matt Riker, the world's greatest
Speaker 2: mercenary and bounty hunter. What a guy, What a guy.
Speaker 3: This guy is a gentleman of beef, as we might say.
Speaker 3: But he just looks great in a pair of tidy
Speaker 3: whities and they'll they'll treat you to that over and over. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Matt Riker played by Rick Jiannasi. Like a lot
Speaker 2: of the actors in this film, I have no idea
Speaker 2: how old this guy is. No dates available, yea. Though
Speaker 2: he's one of the actors that did appear in many
Speaker 2: different things. A frequent face in Kincaid's mainstream work, he
Speaker 2: appears in Bad Girls, Dormitory, Robot, Holocaust, Riot on forty
Speaker 2: Second Street, and The Occultist. And after this he went
Speaker 2: on to play his most famous role, that of Harry
Speaker 2: Griswold in the nineteen ninety Troma film Sergeant Kabuki Man NYPD.
Speaker 2: The character Harry Griswold is also the title character in
Speaker 2: that film. Okay, His other credits include eighty nine's Pose
Speaker 2: for Murder, ninety six's Fatal Frames in two thousands, Time Quest.
Speaker 2: He also did episodes of Another World Star, Trek Voyager,
Speaker 2: Caroline in the City, Felicity, and Days of Our Lives.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I would say pitch perfect beef performance here.
Speaker 2: You know, he's earnest, he's reserved, he's not annoying really
Speaker 2: for this movie. Perfect performance.
Speaker 3: You've probably never seen a movie before when a guy
Speaker 3: in just blinding white briefs and nothing else pulls a
Speaker 3: crossbow off the wall and shoots a robot with it.
Speaker 2: That's right. I mean again, he's the best, but even
Speaker 2: the best needs some help from time to time, and
Speaker 2: that's where his right hand man comes in, or at
Speaker 2: least the right hand man for this film, Johnny Felix.
Speaker 3: I love Johnny Felix. Every time Johnny Felix is on screen,
Speaker 3: I just feel like everything's going to be okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Johnny Felix seems to He's a cool cucumber. He's
Speaker 2: got it under control, you know, ready to jump in
Speaker 2: with some kicks or some tech, whatever the situation requires.
Speaker 3: He has a good, lively, joyful reaction almost to seeing
Speaker 3: things that are about to kill him, Like when the
Speaker 3: cyborg is coming their way and starts smashing his hand
Speaker 3: through the concrete, Johnny Felix just goes, WHOA Okay.
Speaker 2: Also, in a world of seemingly ubiquitous cyborg activity, he
Speaker 2: doesn't know what the word cyborg mean, Like it's like,
Speaker 2: what do you call these things?
Speaker 3: I was confused by that because I thought his one
Speaker 3: of his main jobs was hunting down cyborgs. It seems
Speaker 3: like that's what they do. But he can't remember the
Speaker 3: word cyborg. He calls them jelly heads.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's like really deeply he is something he doesn't
Speaker 2: like about the term, and he refuses to use it,
Speaker 2: like they're not technically cyborgs. I don't use that term
Speaker 2: something like that.
Speaker 3: But Darla takes offense to this, this other character. She's like,
Speaker 3: they're called cyborgs.
Speaker 2: N Felix did it right? Yeah? So Johnny Felix is
Speaker 2: played by Ron Ronaldi here. He followed this up with
Speaker 2: Riot on forty second Street, and he's also in the
Speaker 2: eighty seven David a prior film Man Killers, and he
Speaker 2: also has a small uncredited role in twenty In two
Speaker 2: thousand and two, writers analyze that. He also did a
Speaker 2: little bit of stunt work, which is not surprising because
Speaker 2: he's throwing some mean kicks in this film. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 2: And then we have Elaine Elliott. This character is a
Speaker 2: dancer by night, also bounty hunter by night and private
Speaker 2: op by night. I don't know what she does in
Speaker 2: the day, it's not important, is.
Speaker 3: It a private op? I thought she's a public op.
Speaker 3: She's a fully candidated government whatever. You remember that line.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's like globby gobbedy.
Speaker 3: Given there, I had to pass tests for my government
Speaker 3: accdidation of being an op.
Speaker 2: Okay, she's she's above bar and also below bar. She's
Speaker 2: great whatever kind of job you need her for. Elaine
Speaker 2: Elliott is played by Tani Vrennan. This was her first role,
Speaker 2: and she went on to work in in Riot in
Speaker 2: eighty eight's The Big Blue eighty eights, war Board, war Birds,
Speaker 2: and ninety one Switch. She also popped up on the
Speaker 2: TV shows Night Court and Beverly Hills nine O two
Speaker 2: one zero.
Speaker 3: She also seems like she's having a good time on set. Yeah,
Speaker 3: almost laughing while she says a lot of her lines.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again I thought her performance is perfect for
Speaker 2: this film. Oh yeah, no notes. All right, Now, let's
Speaker 2: move on to the villainous faction of Intel Tracks, intel Tracks,
Speaker 2: intel Tracks or in yeah say they say it different
Speaker 2: ways they do Yeah. At one point it is intel Tracks,
Speaker 2: So I'm not sure how we're really supposed to stress this.
Speaker 3: I think we also get Intel Tracks, yea, intel Tracks. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The CEO, I guess, or tyrannical ruler of Intel Tracks
Speaker 2: is Z just just single letters? Z?
Speaker 3: Is he doctor Z? As in bloodwaters of bloodwaters of
Speaker 3: or just Z?
Speaker 2: I think he's just Z. I would I thought about
Speaker 2: Bloodwaters of Doctor Z a lot, which, as if you
Speaker 2: remember from our episode, doesn't actually feature a character named
Speaker 2: doctor C. But what doctor Leopold is his actual name
Speaker 2: in that?
Speaker 3: Oh? I forgot about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but one of the alternate titles was Bloodwaters of
Speaker 2: Doctor C, So it's okay to call him doctor C.
Speaker 2: It's fine. But this Z is played by Bill Peterson.
Speaker 2: Peterson was also in Bad Girls Dormitory, and that's really
Speaker 2: about it. IMDb contains an incorrect reference to him in
Speaker 2: a Rose Marie documentary which I spent way too much time.
Speaker 2: I think I like scanned through most of the documentary
Speaker 2: looking for this guy because they found it on Tube,
Speaker 2: only to realize, oh no, no, they had him confused
Speaker 2: with legendary trumpetear Bill Peterson. Different guy entirely. So this
Speaker 2: Bill Peterson is another one of these actors where it's like,
Speaker 2: who knows who this guy was and what he did
Speaker 2: and how he ended up doing these couple of films.
Speaker 2: But I love him here. He has a real villainous,
Speaker 2: amazing Chris Well vibe. And he's also, like some of
Speaker 2: our other notable characters, seems to be wearing like Rick
Speaker 2: Owen's designs the whole time, like very gothy and black
Speaker 2: and sleek and shiny.
Speaker 3: He looks like he's dressed like a stag Beetley. He's
Speaker 3: got the yeah, the black ribbed armor with the big shoulders.
Speaker 3: I love Zi's energy. He has a smug, unctuous, unctuousness
Speaker 3: about him, often with his chin held up real high.
Speaker 3: He's a bit haughty, and he's often just standing in
Speaker 3: a room with his arms folded behind his back before
Speaker 3: the action begins, and then he gets a phone call,
Speaker 3: so I guess he just stands like that in its downtime.
Speaker 2: Yeah, often just commenting on his master plans to inject
Speaker 2: cyborgs with club drugs and then enjoy the chaos. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and profits.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: Let's see other people in his operation. At least at
Speaker 2: first we have doctor Paul Haynes is one of his
Speaker 2: cyborg designers and the architect of the Delta seven line
Speaker 2: of cyborgs that will be important, played here by markmi Emilli.
Speaker 2: Was also in Bad Girls as well as the nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine vampire film Cold Hearts. Then doctor Paul Haynes
Speaker 2: has a sister, Darla Haynes. This film has a lot
Speaker 2: of characters for it's a limited scope really, but yeah,
Speaker 2: we have Darla Haynes played by Mary Fahee. This is
Speaker 2: Jeff Fayy's sister and her only other credit is Riot
Speaker 2: on forty second Street. This is Jeff Ahee's sister. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's what's That's what the internet says.
Speaker 3: Yeah, wow, amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Again, another one of these cases where I guess,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know her full history and what
Speaker 2: she went on to do, but for a brief period
Speaker 2: of time she's like, let me try the cinema thing out.
Speaker 2: Let's see if it fits. So Matt Reiker, Johnny Felix,
Speaker 2: Elaine Elliott, and Darla Haynes. They're gonna end up composing
Speaker 2: our core group of four heroes, and I can't help
Speaker 2: but think of them as selectable characters in an arcade
Speaker 2: beat him Up like the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Speaker 2: or the X Men game. And indeed, this whole film
Speaker 2: very much has a side scrolling beat him Up energy.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, yes, it is in that Ninja Turtles fighting game zone.
Speaker 2: It feels like that, yeah, yeah, and has lots of slime.
Speaker 3: Even some of the costumes look like they would fit
Speaker 3: into that world.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, there's there's one character We'll come back to.
Speaker 2: One of the cyborgs really does look like probably multiple
Speaker 2: characters from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Speaker 3: One of the cyborgs looks like Kraying's android body. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that build? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Or which one was the is it? Which was a
Speaker 2: Bebop a rock Steady? Which one was You're right, yeah, Bebop? Yeah.
Speaker 2: It kind of looks like a pre mutation Bebop, all right. Uh,
Speaker 2: you can't have just two factions in a cyberpunk story.
Speaker 2: We also have what I'm calling Team Domina, led of
Speaker 2: course by Domina. This is Z's rival, and I think
Speaker 2: something of a cyborg originator. She takes credit for everything,
Speaker 2: for all of Z's success in the cyborg world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he stole everything from her. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 2: Domina is a euphoron enjoyer and what seemingly what New
Speaker 2: Jersey native is that? What's is that? The accent. I'm
Speaker 2: I'm not great with my analysis of New York Area accents,
Speaker 2: but it's strong in character defining. She kind of feels
Speaker 2: like she could be a Sarah Squirm character on SNL
Speaker 2: or something.
Speaker 3: She's just I love her. I love Domina so much.
Speaker 3: Her accent is great. Here's my take on her accent.
Speaker 3: It sounds like a bad, fake New York Area accent,
Speaker 3: but I think it's just a real, non movie actor
Speaker 3: thick New York Area accent or New Jersey accent, That's
Speaker 3: what I think. Like, I think this is her real voice.
Speaker 3: And almost all of her lines in the movie begin
Speaker 3: with the word Z. He's just always saying Z's name
Speaker 3: because she's either talking to him or talking about him,
Speaker 3: So almost every line starts off with her saying Z.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I feel you know, you feel bad for
Speaker 2: the other individual in her life, Hydro, her loyal cyborg
Speaker 2: because why not more talk about Hydro. Hydro's been for
Speaker 2: you the whole time. He's been here for you the
Speaker 2: whole time, But you're always talking about Z, who's your enemy,
Speaker 2: that's elsewhere.
Speaker 3: Well, she does tell Hydro that he is very loyal
Speaker 3: and well programmed often and he said thank you, Domina.
Speaker 3: But the next thing she says is She's like, but
Speaker 3: that's Z.
Speaker 2: Domina is played by Stormy Spill. This is Stormy Spill's
Speaker 2: only credit. I could find no other evidence of Stormy
Speaker 2: Spill popping up anywhere in any kind of media. I
Speaker 2: can only imagine what sort of adventure Stormy Spill got
Speaker 2: up to in mid eighties New York City. But she's
Speaker 2: great here. I'm an instant Stormy Spill fan. And she
Speaker 2: is also dressed like a Rick Owens model. For most
Speaker 2: of the film.
Speaker 3: She feels like a local celebrity. Yeah, it was cut,
Speaker 3: you know, like when they put What's r C Baits
Speaker 3: as Sam the Keeper and Werewolf or in the black
Speaker 3: Hole Sun music video Rcy Bates. It was known as
Speaker 3: a you know, around town LA local celebrity more than
Speaker 3: as an actual movie star. But people knew of him
Speaker 3: and liked him and so put him in things she
Speaker 3: feels like that. She feels like somebody around town in
Speaker 3: New yor or that everybody knows about and likes. And
Speaker 3: somebody was like, we got to put Stormy in a movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you can easily imagine like Stormy spilled like
Speaker 2: being a notable owner of some local bar or an
Speaker 2: MC I don't know, you know, a club or a
Speaker 2: or less show or something. Yea, but you know, for
Speaker 2: the rest of us years later, just a mystery.
Speaker 3: But her on screen energy is a little bit like
Speaker 3: share kind of.
Speaker 2: Yeah share compared to Share in some user comments before.
Speaker 3: But by way again of a stag beetle with the costuming.
Speaker 2: Now we mentioned Hydro, her loyal cyborg, a slightly dopey
Speaker 2: earlier Delta model, also the last of its kind. Hydro
Speaker 2: is played by Doug Devas, but sometimes spelled like DeVos,
Speaker 2: and I think DeVos feels more appropriate because of the
Speaker 2: Cyborgs often look like they belong in a Devo video
Speaker 2: or or or perhaps some other like you know, you know,
Speaker 2: eighties Sunglasses at Nights sort of a music video or
Speaker 2: like craft craft work.
Speaker 3: For sure, it looked like craftwork.
Speaker 2: The robots, yes, and they move like that. Yeah, yeah, yes,
Speaker 2: so yeah, Doug Devas here, not to be confused with
Speaker 2: the businessman of the same name. All right, getting a
Speaker 2: little bit into the world of cyborgs and droids. There
Speaker 2: are some great beefy cyborgs in this but I'm not
Speaker 2: going to list all of them, but I am going
Speaker 2: to mention we have a pleasure droid that shows up
Speaker 2: last year's model and she is played by Leanne Baker.
Speaker 2: Baker was also in Bad Girls, Breeders, and Riot, but
Speaker 2: a lot of viewers will recognize her as the lead
Speaker 2: Eva from the nineteen eighty six New York indie film Necropolis,
Speaker 2: in which she plays a New York City punk witch.
Speaker 2: This one has some notable VHS covers, included one here
Speaker 2: for you, Joe.
Speaker 3: It's made on graft paper.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, like a motorcycle, short, spiky blonde hair,
Speaker 2: you know, almost you know, a little bit of a
Speaker 2: gozer vibe. But yeah, she instantly stands out. Her other
Speaker 2: films include eighty seven, Psychos in Love and Galactic Jiggalow.
Speaker 2: She retired from acting but has written at least one
Speaker 2: young adult book, so she went on to become an author.
Speaker 2: So yeah, look her up. She's fun.
Speaker 3: She really punches her lines in this movie. She only
Speaker 3: has a few lines, but every one of them is
Speaker 3: just fully enunciated straight into the camera.
Speaker 2: But she can't criticize because we find out she is
Speaker 2: a cyborg.
Speaker 3: So that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, robotic acting, you know, excuses a lot, all right,
Speaker 2: And then briefly getting into some of the folks behind
Speaker 2: the special effects in this film. Again, the special effects
Speaker 2: in this film are scrappy, low budget, but also awe
Speaker 2: inspiring in their own way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the stretching arm effect is everything. When I was
Speaker 3: watching this on my phone at first on an airplane,
Speaker 3: and when that started happening, I just I was at
Speaker 3: a loss because I needed to turn and talk to somebody.
Speaker 3: It's just this random guy next to me, and I
Speaker 3: can't like show it to him what I want to be.
Speaker 3: Do you see the arm? Oh my god?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm sure everyone around you was thinking about this
Speaker 2: movie while you were watching. They're probably like, what is this?
Speaker 2: What is he doing? Why is any watching the films
Speaker 2: on the back of his seat?
Speaker 3: Yeah, a good question. Well I had something much better
Speaker 3: than any of that there, and it is this, and
Speaker 3: to a large extent better because of the special effects.
Speaker 3: That crazy arm stretching. Also, the later puppet of the
Speaker 3: guy that I'm going to end up calling Bud, the
Speaker 3: cyborg friendly cyborg that man that puppet is is incredible. Yeah,
Speaker 3: way more elaborate than I would have expected for a
Speaker 3: movie otherwise of this budget. If this makes any sense,
Speaker 3: The special effects are definitely a production value rung above
Speaker 3: say the sets and the costumes.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yes, Yeah, and again it's just a place where
Speaker 2: you see the passion here, you see the passion in
Speaker 2: these guys. Guys work, So are these guys well. We
Speaker 2: have Ed French. He's credited with special makeup effects and
Speaker 2: he was born in nineteen fifty one. French worked on
Speaker 2: several Kincaid films and Acts and Breeders, and this is
Speaker 2: around the same time he did eighty six is Dead
Speaker 2: Time Stories and four episodes of Tales from the Dark Side.
Speaker 2: He also had already worked in special effects makeup on
Speaker 2: such films as eighty three sleep Away Camp, eighty Four's
Speaker 2: Chud and eighty five's The Stuff. Since then, he's had
Speaker 2: a hand in a ton of special effects of laden films,
Speaker 2: including Terminator two, Hell Raiser, Bloodline, The Midnight Meat Train,
Speaker 2: Sinister two, and The twenty twenty three Dungeons and Dragons
Speaker 2: movie Wow, also credited with Cyborg Mechanical Designs. We have
Speaker 2: Tom Lawton. Lawton had previously worked on eighty six's Class
Speaker 2: of Newcombe High and Robot Holocaust, and went on to
Speaker 2: work on A Nightmare on elm Street, four, The dream Master,
Speaker 2: two thousand and five's King Kong, and two thousand and
Speaker 2: five is The Lion, the Witch in a Wardrobe. These
Speaker 2: last two as part of WETA.
Speaker 3: I remember Nightmare four, I think has some very notable
Speaker 3: special effects.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was like a yeah, this was a period
Speaker 2: in the Nightmare. I guess, you know, after a point.
Speaker 2: I mean, they all have some great special effects in them,
Speaker 2: but this is a point where they're really going for
Speaker 2: crazy stuff, right, Yeah, all right. Also Matt Vogel has
Speaker 2: special effects credit. Vogel's previous films included included eighty one's
Speaker 2: Miss forty five, The Nesting and Madman, as well as
Speaker 2: eighty four's Chud, Robot Holocaust, Breeders, Necropolis, and eighty seven
Speaker 2: Streak Trash. He went on to work on such films
Speaker 2: as Frank and Hooker another film that I've watched on
Speaker 2: an airplane and I keep almost coming back to Franken Hooker.
Speaker 2: It's pretty great in its own way, but we also
Speaker 2: did Kings of New York, Cloverfield and much more.
Speaker 3: Bravo nice work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, once again, as with Star Crash, I love the
Speaker 2: violent laser blasts in this film. They just send the
Speaker 2: sparks flying. And I also love how the cyborgs all
Speaker 2: seem to have like green slime vomit for blood again,
Speaker 2: or at least the mutated ones. Once they get really mutated,
Speaker 2: there's all sorts of weird goo coming out of them.
Speaker 3: I am used to seeing movies where the laser guns
Speaker 3: are almost useless against the villain. You know this is
Speaker 3: a comment you've got, like, Oh, I'm an invulnerable cyborg.
Speaker 3: I can't be stopped. And so you see characters shooting
Speaker 3: it with laser guns and the lasers just bounce off.
Speaker 2: Or even when they kill somebody, they don't leave a mark.
Speaker 2: It's just coming. You got me.
Speaker 3: In this movie, the lasers are absolutely deadly. So there
Speaker 3: will be characters locked in a life or death struggle
Speaker 3: with the cyborg. But if they can pop one laser
Speaker 3: blast off on the cyborg, Cyborg's done. Yeah that's it.
Speaker 2: I'll take deadly rays for sure.
Speaker 3: Exactly these deadly rays will be their death.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, And finally, the score is by Don
Speaker 2: Great born nineteen fifty one. Synth guitars, lots of cheesy
Speaker 2: riffs that only sometimes match the on screen action. I
Speaker 2: also get a great retro video game vibe from all
Speaker 2: of this. You know, just the music that's playing as
Speaker 2: you side scroll your way through a level.
Speaker 3: Absolutely sounds like the music that loops in the background
Speaker 3: in the old nes Batman game.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, absolutely. Great also composed scores for Breeders and Necropolis,
Speaker 2: but he also had a lot. He also has a
Speaker 2: lot of additional music and stock music slash production music
Speaker 2: credits on all sorts of films.
Speaker 3: Okay, we're doing the plot now, let's do it.
Speaker 2: Let the hunt begin.
Speaker 3: So the title and credits are a very nice glowing
Speaker 3: green on black, like the computer screens in the Matrix,
Speaker 3: you know, the digital rain look, not that design, just
Speaker 3: the green on the black. It does, I don't know,
Speaker 3: just makes you feel nostalgic for another era of computers. Also,
Speaker 3: the opening music makes me feel nostalgic. We were just
Speaker 3: talking about it being kind of like video game music,
Speaker 3: but the song that plays at the beginning isn't quite
Speaker 3: video game music. Yeah, that comes a little bit later
Speaker 3: in like the fight scenes. The opening theme is that
Speaker 3: nineteen eighties synth pulse that just makes me think about
Speaker 3: a cop in a cream blazer with the sleeves pushed up,
Speaker 3: you know what I'm saying. So it's a little bit
Speaker 3: Miami Vice. It's also Grand Theft Auto Vice City. So
Speaker 3: that whole thing also kind of a thin, plinky, little
Speaker 3: snare beat. I don't know, it's a good sound. And
Speaker 3: then the opening shot is New York City. We see
Speaker 3: the skyline of Lower Manhattan at dusk with a dark
Speaker 3: blue sky, orange sunset in the background, and all of
Speaker 3: the buildings glowing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this reminded me just a little bit of the
Speaker 2: A Trauma Team release Skyline. Trauma fans will know what
Speaker 2: I'm talking about.
Speaker 3: Also, in a way reminded me of the opening of
Speaker 3: the John Travolta movie about John Gotti, which I don't recommend,
Speaker 3: but it starts with Dravolta just looking at basically this
Speaker 3: skyline of New York City and then he's like, New
Speaker 3: York's the greatest city in the ef and world. So
Speaker 3: after this we cut to an establishing shot outside of
Speaker 3: a grungy looking building and a sign tells us this
Speaker 3: is the headquarters of the company called in tel Tracks
Speaker 3: Intel Tracks. We cut inside and there are random, dull
Speaker 3: body parts hanging from the ceiling. That's promising. The first
Speaker 3: thing we see is a severed mannequin arm on a wire,
Speaker 3: just hanging in this dark room that looks like it's
Speaker 3: a parking garage. There's a table that very much wants
Speaker 3: you to believe it is a lab. So we have
Speaker 3: test tubes lined up on racks, a white sculpture of
Speaker 3: a hand mounted on a brick, and then a few
Speaker 3: loops of IV tube dangling in the frame.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of these sets slash locations and they're
Speaker 2: gonna They're gonna get you halfway there. You need you
Speaker 2: bring a little imagination into your viewing. There's just enough
Speaker 2: for you to figure out what this is supposed to be.
Speaker 2: So we pan over to some cyborgs standing in a row,
Speaker 2: and you can tell their cyborgs because they are wearing
Speaker 2: the Mutant Hunt cyborg uniform, which is long dark pants,
Speaker 2: a dark fitted button up shirt buttoned all the way
Speaker 2: up including the collar high and tight haircut sunglasses even
Speaker 2: at night and indoors, and we will get an explanation
Speaker 2: for those sunglasses later, which is pretty ambitious. Most films
Speaker 2: of this sort, they're just like, of course, everyone's wearing
Speaker 2: sunglasses at night. It looks really cool. This film actually
Speaker 2: bothers to give us some lore to explain it all.
Speaker 3: I think the explanation, though, has to be a post
Speaker 3: talk rationalization, because in the scene where it's happened, I
Speaker 3: don't think that scene was originally in the story. I
Speaker 3: think that's a later insert.
Speaker 2: Do you think that? Do you think the actors requested
Speaker 2: They're like, Tim, why are these cyborgs wearing sunglasses? I
Speaker 2: don't know that my character would hunt them if they
Speaker 2: were wearing sunglasses at night for no reason. We've got
Speaker 2: to establish it.
Speaker 3: No, I don't think that's the reason. I think the
Speaker 3: reason is otherwise it wouldn't make any He sends it
Speaker 3: all for there to be a sex scene in the
Speaker 3: scene right after the scene where the heroes are like,
Speaker 3: we've got to stop these cyborgs right now. They need
Speaker 3: to explain why they have twelve hours until the cyborgs
Speaker 3: can be hunted again.
Speaker 2: There you go, there you go.
Speaker 3: So we first see these guys, like the cyborgs are
Speaker 3: moving around and it's very old school robot mime work. Again, craftworks.
Speaker 3: We are the robots, you know, slow pivoting, ah, that
Speaker 3: kind of thing. So after this we cut to some
Speaker 3: different guys, three guys standing in a row. One of
Speaker 3: them is Z, the character we already talked about, the villain, Z,
Speaker 3: who is dressed like a stag beetle. He's wearing some
Speaker 3: kind of vest or upper body armor that is shiny
Speaker 3: and black ribbed in the front, with these flared out
Speaker 3: shoulders so that he's kind of V shaped. He checks
Speaker 3: his watch and he says, Zerum activation should begin now.
Speaker 3: Right after this, a couple of cyborgs in this line
Speaker 3: over here, they turn and they start attack the other cyborgs,
Speaker 3: and we see them really damaging each other. Arms get
Speaker 3: yanked out of sockets, their wires popping and shooting sparks.
Speaker 3: One of them rips a head off, and Z says,
Speaker 3: that's it. They're even more violent than I imagined. He says,
Speaker 3: our customers will be pleased, don't you think, And then
Speaker 3: it cuts to reaction shots of the two cyborgs beside him,
Speaker 3: in which they do not react. Or that that's the joke. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: somewhere else in a tall building, there's an alarm going
Speaker 3: off inside an empty white room that looks kind of
Speaker 3: like an art studio with nothing on display. Have that feeling, yeah,
Speaker 3: I sure to. In walks a woman wearing that same
Speaker 3: kind of stag beetle outfit as z So big shiny
Speaker 3: black leather shoulders and a ribbed front. And this is Demeana.
Speaker 3: As we were saying earlier, Demeana is a phenomenon. She
Speaker 3: just owns the screen. The alarm is sounding and Demina says,
Speaker 3: sort of talking to the ceiling. She says, Hydro, what
Speaker 3: was that? And then we cut to somewhere else and
Speaker 3: there's a cyborg who looks even dorkier than the other cyborgs.
Speaker 3: He's talking into a microphone. This is Hydro. He tells
Speaker 3: Demina that the intel tracks cyborgs have been activated. She
Speaker 3: asks the altered units. Hydro says this is correct, and
Speaker 3: then Demeana begins to pace. So in this scene there's
Speaker 3: some cinematography. She's wandering behind a bell jar that gives
Speaker 3: her a slight funhouse mirror appearance when she crosses parts
Speaker 3: of it, and she's thinking about the activation of these
Speaker 3: altered units. She says that Z must be out of
Speaker 3: his mind quote the way he has them programmed, they'll
Speaker 3: turn against him. He'll be lucky if he isn't ripped apart.
Speaker 3: But Demana is plotting. She tells Hydro that they're going
Speaker 3: to keep an eye on what Z is up to
Speaker 3: quote until I'm ready to unveil my creation to the world.
Speaker 3: Z can play with his pathetic toys, and then she's
Speaker 3: starts it's monologuing. So we learned that everything Z and
Speaker 3: his people have ever produced, including Hydro, started in her laboratory.
Speaker 3: She says, Z that thieving swine. Then she wanders over
Speaker 3: to a figure that we can't quite see. It's held
Speaker 3: off screen. We just sort of see an arm wrapped
Speaker 3: in something white, and then she just starts rubbing the
Speaker 3: arm and we hear it growling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's gonna be a lot of build up concerning
Speaker 2: this figure. Yeah, I wonder if it's going to be
Speaker 2: a cyborg. So we cut back to Z and his
Speaker 2: two dudes, and he says that he is creating five
Speaker 2: different models of these things, with a thousand copies of
Speaker 2: each quote total carnage, uncontrolled fury.
Speaker 3: What more could anyone ask? Why is he doing this?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I think he does generally enjoy chaos, but
Speaker 2: we also will learn later for profit. He has a
Speaker 2: client list that includes with tyrants and dictators and criminals
Speaker 2: around the world, and they want a way to biologically
Speaker 2: hack their worker cyborgs and turn them into mindless killing machines, for.
Speaker 3: They cannot be controlled. Cannot because they specify many times
Speaker 3: what these things are is that they cannot be controlled.
Speaker 2: I mean, can you imagine a text CEO wanting to
Speaker 2: make money off of a technological innovation that cannot be
Speaker 2: fully controlled and may become a problem later on. I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 3: Well, at least there there's the illusion that it can
Speaker 3: be controlled. You know, he's just saying He literally says,
Speaker 3: these are uncontrollable. And so he calls in the maintenance
Speaker 3: droids to clean up the borg massacre and incinerate the evidence,
Speaker 3: and we get a hilariously dramatic scene of cyborgs killing
Speaker 3: other cyborgs and smashing laboratory equipment. Body parts are smashed
Speaker 3: up all over the floor. There's a funny shot of
Speaker 3: the dead cyborgs lying on the ground smoking, and they
Speaker 3: all have their mouths wide open in dentist mode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also their limbs up like dead bugs.
Speaker 3: I love it. Yeah. So next we meet a handsome
Speaker 3: guy in a white lab coat and he walks into
Speaker 3: the room with all of the fuming cyborg meat on
Speaker 3: the ground, and Z is just standing there over the bodies.
Speaker 3: This is one of the times when the scene starts
Speaker 3: and Z is just standing there with his arms clasped,
Speaker 3: hands clasped behind his back, not doing anything, and this
Speaker 3: guy walks up. The guy in the lab coat is
Speaker 3: Paul Haynes. Doctor Paul Haynes. He and his sister Darla
Speaker 3: Haynes are Intel Tracks employees who worked on the design
Speaker 3: of the Delta seven cyborgs, which is I think what
Speaker 3: these are. So Haines goes up and sees all the
Speaker 3: smoking meat and he's like, what is this? Zee says
Speaker 3: he thought the lab was empty. Haines says that the
Speaker 3: Delta sevens were not ready for activation. These have not
Speaker 3: been safety tested yet. It's not time. Haynes says, I've
Speaker 3: spent the last year on these cyborgs. You reduce them
Speaker 3: to a pile of scrap. Z says my scrap doctor.
Speaker 3: Your work is for the benefit of my corporation. If
Speaker 3: you wish to keep your position, you'll forget everything you've
Speaker 3: seen here. And Ze looks so annoyed. But the fact
Speaker 3: that he seems so annoyed is especially funny because he's
Speaker 3: not doing anything. He's just standing there like some kind
Speaker 3: of palace guard when Haines comes in. And then after
Speaker 3: this conversation, he wanders off, pretending obviously pretending to be
Speaker 3: looking at something that's not there on the other side
Speaker 3: of the room. So Haines kneels down and then he
Speaker 3: I loved this. He dips a finger in the cyborg
Speaker 3: juice and then is he gonna taste it? Yeah, he
Speaker 3: just tastes it, like what's he assessing freshness? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean he's a he's not an angel from
Speaker 2: the prophecy, so he presumably just has human Hell. You know,
Speaker 2: we talked, we talked about this. You know, we have
Speaker 2: a geologist out there in the world who can actually
Speaker 2: taste a rock and tell you something about it. So
Speaker 2: maybe Haines is just such an expert in the cyborg
Speaker 2: world that he can taste just random cyborg juice and
Speaker 2: tell you a little something about what's going on there.
Speaker 3: He can debug cyborgs programming by tasting their juices.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know the weird thing is we find
Speaker 2: out later that anytime these altered cyborgs go anywhere, the
Speaker 2: place just reeks of eupour on. Yet he's like sampling
Speaker 2: the gou here and he's not getting high. Presumably right,
Speaker 2: maybe this was this is cyborg goo from a non
Speaker 2: Euphoron oh altered cyborg. So I guess it works.
Speaker 3: I think you're right. Yeah, because these are the cyborgs
Speaker 3: that Z had the other cyborgs kill these cyborgs. I
Speaker 3: think Z was having the Euphoron cyborgs killed the non
Speaker 3: Euphoron side.
Speaker 2: There you go, that explains it.
Speaker 3: Uh So he no, wait a minute, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: that I'm thinking about that can't be right because he's
Speaker 3: about to Paul is about to yank the core out
Speaker 3: of the back of this cyborg and go figure out
Speaker 3: what happened. So this has to be one of the
Speaker 3: altered ones.
Speaker 2: Oh Man missed opportunity to explore here with him getting
Speaker 2: hooked on U FOURU on by sampling cyboord game.
Speaker 3: So he takes it back to his lab, this little
Speaker 3: core that he gets out of the back of the neck.
Speaker 3: And I just want to flag here that, like everybody
Speaker 3: in this movie has a funny costuming issue. Both Paul
Speaker 3: and Darla are dressed really funny for lab work. Paul
Speaker 3: is he is wearing a lab coat, but underneath it,
Speaker 3: he's wearing this blue shirt that is open, like four
Speaker 3: buttons down.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like in his lab.
Speaker 3: And Darla is wearing like a black party dress.
Speaker 2: Ye, Like, I'm going out after the shoot today, so
Speaker 2: can I just wear this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it looks like you're dressed for going out for cocktails.
Speaker 3: That's what that's lab now. But again, basically, all of
Speaker 3: the costumes in this movie are funny. We'll note them
Speaker 3: as we go along. So they run some tests and
Speaker 3: established that there is an alien molecule in the fluid
Speaker 3: system of the affected cyborgs. Guess what it is. It's
Speaker 3: U four on again. This is the fictional d rug
Speaker 3: in the movie. Characters spend a lot of time talking
Speaker 3: about it. They spend a lot of time doing it.
Speaker 3: This is you put it in your ear And Paul
Speaker 3: explains the computer readout on this stuff. He says, anti
Speaker 3: organic reactions triggered by pre programmed sexual response, like what
Speaker 3: are these going to be sexual cyborgs? Now? No, that
Speaker 3: does not happen. There's nothing sexual about them. But they
Speaker 3: keep characters keep describing what's going on with these killer
Speaker 3: cyborgs in sexual terms, but the cyborgs do nothing remotely sexual.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this initial setup makes you wonder if you're
Speaker 2: in for a much grimier film. But I think the
Speaker 2: idea here is the drug messes up the cyborgs in
Speaker 2: a way that makes them on some level experience hedonistic
Speaker 2: pleasure via violence and death. But all they need to
Speaker 2: do to feel that pleasure is just rip somebody's head off.
Speaker 3: That sort of thing. I think this is Actually it's
Speaker 3: drawing on some kind of like serial serial killer associated
Speaker 3: ideas that like, oh, serial killers are getting some kind
Speaker 3: of sexual pleasure when they go out and randomly murder people,
Speaker 3: and that's what's happening to these cyborgs, I think is
Speaker 3: the idea. Yeah. Anyway, Paul determines that three of the
Speaker 3: mutated cyborgs escaped, and at once he picks up the
Speaker 3: phone to call somebody. He explains to Darla that he's
Speaker 3: contacting the only man he can trust, Matt Riker. Darla
Speaker 3: is skeptical. She knows that Riker is a mercenary, but
Speaker 3: Paul says those cyborgs can't be stopped by ordinary means.
Speaker 3: But while Paul is making the phone call, they're interrupted.
Speaker 3: Some cyborgs come in. Cyborgs come in and explain that
Speaker 3: the two of them are being that Paul and Darla
Speaker 3: are being placed under arrest for making mutated cyborgs. I
Speaker 3: think Z is trying to pin this on them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, whose cyborgs are these though? Or these are not
Speaker 2: Z cyborgs but like law enforcement cyborgs.
Speaker 3: Maybe Darla gets away by just kind of shoving a
Speaker 3: table at one of the cyborgs and then she jogs
Speaker 3: off and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they kind of like kind of lumbers at her
Speaker 2: tour Johnson's style. Yeah, that she makes it.
Speaker 3: The cyborgs are like the zombies and Night of the
Speaker 3: Living Dead. They're slow moving, they're all messed up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is explained that. I think most of them
Speaker 2: are designed for like assembly line type work and dangerous
Speaker 2: environmental work that sort of thing, so maybe they don't
Speaker 2: have to move quickly.
Speaker 3: We see Darla running away through these desolate futuristic city
Speaker 3: streets at one point, unless she goes through a tunnel
Speaker 3: and we see cars parked everywhere. It's very future in
Speaker 3: New York City from the eighties. There's lots of trash
Speaker 3: and graffiti. At one point, she passes a bit of
Speaker 3: graffiti that says death may be your Santa clause.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, interesting with claus felt like claws with a w.
Speaker 3: So the cyborgs are in pursuit the whole time. They're
Speaker 3: blasting at her with lasers but always missing. Eventually, she
Speaker 3: comes to an apartartment building and runs up the stairs
Speaker 3: to the home of Matt Riker. When she starts banging
Speaker 3: on the door, Riker is asleep in his bed with
Speaker 3: a woman next to him, with all the lights on.
Speaker 3: And Riker's apartment is hilariously empty. It is painted white
Speaker 3: brick walls and instead of furniture, he just has hooks
Speaker 3: on the walls with weapons mounted on them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, most of these shots there are no visible windows
Speaker 2: in this place. And I've stayed in some New York
Speaker 2: City basement apartments before, granted with more art and fewer
Speaker 2: weapons on the walls. So this feels like a very
Speaker 2: real location. But it also does just feel like an
Speaker 2: absolute kill room of a New York City apartment.
Speaker 3: Yes, so Riker gets up, does not get dressed, so
Speaker 3: I can imagine a very beefy man. He looks kind
Speaker 3: of like a soap opera star in tidy white ees,
Speaker 3: brand new ones. By the looks of it, they're blindingly white.
Speaker 3: He goes to the door, but before he can open it,
Speaker 3: Darla Haynes busts in somehow, and she says, Matt Riker,
Speaker 3: I'm in trouble. And then the lady in bed, who
Speaker 3: had been in bed with Riker, pops up and says,
Speaker 3: you bet you are a sweetheart.
Speaker 2: The lady in bed is the short line here. This
Speaker 2: is the one that we're going to find out later.
Speaker 2: Is a pleasure bought. Yeah. Quick note on the tidy whities.
Speaker 2: I haven't actually watched any of the Joe Gage films,
Speaker 2: but I'm to understand that the standard white cotton briefs
Speaker 2: are a hallmark of the blue collar working man aesthetic
Speaker 2: in those films, So this might be one of the
Speaker 2: things we can point to as a connection between the
Speaker 2: Tim Kincaid films and the Joe Gage films.
Speaker 3: Interesting, Okay, Anyway, before Darla and the others can discuss things,
Speaker 3: cyborgs arrive. They just start coming in the door, and
Speaker 3: then here begins one of the funniest action scenes I
Speaker 3: can recall from any Basically, what happens is that mercenary
Speaker 3: Matt Riker fights this gauntlet of buttoned up cyborgs. He's
Speaker 3: still in his white briefs, but the staging is just magnificent.
Speaker 3: Throughout the fight, they keep cutting away to new walls
Speaker 3: with different weapons on them for Riker to use. There's
Speaker 3: the way that people have to step over the bed
Speaker 3: to get over it, producing a cute little mattress squeak
Speaker 3: every time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, the cyborgs, big beef cyborgs having to step
Speaker 2: over the bed.
Speaker 3: Yes, Ryker hiding behind the punching bag while he's maneuvering
Speaker 3: the way. Only one character moves at a time, and
Speaker 3: when one character is moving, everybody else just stands there
Speaker 3: still and watches them.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And the music this is where some of that video
Speaker 3: game style music comes in. It's also very wah wah
Speaker 3: eighties guitar going.
Speaker 2: It's so good. Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 3: There's one amazing sequence where Riker hand he manages to
Speaker 3: he's got handcuff for some reason. He manages to handcuff
Speaker 3: one of the cyborgs to the radiator using these handcuffs
Speaker 3: that were just sitting on a table. And then while
Speaker 3: the cyborg is cuffed there, it turns. It sees a
Speaker 3: machete on the wall, but oh no, the machete's like
Speaker 3: fifteen feet away. No problem. It starts reaching with its
Speaker 3: arm and then just keeps reaching and keeps reaching and
Speaker 3: keeps reaching, and the arm stretches, so the cyborgs have
Speaker 3: stretch armstrong powers. It engages extender arm, and we do
Speaker 3: get a cutaway where you see the full length arm
Speaker 3: all the way stretched out, and then it retrieves the
Speaker 3: machete so that it can chop off its own hand.
Speaker 3: It squirts orange juice concentrate wires are poking out everywhere,
Speaker 3: and then I think when it gets up it jams
Speaker 3: the hand back onto the wrist.
Speaker 2: Yes, it does, and then is ready to fight again.
Speaker 2: This scene takes forever, but every moment of it is awesome.
Speaker 2: I would love this sequence in any mid to high
Speaker 2: budget production, but I also just love it in a
Speaker 2: little bit low budget production like this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so good and got all of the weapons.
Speaker 3: So there's a crossbow on the wall. Ryker ends up
Speaker 3: using that. There's a shotgun on the wall. I don't
Speaker 3: think he ever uses the shotgun. He picks it up
Speaker 3: and he tries to shoot it, but it jams and
Speaker 3: then he can't use it, so he just does to
Speaker 3: punch a cyborg.
Speaker 2: Or maybe he realizes his last minute. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't keep a loaded shotgun hanging on the wall. But yeah,
Speaker 2: that one, that one is no use.
Speaker 3: There's a harpoon that he never uses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would shot the harpoon. Gun doesn't get used.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what is the what are Raphael's weapons and the
Speaker 3: ninja shurt?
Speaker 2: Oh the sigh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, he uses some of those, or he tries
Speaker 3: to use them and but the cyborg deflects him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, grabs them, whips him around, and then he goes
Speaker 2: to use them and they're deflected. But then in the
Speaker 2: next shot on the wall again.
Speaker 3: Oh very good, I didn't notice that. Eventually he gets
Speaker 3: one of the cyborgs with a night stand lamp attack like,
Speaker 3: he yanks the bull about and then zaps the cyborg
Speaker 3: with it. He so he kills a couple of the
Speaker 3: cyborgs and then the music stops and then Darla says
Speaker 3: they aren't human, and the woman in the bed says
Speaker 3: no kidding. Darla asks Riker for a cigarette, which I
Speaker 3: thought was funny, and he finally puts some pants on,
Speaker 3: and then Darla explains what happened. She asks Riker for help.
Speaker 3: Turns out Riker and her brother Paul had worked together
Speaker 3: in the past. Paul once saved Riker's life and he
Speaker 3: owes him one, so he's in for whatever this is.
Speaker 3: Then Darla gives the scoop. She says, Paul's head of
Speaker 3: research at Intel tracks he designed a new line of cyborgs,
Speaker 3: the Delta sevens, for hazardous occupations. A few hours ago,
Speaker 3: three of the Delta's malfunctioned. Someone had introduced U four
Speaker 3: on into their system. And then the lady in Riker's bed,
Speaker 3: who's still here and very much part of the conversation,
Speaker 3: says EU four on, who'd want to get robots high?
Speaker 2: In great delivery?
Speaker 3: And Darla says the drug decays and mutates psycho sexual
Speaker 3: response programs, corrupting the reasoning cortex. The other lady says,
Speaker 3: what's that in English? And then Reiker, comprehending perfectly, says
Speaker 3: they kill for pleasure. Yeah, I don't know how you
Speaker 3: get that from the other thing, but so Paul is
Speaker 3: being imprisoned by Intel tracks, which we learn is legal. Actually,
Speaker 3: the corporations in this movie can imprison anybody for up
Speaker 3: to seventy two hours.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 3: Ever since the Space Shuttle sex murders.
Speaker 2: Yes, the Space Shuttle sex murders, which is just just
Speaker 2: a nugget thrown out there for us to ponder. But
Speaker 2: I love it, like the kind of like gentle world building.
Speaker 2: It's like, what, like I imagine a world in which
Speaker 2: there was something called the Space Shuttle sex murders, and
Speaker 2: it's just sort of a common reference like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: when that happened.
Speaker 3: It's just a common reference point and it can explain anything. Apparently,
Speaker 3: why can corporations imprison people because of the Space Shuttle
Speaker 3: sex murder?
Speaker 2: We can't allow it to happen again. So yeah, we
Speaker 2: got to give corporations extra power over people.
Speaker 3: So Darla says, if you can't stop the mutants, Riker,
Speaker 3: who knows how many innocent people they'll murder. Riker says,
Speaker 3: I'll give it a try, but it's not going to
Speaker 3: be easy. Darla explains that the Delta sevens have five
Speaker 3: times as much strength as the cyborgs that Riker just killed,
Speaker 3: and he says, She says they have. This is where
Speaker 3: we get that they have a limited telepathic power, allowing
Speaker 3: them to sense potential harm, meaning that as long as
Speaker 3: you're hunting them, they'll be hunting you. That's good, that's
Speaker 3: pretty fascinating.
Speaker 2: And and again it makes you if we exist in
Speaker 2: a world where that exists. That's part of the cyborg build.
Speaker 2: Like what other details are out there? So I did?
Speaker 2: I do kind of love this.
Speaker 3: So Riker first jokes that he's going to not take
Speaker 3: the job. He's like, I don't know, this is too
Speaker 3: much for me. And then he's just like, no, I'm
Speaker 3: just kidding. I'll do it. And then more cyborgs just
Speaker 3: start pouring into the apartment. Whoops, they were talking too long,
Speaker 3: I guess, and another fight begins. I don't know why,
Speaker 3: but this time they go straight for the lady in
Speaker 3: the bed. The cyborg just scoops her up and throws
Speaker 3: her out the window. Oh no, but when she hits
Speaker 3: the ground, our fears are somewhat put to rest because
Speaker 3: we see there is no blood. Instead, she splats in
Speaker 3: a puddle of yellow green goop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, she's a cyborg. Fantastic sequence here and a
Speaker 2: good moment to just bring up the general cyborg fighting
Speaker 2: techniques that we see from these guys. They have two
Speaker 2: main grappling styles. They have the Monster Movie made in lift,
Speaker 2: you know, like any poster you've seen of a monster
Speaker 2: carrying an unconscious woman.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just lifting up. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the other is a two handed frontal ballet lift.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure exactly what this is called, but you know,
Speaker 2: like lifting someone up in the air like a like
Speaker 2: a parent might lift a toddler above their head. That
Speaker 2: ballet move so not something you see like in wrestling
Speaker 2: per se, but it's one of the things that the
Speaker 2: cyborgs do here in addition to their chops, their punches
Speaker 2: and her head rips.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they do some brutal karate chops and they rip
Speaker 3: body parts off. But the fight continues. There's machete versus chair.
Speaker 3: One of the cyborgs gets a machete, Matt Riker as
Speaker 3: the chair and they're squaring off. Eventually, Ryker gets the
Speaker 3: upper hand and blasts the cyborg with a laser gun
Speaker 3: and that's it. And a laser gun does the trick
Speaker 3: and then a Riyker and Darla go to the window
Speaker 3: and Darla looks down at the body and she expresses shock,
Speaker 3: and Ryker says, easy, come, easy go, and she goes,
Speaker 3: how can you say that? And Ryker is like, ah,
Speaker 3: she wasn't a human, just a pleasure robot. Oh, okay,
Speaker 3: no big deal.
Speaker 2: She seemed to have a personality.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, question like, do the cyborgs in this movie
Speaker 3: want to live? Do they feel pain? In which case
Speaker 3: I would feel kind of bad anyway that she got
Speaker 3: thrown down there. I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're left to just try and figure it out.
Speaker 3: We at least learned that some of them later do
Speaker 3: feel pain. Yeah, it's trying, but so apparently no big
Speaker 3: deal from the movie's point of view, just a robot. Oh.
Speaker 3: And then also Ryker says, I smell euphour On, must
Speaker 3: have been pumped full of it. Which one is he
Speaker 3: talking about her or.
Speaker 2: The Yeah, yeah, it was confusing the first time I
Speaker 2: watched it as well.
Speaker 3: And then he says, seems an old friend of mine
Speaker 3: has been on the Euphoron trail for the FEDS. So
Speaker 3: we cut to a nightclub called Club Inferno, and there
Speaker 3: is a dance act going on. We see a lady
Speaker 3: with red hair with a mask on. It was kind
Speaker 3: of a bandit mask of some sort. And she's dancing
Speaker 3: on the stage. She's wearing like a black body suit
Speaker 3: with a bunch of holes in it. She almost looks
Speaker 3: like she could be in the cast of Cats. Did
Speaker 3: you get that? Yeah? Yeah, And this is going to
Speaker 3: be the character Elaine Elliott. So in the middle of
Speaker 3: her dance, there are a couple of creeps in the
Speaker 3: club that come up on stage and start messing with her,
Speaker 3: and then she beats them up and tosses them out
Speaker 3: on their butts. But I thought it was weird. While
Speaker 3: they're fighting, some people in the club are audibly like
Speaker 3: out and rooting for the attackers and the fight. Get her, Yeah,
Speaker 3: get her. This is not a very good club, it
Speaker 3: seems like. And so in this club we see people
Speaker 3: also doing you for on They're dabbing it into their ears.
Speaker 3: There's one guy just drinking from a bottle of Jack Daniels.
Speaker 3: Do they let you drink straight out of the bottle
Speaker 3: at a bar?
Speaker 2: They do that in movies if you're the protagonist and
Speaker 2: you've had a rough day, It's like, just leave me
Speaker 2: the bottle, Sam that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: But wouldn't they at least make you put it in
Speaker 3: the glass.
Speaker 2: I don't know I went to a bar in Thailand,
Speaker 2: I believe. Oh no, you know. I can't remember if
Speaker 2: I went to a bar. I just read about this
Speaker 2: while I was visiting Thailand. But like, there are bars
Speaker 2: in Thailand where you can bring in your own bottle
Speaker 2: that they will keep for you. And then I don't
Speaker 2: know if you're allowed to drink out of the bottle though,
Speaker 2: that's the thing.
Speaker 3: Anyway. Elaine comes down after her act and she talks
Speaker 3: to Riker and Darla. Riker introduces her at inter uses
Speaker 3: Elaine as private Op bounty hunter. Oh you were right,
Speaker 3: private op, he says, Private, okay, Private Op bounty hunter,
Speaker 3: Dancer of the Seven Veils. I just thought she's a
Speaker 3: public op because she says she does it for the government.
Speaker 3: So I don't know what's what's going on there. Maybe
Speaker 3: she's private and public and public.
Speaker 2: She's a busy woman. She has a number of.
Speaker 3: Hats totally, she's multitasking. Riker tells Elaine that he has
Speaker 3: a blotder job for her. A blotterer in this movie
Speaker 3: means murder. I think it means like assassinate. So he's
Speaker 3: got a blotder job for her. Does she want in?
Speaker 3: There's some haggling. She finds out that Riker is doing
Speaker 3: the job as a personal favor. But she's only interested
Speaker 3: if she can claim her usual fee. As we can
Speaker 3: see from the number of jobs she has, she must
Speaker 3: be she's interested in making bank and Riker says, don't
Speaker 3: worry about it, I'll cover your fee. He says. The
Speaker 3: targets are not human, they're cyborgs, quote mutants, psycho sexual killers.
Speaker 3: And we learned that lately Elaine has been working on
Speaker 3: a government case. Here's her public op stuff. She's tracking
Speaker 3: a large cash of euphoron smuggled in from the lunar colony.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is another detail that it's like, what what
Speaker 2: is it? Euphoron comes from the moon? Are they like
Speaker 2: they're making it in like euphoron labs on the moon
Speaker 2: or they growing something there gets turned into euphoron, Or
Speaker 2: is something naturally occurring in the depths of the moon
Speaker 2: that it becomes uphoron. I don't know.
Speaker 3: That was my thought. Euphoron is made of the moon.
Speaker 3: It is a drug manufactured from the lunar regolith. That's good.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 3: But anyway, somebody on earth here, or at least in
Speaker 3: New York, has been buying up all of the euphorons,
Speaker 3: so the market has dried up. Somebody's buying it and
Speaker 3: hoarding it, and nobody knows where it is. H And
Speaker 3: then while she's talking, it took me until the second
Speaker 3: time I was watching this scene to notice, like, wait
Speaker 3: a second, isn't that Domeina sitting right next to her?
Speaker 3: That is that's.
Speaker 2: Her drinking something out of a coop glass there. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: so they Oh, I'm sorry a Nick and Nora glass.
Speaker 3: I think I think that is right. Yeah, that is
Speaker 3: what it is. So Demina's just sitting there listening. I
Speaker 3: guess she's snooping on this conversation. Our heroes decide that
Speaker 3: they've got to get another one of their associates on board,
Speaker 3: a guy named Johnny Felix will meet him soon, and
Speaker 3: Elaine says, Riker, how do I find these mutants? Riker says,
Speaker 3: you don't they find you. So it turns out, yes,
Speaker 3: this was Domina sitting next to Elaine. Demina goes in
Speaker 3: back and places a phone call to Z remembers Z,
Speaker 3: I love this call. These personalities bouncing off of each
Speaker 3: other are so good. Demina says, Z, how good to
Speaker 3: hear your voice. It's been such a long time, so
Speaker 3: much blood under the bridge, Z says, what is it, Demeana?
Speaker 3: Demina says, Z all of the lines to start with.
Speaker 1: Ze.
Speaker 3: She says, as your old colleague as well as your
Speaker 3: ex partner, I thought I might have some information that
Speaker 3: would be of interest to you. But if I'm mistaken,
Speaker 3: don't let me disturb you. Ze says, We've been playing
Speaker 3: these games for too many years. Demeana sounds like some
Speaker 3: games without frontiers.
Speaker 2: Would say, I would say so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So he says, now what is it? Do you
Speaker 3: want something from me? Or are you planning something that's
Speaker 3: going to hurt me? Demina says that genetic strain you
Speaker 3: introduced into your Delta sevens, it's about to cause you
Speaker 3: a few more problems than you've anticipated. You've got Matt
Speaker 3: Riker and his merry band on your case, baby, so
Speaker 3: they haggle about some stuff. I also love the way
Speaker 3: the scene looks because they both have these like orange
Speaker 3: red backgrounds behind them. Though they're in different places, but
Speaker 3: their backgrounds look the same.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is a scene in which the stills
Speaker 2: from the restored version that you'll find on the Vinegar
Speaker 2: Syndrome disc. They really pop and made these scenes. These
Speaker 2: stills especially made me realize I need to this up.
Speaker 3: So they're going to make a deal. Demina offers to
Speaker 3: share the location of Matt Riker's recently recruited associate. I
Speaker 3: think this means Elaine in exchange for fifty kilos of
Speaker 3: upour on. Domina says, you've made it very difficult for
Speaker 3: those of us who like to use uphoron as our
Speaker 3: favorite entertainment. And I for one field that I must
Speaker 3: go on record as telling you that I resent it.
Speaker 3: I really do. Is that Lion has too many words.
Speaker 3: You can cut that in half and say the same thing.
Speaker 2: She feels strongly about this, though I really think she
Speaker 2: does at Z.
Speaker 3: I love this line where Z replies by saying, you're
Speaker 3: so euphoroned out right now, you don't know what you're
Speaker 3: talking about. But Demina wants the fifty kilos of U
Speaker 3: four ons a. Z's going to give it to her
Speaker 3: and she and she's going to provide the location of
Speaker 3: the op. So it's a deal. And next thing we
Speaker 3: see Elaine is walking home from the club alone and
Speaker 3: she hears footsteps behind her on the sidewalk. She stops
Speaker 3: and looks back and it's a big old cyborg come
Speaker 3: in her way. So she runs to a yellow payphone
Speaker 3: and places a call to a new character, Johnny Felix. Ye,
Speaker 3: Johnny Felix is a cool guy in a short sleeve
Speaker 3: green mechanics jumpsuit who kind of looks like he's going
Speaker 3: for like a hairstyling of oats from Hollan Oats, you
Speaker 3: get that. Yeah, Like he's kind of small but muscly
Speaker 3: good looking guy with a strong dark mustache and a
Speaker 3: tight curly black mullet. Very cool look. And Johnny Felix,
Speaker 3: as I said before, he's just a very positive, sunshiny presence.
Speaker 3: Makes me feel like everything's gonna be okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's got the kicks, he's got the tech. He's
Speaker 2: going to help you work it out.
Speaker 3: So Elaine calls Johnny Felix and he's walking on the
Speaker 3: sidewalk somewhere, eating with chopsticks out of a Chinese takeout box,
Speaker 3: and he answers the call by pressing a little button
Speaker 3: on his ear. So I think he's he's got a
Speaker 3: cell phone implanted in his ear. Johnny Felix is not
Speaker 3: a robot, He's not a cyborg. This is just a
Speaker 3: strictly business implant.
Speaker 2: And of course it made me think of earbuds. You know,
Speaker 2: there's so much in the visual language of a film
Speaker 2: like this depicting the technology the future that it easily
Speaker 2: just passes you by as a modern viewer of it,
Speaker 2: because this is already how we live.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's true. So Elaine asks for help, says, a
Speaker 3: guy is after her, Johnny Felix. He's always making jokes.
Speaker 3: He's just like geez, you and your man problems, Elaine.
Speaker 3: But then she shares her location with him. Again. I
Speaker 3: said this earlier. I love anytime this movie shows a
Speaker 3: map with location data. It happens a lot in the
Speaker 3: second half of the movie. So in this case, there's
Speaker 3: a pixelated screen, vaguely shaped like the outline of Lower
Speaker 3: Manhattan as seen from space, with no features, no labeling,
Speaker 3: no streets or landmarks, just a solid island. And then
Speaker 3: a big X appears on part of the land mass.
Speaker 3: Johnny Felix looks at that, he says, I got you, babe,
Speaker 3: I'll be there in exactly eighty five second.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is where he breaks into a dead run, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well no, he shovels a few more bites of
Speaker 3: these noodles.
Speaker 2: You need that noodle fuel for the fight to come.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. These sausages will give me the quick
Speaker 3: energy I need to escape. So he eats some more
Speaker 3: noodles and then he throws his takeout box on the sidewalk.
Speaker 3: Johnny Felix, that you litter bug. He's contributing to the
Speaker 3: miserable state of this dystopian cybercity. But then he takes
Speaker 3: off at a run. Meanwhile, the cyborg corners a lane
Speaker 3: on a kind of boardwalk or promenade overlooking the East
Speaker 3: River at night, and we see bridges lit up in
Speaker 3: the background. She taunts the cyborg. She says, come on,
Speaker 3: you putrid slime bag, take your best shot, and they
Speaker 3: tangle a bit. Elaine gets some good kicks in. Johnny
Speaker 3: Felix arrives on scene and then stands there watching while
Speaker 3: the cyborg and Elaine are wrestling. And then the cyborg
Speaker 3: holds her up in the air like he you know,
Speaker 3: like the cyborgs do, like he's going to do a
Speaker 3: body slam, but Johnny Felix else cut her some slack. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and the cyborg, hearing this, puts her down. I guess
Speaker 3: he cuts her some slack and then allows Johnny Felix
Speaker 3: to kick him in the face. And then our two
Speaker 3: humans run off and get some distance, and Elaine says,
Speaker 3: unless you've got some big artillery on you, this thing's
Speaker 3: too heavy, hitter. Some something got lost there, yeah, and
Speaker 3: then it and then the cyborg sort of menaces them.
Speaker 3: It walks up punching some holes in a big concrete block,
Speaker 3: and then Johnny Felix yells, WHOA So perhaps another time.
Speaker 3: They run away, and then after this they have a
Speaker 3: stroll and a little chat. They're again walking on this
Speaker 3: you know, sort of railing area overlooking the river by
Speaker 3: the city, and Elaine explains, I hate it when men
Speaker 3: save me. Johnny Felix says, well, excuse me for living.
Speaker 3: And then Elaine says, come on, Johnny, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. It's humiliating. I am a fully accredited Federation's operative.
Speaker 3: I passed tests. Johnny Felix is he has a reasonable answer.
Speaker 3: He's like, look, Elaine, you know we all need help
Speaker 3: once in a while.
Speaker 2: It's true.
Speaker 3: Johnny Felix needs help sometimes too. But then Elaine says,
Speaker 3: even Riker, and there they gotta, they gotta admit Riker
Speaker 3: never needs help. Riker's different. But wait, why did Riker
Speaker 3: recruit them if he never needs help? Because Riker needs help,
Speaker 3: needs help? Yeah, yeah, uh yeah, so Elaine says, well,
Speaker 3: as of tonight, I'm just real glad I know an
Speaker 3: off with a phone implanted in his ear.
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 3: Then Johnny Felix says, yeah, it's real convenient. And if
Speaker 3: I don't pay my bill, what can they do? Cut
Speaker 3: off my ear? Seems like they probably would.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that seems like the black mirror direction this would take.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, speaking of ears. Next, there's a scene of
Speaker 3: Demeanor at her apartment or is this her lab anyway,
Speaker 3: slamming some U four on into her ear while she
Speaker 3: looks in a mirror. Hydro appears and gives her an update.
Speaker 3: Riker's off has escaped, the cyborg is still at large.
Speaker 3: Demina is very happy with all of this. She says
Speaker 3: that not all cyborgs are as well programmed as Hydro.
Speaker 3: Hydro says, thank you, Domina. Domina says, I often thought
Speaker 3: I should have stayed with the Delta sixes. Hydro, you
Speaker 3: were all so dependable, so trustworthy, so impervious to rust.
Speaker 3: Hydro says, thank you, Domina. Domina says, now you're the
Speaker 3: only one left all the I wonder how often she
Speaker 3: talks to him like this, you know, it just seems
Speaker 3: like it's the running theme in their house. But she says,
Speaker 3: all the others turned to scrap Z. Z had to
Speaker 3: be greedy. He always wanted more. Well, he's about to
Speaker 3: find out that it was more than he could ever handle.
Speaker 3: So many scenes where she's just predicting that Z will
Speaker 3: soon get his come up, and so it's gonna it's
Speaker 3: got to be really good when it finally comes. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So next we go back to Matt Riker's apartment, you know,
Speaker 3: the one with the weapon hooks instead of furniture. Johnny
Speaker 3: Felix is getting some reps in at the punching bag,
Speaker 3: and this scene is funny in how it's shot because
Speaker 3: at first, Johnny Felix is the only character we can see.
Speaker 3: We're just watching him work in the punching bag. Suddenly
Speaker 3: he stops fighting the bag and starts talking to the room.
Speaker 3: He says, I've tracked and logged four murders in the
Speaker 3: last eighty five minutes, but we don't see who he's
Speaker 3: talking to. Gradually we cut away and reveal basically all
Speaker 3: of the other characters are in the room with him,
Speaker 3: So we got Matt Riker here, Elaine, and Darla. Johnny
Speaker 3: Felix explains the murders he is tracking. He says, all
Speaker 3: in the same quadrant kill meth is identical and traces
Speaker 3: of euphour on looks like one of these creep boys
Speaker 3: is out on the job. And Darla says cyborgs. Paul
Speaker 3: would die if he knew. He never intended the Delta
Speaker 3: sevens to kill, but Matt Riker says someone did so.
Speaker 3: In the scene, Johnny Felix can never remember that they're
Speaker 3: called cyborgs, but again, he seems totally familiar with hunting cyborgs.
Speaker 3: This is like his standard work. It almost seems so yeah,
Speaker 3: very confusing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like if you didn't know it was called
Speaker 2: an iPhone, Like everybody knows what this is.
Speaker 3: But your job is buying iPhone, yeah or something. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and he starts calling them jelly heads. But also in
Speaker 3: the scene, we learned that Johnny Felix is Riker's Q branch,
Speaker 3: so he busts out some toys for everybody. This includes
Speaker 3: tracking devices. Uh there's one that Darla can tune to
Speaker 3: pick up the mutants so that they can find them anywhere.
Speaker 3: Another device is one that can zero in on the
Speaker 3: molecular structure of Euphouron and will lead you to any
Speaker 3: quantity over ten kilos. They also have these little wind
Speaker 3: up cars with spikes on them that crawl around and
Speaker 3: then jump and then explode.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and when they jump they make a cartoon
Speaker 2: sound like Yosemite. Sam just shot a tin can off
Speaker 2: of the fence post, which cham Yeah.
Speaker 3: So now I basically now we've got Finally the mutant
Speaker 3: hunt begins, the titular mutant hunt. It is here. Elaine
Speaker 3: is going to go hunting for the Upouron stash, Johnny
Speaker 3: Felix is going to hunt for Cyborg Alpha and Blotterer
Speaker 3: him and Matt Riker is going to hunt for Cyborg Beta.
Speaker 3: These are the two main cyborgs left. And Darla is
Speaker 3: going to stay at Matt Riker's apartment until the hunt
Speaker 3: is concluded. And Darla says, look, I know you're professional.
Speaker 3: I know you kill for money, But do you really
Speaker 3: know what you're dealing with? These things? Aren't you four
Speaker 3: on dealers or sex maniacs. They're superhuman machines, ten times
Speaker 3: stronger than any man. Wait, wasn't it five times stronger
Speaker 3: in the earlier scene that was an hour ago? They're
Speaker 3: just stronger now they're getting stronger. Yeah, And Johnny Felix
Speaker 3: is like, there's ten times stronger than any man. So
Speaker 3: Darla says, so so you can't even remember they're called cyborgs.
Speaker 3: Johnny Felix makes himself pronounced the name. He says cyborgs,
Speaker 3: and Darla then addresses Matt Riker. She says, you think
Speaker 3: brute force can solve anything, Well it can't. But Ryker
Speaker 3: is able to put her at ease. He's like, hey,
Speaker 3: you know your brother sent you here. Your brother trusted me,
Speaker 3: You should trust me too. Another funny costuming note. By
Speaker 3: this point of the movie, Riker is now wearing also
Speaker 3: a full body jumpsuit like Johnny Felix, but this jumpsuit
Speaker 3: has zippers that come in at angles on the chest
Speaker 3: that make it look like a country western shirt, like
Speaker 3: he's about to do a cowboy song. Anyway, they get
Speaker 3: to hunting. So I think after this part, I'm going
Speaker 3: to narrate the movie a little bit less closely. We'll
Speaker 3: do specific scenes instead of trying to cover everything. But
Speaker 3: generally in the middle of the movie, we're gonna have
Speaker 3: Matt Riker and Johnny Felix hunting their mutants, Elaine hunting
Speaker 3: the uphour on, and then Darla is going to have
Speaker 3: encounters with a previously assumed destroyed cyborg in Riker's.
Speaker 2: Yeah cyborg that yeah, they they seem to terminate in
Speaker 2: the initial battle, and it's just laying there. We see
Speaker 2: it laying against the wall, and it just looks completely disgusting,
Speaker 2: like why would you not clean this out? Like this
Speaker 2: thing must just reek of like rotting organic parts and
Speaker 2: you know, maybe U four on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, just chopped meat laying there in the wall.
Speaker 3: But it'll come up again later. So they set out
Speaker 3: on the hunt. And then right after this, right after
Speaker 3: the scene with like we're going to hunt the mutants, now,
Speaker 3: we cut to Riiker and Elaine in some other different
Speaker 3: apartment together and they decide it's time for some loving.
Speaker 3: It's like, aren't y'all on the clock? I know work
Speaker 3: is not everything, but there are mutant cyborgs killing people
Speaker 3: every few hours, but they start kissing on each other.
Speaker 3: Part of their foreplay involves tossing deadly explosives at each other. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and there's one part. I was laughing out loud here
Speaker 3: at the way that Elaine unzip Riker's jumpsuit and then
Speaker 3: peels it back to reveal those awesome tidy white eies
Speaker 3: yet again. And then while they're lying naked on the
Speaker 3: floor kissing, Elaine says, we have crazy mutant cyborgs out there.
Speaker 3: Riker makes an excuse here. He says, you saw the
Speaker 3: dark glasses. They can't take the light. Something about no
Speaker 3: compatibility of organic and synthetic parts. We have until tomorrow night.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm not sure it makes sense, but I again
Speaker 2: I admire that there's a reason for the classes.
Speaker 3: That's why they can be doing this. But again, this
Speaker 3: scene feels to me like an after the fact interpolation. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now I want to add here there's a love scene here,
Speaker 2: but it is amazingly tame, and oh yeah it is.
Speaker 2: There's nothing really, There's some very brief newdity in this
Speaker 2: film a couple of times, but like blink and you
Speaker 2: miss it, sort of thing, and it is kind of
Speaker 2: interesting to think about this film in particular, or at
Speaker 2: least I can't necessarily speak for other Tim Kinkaid pictures,
Speaker 2: but comparing the Tim Kinkaid pictures to like to the
Speaker 2: fact that he had this career in adult cinema, you
Speaker 2: almost get the sense that it's like he has unlike
Speaker 2: other filmmakers, and you know, b movie filmmakers, maybe you
Speaker 2: just didn't have a desire to explore anything overtly sexual
Speaker 2: in his sci fi pictures because he already had all
Speaker 2: these other films where he'd gotten to explore all of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there is this romance scene. It does feel kind
Speaker 3: of perfunctory, just like something they had to like get
Speaker 3: in there and get done really quick. It does not
Speaker 3: feel like Kincaid is eager to explore the sexual side
Speaker 3: of the story. It just seems like not something that's
Speaker 3: a high priority.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I guess it's one of those things sometimes
Speaker 2: in pictures, it's like you you portray a physical relationship
Speaker 2: in order to imply the emotional connection and the character
Speaker 2: level connection that you either don't have time to depict
Speaker 2: and establish, or you know, or you just it's not
Speaker 2: the sort of film where you do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's interesting. I don't know if I've ever thought
Speaker 3: about it quite that way, but sometimes I think, yes,
Speaker 3: like a kiss can be cinematic shorthand for when you
Speaker 3: either don't have time to or don't have the skill
Speaker 3: to properly render a developing relationship. Well let's just have
Speaker 3: them kiss and there you go.
Speaker 2: But I mean, who among us has not fallen in
Speaker 2: love during the course of a mutant hunt? So I
Speaker 2: think we can all we can all resonate with this scene.
Speaker 3: So here we go to our first mutant murder scene
Speaker 3: plus Riker's intervention. So we're on a street with graffiti
Speaker 3: and trash everywhere. It's nighttime. There's a lady calling out
Speaker 3: a window above. She says, Amber Dawn, come inside. It's
Speaker 3: two in the morning.
Speaker 2: She is apparently we don't really find out until later,
Speaker 2: but she's calling a child. This is I guess a
Speaker 2: little bit of comic relief that's thrown into the picture.
Speaker 2: But there's some kid named Amberdon just out there playing
Speaker 2: in two am slime City, Dystopian New York.
Speaker 3: I'm playing with the toxic waste mom. Then later, yeah,
Speaker 3: there is a U four on couple kissing in an alleyway.
Speaker 3: Another couple wandering down the sidewalk. The cyborg smells these
Speaker 3: people and then meets them head on on the sidewalk.
Speaker 3: The cyborg karate chops the dude, and then somewhere else
Speaker 3: Matt Riker is walking around next to a chain link
Speaker 3: fence and his watch starts beeping. He looks at it
Speaker 3: and we see a screen that says human life termination
Speaker 3: process in progress, quadrants quadrants E one thirty five human
Speaker 3: life termination process in progress. So he starts running to intercept.
Speaker 3: You start. You think, man, this'd be faster if he
Speaker 3: had a car, because no.
Speaker 2: Motorcycle or something. Come on, motorcycles are cyberpunk.
Speaker 3: This this New York future has no traffic at all.
Speaker 3: We never see traffic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, where's the where's the public transportation system?
Speaker 3: Also we see now the cyborg is very bloody and bubbly.
Speaker 3: So this seems to fit with the theme that as
Speaker 3: the cyborgs become good, they are becoming more powerful.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also, when the cyborg kills one of these people, I
Speaker 3: think this is when we just get a bunch of
Speaker 3: like meat slop thrown on the ufouron couple who are
Speaker 3: kissing in the alleyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they seem to just be like we we should
Speaker 2: be still until the murderous cyborg leaves so we can
Speaker 2: commence smooching again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they don't run away or anything.
Speaker 2: I want to add that Riker. Yes, we are told
Speaker 2: that he is running, and we see him running, but
Speaker 2: probably by accident. It ends up feeling like he's not
Speaker 2: in enough of a hurry to stop this impending human
Speaker 2: life termination because like he gets there right and like
Speaker 2: strolls in kind of casually right after the cyborg rips
Speaker 2: an innocent person's head off. Yes, and then he's like, like, hey, cyborg,
Speaker 2: let's do this.
Speaker 3: He said. No, this is the line he says when
Speaker 3: he gets there. He says, you sure look ugly, real ugly.
Speaker 3: Hey cyborg, this cyborg just murdered somebody in cold blood.
Speaker 3: Maybe you should have skipped the one line here and
Speaker 3: just like jumped in and stop the murder.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm not going to tell Matt Ryker
Speaker 2: how to do his thing. He's the best.
Speaker 3: Also, the line seems backwards. He says, hey, cyborg last
Speaker 3: instead of first. He also, when they're fighting, there's a
Speaker 3: part where he says, don't get me steamed cyborg. He's
Speaker 3: going to kill this cyborg either way. What does it
Speaker 3: matter if he steamed?
Speaker 2: But the cyborg is also thinking, thank you for calling
Speaker 2: me by the correct term. I am a cyborg, I'm
Speaker 2: not a jelly head.
Speaker 3: So Riker is victorious in this fight. And then when
Speaker 3: the cyborg is busted down on the sidewalk, I think
Speaker 3: he gets out pliers and starts just taking it apart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he kind of like field strips the field dresses
Speaker 2: the cyborg and gets the parts he needs to study later.
Speaker 2: I want to add that most of these fights also
Speaker 2: remind me a bit of nineteen fifties Luca movie action sequences,
Speaker 2: not because of the choreography or anything, but the way
Speaker 2: that they're staged and shot often wide and long, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, often lower budget situations
Speaker 2: where you're shooting the action wide and you're letting the
Speaker 2: action play out and you're missing none of the beats
Speaker 2: of the combat, which in a way is good because
Speaker 2: if the choreography is good, then it'll have it'll make
Speaker 2: sense from move to move and tell its own little story.
Speaker 2: But I don't know, it's not necessarily what we have
Speaker 2: going on here.
Speaker 3: So in the middle of the movie. There are more
Speaker 3: scenes of Demeanor pacing around her empty art gallery talking
Speaker 3: to Hydro about how she's gonna get revenge on Z,
Speaker 3: talking about how she needs you four on, and also
Speaker 3: monologuing to this other being which we now get a
Speaker 3: better look at, and it's a mummy. She just says,
Speaker 3: a mummy standing in her apartment. It's huffing and growling,
Speaker 3: and she talks to it kind of like she's hitting
Speaker 3: on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, which makes me feel worse for Hydro. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: Hydro has always been here for you, girl, and you're
Speaker 2: just touching on this giant mummy cyborg because it's got
Speaker 2: to be a cyborg, you know, while Hydro's just standing there. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: you feel bad for Hydro.
Speaker 3: It almost feels like there should be a scene where
Speaker 3: Hydro has like her a present or has flowers for her,
Speaker 3: but then he's he's like embarrassed and he doesn't give
Speaker 3: them to her.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, she's in there grinding on this mummy and
Speaker 2: he's like oh and then he just like head down,
Speaker 2: leaves the room with the present, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Puts the ring back in his pocket.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So there are scenes of Elaine hunting for U four on.
Speaker 3: She's just walking around strange deserted locations. At one point
Speaker 3: she's on a beach. She goes to empty factory buildings
Speaker 3: and she's singing, you.
Speaker 2: Four on, you four on, Where are you this one
Speaker 2: particular empty factory building. I didn't look up where this
Speaker 2: is or would have been, but it's quite impressive. Like
Speaker 2: they you know, there's a lot of gorilla style shooting
Speaker 2: in this, but they also they found some cool locations
Speaker 2: here and there.
Speaker 3: So one of Yeah, if it's the same place you're
Speaker 3: talking about, I assume it probably is. It's clearly a
Speaker 3: real location. It's way too vast and elaborate to be
Speaker 3: to have been built as a set.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or a mat painting. This is not a map painting.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, this is a real place. It's
Speaker 3: like a brutalist concrete building with interior facing windows over
Speaker 3: this courtyard and then but the courtyard is not open
Speaker 3: sky it's got a roof over it with skylight windows,
Speaker 3: and then just concrete opera boxes poking out from windows
Speaker 3: on the six floors that are facing in. It's a
Speaker 3: very cool looking place. Seems like it would have been
Speaker 3: used for a RoboCop set.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and this correct me if I'm wrong. This
Speaker 2: is supposed to be the Intel Tracks headquarters.
Speaker 3: I think, so, yeah, okay, let's see somewhere. Oh there's
Speaker 3: one part I wanted to mention, just because it was
Speaker 3: unexpected and kind of interesting. There's the scene where the
Speaker 3: civilian beats a cyborg. Yeah.
Speaker 2: This is great because there's like this, this random Asian
Speaker 2: guy walking down the street or doing something. He's doing
Speaker 2: something on the street, taking the garbage out. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: then a cyborg attacks and you think, oh, this, this
Speaker 2: poor guy, this is just gonna we're going to establish
Speaker 2: cyborg dominance here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, you think head's gonna get ripped off again.
Speaker 3: But instead, this guy has moves. He starts kicking the cyborg,
Speaker 3: he beats it up, and then he runs away.
Speaker 2: Yeah he does like some sort of cool flying headbut
Speaker 2: to the mid section of the cyborg and wins and leaves,
Speaker 2: and you're like, yeah, that was quite a roller coaster ride,
Speaker 2: and I'm glad this guy won.
Speaker 3: I just assumed any non op who faces a cyborg
Speaker 3: is dead meat, but some civilians in future New York
Speaker 3: are powerhouses. This guy's one of them. I don't know
Speaker 3: what the point of this scene was. It almost feels
Speaker 3: like it kind of goes against the theme of the story.
Speaker 3: But maybe it's just like, hey, we know this other
Speaker 3: guy who's a good, you know, martial artist. We could
Speaker 3: use him for something, and we don't really have room
Speaker 3: for another character in the movie, but well, how about
Speaker 3: just we have a scene where he beats up a cyborg.
Speaker 2: I guess, so that has to be it. It's like,
Speaker 2: this is the sort of thing in a more finely
Speaker 2: tuned film you wouldn't find this, or if you did
Speaker 2: find it, it would have some sort of important payoff later.
Speaker 2: Here is just there and you just enjoy it for
Speaker 2: what it is. It's just a gift that the movie
Speaker 2: gives you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, great scene. Yeah, no notes. There's also the scene
Speaker 3: where Demeana kidnaps Matt Reiker. She chains him up in
Speaker 3: her place. It tells him the whole plot explains Z's
Speaker 3: plot to create mutant these mutant cyborgs. She puts a
Speaker 3: bomb in his head, he gets an implanted bomb in
Speaker 3: his skull, and then Demino wants to make a deal
Speaker 3: with Riker. She's gonna help him if he will get
Speaker 3: rid of will help her get all of Z's uphour on.
Speaker 3: Ryker says, sounds to me like you have a bad
Speaker 3: pleasure Jones.
Speaker 2: Is that a thing? I guess let me go with
Speaker 2: the future.
Speaker 3: Demina says quite the opposite. I've created something extraordinary. Z
Speaker 3: Z thought he could use upour on to break through
Speaker 3: to the next level of strength and intelligence, But all
Speaker 3: he did was create sickness and plague. He had the
Speaker 3: answer right in front of him all the time. He
Speaker 3: didn't even see it. Seems like more rubbing it in
Speaker 3: Hydro's face. It's like she's talking about Hydro. He's the
Speaker 3: answer that was there all along.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but she's already kind of threatening. It's like Z's
Speaker 2: sick plot. He can't actually pull it off. I'm the
Speaker 2: only one who can pull off this sick plot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. So Riiker talks Domina into deactivating the bomb
Speaker 3: and planted in his head in exchange for telling Demino
Speaker 3: where Darla is, and then she's like all right, I'll
Speaker 3: do yeah, and then he just elbows her and escapes. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there is a whole plot here where Darla and the
Speaker 3: already destroyed cyborg in Matt Reker's apartment start interacting the
Speaker 3: cyborg has half of its face blown off. The half
Speaker 3: that's still there is pretty mangled. As we were saying earlier,
Speaker 3: the effects in this movie in general can look pretty cheap,
Speaker 3: and some of them are like cheap but great. I
Speaker 3: was suddenly pretty impressed with this one, Like this is
Speaker 3: elaborate puppetry.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Darla sees the cyborg up and moving around and
Speaker 3: freaks out. She sees it. I think she's just getting
Speaker 3: out of the shower, and it says, doctor, don't be frightened.
Speaker 3: I can can't harm you now. Our damaged chromo system
Speaker 3: demands that we kill every six hours. I will be
Speaker 3: homicidally inactive until six seventeen am.
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 3: Please, doctor, your brother created us. You know our circuitry.
Speaker 3: I am in great pain. You can neutralize my killer impulse.
Speaker 3: You must help me. You must return to the lab.
Speaker 3: So for a second I thought, well, wait, how sweet
Speaker 3: this is. This is about to become Bud, the mutant
Speaker 3: cyborg who is friend instead of foe. It's sort of that,
Speaker 3: but not exactly. He then picks Darla up while she's
Speaker 3: screaming and telling him to stop, and he ignores her
Speaker 3: and carries her away to Inteltrac's headquarters.
Speaker 2: You know this is another lift. I didn't. This is
Speaker 2: another grappling maneuver for the cyborgs. This is the put
Speaker 2: her heaver over your shoulder approach.
Speaker 3: Here and then just carries her down the sidewalk while
Speaker 3: she's screaming and like nobody helps her. New York, Yeah,
Speaker 3: bade City, slime City. So yeah, this cyborg is now
Speaker 3: not exactly nice, but at least homicidally inactive. He just
Speaker 3: wants help getting the neutralization of the impulse. So there's
Speaker 3: another cyborg street fight scene. We have a gang of
Speaker 3: U four on heads who try to jump a cyborg
Speaker 3: and get his upour on That's what they say. The
Speaker 3: cyborg fights back, and then Johnny Felix, who is for
Speaker 3: some reason watching from some metal bars up above, intervenes
Speaker 3: and fights the cyborg. And I was like, bad strategy.
Speaker 3: Why not let the gang fight it first.
Speaker 2: I guess he's trying to make friends. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Johnny Felix gives the cyborg a good beating. He keeps
Speaker 3: whacking it with poles and then he eventually impales its
Speaker 3: face with a pipe and then after he beats the cyborg,
Speaker 3: the U four on punks try to jump him, but
Speaker 3: Matt Reker is there. He's squatting on the roof, and
Speaker 3: then he jumps up like Spider Man, and together our
Speaker 3: two heroes beat up the punks. I think two of
Speaker 3: these three guys are the ones who attacked Elaine in
Speaker 3: the club.
Speaker 2: I believe, so. I think we saw the other punk
Speaker 2: in there as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and getting the Jack Daniels.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the punk with the crazy hair, which is another
Speaker 2: one of these figures. You just kind of assumed this
Speaker 2: was a New York like punk scene character or something
Speaker 2: at the time.
Speaker 3: While walking away from the scene, Johnny Felix and Matt
Speaker 3: Riker get a signal on their watches. They realized the
Speaker 3: cyborg in Riker's apartment has kidnapped Darla, so they go
Speaker 3: off in pursuit. There's a villain monologue scene somewhere in
Speaker 3: here where Z is talking to Paul, who is tied
Speaker 3: up on a table, very loosely tied up on a table.
Speaker 3: He's just laying on a table with his hands kind
Speaker 3: of some wires looped around him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these are meta materials, I sim So that's fine,
Speaker 2: that's how it works. There.
Speaker 3: You go and Z explains his plot goes like this,
Speaker 3: You get the U four on, you put the uphur
Speaker 3: on in the cyborgs, and then the cyborgs mutate. Now
Speaker 3: you have uncontrollable homicidal maniacs with the strength of ten men.
Speaker 3: You sell them to the highest bidder. And Z says
Speaker 3: he has clients lined up all over the world. Somehow
Speaker 3: this makes you capable of global nomination. Sure, that's what
Speaker 3: he's doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: At intel TRAC's headquarters, Matt Riker and Johnny Felix intercept
Speaker 3: Darla and Bud the cyborg. Bud the cyborg explains that
Speaker 3: he has been programmed to feel pain, why and that
Speaker 3: he can feel and he wants their help. And in
Speaker 3: the middle of the conversation, Elaine blows up Z's cash
Speaker 3: of you four on elsewhere in the facility and this
Speaker 3: causes havoc, but Bud the cyborg tells them, Hey, I
Speaker 3: can show you the way to get through undetected, so
Speaker 3: follow me. Meanwhile, Domina has another scene with her mummy.
Speaker 3: She says she's going to unleash the Delta eight on Z.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the Delta eight. The others have been
Speaker 2: Delta sevens. This is the most advanced cyborg.
Speaker 3: Yet she's got the best, and she says, and then
Speaker 3: we'll see whose combat units are the most expensive purchases
Speaker 3: on this plan this planet.
Speaker 2: At least there you go. She's gonna out z Z.
Speaker 3: So she starts ripping off the mummies bandages, revealing weird
Speaker 3: green runes carved into its back. And then she gets
Speaker 3: hot and heavy with the cyborg mummy. She just starts
Speaker 3: grinding on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, suddenly her shirt is off and she's kind of
Speaker 2: like grinding against it, and yeah, I mean she is
Speaker 2: just into this uphuron pumped Delta eight cyborg and is
Speaker 2: gonna this is gonna be the the most hotly anticipated
Speaker 2: cyborg on the market.
Speaker 3: Also, the more goop equals more power, more power correlation
Speaker 3: that's holding because when we see the Delta eight Cyborg
Speaker 3: revealed at the climax, it is the gooeyest one of all.
Speaker 3: They say it is mutated beyond recognition. It's just dripping, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Just ball hairless, dripping, smiling, like just completely off its rocker.
Speaker 3: So here the character is kind of just running around
Speaker 3: in the facility. I think Elaine is blowing up the
Speaker 3: U four on Z keeps throwing random grenades at nothing.
Speaker 3: I don't know what. He's just throwing things that explode.
Speaker 3: And then there's a final showdown at the facility. So
Speaker 3: our heroes and their cyborg friend meet Z and Paul,
Speaker 3: who is his hostage. Z tries to tell Bud the
Speaker 3: cyborg that he can help it, but it's a lie.
Speaker 3: Paul tells the cyborg, Z made you like this, he
Speaker 3: made you kill so Bud the cyborg then grabs z
Speaker 3: buy the collar and hoists him high in the air
Speaker 3: with an arm stretch to create the image that's on
Speaker 3: the poster. We didn't talk about the poster.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there are at least a couple of different
Speaker 2: posters from back in the day out there. One of
Speaker 2: them is this amazing image of a cyborg slash mutant
Speaker 2: arm extending a dude into the air, and I think
Speaker 2: that was the reason I ended up watching it. I
Speaker 2: was like, that looks awesome, then quickly realizing this movie
Speaker 2: might not deliver on that image. But it does.
Speaker 3: It really does, And then the cyborg just throws Z
Speaker 3: on the ground. Then we get an twist. Demina shows
Speaker 3: up with her unwrapped mummy, the Delta eight. She's here
Speaker 3: to get her revenge on Z, but by the time
Speaker 3: she arrives, Z is already on the ground. So I
Speaker 3: guess it's just gonna get revenge on whoever, which is
Speaker 3: all of the good guys.
Speaker 2: It's plenty of venges to go around.
Speaker 3: And so the fight starts. Matt Riker says party time, Felix,
Speaker 3: Party time, and everybody fights. Matt Riker squares off against
Speaker 3: the Delta eight. It's more fighting basic kicking and jumping attacks.
Speaker 3: Elaine fights some other random cyborgs. At first, Johnny Felix
Speaker 3: just stands there watching with his arms crossed, not helping
Speaker 3: his friends.
Speaker 2: He's powering up. Yeah.
Speaker 3: At one point during the fight, Johnny Felix yells, God
Speaker 3: has come out of the ceiling what. I don't know
Speaker 3: what that means. But Elaine beats up some cyborgs and
Speaker 3: there's a funny part where she kicks a cyborg in
Speaker 3: the crotch after she knocks it down, and this makes
Speaker 3: a metallic clanking sound like oh, no crunching in this
Speaker 3: cry It's just a metallic clank. Yeah. And then Johnny
Speaker 3: Felix beats up a couple of cyborgs and then stomps
Speaker 3: on them and we see him lift his foot up
Speaker 3: from stomping on them, and it's just sticky pizza pizza
Speaker 3: bubblegum on his shoes. And at one point Riker in
Speaker 3: the fight jumps on the Delta eight's back and rides
Speaker 3: at piggyback. Yes, yes, but then there's the cyborg intervention.
Speaker 3: So the Delta eight gets Riker on the ground and
Speaker 3: then reaches out with its hand, just holding its hand
Speaker 3: out to him, and then Bud the Cyborg, the now
Speaker 3: sort of friendly cyborg, says, watch out its hand, don't
Speaker 3: let him use his hand, and then Ze shoots Bud
Speaker 3: the Cyborg with a laser so he's done for and
Speaker 3: then the Delta eight hand starts to glow. It glows
Speaker 3: from inside like a salt lamp. And then before the
Speaker 3: Delta eight can use his hand. Whatever this is going
Speaker 3: to mean, Darla intervene. It's Darla, sister of Paul. She
Speaker 3: intervenes and shoots the Delta eight with a laser gun
Speaker 3: and that does it. Delta eight collapses and Matt Riker says, thanks,
Speaker 3: ever thought about mercenary work. Elaine tells her, yeah, she'd
Speaker 3: be great at it. But here z still injured and
Speaker 3: on the ground. He's got to get one last pot
Speaker 3: shot off, so he shoots at Paul, but it's non fatal.
Speaker 3: It just hits him in the arm. And then Matt
Speaker 3: Riker says, I'm not going to take a bad guy
Speaker 3: out when he's on the ground, just kidding. He shoots
Speaker 3: Z and then Z bursts into flames and then starts
Speaker 3: wiggling around making mechanical sounds. And I was like, what
Speaker 3: is Z a cyborg that doesn't make any sense?
Speaker 2: Doesn't make any sense, but it does. It's a head scratcher.
Speaker 2: What would that mean for everything we've seen so far?
Speaker 2: As Z himself was also cybernetic, maybe he just has
Speaker 2: a lot of cybernetic parts. Like he's you know, augmented
Speaker 2: himself a lot. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Oh, kind of like Johnny Felix, except instead of just
Speaker 3: getting a phone in his ear, he's parts all over.
Speaker 2: Yeah. When you're the d tracks CEO, there's all sorts
Speaker 2: of like brand new bleeding edge gear you can have
Speaker 2: loaded up inside you.
Speaker 3: He's like Alex Rain and Nemesis. He keeps getting his
Speaker 3: machine percentage of Oh.
Speaker 2: Man, can you imagine al totally different visual cinematic worlds?
Speaker 2: But can you imagine those two cybernetic visions converging here.
Speaker 3: It's like Jetson's meet the Flintstone Nemesis, Nemesis meets Mutant Hunt.
Speaker 3: That should have been a crossover event absolutely. And then
Speaker 3: the sort of the coda to the film is elsewhere
Speaker 3: on the street, a mother calls to her child who's
Speaker 3: out playing on the sidewalk below. And we see the
Speaker 3: child and this is the Amber Dawn who is being
Speaker 3: called for earlier, who's like a little kid, not an adult,
Speaker 3: and the child locks eyes with the goofy cyborg who's
Speaker 3: down on the street there, and the cyborg smiles. I
Speaker 3: think it is supposed to recall the scene in the
Speaker 3: original Universal Frankenstein. Yeah, with the kid and the monster. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I guess. So it doesn't really have any depth or
Speaker 2: meaning here, but it's just kind of a a fun
Speaker 2: way to round things out. And I don't know, I
Speaker 2: can imagine an Amber Dawn character creating, you know, establishing
Speaker 2: a relationship with monstrous cyborgs and eventually becoming either the
Speaker 2: nemesis of Alex Rain or fighting alongside him. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Oh wait, I have a question. I'm sure we do see,
Speaker 3: but I just forgot what happens to Demeana at the end.
Speaker 2: Great question. I have no idea that she she just
Speaker 2: runs off. I don't remember her getting her blasted or
Speaker 2: torn in half or anything like that.
Speaker 3: I don't want to say we don't see it, because
Speaker 3: I may have just not remembered. But no, I forget
Speaker 3: what happens to her if we see so. Good question.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe I will go as far to say not
Speaker 2: firmly established if I don't remember it, because again, she
Speaker 2: was one of my favorite characters here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, well that is mutant Hunt rob Strong selection,
Speaker 3: good pick. I love it. I'm going to order the disc.
Speaker 2: Awesome. Yeah, yeah, this one. I wish I had time
Speaker 2: for the disc, but as you mentioned, we were both
Speaker 2: traveling at the time, and I just needed something to
Speaker 2: watch on the airplane for Weird House. And this is
Speaker 2: the sort of film that I find that if I'm flying,
Speaker 2: I need to watch a film of this caliber. I
Speaker 2: haven't completely come up with a reason for why that is,
Speaker 2: but this is what works for me. Films like this,
Speaker 2: films like Franken Hooker, these I need to watch amid
Speaker 2: strangers a board an airplane.
Speaker 3: I was getting distinctly self conscious about like this older
Speaker 3: lady next to me seeing what I had on my
Speaker 3: screen all I'm watching.
Speaker 2: I don't know she needed to be exposed to Mutant Hunt.
Speaker 2: She's probably looked it up already and she's ordered her
Speaker 2: copy as.
Speaker 3: Well, I would hope, So that would be nice.
Speaker 2: All Right, We're going to go in end the hunt
Speaker 2: right here, but we'd love to hear from everyone out there.
Speaker 2: If you have thoughts about Mutant Hunt or any of
Speaker 2: the films we've discussed in this picture, or films we've
Speaker 2: covered in the past in Weird House, or films you
Speaker 2: think we should absolutely cover in the future, reach out
Speaker 2: to us. We'd love to hear from you. Just reminder
Speaker 2: to everyone, it's stuffed. Tobi Your Mind is primarily a
Speaker 2: science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 2: but on Fridays we set aside at all of that
Speaker 2: and we mostly just talk about a weird film here
Speaker 2: on Weird House Cinema. Look us up on Letterboxed We're
Speaker 2: Weird House. We have a nice list of all the
Speaker 2: movies we've covered over the years, and sometimes a peek
Speaker 2: ahead at what comes up next.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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