Early Review of Android Cop (2014)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: The Asylum

Runtime: 86 mins

Format: Screener

Plot: In the year 2045, a Los Angeles Police Department detective and his new Android partner enter the Zone, a forbidden section of the city plagued with an unknown disease. There, they discover the source of the illness and uncover a troubling Government Conspiracy at the center.

Review: I'm still anxiously awaiting for my BluRay copy of Mega Shark vs Mecha Shark, the third movie in the infamous Mega Shark series, to arrive in the mail, however in the meantime the fine folks at Asylum sent my way a screener of another new movie of theirs to review, Android Cop, set to be released this upcoming Tuesday on February 4th.

As you might guess, Android Cop is very much Asylum's glorious return to mockbusters by riffing on the upcoming RoboCop remake. Asylum has landed themselves in plenty of legal troubles over the last couple years because of their mockbusters (The Day The Earth Stopped, Age of Hobbits aka Clash of the Empires, and American Battleship aka American Warships being the top guilty parties), and because of that it seems lately they just don't do as many mockbusters as they once did. In fact, off the top of my head, the last one I can remember them doing was the After Earth mockbuster, Apocalypse Earth, and that was almost a full year ago in just a couple more months. I love their original stuff as well, don't get me wrong, but I've always held a special place in my heart for Asylum's mockbusters. For one, it was what originally led me to them way back in the days of Snakes on a Train, H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, and Transmorphers. Secondly, it's always fun to see just how close to the real Hollywood blockbuster it turns out and in turn which one ends up being more entertaining. So yeah, of course I was pretty excited to come home from a crappy day at work to find a screener waiting for me for Asylum's much-anticipated return to mockbusting by way of Android Cop.

Much like with Universal Soldiers, we're kind of just plucked down into the middle of the story without much backstory to go off of, which has always been an annoying story format that I hate. We have to kind of figure out the characters and their relationships with one another on our own, in addition to having to pick up on little throw-away dialog lines here and there in order to grasp just what's going on at the point in the story that we're dropped into. From what I could gather in the opening minutes, Android Cop takes place in a semi-post apocalyptic future. I say semi because we do see shots and have scenes that take place in bustling, glistening, beautiful cities of glass, however this portion of the movie takes place in the rubble and debris of a destroyed and radiation-infected Los Angeles, dubbed "The Zone" by our lead cop character as played by Mortal Kombat: Legacy, Arrow, and Spawn starer Michael Jai White. He and his partner are on some kind of mission into The Zone in search of a specific suspect that is moving among the leftover homeless people, crime lords, and mutated cannibals that reside in what's left of the city. During this mission, something malfunctions with a computer-controlled sentry gun at the border and it accidentally shoots and kills Michael Jai White's partner, thus leading to his distrust of anything computerized and mechanical that isn't fully operated by a human.

Before even the 6 minute mark he's retrieved from The Zone, only to be sent right back in with another team for backup where, once again, they're almost all taken out, this time by street gangs, until a new mysterious robotic police officer shows up, decked out in black body armor gear and a tinted helmet visor – the title character himself, the low-rent RoboCop wannabe with no personality and a strong unwavering attitude against law-breakers, Android Cop (named Andy, but honestly Android Cop sounds so much cooler, so that's what I'll be referring to him as for the review). Of course there's distrust towards him on the part of Michael Jai White's character because he simply just does not trust machines anymore, which frustrates him all the more once they reach back to the precinct in the city and he finds out that this Android Cop, the first prototype in what the higher-ups hope will be the future of Law Enforcement, is to be his new partner.

As you can probably already tell since all that makes up only the first 10 minutes or so, the movie moves at breakneck speed, starting off right in the thick of things and hardly letting you even have a moment to breath till the end. The rest of the movie plays out pretty much as you can expect, with the two of them working together on a top secret case that leads them through the underbelly of their city and out into the anarchy-ridden Zone, with Michael Jai White learning along the way to accept his robotic partner and even, eventually, trust him while the Android Cop finds his humanity, as these things tend to go in these movies, while also inadvertently uncovering a vast Government conspiracy that also involves some of the top-ranking officers in the police force and their very own Mayor.

So yeah, the movie is pretty generic, but it still manages to be a hell of a lot of fun, largely in part cause of the fast pace of it but also because it's another example of an Asylum mockbuster done right. It has tastes of what it's mockbusting (really, the whole robotic cop angle and most of the subplots dealing with that is obviously directly lifted from RoboCop, and the fact that its body is black, as is the new upcoming reboot of RoboCop's, so that isn't fooling anyone), but there's so much more to the movie that it does separate from all that - For example, there's a subplot in here where they discover that when citizens are in life-threatening accidents and are rendered unconscious, their bodies are kept on life-support while their consciousness are secretly transported into replica android bodies, but without their knowledge so they never know (a debate as to the legalities and moral issues of that also pops up), meaning there could be potentially hundreds if not thousands of sleeper Androids walking around, just ready to be activated by a corrupt person in a position to do so. Stuff like that in this movie actually reminded me quite a bit of the final few episodes of Power Rangers RPM (sorry, spoiler for those not caught up on a 5-year old TV show). Hell, there was even a plot twist in regards to that, late into the movie that I initially called earlier on, but totally forgot that I had called while the movie went on, so it still came as a surprise to me when it happened, and it was a very logical and welcomed plot twist at that.

Even the CGI effects, though there's not much with this one, which is an odd thing to say about an Asylum movie as they're usually all decked out in crappy-but-fun CGI money shots, the few we do get consist of some very well-done futuristic flying vehicles and a couple decent explosions. The rest of this movie was done with practical effects, from the Android Cop himself to the Mad Max-style spiked cars and mutant cannibalistic savages that populate The Zone. In matter of fact, while on the topic here, it's pretty safe to say that more than RoboCop gets mockbusted, as there are plenty of shades of movies and shows I've already mentioned, such as Mad Max and even Power Rangers RPM (though I'm doubtful that last one was on purpose), while I also got some vibes reminiscent of The Terminator, Nemesis, and even Lethal Weapon at times. Even if for some strange reason the movie is not keeping your interest on it's own, you should at least be able to have a fun game of 'Guess That Homage/Rip-Off' with your pals, which will keep you occupied right to the end.

The acting was also filled with lots of good stuff to entertain – Michael Jai White especially was in top form, as he always is, and was just as good here as he is in anything else. A lot of bigger named actors, when in movies such as this, tend to not really bother trying I find, but Michael Jai White, I tell ya, really seems to be a professional when it comes to these things. He also had excellent, and at times humorous, chemistry with his Android partner, which is saying something considering one of them purposely had no personality of their own. They only part of their partnership I wasn't a fan of, was the actor they got to play the Android Cop, Randy Wayne of Honey 2 and Dukes of Hazard: The Beginning fame. It's not that he was bad at it, on the contrary he played the role perfectly and put into the buddy-cop chemistry just as well as Michael Jai White did, but my issue comes down to the fact that he's just so short and scrawny, especially when standing next to Michael Jai White, that even with the thick robotic body armor on, he came across like a pipsqueak when on-screen at the same time as him, and that guy only had to bring himself to the table to look pretty threatening. There were times when criminals were sweating off their fear when face-to-face with the Android Cop and I was just left wondering... Why? If anything they should have busted a gut laughing at the visual gag that is this duo of a tall muscular man in nothing but a tight t-shirt and this short skinny guy decked out in thick body armor, yet the level of intimidation being felt by them was reversed from how it should be.

Admittedly though, he did look pretty damn cool whenever he was firing guns off, but considering this is a sci-fi action movie, I wouldn't expect anything less when it comes to the gunplay scenes (of which there are plenty). Other than that, the only times in the movie that he actually came across as looking all that badass and intimidating, was when he had his tinted-visored helmet on, something that doesn't happen very often; He's wearing it when he's first introduced and then he doesn't put it back on again until far later into the movie, however it's in a scene that is almost cheer-worthy when he finally does pick it back up and put it on, because you know he's about to kick some ass and shit is gonna get real.

In addition, Charles S. Dutton even shines nicely here as the corrupt Mayor and plays the role with such gusto that I'm sure he probably thought he was in a theatrical movie, because I can just not see such an established actor putting that much effort to good use in such a low budget B-Movie. Not that I'm complaining, mind you - I'll never, ever, complain about top-notch acting in a B-Movie.

Sure, the movie has a bit rushed and sloppy of a beginning, and the Android Cop himself may have been slightly miscast when it comes to his size and overall visual intimidation level, but there is so much other stuff to love in this movie, and so much more of it that's done surprisingly well, that it's easy to overlook those minor issues and not really be bothered by them come the time the credits roll at the end. Android Cop is more than just a good, fun, entertaining return to mockbusting for The Asylum, it's an all around good, fun, entertaining movie, period. I know that unless the word 'shark' is in the title somewhere than it seems like Asylum never does sequels anymore, but I would love to see a second movie with these characters on another case and foiling another conspiracy of some sort.

If this is the caliber of movies we can be expecting from The Asylum during 2014, than this is going to be one hellof an awesome year to be an Asylum fan.

Dead or Alive, you're coming with... oops, sorry, wrong movie.

9/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Manborg (2011)

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Universal Soldiers (2007)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: The Asylum

RUNTIME: 85 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: A Marine unit sent into an island base to save a professor, meets what they are trying to save the professor from: Genetically modified super soldiers that have gone awry and have escaped from their maximum security holding cells.

REVIEW: The Asylum is very well-known for their mockbusters, many of which I've covered in past reviews. However, despite the title, Universal Soldiers is actually more of a Terminator mockbuster then Universal Soldier, and is actually kind of a nice companion piece to Asylum's The Terminators as both movies are very similar to one another, have plots that are pretty close together, filmed in the same style, and may even potentially share some of the same effects shots. The main difference - That one is actually enjoyable and this one is not.

The acting is decent for the most part (a couple people aside), but the audio is of such terrible quality that you can't even hear the dialog half the time, so really, the acting is pretty hard to judge.  It doesn't help that it has such a jarring beginning and you're left feeling confused and lost, with hardly any explanation as to what's even going on - Seriously, as the movie starts we're already plucked down into the middle of the action with no backstory given to us as to how the characters got into the middle of this situation. It really feels like coming into a movie that you've never seen before half-way through, and being expected to understand everything and follow along. Because of this, you spend the entire movie just being lost at what the heck is even going on and who these people are.

The action and chase scenes are well-made though, with some pretty interesting death scenes (although they're pretty repetitive), but that's pretty much the only enjoyable aspects of Universal Soldiers, neither of which are worth spending the 80-odd minutes it takes to watch this. I know Asylum is known for their cheap production values, but this one takes the cake, coming across  and feeling like having been slapped together from initial idea phase all the way to production completion over the course of just a week.

3/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Nazis at the Center of the Earth (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: The Asylum

RUNTIME: 90 mins

FORMAT: Netflix

PLOT: A group of researchers in Antarctica are abducted by a platoon of masked soldiers and dragged to a hidden continent in the center of the Earth. There, they discover that surviving Nazi soldiers are plotting an invasion of Earth to revive the Third Reich.

REVIEW: I honestly wasn't originally planning on doing a review for Nazis at the Center of the Earth, simply because I can't review every B-Movie I watch, I just watch way too many of them, and where I recently put out two reviews, one for Grimm's Snow White and one for Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver, with another one for Camel Spiders being prepped for the near-future, I was planning on just sitting back and enjoying Nazis at the Center of the Earth without having to worry about taking notes and doing up a review after. But by the time the credits started rolling I knew I just had to do a review of this one to help get the word out to fellow B-Movie lovers about just how good I found Asylum's latest offering to be.

Our main characters are all scientists at a remote facility in Antarctica, where they happen upon an entrance that leads down through the ice to another 'world' at the center of the earth, in which remnants of Nazi Germany are residing, led by the real-life Nazi war criminal made famous by his horrifying human experimentation, Dr. Josef Mengele, as they seek immortality by abducting people and using their flesh and body organs to replace their own when theirs expire.

To start, this movie already had me pretty much won over by mentioning and touching upon some of my more favorite conspiracy theories (yes, admittedly I'm a conspiracy theory nut), such as Nazis having top secret underground bases in Antarctica where they currently may still reside in secret to this day, Nazis working on UFO and futuristic technologies at said secret bases, that Hitler actually survived WWII, and that there was a secret battle between the U.S. Air Force and a UFO in the skies over Antarctica a few years back. Do I honestly believe these conspiracy theories? Well no, of course not (Though I am willing to be open to the idea of Hitler having survived WWII), but they're fun to think about and still among my favorites regardless, and it was great to see them all utilized here in one form or another. It's the attention to these little details that sometimes go a long way with me, and Asylum is normally pretty good at including those little details in their projects.

The acting from most everyone was surprisingly good. Yes, there were a few of the more minor characters who were about as good as to be expected from an Asylum movie (which is to say not very), but all the main cast, especially the lead scientist with questionable methods, as played by Starship Troopers' Jake Busey, were in top form, with their true acting chops coming out when they had to play their characters as being terrified; when these characters were screaming or being horrified, you believe them, and you feel the fear right along with them. Another shout-out has to go to actor Christopher Karl Johnson (Angels & Demons, Anneliese: The Exorcist Tapes) who played the evil Dr. Josef Mengel to perfection. Every time he was on-screen, there was great tension as you just knew he was in the scene for a reason, and normally those reasons don't bode well for our captured good guys.

Which brings me to what I believe is the strongest aspects of this movie, and it's kind of a broad topic but it all interconnects. Nazis at the Center of the Earth is nothing if not atmospheric and genuinely creepy. Nazis alone is enough to make the movie a bit creepy, but this movie goes above and beyond what it has to, to paint them as a real genuine threat to the characters. Not once did I think 'well sure, they're the villains because the movie says they are, but they're so cartoony and laughable that I just don't see them as a threat'. Instead, I was on the edge of my seat whenever they were on-screen, knuckles white from clenching them in fear and ready to jump a mile high at the slightest unexpected noise in my darkened apartment. I'm not going to go into the details of individual scenes regarding them and some of the things they do, because to be spoiled on them would remove much of the tension, but what I will say is that this movie is certainly not for the feint of heart. There is plenty of blood, gore, disturbing imagery, and uncomfortable scenes that made me extremely anxious - there are quite a few scenes that even I found difficult to watch that made me squirm in my seat uncomfortably. Of course, it takes more then just horrifying subject matter to accomplish that. Sure, that's a large part of it but it could easily come across as hokey and eye-rollingly lame without excellent make-up and practical effects. From the look of the skinless and zombie-esqe Nazis to the various experimentation and operations done on the captured scientists, it all looked amazing and never once did it seem terribly fake or obvious (A first for Asylum, I believe).

But for those that are squeamish or easily creeped out, you'll be able to relax after a bit as the movie takes a surprising and sudden 180 degree turn midway through from being deadly atmospheric and disturbing to a full-on campy cheesefest filled with hilarious one-liners. How can a movie where zombie Nazis that rip people's skin off and group-rape women in a dimly-lit underground base turn into a hilarious cheesefest, you ask? Two words:

Robo-Hitler.

Yes, if you just saw the words 'Robo-Hitler' then you did indeed just read that correctly. In a sudden twist that I can honestly say I did not see coming, Hitler is revived as a giant CGI cyborg with a wide range of arsenal that includes a long-ass blade, machine gun arms, and green energy blasts that shoot from his chest. I am being 100% serious right now when I tell you that I shit you not on this.

And I loved it.

So so much. Only Asylum can turn such a genuinely disturbing and nightmare-inducing torture-porn movie into a laugh riot camp-ground and actually have it work. Adding to the amazingness that is Robo-Hitler is the fact that he also commands a gigantic Nazi UFO Doomsday Machine that breaks up through the ground of the Earth and rests in the skies above Antarctica, heading out to declare war on the rest of the world by pre-empting a biological attack by way of releasing flesh-eating bacteria above the major cities. This of course leads into the previously-mentioned battle between the U.S. Air Force and a UFO over Antarctica, but as to be expected, the fighter jets are no match for this Doomsday Machine and it's up to our escaped heroes to take it down from the inside. This part of the movie actually felt very similar, visually, to another Asylum movie titled Battle of Los Angeles, and upon doing some research discovered that the director of this, Joseph J. Lawson, had been the visual effects supervisor on that one, which would explain the similar visual style from the reveal of the Nazi UFO onwards.

I know this kind of movie isn't everyone's cup of tea, even among B-Movie fans, but I have to say that I personally really loved Nazis at the Center of the Earth. To me, it's near-perfect. There's really only two very minor stumbling blocks, the first of which is the fact that despite being out in the cold in the middle of Antarctica, there's no visible breath coming from any of the characters, not even crappy fake CGI breath and that kind of takes the viewer out of the movie for those scenes (though there is a scene where two of the characters end up outside in just their regular everyday clothes and they rush to grab warm jackets and gloves to put on, so props to the director for that little bit). The other minor detractor is that, putting Robo-Hitler and his UFO Doomsday Machine aside, most of the twists and character motivations in this movie are very predictable and easy to guess pretty early-on, leaving very little to be surprised by during the movie. But as I said, these are only minor issues that are easy to overlook when up against all the other excellent things in this movie.

Production value-wise, this is probably one of Asylum's best and most professional movies to date. Entertainment wise, while it may not be the best (Seriously, 2-Headed Shark Attack, Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus, and Mega Python vs Gatoroid has that market pretty much covered), it's still really, really good and far better then I was expecting.

Also, be sure to stay through the End Credits for a short little stinger scene at the very end.

10/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Nemesis 2: Nebula (1995)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Imperial Entertainment

RUNTIME: 87 mins

FORMAT: VHS

PLOT: 76 years after the first movie, cyborgs have taken over the world and enslaved the human race. The human freedom fighters' scientists create a genetically-engineered superhuman as a secret weapon against the cyborgs, but during an ambush they must instead send her back in time to hide her, but she's soon followed by a cyborg bounty hunter.

REVIEW: I know everyone warned me to stay away from Nemesis 2: Nebula and the other Nemesis sequels, but I wanted to check them out for myself anyway. 1, Bad movies are my forte' so if you tell me to stay way from something because it's a bad movie – that just sparks my interest even more. 2, the original director/writer did all four Nemesis movies so that has me interested. 3, I'm a completest. When I sit down to watch a movie, no matter how bad the others are, if there are more in the series I have to watch them.

And to be honest? I didn't find this nearly as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Sure, when compared to the first movie, it's not very good, but as a stand alone movie I found it quite entertaining and really, it has next to nothing to do with the first movie anyway beyond using is as a bit of background information on the state of the future, so it really has no need to be compared with it.

Following the events of the first movie, a full-on war started between cyborgs and humans in which the humans lost. After decades of slavery, scientists working with the human freedom fighters finally manage to create a superhuman – a female baby that will grow up to be stronger and faster then the average human, and have quick reflexes to fight back against the cyborgs with. However, shortly after being born, the labs are ambushed by a cyborg strike team and one human manages to escape with the baby (the baby is named Alex in memory of the 'human hero' from the start of the war; a blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to the main character of the first movie). To escape, she steals a cyborg time traveling vehicle and ends up in East Africa in the 1980's - right in the middle of a civil war. When the female adult is killed by a group of rebels, the baby is taken in by a local tribe of Natives and is raised as one of their own. Cut forward to her early 20's and the cyborgs from the future finally managed to track her location in time and sends back a bounty hunter named Nebula, which heavily resembles a Predator rip-off, to track her down in the East African desert and kill her.

The Alex in this movie is played by a rather tough-looking and quite large female bodybuilder...which actually makes sense. After all, mankind's great weapon against the machines – a genetically-engineered superhuman - isn't going to exactly be small, thin as a stick, and meek. This isn't the sleek-and-sexy-looking Resident Evil or Underworld franchises, this is the low-budget dark and gritty Nemesis franchise. And since they hired her based off her size and stature...well, her acting (or lack there-of. Seriously, she hardly has any lines in the entire movie) leaves a bit to be desired. But she wasn't hired for her acting ability and her character wasn't genetically-engineered for a good conversation, so it makes sense. Both her and her character are in the movie for purely one reason: to kick cyborg ass. And in that regard, she does it perfectly.

Other then her, the only other main character really is the silent-but-deadly Bounty Hunter creature. Despite being called a cyborg, it comes across much more as some kind of flesh-and-blood creature or alien then it does a mechanical robot, and it talks even less then Alex does. That is to say, apart from some growls, snarls, and roars, there are only two scenes in the entire movie where it actually speaks – and oddly enough to great comedic effect (whether on-purpose or not). When it does speak, it's with a fluent British accent, totally going against the animalistic beast-like nature it was portrayed with during the entire movie. It also seemed to shop at the same Army Surplus store as the Predators from the Predator movies; it can bend light to make itself look near-invisible or distort your vision when you look at it or something like that (never really made clear what that effect was all about), it can record and playback video and audio, it can change the style of view it has, and it has a shoulder cannon that fires blue energy blasts. With it being a bounty hunter, it's also an expert hunter and tracker. But in it's very short defense, at least it's design was a bit original and it didn't really look much like a Predator. Although we hardly get to see it beyond a quick-moving blue blur for most of the movie, until a few good shots of it at the very end during the climatic fight.

Where-in the first movie we got many different kinds of scenery; post-apocalyptic wasteland, extensive city, small town, Japanese jungle – This one, except the first five minutes which takes place in a post-apocalyptic Cyborg-controlled city (and is made up almost entirely of re-used stock footage from the first movie), is all set pretty much in one location – the East African desert. It makes the movie feel a lot more small-scale then it's predecessor. Still, I actually liked the desert landscape, if for nothing more then it didn't give Alex many places to run and hide, thus leading to more kick-ass action scenes. The movie didn't have much of a plot other then Alex trying to escape the bounty hunter, coming across a group of people (depending on the group, some try to help her while others try to capture her for their own reasons), said group of people get killed, Alex tries to escape the Bounty Hunter again, repeat. When a movie is like that, the action scenes are really all it has going for it and thankfully there are plenty, though none of them reach the level of awesome that the action scenes from the first movie were at, but they're still pretty good in their own low-budget right.

There are some aspects that make no sense at all though – like if the Cyborgs have time travel devices, and they finally managed to track down the point in time that Alex was sent back to, then why send the Nebula bounty hunter to 20 years later, instead of to the point where the baby initially arrived and thus was still a baby instead of a superhuman cyborg-killing adult? But in movies such as these, you're not really supposed to think too much about the gaping plotholes, I guess.

My one real big issue however, apart from the above-mentioned inconsistencies when it comes to the Nebula bounty hunter, is that the movie ends without any real ending. Alex kills the bounty hunter and then drives off in a jeep. The End. She's still stuck in the past while her present/our future burns under the control of the cyborg menace, and they will no doubt continue to send cyborg troops back in time to kill her when this one fails to return. I hear that Nemesis 3: Time Lapse is made entirely of scrapped footage from this movie – they had filmed way too much and had to cut much of it (including many characters and entire plots) in order to get this one down to a reasonable runtime and so they used all that cut footage to make another movie. I'm not sure how well that will play out on-screen, but I'm looking forward to finding out.

7/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Nemesis (1992)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Imperial Entertainment

RUNTIME: 95 mins

FORMAT: VHS

PLOT: In the future, where the average person now has various cybernetic enhancements, one cop questions his humanity and leaves the Force in pursuit of a major conspiracy that could change the world forever.

REVIEW: After recently watching Ghost in the Shell 2.0 and Blade Runner, as well as the Mystery Science Theater version of the mucho-low budget movie Future War, I was still in the mood to watch more movies of that kind, and a person on Twitter recommended that I watch and review Nemesis – a low budget 1992 sci-fi/action flick directed by Albert Pyun, who some of you may know as the director and writer of many low budget movies of various genres throughout the 80's and 90's, which include but is not limited to Alien from L.A., Dollman, Cyborg, Kickboxer 2 and 4, and The Sword and the Sorcerer.

I searched and searched but couldn't find the DVD of the movie for a reasonable price so settled instead for buying a super-cheap VHS copy and dusting off my old VCR to watch it. I forgot how awesomely oldskool VHS tapes are; back when you had to watch 10 minutes+ of trailers at the beginning and could only skip them by fast forwarding, back when lines would come up on the screen and you either had to fix the tracking or just deal with it due to damage on the tape. I'm thinking I should check out some more of these older low budget flicks on VHS instead of DVD or BluRay, cause if anything I think it added to the overall grittiness of the movie.

As for the movie itself – while not perfect, it was pretty darn enjoyable. It was way ahead of it's time, dealing with aspects that wouldn't be made popular until Ghost in the Shell and the The Matrix came along. Alex Rain is the name of the main character here and he's a human detective with quite a large number of cybernetic enhancements, but while on the trail of some cyber hackers led by his ex-partner he starts to uncover a much larger conspiracy that involves people in power being secretly killed and replaced by cyborg duplicates in a move by cyborgs to take over the world and turn humans into their slaves. Along the way, he constantly has to keep getting upgraded with more mechanical parts due to the state he's left in after some of the action scenes don't go his way. These tuneups have become so commonplace that he starts to worry about just how human he is or isn't anymore. At what point does he stop being human and starts being just a machine?

The movie starts off on a 10-minute long action scene in the rubble of Los Angeles that doesn't go even 5 seconds without gunfire or explosions happening, and that kind of fast pace doesn't let up much until the credits roll at the end. The entire thing is filled with non-stop well-choreographed and over-the-top action scenes, and intense elaborate shoot-outs (some of which have been outright copied by future movies such as Underworld), that culminates in a massive action sequence in the jungle that would make even Rambo and the Predators jealous for missing out on. To make those sequences even better, everything is done using practical effects and thus these action scenes were, to me anyway, more interesting to watch then almost any big budget Hollywood CGI-generated monstrosity from this day in age. Only detractor is one scene towards the end uses some really bad stop-motion for a fight scene between Alex Rain and a T-800 ripoff in the cargo area, and on the outside of, a futuristic jet as it zooms through the sky.

When one of those drooling-good action scenes isn't happening, there is still plenty going on to keep you interested such as nudity and robotic cyborg parts being displayed in gory fashion. It also takes the time between action scenes to set this world up and give us most of our information in regards to the way the world is and who all the major players of the movie are. However, it certainly doesn't help that pretty much all of the actors are really bad and the lead actor has such a thick Jean-Claude Van-Damme style accent that it's hard to pick out what he's saying a lot of the time, and when you can understand it, it's very stilted and broken up. However, the most important lines he will say – some classic hilarious one-liners – are crystal clear for all to enjoy.

In this future world, most of the world seems to lay in ruins. Despite the fact that it's established early on that people still live in Los Angeles and places such as hotels are still in business (since the first action scene starts off in one), most exterior shots show the city in ruins, with crumbling buildings and massive debris everywhere, and a desolate desert wasteland closing in on all sides. Adding to the atmosphere of an almost post-apocalyptic world is the fact that every exterior shot throughout the first half of the movie has a reddish tint added to it, giving the effect that the sun is dying. At least until Alex Rain travels to Japan, and then for some reason the sun and landscape are normal there, so maybe it's only America that's on the brink of being wiped out. That's something that's never really made clear.

Musical scores could potentially make or break a movie and luckily here it really fits. It's kind of an almost Native American style music mixed with detective noir kind of music and oddly enough, that fits really well with a futuristic cyberpunk flick, though you wouldn't believe it to hear someone say so. Then once Alex Rain goes to Japan, the music changes more to traditional Japanese-style music. Right from the opening moments, the musical score really stands out and sets the mood perfectly, and never once feels out of place during any scene of the movie. More often then not, it's the stand-out aspect in just about every scene. I find that low budget movies tend to have the best, most over-looked scores and it sucks that they almost never get officially released like bigger-budget theatrical movie scores do.

There's not really much more I can say about it. That's why I hate reviewing action movies, because I'm not able to articulate my thoughts as well as I can when there's some big monster stomping around or an alien invasion force going on that I can focus large chunks of my review on. However I told some people that I'd review this one, so I kind of had to follow through. I've been told that there are three sequels to this movie, but to stay away because none of them have anything at all to actually do with this movie and all are quite bad. However, being the sucker for bad movies that I am, and the fact that they're all written and directed by the same guy as this movie, I think I won't listen and will go track them down and watch them anyway, and since I've reviewed this movie, you can expect eventual reviews of the sequels as well.

9/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Transmorphers 2: Fall of Man (2009)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: The Asylum

RUNTIME: 90 mins

FORMAT: BluRay

PLOT: In this prequel to the first movie, the robot invaders attack Earth in the present day, forcing a group of humans to band together and seek refuge as their planet falls.

REVIEW: After having defeated the alien robot menace at the end of the first Transmorphers, there was only one direction to go for Transmorphers: Fall of Man – back in time. For this outing with the giant killer alien robots, instead of a full-on war movie like the first was, we get to see the original invasion that is talked about in the first movie, so it plays more as a global disaster movie then a war movie, and while I love both of those kinds of movies, it doesn't lend to as much over-the-top silly fun battle scenes. Instead we get a very slow start and when things do actually start to happen it's mostly chase scenes of various kinds – foot chases, car chases, air chases, ect, which in my opinion, isn't as fun to watch as futuristic battle scenes, and gets redundant and boring after awhile. Luckily though, the last 20 minutes gives way a bit more to robot war scenes as a pocket of surviving humans launch a guerrilla assault on a nearby alien robot terraforming plant.

But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, so let me start back in the beginning of the movie. The first thing that I noticed in this, is that the backstory on the invasion is actually quite different then how it was said to be in the first movie. In the first movie, it was said that we detected alien life and sent out a message for peace, which was answered by an invasion force and the destruction of our planet. In this movie however, it says/shows that we shot down a UFO over Roswell in the 40's and reversed engineered its technology to create all modern-day appliances and machines. However, that was just a plan by the alien robots to integrate into our society and thus, machines start coming alive and attacking people before sending out a signal to flag the invasion force, which arrives towards the end of the movie. I look at it this way: The events in this movie are the real events behind the fall of Earth, where-as the events mentioned in the first movie are diluted by 400 years of the Chinese Whisper game and thus, the story has changed over time, whether on purpose or not, to make humans think the attack was 100% unprovoked and they were as innocent as pie.

Another difference between the two movies is that the first was a mockbuster in name-only and the movie itself really had nothing at all to do with cashing in on the success of Transformers. This one however had every intent of doing just that. This time, the robots actually transform into modern stuff like vehicles and satellite dishes and the like. There is even a small spider-like cellphone robot that is very obviously a rip-off of Frenzy from Transformers. However, that's all perfectly fine by me. I don't watch a movie titled Transmorphers: Fall of Man and expect Steven Spielberg level of filmmaking. Plus it put forward an interesting idea – How would Transformers have gone, had it only been the Decepticons on Earth and no Autobots? Pretty much exactly as it does here: Total Pwnage of the human race. But with less of a budget.

However, despite the low budget, the movie still manages to look nice. The transforming – errr, transmorphing I mean – really allows The Asylum to show off just how far they've come with their special effects over the last few years, which is miles ahead of what they used to be back when they had made the original Transmorphers. Sure, they may look like shit compared to Michael Bayplosion's transforming effects, but as far as Asylum movies go – the transmorphing effects look excellent. The acting is also a huge improvement over the first movie for the most part, but still not close to the best I've seen from this company. Over all, I'd rank it in the middle, with the occasional really bad actor (Government scientist lady, I'm looking at you). The improved acting at least helped make the characters come across as more realistic and almost like actual people, however the horrible dialog they were given kind of took that realistic approach away again.

Which brings me to my first major problem – the script. Yes, I realize this is an Asylum movie and I'm not expecting cinematic gold or anything, but it still felt to me like one of their worst-written movies. See, one of the strong points of the first movie I had mentioned in my review for that, were the characters. They were likable and interesting and the script made you care for them. I didn't give a shit about any of the characters in this movie, and a large part of that had to do with how badly written they all were. From their actions (What kind of cable repairman carries a friggin' gun in his tool box just in case there happens to be an alien invasion?), to the absolutely dreadful dialog (There is actually a scene where the Government scientist lady describes the difference between an extraterrestrial and an alien is that an extraterrestrial attacks like a friend and an alien attacks like an enemy), as well as horribly stupid plot devices (When told that the satellite dish in the back yard was really an evil alien robot, the Sheriff just instantly believes them), Transmorphers: Fall of Man really comes across as having been written by the laziest writer in the world with no care taken in respect to the first movie beyond giving the main character the same last name as a character from that movie (In this movie he's the main male lead, while in that movie it was the lesbian female General, who I guess is now considered a descendant of this guy).

My other major problem consists of the fact that we never actually see any of the cities being attacked by the evil alien robots. We follow the main characters as they start to unravel the fact that there's a secret invasion going on, they get chased to a military base by a jeep that's a Transmorpher that results in, admittedly, a rather cool action scene in which they destroy the thing but not before it destroyed pretty much everyone and everything in that base and sent a signal out to call in the invasion shock troops. Then as the invasion begins shortly after, but without actually seeing any of it and only hearing about it through dialogue, we follow those main characters as they get out of town and immediately locate a 'hidden' refuge (that was easier to find then Easter eggs on Easter Morning) just outside of the city made up of survivors of the city invasion that we never even got to see. Despite the invasion having just happened, they act like they've been out in the desert for forever. The entire segment was a horrible cop-out that had me severely disappointed. Now it may just be me, but in a movie called Fall of Man, I expect to actually see the fall of man instead of hearing about it in shitty throw-away dialog.

But back to some positives as I like to try to leave my reviews off on a high note. After that cop out of not actually getting to see the invasion, the survivors get word of the Transmorphers setting up terraforming plants all over the world, to change the planet to one that can sustain them. Finding out that one of these plants are nearby (Again, just when exactly did they set these plants up? The invasion just flippin' started 5 minutes ago), they put together a small strike force and head back into the city to take it out, leading to my favorite action scene of the movie, with some pretty gripping kick-ass action beats. This climatic scene alone felt more like the first movie then anything else in this one did. If the rest of the movie had been as good as these final 15 minutes, I wouldn't have many complaints.

I've also noticed that these more recent Asylum movies have started having really good musical scores to them, some of which I'd actually wish they would release on CD so I could buy. There's some that even though the movie is absolute garbage, the score is fantastic and it really helps bring a sub-par movie up to par at times. While there isn't much score in this movie the few tidbits that we do get, especially at the very beginning and the very end, show great promise and I wish we had gotten more of it because it really deserved to be showcased more.

Overall, while the movie improved in some areas over the first, the horrible script brought it down many notches, so I can't really bring myself to give it a better score. From a technical aspect it is definitely better, but from an entertainment stand point I found it not as good as the first Transmorphers and couldn't help but feel a tad let down. Hopefully with Transformers: Dark of the Moon coming out later this year, we'll get a Transmorphers 3 that takes place between this movie and the first, and if made right, it will take the best aspects from this movie, the best aspects from the first movie, and combine them together to form one really kick ass Transmorphers 3. However I wouldn't count on it, as I believe The Asylum reps have stated they're done making sequels.

Alas, I can still hope.

5/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Transmorphers (2007)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

  
COMPANY: The Asylum

RUNTIME: 85 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: A race of alien robots have conquered Earth and forced humanity underground. After a few hundred years, a small group of humans develop a plan to defeat the mechanical invaders in the ultimate battle between man and machine.

REVIEW: Even though The Asylum is very well-known for their small-budget rip-offs of big budget movies, Transmorphers is actually nothing at all like Transformers and is instead more like the future scenes from The Matrix or The Terminator. It takes place 400 years after an alien race of giant robots take over Earth, and the human resistance lives underground with the occasional trip to the surface for a mission under the cover of darkness. Very simple plot that has been done a half dozen times or so in the last decade alone, yet its a plot that never seems to get old. Much like with the Michael Bay movies, these large robots do transform, but unlike them, they only transform into giant futuristic weapons (and in one case, an actual building to trick the human soldiers), and that's about as close as it comes to Transformers. This movie was originally titled Robot Wars, but then Transformers was announced, so these guys changed the title so they could play off the sure-fire success of the upcoming blockbuster. I almost wish they never changed the title though, because it gets quite a lot of flak for being a Transformers rip-off, when in actuality it's only a Transformers rip-off in name only.

 One thing you can always count on in an Asylum movie without fail, whether it be a mockbuster or an original piece, is the acting. It's always going to be bad, no matter how good the rest of the movie is, and I do believe that this one has some of the worst acting I've ever seen – Asylum movie or not. The acting is beyond atrocious, and I seriously doubt they could have found worse actors even if they purposely went out to find bad actors, and I feel acting can bring an otherwise good movie down, or an otherwise bad movie up. Unfortunately I feel it bogs this one down. Not that I expect good acting from this company, but something better then what I would expect from a Grade 3 school play would have been nice. Another low point of all Asylum movies are the effects – due to the massively low budget this company can afford to give to its movies, the effects are the next aspect to suffer after the acting. Movies made by this company tend to have the worst effects I've ever seen – yes even worse then most of the SyFy Channel Original movies – but I'm not bothered by that. For one, as long as I enjoy the story of a movie and can have some fun with it, I don't mind bad effects, and for two, you can't watch Asylum movies and expect CGI better then something your Stoner friend back in Grade 10 could do after smoking a few grams of weed - these ARE B-Movies after all, and bad acting and effects is part and parcel of that.

 Now I'm sure it sounds like I'm giving the movie a lot of flak, and while its true that you can't review an Asylum movie without listing a novel-length worth of negatives, truth be told though I actually loved the movie and I ended up having a great time in the so-bad-its-good zone (After all, where else can you find a female military general being in a lesbian relationship with one of her soldiers with steamy make-out scenes to boot?), however if you hate these kinds of movies, or movies from The Asylum in general, then stay far away cause this one won't be any different. For those that plan to enjoy this movie for what it is though, be on the look-out for one hell of a plot twist about an hour in, that I can admit I did not see coming at all and I applaud the writer for throwing that in there. These movies tend to be as generic and predictable as they come, but this one threw in a pretty clever plot twist that I wish most big-budget movies would have the balls to do without giving it such a lead-up that a two year old could see it coming (Granted, the most recent Terminator movie did the exact same twist, but this came out several years before then, and did it in a much more subtle way).

Another point in favor of the movie are the characters. I was quite surprised at just how interesting and well-written these characters were - for the most part I actually cared about what happened to them, and I loved watching them on-screen. Whether it be over-acting scenery-chewing as someone casually tells off the General, or just friends standing around and chatting about the old days, or be it in the thick of man vs machine battle with explosions going off all around, I never once got sick of watching these characters, despite the horribly cheesy acting from those portraying them. Actualy if anything, the dreadful acting may have added to the entertainment value. The one issue I do have with this part though, is that the audio isn't very good on the DVD, as there were a lot of instances where people were either talking or out and out shouting at each other, yet you can't hear a single word because the volume of their speaking is very low, compared to the audio of the music soundtrack and explosions, gun fire, and other sound effects. I'd say a good 25% of the dialog in the movie is missed simply because you just can't hear what they're saying, and it's a shame that some of that includes dialog that's supposed to be important to the plot.

If nothing else, this movie is just filled with plain ol' fashion fun. Future resistance fighters blasting away at giant killer robots in a post-apocalyptic world is always fun to watch, no matter how good or bad the movie turns out, as you just know you'll get lots of explosions, swearing, violence, death, and everything else that makes post-apocalyptic evil robot movies fun. It also never stays slowed down for long. The movie starts with a giant battle that goes on for quite some time, then we spend about 15 minutes or so in the underground base to establish our characters (during which we get a 4-way cat fight between a bunch of hot military girls). And then it's back to the surface for another mission, which takes up the remainder of the movie and hardly lets up on the action.

So in the end, yes this movie is far from great, even by Asylum standards, but it is one hell of a fun ride if you don't mind low quality B-movies.

7/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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