September 15, 2015

Eliminators

This movie's trailer was featured in Trailer Trash 3: People 0. It's a fantastic trailer, but nothing could have prepared us for the insanity that is this movie.

The plot unfolds something like this: Mandroid is scheduled to be dismantled by his creator when a lab assistant (who is also Mandroid's only friend) saves him from from his senseless death. But the front door of the building is as far as his friend can take him on his quest for freedom. Will Mandroid be able to find the person who designed him, a swamp-rat tour guide, and a ninja to team up with in order to defeat the man who wishes Mandroid dismantled?

Well that escalated quickly: So much that happens without provocation in this movie. Mandroid escapes the compound and somehow the first person he stumbles into is the very engineer who conceived Mandroid's design, though she was not responsible for his actual construction. She walks into a bar asking for the best guide in town and instantly the bar erupts in a brawl. The last man standing (literally) is somehow deemed worthy of being the guide which causes several of the snubbed bar patrons to hunt down our heroes with the intent to kill them. Eventually Mandroid gets separated from the engineer and the guide which is unlucky for them because they are immediately kidnaped by some kind of neanderthal tribe, that is somehow located in modern Louisiana.

Things to watch for: The ultimate team-up for no apparent reason. A flying, matter displacing, robot that plays the dual rolls of Toto and R2D2.

Parallels we drew: For most of the movie we were making Star Wars and Indiana Jones jokes, until one of our guests proclaimed “This movie is basically the Wizard of Oz on the bayou”. And it pans out. The engineer is Dorthy, Mandroid is totally the tin man, the swamp rat is the Scarecrow, leaving the ninja to be the cowardly lion (entirely by default). The yellow brick road is the river, the neanderthal tribe are the flying monkeys, the little flying robot is toto, and the man who wants Mandroid dead is the wizard (even appearing as a disembodied head at one point). We were tempted to watch the whole thing again with the sound off with Darkside of the Moon playing...

Yep, that's: Denise Crosby (Star Trek: The Next Generation) and Roy Dotrice (The Cutting Edge).

What the filmmakers might have been thinking: Alright, who has some ideas for a movie? Everyone? Oh good, we'll use 'em all.

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