Mister Trash Presents...

This week, Robo-copter VS The Beach Boys & a really disappointing date with Grace Jones...

R.O.T.O.R. (Cullen Blaine, 1989)

So, in 1988, when veteran animator Cullen Blaine decided to make a movie, he did not draw upon his extensive experience with children's programming like "Dennis the Menace" or "Alvin & the Chipmunks."  Instead, he made an R-rated Robocop knock-off about a Robotic Officer Tactical Operation Research unit gone berserk.  The “perfect cop of the future” was created due to the intense increase in murder, rape, robbery and arson, all crimes normal human beings clearly can’t do anything about.  So of course science, always the evil bane of our society, comes up with an unstoppable robot motorcycle cop who, of course, defies its programming and goes on a killing spree. 

Our hero, a Texas Cowboy/Robotics Specialist named Captain Coldyron (pronounced Cold Iron!), was responsible for R.O.T.O.R.’s creation and is now the only one who can stop a machine with no compassion who only exists to kill.  But not before an awesome montage in which Coldyron drinks coffee and eats carrots with his horse to a rollicking country song in the background.  Then he’s off to introduce his killing machine to the world!  “It stops felons, judges the crime, and executes sentence. Justice served C.O.D.”  But things get all wonky when Coldyron is shitcanned, a bureaucrat takes over the project, and an Indian who talks jive starts hitting on the lab assistant (“Once you go red, you never get outta bed!”).   

Meanwhile, Coldyron beats up some Hispanic guys while spouting racist lines like “Easy, greasy!” because, you know, he’s the hero.  Now that the film is half over, R.O.T.O.R. is finally activated (by accident, evidently) and he sets out on his motorcycle to begin his mayhem in earnest.  He shoots a dude in the face for speeding, is said to have killed a bunch of nuns to get to a jaywalker (this is never shown), beats down a bodybuilder who demonstrates his oily muscles to him, kills a redneck trucker, and then goes a’hunting for Coldyron and some chick he’s trying to save from R.O.T.O.R. 

Luckily, Coldyron contacts one Dr. Steele, who shares his unique combination of having a metallic surname and knowledge of robotics, and who also happens to be a terrifyingly masculine female body builder with a skunk-striped bouffant mullet who spouts scientific-sounding nonsense nobody could possibly make any sense of.  And how do they stop him?  I’m not really sure, to be honest.  Coldyron lassos his arms with some really thin ropes and then he explodes.  Science!  Rife with wondrously ludicrous dialogue, insane performances, and bewilderingly awful cinematography that tends to suggest most of the action off-screen, R.O.T.O.R. is truly a spectacle to behold.  It’s Maniac Cop meets Robocop as imagined by a 10 year old who hates his dad.  It’s so bad that it will melt your face and you’ll like it.  (And it’s still way better than that last Indiana Jones movie.)

Highlight of the Film: I don’t know what the hell is up with this, but when Coldyron initially reveals R.O.T.O.R. to a staff of scientists, the only dissenters are representatives of the Brian Wilson Institute, one of whom questions the mysterious alloy from which R.O.T.O.R. is made by asking if there are “some good vibrations to its molecular tonality.”   Is this supposed to be funny?  What the hell have the damn Beach Boys got to do with anything?  This movie literally split my skull open.

Originality isn’t exactly R.O.T.O.R.’s strong suit.

Deadly Vengeance (A. C. Qamar, 1981)

Man, did I ever get duped.  Let me start by telling you that I am deeply in love with Grace Jones.  Seriously.  That's why A View To A Kill is my favorite 007 movie and why I've seen Vamp something like 17 times.  Thus, when I got my hands on Deadly Vengeance and noted her face splashed across the faded VHS cover and a description on the back explaining that this was essentially a "Grace Jones on a rampage" movie, I experienced something like angels massaging my exposed brain with ambrosia.  In actuality, however, an Indian director named Amin Q. Chaudhri (credited here as A. C. Qamar) took an old porno he made ten years earlier called Sweet Vengeance, shot some new footage, and then edited it together to form this mind-altering curiosity in 1981.  (This helps to explain why part of the Theme from Shaft plays in several scenes, as well as why hairstyles, cars, and fashion drastically change throughout the course of the movie.) 

Grace (also known as My Lovely Grace, God How I Love You) is the unnamed girlfriend of a hustler named Slick Jones who, after a bewilderingly long and explicit sex scene (focused mainly on Slick’s thrusting buttocks), sends her man off to (very explicitly) bone the secretary of Big Mike, a big time hood to whom Slick owes a metric fuckton of bread (that’s jive for money!).  (Note that the secretary claims to have never seen a black man just before the humping commences.)  Unfortunately for Slick, Big Mike walks in on them doing the horizontal mambo and boy howdy is he pissed!  So he shoots them both to death.  Meanwhile, some white people screw in the woods.  Turns out that this dude, Mark, owes Big Mike too, so he’s hiding out and trying to figure out what to do.  (Note that Big Mike isn’t really very big at all, so one should assume that the “big” in “Big Mike” refers to his status in the criminal underworld rather than his size.) 

So like a humungous goddamn moron, Mark goes straight to Big Mike to try and work it out with him.  Not only that, but he gets all lippy to boot.  Says the new secretary: “Say Mike – he was pretty fresh!”  Fresh enough to kill!  His chick Betty, sick with grief, enlists her pal Lisa and a flaming gay photographer and the three of them plot their vengeance (deadly vengeance!).  But not before the two girls engage in some extraordinarily awkward Sapphic foreplay set to the tune of a squealing violin.  Hurm.  And a lot of talking.  Double hurm.  Oh, and Grace Jones?  Yeah, she was never seen again after she got drilled by good ol’ Slick.  Rest in piece, good buddy. 

Anyway, the girls clumsily seduce their way to the top (seriously, it’s nerve-shattering to watch these chicks do it), eventually getting to Big Mike and caving his head in with a truncheon after the least alluring seduction dance ever committed to celluloid. He ain’t dead, though – naturally they must keep him alive and semiconscious, otherwise what’s the point of sawing his pecker off with a straight razor?  Cue high speed car chase as Big Mike’s henchmen pursue the chicks, who end up driving off a ramp and dying in a fiery crash with a shriek that ends the movie.  What?  Really?  I don’t what to say about this flick.  It looks like a porn without any porn in it.  But I am surely the last person who can complain about that – I once watched Debbie Does Dallas by fast-forwarding through all the sex scenes.  Because I liked the jokes.

Highlight of the Film:  I’d love to say Grace Jones’ brief and inexplicable appearance in the beginning of Deadly Vengeance was its highlight, but honestly all she did was flounder underneath a writhing sweat-covered dude whose ass was more interesting to the (clearly insane) cameraman than Grace’s lovely unclad form.  Thus, the mind boggling seduction scene below gets my vote.  I’ve never seen anyone work this hard at not being at all sexy in any way, shape, or form – but I am somehow impressed.  Appalled, but impressed.