Video Goo Goo: Automatic

AUTOMATIC, 1995, Starring Olivier Gruner, John Glover, Daphne Ashbrook, Jeff Kober, Directed by John Murlowski


Let me get this out of the way.  I love this picture.  I almost feel it could never live up to the hype I bestow upon its shoulders, but such is the territory with these little movies each of us decide to champion.  I claim this movie, this is my thing.  If there's a cult following out there for Automatic, I haven't found it.  It's hard to find anybody else who has actually seen it, let alone cherish it.   If I'm the lone supporter, so be it.  Yet I have this compulsion to share, to preach, to spread the good word.
So let me proselytize.

What is Automatic?  Think cyberpunk Die Hard.  If I was pitching this to Griffin Mill while he dines at Spago's circa 1992, I would switch it up and bellow "the Terminator meets Die Hard".  Set in the year 2033, the Automatics are a line of personal servants/protectors that are sold by the RobGen corporation.  The "J" series, which all look and sound like Olivier Gruner (it could be worse, they could look and sound like Frank Zagarino), is five years old and facing increasing competition from cheaper competitor androids.  RobGen is on the eve of introducing a new line of Automatics.  The head of the company, Goddard Marx, really needs this new product to be a hit, and he barely convinces the blustery bank representative to give him an extension on his outstanding debt. 

Meanwhile, slimy executive Barker (the late, great Stanley Kamel) asks secretary Nora Rochester (Daphne Ashbrook) to stay late to work on the new ad campaign.  He has ulterior motives, though, and before long is sexually assaulting the young lady.  Automatic J-269 hears the commotion and enters Barker's office.  Even though Barker orders the "tin man" to mind his own business, J-269 cannot help but to save the damsel in distress.  After a short tussle, Barker retrieves a gun from his desk - part of the movie's sardonic sense of humor- when Barker needs the gun he says the word gun, a female computer voice repeats the word, and bam, a gun pops out of the desk.  In this world, a desk gun is standard issue for the desk jockeys.  When a bullet proves ineffective to the Automatic, Barker threatens Nora with the gun, and J-269 accidentally kills Barker while in the act of disarming him.

What do you say, Sport?

After reporting this incident to the head of security, J-269 decides to invoke protocol and sit tight until the police can arrive.  This means also keeping witness Miss Rochester on hand, despite her wanting very much to leave the premises immediately.  The head of security (the always fun Troy Evans) calls in Goddard Marx, who quickly decides that he doesn't need this headache the night before the unveiling of his new product.  To make matters worse, there are a group of sign wielding protesters outside the building, along with a contingent of the press.  The protesters are upset because they fear the new line of Automatics will be labor units, thus costing them jobs, even though it has been repeatedly assured to them that this was tried in Blade Runner, with disastrous consequences, and nobody wants a repeat of that shit.  Did you see what Roy Batty did to Tyrell?

Promises to never crush your head

Marx calls in a team of mercenaries led by Jeff Kober as Simon West, not to be confused with Simon West, the guy who directed Con Air.  J-269 now must protect Nora while eluding the mercs.  The rest of the movie is the cat and mouse game between the two protagonists and the mercs, as J-269 and Nora try to escape the building.  That's obviously the Die Hard component.  It's very ingenious, really, confining the action to one locale like this.  Saves a ton of money on your futuristic movie.  It's a conceit that was also used in another cyberpunk thriller from the same time period, DEATH MACHINE.  I prefer Automatic, it's more intimate, and has a nice sci fi payoff at the end.   Plus, model work.  I miss that stuff so much.

I adore model work

I never know if I am selling this thing right when I describe it to like minded individuals.  There's no groundbreaking action here, just well staged mayhem as J-269 uses his considerable martial arts programming to take on the well armed mercs.  It hits my sweet spot; I'm a sucker for anything remotely cyberpunk and I love a well done B action movie.  Seriously, on the cyberpunk front, I could see this story being ripped straight from a roleplaying sourcebook circa 1989.  There is some nice stuff simmering under the surface, whether the robots are indeed "more human than human", they are the only ones in the story willing to show some compassion and unselfish behavior.

Movies like this, though, can wither right away if they don't have the proper star.  Olivier Gruner, who was seen by many as a knockoff of Van Damme, which carries a certain kind of irony since Van Damme was seen as a Schwarzenegger knockoff, has an easy child like charm as J-269.  He's so damn likable here,  playing a robot, the "tin man" who wonders if he's a real boy.  Okay, I might be mixing my children's lit metaphors there.  Gruner was born in France, he still carries the accent, but as Schwarzenegger showed us, accented  English is no detriment to effectively playing a cyborg.

You know it's funny if Jeff Kober laughs

The best I can hope for is that someone out there who hasn't seen the movie will check it out.  If they end up liking it, all the better.  There are folks who can tell you I never let an opportunity pass to talk about this movie.  When I think of the similarly themed movies that made it to theaters- EVE OF DESTRUCTION, SOLO- I wonder why Griffin Mill passed on this thing in the first place.  Maybe after UNIVERSAL SOLDIER the world was just not ready for another Eurobot* to storm the silver screen.  It's a damn shame.

I almost forgot to mention another Olivier Gruner cyberpunk movie that DID get a theatrical release- the Albert Pyun directed NEMESIS.  That movie has a cult following.  It really doesn't deserve it.  I think I'll track that one down and write it up soon.

Poster looks cool, movie must be good right?

Seriously?

*Fellow nerds, I'm aware that Van Damme was not a robot in UniSol.  He was an alien.  Duh.

Video Goo Goo: Invasion U.S.A.

INVASION U.S.A.

Yesterday I wrote about a real stinker, a little no budget affair titled THE ANNIHILATORS.  That was a case of revisiting a decades old VHS viewing and discovering that nostalgia is a harsh mistress.  Now, the exact opposite.  A movie that I find more enjoyable now than I did even as a kid with admittedly low standards. 

Okay, a little preface if you will.  The heart of the matter.  I love B movies.  Adore them when they get it right.  All too often, they misfire, but when you get that rare convergence of ideas and execution, you can get something wonderful:  The Pure B Movie.  That's what we have here, folks, with today's feature.  Unfortunately, the Pure B Movie doesn't happen that often in this day and age because the tropes and formulas of movies are all too familiar to audiences, and too often filmmakers rely on deconstruction and meta commentary to tell their stories.  Which then cease to become stories in my opinion.  What are the next generation of filmmakers supposed to take as inspiration, and at what point does it all just become too cute and implode on itself?

Exhibit RR

Don't get me wrong, when that sort of thing works, ala Quentin Tarantino and the incomparable INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, it's not only good, it's transcendent.  That is the exception, though.  More often than not we are left with forgettable entries such as SHOOT 'EM UP.  I do realize that the idea of "movies about movies" has been around for the longest time, all the way back to the beautiful westerns of Leone, the astounding achievements of mood and atmosphere of Melville, and I'm sure well before these two examples.  That's a whole other bag of donuts, though, as those artists were usually reinterpreting the American films that influenced them in the first place.


I need to make something clear right now. I am in no way saying that my idea of the pure B movie can have nothing on its mind. Hell no, the genres that were historically relegated to the ranks of B status were terrific vessels to smuggle in ideas on everything from sexuality, politics, rampant consumerism, and anything else that was on the film maker's mind.

Don't turn the channel yet, Chuck

Enough talking jackass.  What's all this have to do with Chuck Norris and his one man fight against a Communist invasion?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089348/

Wow, don't be such a dick.  I'm getting to that.  INVASION U.S.A. is today's example of a Pure B Movie.  There is no winking here.  It's a straight forward action picture that is put together by an ace craftsman, the unsung Joseph Zito (Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, The Prowler).  While the only ideas smuggled in are laughable Reagan era paranoid fantasies, the movie delivers on all of its intentions.

The movie begins with a boatload of refuges, it's never explicitly stated, but presumably trying to get from Cuba to Florida.  I've been to Florida, and I'm not sure it's really much of an improvement.  Another boat is spotted, and it looks like it's good news, a Coast Guard crew led by none other than Richard Lynch.

If you can't trust this face, then who can you trust?

Except it's not good news.  Lynch is actually Mikhail Rostov, leader of a group of, as the trailer puts it, international terrorists.  After greeting the refuges with a warm welcome to the Estados Unidos, Lynch then directs his men to massacre the boat people with machine guns.  At first I assumed it was because they had the gall to leave a paradise like Cuba, but instead the terrorists are after a stash of drugs on the boat. 

Next we're introduced to Matt Hunter, played by Chuck Norris.  He lives a spartan existence in the Florida Everglades, and earns a living by wrangling alligators for use on one of the fifty reality shows about idiots who live in swamps, also known as nature's asshole.  He does this with his crusty old pal, John Eagle (Dehl Berti).  Hunter doesn't really like John Eagle and really only tolerates him because he is a shaman that can summon the spirits of hot women.  These spirits provide Hunter with sexual pleasure, since no woman in her right mind would venture to a swamp.  I mean, there's fucking gators there, and all kinds of creepy crawly shit.  Probably things they haven't even discovered yet. 

Back to Rostov and his shenanigans.  Rostov plans to sell the drugs (Cocainum!) for arms.  No, not the things that hang off our shoulders, but guns, lots and lots of guns.  In what is either a converted seedy hotel or the shabbiest office building ever, Rostov meets with none other than Sleazeball Hall of Famer Billy Drago.

Wild horses couldn't Drago me away

Although the deal goes off without a hitch, Rostov decides to kill Drago and his lovely, butterfly knife wielding, cocaine snorting assistant Dorothy in nasty fashion.   It seems that he hates Americans and their decadent ways so much, that he cannot control his violent impulses. Dorothy's end starts out particularly gruesome, in fact, I defy anybody with a nose not to flinch.  Note to self:  Don't ever do cocaine around Richard Lynch.  Rostov then reveals his nasty little trademark, shoving his pistol down his enemy's pants and firing.  This whole scene is indicative of the movie's nasty, sweaty little charm. 

Why, Rostov, why?

Now back to Matt Hunter, not to be confused with Matt Hunter, as played by Michael Dudikoff in Cannon's AVENGING FORCE.  Hunter's only real friend is his pet armadillo, Tom.  There's a heart warming scene where Hunter is chopping trees down with his chainsaw, mainly because he suddenly realized that he's living in a fucking swamp and that he has wasted his life to this point.  He is distraught, but witnessing the shenanigans of lil' Tom puts a smile on his face and makes everything right in the world again.

That's what it's all about.

There is a "company" guy that shows up to try and recruit Hunter, because apparently this social misfit that doesn't even have the good sense to move out of a swamp is the only one who can stop the oncoming invasion. I guess the invasion is happening on that one weekend when the nation's armed forces were away on holiday. The nation is totally boned if Hunter turns them down. Which he does.  For about two minutes, until he changes his mind.

You see, it turns out that Hunter and Rostov have a connection. A bad breakup in the summer of '74 led to lifelong animosity between the two. They should have known that it would never workout, what with Hunter being some sort of government trained badass ("The company really needs you this time"- actual line of dialogue), and Rostov being an in demand international terrorist, always on the go. It doesn't help matters that a still bitter Hunter likes to show up and fuck with Rostov on the job, such as kicking him in the face right before he blows up a room full of people with a rocket launcher. Rostov clearly still has feelings of his own, as we see the just mentioned scene in one of his many dreams featuring Hunter.

Video Goo Goo: The Annihilators (1985)

Most of the time going back and revisiting those flicks I treasured as a child only turns ugly.  Other times it becomes a pleasant surprise, and I marvel at the good taste I had as a smart, good looking young whippersnapper.  This isn't one of those.  This is the ugly.

It's easy to make fun of this stuff, but it's this brand of trash that made me the well rounded film aficionado I am today.  Now if you'll excuse me, I have to run to watch a copy of Robowar.

In 1972, a crack commando- oh wait...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088729/

I know what you're saying.  Any movie that starts out with stock footage must be good.  Right?  Not so, you fucking idiot.  Why are you interrupting me, anyway, let me talk about the movie, can't I get in a word edgewise?  Is edgewise one word or two?  How did that phrase come about, anyway?

THE MOVIE:  The Annihilators.  Starring Christopher Stone (The Howling), Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs (Welcome Back, Kotter), Paul Koslo (Mr. Majestyk), and the one and only...

Really, an exclamation point should follow this guy's name in any movie.

Yes, Gerritt Graham.  The Gerritt Graham.  This was a pleasant surprise, because I didn't remember this man being in the film.  If I would have remembered this little tidbit, I would have tracked it down years ago.  Oh, also, some other people are in the movie.  There's this one guy who wears glasses, but it's kind of a gyp, because he never does anything interesting with the glasses.  Get this, he only uses them to see with, and I'm all like, why did you even put glasses in the movie?  So stupid.