By Geno McGahee
The 1980s were a very special time for film. You had great films like ROBOCOP, TERMINATOR and MANIAC COP, and the producers of the ultra-low budget film R.O.T.O.R, obviously watched all three, enjoyed them, and then made a film heavily inspired by them. The idea is nothing new because we are fascinated with robots. Movies like WESTWORLD, FUTUREWORLD and CLASS OF 1999 presented nice sci-fi robot movies. Of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger is the most popular robot with TERMINATOR, but there was enough robot stuff out there to encourage low-budget filmmakers to try their hand at it and cash in.
Writer/Director Cullen Blaine took notes and put together the basic storyline: A robot is created to fight crime and keep order. Unfortunately, it gets the wrong program and begins judging and killing those found doing wrong things. So, throw in some JUDGE DREDD and CHOPPING MALL too. The only way it can be stopped is through the creator, Coldyron (Richard Gesswein), who kind of looked like Sid Vicious of WWE/WCW fame. Both Gesswein and Sid Vicious had remarkable hair.
ROTOR (Robotic Officer Tactical Operation Research) gets accidentally released by a goofy scientist and a robot named “Willard” that has all the bad wink at the audience jokes. There’s a TERMINATOR reference and the scientist notes that “it’s not like this is a low budget sci-fi movie.” I hate that shit. A wink at the camera needs to be done at certain points but most of the time you will lose your audience. You’re supposed to suspend you disbelief and be taken into the story…not booted back out by some freaking geek and his sex bot.
ROTOR, on a bike, looks remarkably like the new ROBOCOP and if there was any debate about the thievery here, the original name for this movie was ROBO POLICE. Blaine wasn’t even trying here. This was a flat out cash grab and it wasn’t a bad idea. This was the time of VHS and the video stores and a lot of titles like this were thriving. Sometimes they rent similar movies by mistake. They’re looking for ROBOCOP but see ROTOR and think they got the right one, only to take it home and then return to the video store and shove that VHS tape right up the clerk’s ass. “Be kind rewind? Up your behind” they may say. Maybe not.
When a couple, that argue about the wife getting a job, is pulled over, the husband gets shot dead for speeding. The widow goes on the run and the chase is on, but the one weakness that ROTOR has is loud noise. Whenever she honks the horn, he holds his hands over his ears in pain. She stops honking, he raises the gun. She honks again, he lowers the gun and covers his ears. What sort of pussy ROBOCOP is this?!
Coldyron teams up with the woman on the run and some other woman with terrible hair to take down ROTOR, leading to an explosive conclusion to a very terrible almost unwatchable film. I had very high hopes for this one because I so enjoy the look of this 80’s straight to video look, but it didn’t deliver. There was no focus. At times, it appears it wants to be a serious film, but then they throw in the comic relief which is as unfunny and annoying as it gets. ROTOR doesn’t really come into play until the 45 minute mark of the film and it’s nearly impossible to get there with the wretched writing and acting.
I have watched a lot of films and I usually kind of see what the producers were trying to do. I can look beyond the defects and the see what the point was and the point with R.O.T.O.R. was to cash in. ROBOCOP was out in 1987 and R.O.T.O.R was released in 1988, meaning that it was written quickly, filmed quickly and released quickly. They wanted to fool people into thinking that it was either ROBOCOP or a movie like it. What a terrible, terrible, terrible movie this was.
If you want to complain about the 2014 ROBOCOP, I ask you to watch R.O.T.O.R. first. You’ll quickly shut the fuck up.
Rating: 1/10 – Your move creep.
