When the final credits rolled, T-Force left me with one nagging question: Why would police robots need genitals? If the primary function of the Terminal Force is to enforce the law, what purpose do their cybernetic wangs and hoo-hahs serve? After much ruminating, I came to the conclusion that its probably just an excuse for director Richard Pepin to show off Evan Lurie’s ass and Jennifer MacDonald’s tits. This is a cheapo cash-in actionsploitation flick, after all.

Following the monster success of Robocop (1987), the cinematic landscape was littered with inferior wannabes - R.O.T.O.R. (1989), Cyborg Cop (1993), Robocop 2 (1990) - but T-Force stands out from the pack ... it also rips off the Terminator. Plus it has Malibu from American Gladiators!


When the movie opens, some dude who looks like Ted DiBiase has kidnapped the British Ambassador and the only squad that can save the day is the “cybernaut unit” T-Force. Enter Adam Omega, Cain, Zeus, Mandragora and Athens, guns ‘a blazin’. But wouldn’t you know it, thing go wrong - Adam (Lurie), “misunderstanding” his mission, ends up turning the Ambassador and a slew of innocents into pizza topping.

For the City of Los Angeles, this is a publicity nightmare - so Mayor Pendleton (Silver Spoons' Erin Gray!) and Police Chief Richman order the T-Force program shut down immediately. This does not sit well with Adam, he sees this as a threat to "threat to [T-Force’s] self-preservation" and he leads a bloody rebellion. The whole robot gang follows him, except for Cain (Bobby Johnston) who soon teams up with grizzled cyberphobic cop Jack (Jack Scalia) to extinguish the uprising.


The whole production has the dramatic inertia of grass growing. What’s most disturbing is Johnston is the only T-Forcer who can believably play a robot. How hard is it to be robotic? Marble-mouthed Evan Lurie made a brief career of it - but here he finally feels the need to emote. Bad timing, Evan.


If this be the sort of thing you get your kicks off of, pick up R.O.T.O.R. or Cyborg Cop instead - two like-minded Saturday night beer blast cinematic disasters which are guaranteed laughs. Good luck finding them on DVD though. In a cruel twist of fate, T-Force is readily available and retails at $6.99 ... just bring the hard stuff instead.