Welcome to the Actioneer's latest and greatest feature: Bad FX Spotlite - a special showcase for those visual effects masters whose special achievements weren't quite recognized by the Academy. There's always next year, fellas. Until then you'll have to settle for the Spotlite.

Evan Lurie is a man of many talents, first and foremost his utilization of the "Chinese Balls Technique" for wooing women (watch out, Derek Evans!). As highlighted in the film Hologram Man (1995), he can also transform into an awkward, paunchy wax figurine that bears only a passing resemblance to him. How he utilizes this in the bedding of the fairer sex, remains to be seen. Conversation starter perhaps? Well, a better one than, "Have you ever seen the movie Poltergeist?"

The Movie: Cyborg Cop III (1995)
The Perp: thug (Sir Anthony Hopkins)
The Victim: Evelyn (Jennifer Miller)

Kids, always remember: crime happens when you least expect it. One night you may be innocently walking out to your car and then WHAM! out of nowhere, some thug knocks you unconscious and delivers you to a cybernetic surgeon who implants microchips and other computer paraphernalia inside your body so when the opportune time arrives, he can activate you as a cyborg soldier in the service of the sinister cybernetics corporation, Delta Tech.

Cyborg Cop III, the third and last entry in the Cyborg Cop series, took a haggard, mangy, ready-for-the-shotgun franchise and lamely limped it across the finish line. It’s memorable for very little outside of Ian Roberts’ mind-shatteringly bizarre take on the villainous President of Delta Tech (and music box fetishist), Sheen.

His performance is off-kilter throughout, but this is his coup de grâce. Like Nero fiddling away as Rome burns, Roberts arrhythmically chews his way through the hieroglyphic columns of his flame-licked lair - delivering his final speech to no one in particular save the smoldering remains of his best boy, Oscar...

The sequel to Cyborg Cop, the creatively titled, Cyborg Cop II (1994) was a titular curiosity as it in fact featured no cyborg cops. It did feature an inordinately high use of the fabled air ram: that pneumatic device favored by stunt coordinators to propel stuntmen high into the air (whether appropriate to the action or not).

Some might deem director Sam Firstenberg’s (McCinsey’s Island, Motel Blue) utilization of this hydraulic catapult nigh excessive, but not us at the Actioneer - we see it as a salute to American ingenuity and compressed air and worthy of this very humble tribute...

The Movie: Cyborg Cop II (1994)
The Perp(s): Jack Ryan (David Bradley), Liz McDowell (Jill Pierce)
The Victim(s): cyborgs (Peter O'Toole, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Peter Ustinov, others)

The Cyborg Cop-series has never been notable for its use of the latest in state-of-the art special effects technology. While Terminator 2 (1991) was wowing us with morphing effects and other feats of CGI wizardry - Cyborg Cop (1993) was pulling cheap pranks like this.

So should we surprised when the second installment scraped for new cost-cutting lows? Surely not. Take this scenario, where we find fanny pack-fashionista Jack Ryan and his sexy, dead-eyed gal pal Liz McDowell unleashing epic wrath on an ineptly murderous army of cyborg criminals. Note how these cyborgs are programmed to transmorph into department store mannequins before detonating. This, as most political historians will note - famously provoked the ire of the powerful mannequin lobby - who were key backstage players behind the passing of the Mammography Quality Standards Act later that year.

The Movie: Future Kick (1991)
The Perp(s): Walker (Don 'The Dragon Wilson), Nancy (Meg Foster)
The Victim: Hynes (Eb Lottimor)

A few weeks back, we here at the Actioneer learned the grisly pleasures of Laserblade, the future's exciting, high-stakes alternative to going to the Greyhound Races. Well, it's baaa-aaaaack! You see, Actionettes, it seems Eb Lottimor just didn't listen to the wisdom of the idioms of his day, namely, "He who lives by the Laserblade, dies by the Laserblade." Note here how director Damian Klaus displays the sort of cinematic technique that should serve him well in the field of gonzo pornography. Look how long he hovers on the money shot after Meg Foster and The Dragon get a faceful of Eb.

The Movie: Future Kick (1991)
The Perp: Walker (Don "The Dragon" Wilson)
The Victim: Bang (Chris Penn)

In spite of his considerable charm, Chris Penn - like Don Swayze and Frank Stallone before him - had the misfortune always to dwell in the shadow of his superstar brother (Michael Penn). He also had the misfortune to appear in this film, where he plays second banana to Eb Lottimor, a man best known for being the ex-husband of the chick who played J.R.'s would-be assassin on Dallas. Here, he's "future kicked" into a live wire by Don Wilson. And then his head explodes. And then some sort of green, bile-like substance come pouring out of his mouth.

The Movie: Future Kick (1991)
The Perp: Hynes (Eb Lottimer)
The Victim: Two-1 (Shawn Phillips)

These days for futurist amusement we have such trivial time-wasters as Laser Quest. Thrill as you grope your way through the dark, plastic blaster in hand, becoming the latest blast-charred conquest of a Mrs. Simmons' second grade class. Sure, it's great for corporate parties but don't you wish it was a little more "real?" Does the legitimate threat of death really get your adrenal gland 'a pumpin'? Then Laserblade was tailor made for you! The controls are simple: just give your most concentrated stare, grunt like a Cro-Mag, then watch the brain matter, skull shards and blood-mist fly!

In 1982 Ridley Scott (plus a host of artisans, writers and actors) created Blade Runner, and the people declared it was good. In 1991 Damian Klaus (plus a host of cruise ship arts and crafts instructors, chimpanzees handcuffed to typewriters and State Championship kickboxing competitors) created Future Kick and the people took up torches and barn shovels and gathered in a furious mob that spilled into the streets of Encino, demanding the head of Damian Klaus.


“We demand the head of Damian Klaus,” a voice from the crowd cried.

“Yes,” shouted an elderly man, “or we will set fire to your town of Encino until nothing’s left but barren earth. Then we will toss salt on that barren earth. Then we will urinate on the salt. Then we will engage in sexual congress with women of ill-repute.”

“I say we start with the Children’s Community School,” shrieked one woman, her pendulous breasts flapping with every indignant syllable.


A local greengrocer, pistol ready at his side, ventured cautiously into the street. “Damian Klaus,” he declared, and hush took hold of the mob, “moved to Panorama City five weeks ago. But before you venture off to visit your evil deeds upon Panorama City, may I present to you this parchment signed in Damian Klaus’ own blood swearing that he will never direct another movie again.”

This placated the mob and they soon retreated to a local cineplex to see Curly Sue starring Jim Belushi. 101 minutes later, they burned the cineplex to ground. Many died. A bereft John Hughes would never direct another movie again.


Were it not for this dubious tale, recounted in the back pages of the Encino Sun, Future Kick, much like the Seal of Solomon or The Book of Thoth, may have been lost completely to the mists of time. But your humble Actioneer has recently unearthed its unique cinematic horrors, which I have found in a horrible and reeking state of decay.

The best I can say about this film, is that at 76 minutes, it’s mercifully brief. Somehow though, Damian Klaus has crafted those 76 minutes to feel like Erich Von Stroheim’s original 10-hour cut of Greed.

Imagine if Blade Runner, Total Recall and The Terminator got together for a weekend-long PCP binge/homosexual orgy. By some miracle that confounded and enraged Pat Robertson, Kirk Cameron and their ilk, Blade Runner became pregnant with child. Then while carrying the child to term, Blade Runner subsisted on a strict diet of Wild Turkey and experimental-grade amphetamines while Total Recall and The Terminator repeatedly kicked Blade Runner in the stomach for nine months. The stillborn child would be Future Kick.


It’s a film that hobbles hither and thither without purpose. The plot, what there is, lacks repeating, save to say it takes place in yet another dystopic future where there’s robots, $1-a-lapdance strippers, body-organ thieves and a deadly underground sport called “Laserblade.” Our drowsy, drooping eyes are only occasionally sparked to life by gratuitous shots of botched boob jobs and hyper-violent mayhem. Even Don “The Dragon” Wilson looks bored, as if visions of more Bloodfist sequels danced merrily in his head. In the end, the whole thing gets tied up nice and tidy with an “Oh, it was all a dream” curtain-closer.

Whoops. I dropped a “Spoiler” there without prior warning. Did I ruin it for you? Good. You can thank me later. I just granted you 76 better-spent minutes of your life back. Now go work in a soup kitchen or train seeing-eye dogs or something.

John Rhys-Davies has never been a man to pass up a paycheck. For every I, Claudius in the man’s resume, there are at least ten Chupacabra Terrors. So one shouldn’t be all that surprised to see ol' Salah hamming it up as Kessel, the cabana wear-clad baddie of 1993’s straight-to-video misfire, Cyborg Cop.

The title is a bit misleading, this isn’t another Robocop-come-lately - this a beast of decidedly different breed. Sam Firstenberg, obviously hot to recapture the magic that was American Samurai, once again casts David Bradley as his quick-fisted, fanny pack-donning lead. Bradley plays Jack Ryan, a retired lawman who travels to the fictional Caribbean locale of St. Keith to investigate the disappearance of his long-lost brother, Phillip.

Along the way, he ‘meets-cute’ with feisty female reporter, Cathy, played by Alonna Shaw - who displays the sort of acting chops previously isolated only to adult film sets. Of course in that spirit, she will display her other ‘assets’ later on as their screen romance blossoms.


Firstenberg makes ample use of his tropical-settings, so expect to see a generous splash of ‘local color,’ including bumbling Third World cops, low-grade Reggae and stoned-out Rastamen. And because this is the American Ninja-auteur himself, be sure we’ll be treated to plenty of poorly-choreographed fighting sequences and comically incompetent car chases.

But nothing in Firstenberg’s filmography (and that includes Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo) quite prepares you for the appearance of Quincy - a sluggish, rubber-suited cyborg whose primary objective is to exterminate our harried hero. His other less explicit, more implied objective seems to be sending the audience into fits of uncontrollable laughter. Quincy can punch through a human skull. He also has a retractable razors in each of his ten fingers. And just to over-egg the proverbial pudding, he has a gun holster soldered to his chest. But rather than inspire fear, Rufus Swart’s clumsy performance renders Quincy’s every battle a slapstick farce - especially his final confrontation with Philip (whom Kessel has transformed into another cyborg), a sequence so ineptly staged it must be seen to be believed.


Really, the same could be said for this entire film. For moments like the aforementioned ‘Battle of the Borgs’ are legion. Cyborg Cop isn’t the worst of the robot cop films - that honor undoubtedly goes to R.O.T.O.R. (1989) - but it just might be the funniest.

Cinema history is filled with classic director-actor pairings: Fellini and Mastroianni. Ford and Wayne. Scorsese and DeNiro. Art Camacho and Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson is not one of them.

Beginning in 1995, the duo has bumbled their way through four outings, each worst than the last, but their 2004 offering X-Treme Fighter just might mark their lowest of low points.

Imagine some bastard hate child of Tron and a martial arts demonstration at your local mall and you’re on the right track. Even the ill-at-ease Lorenzo Lamas seems to have too much ‘artistic credibility’ to show up for more than a day of shooting ... but I guess this was BEFORE Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.

Someone long ago said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, the same can be said for writing about movies. So in that spirit, I’ll tarry no further. Ladies and gents, X-Treme Fighter in all its truncated glory:

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.

Say what you want about Vince McMahon. That he’s an adulterer. That he’s a doper. That he’s a monopolizer. That he treats wrestlers like circus animals. That over the last fifteen years he’s encrusted professional wrestling with such a thick layer of exploitative, sophomoric sleaze that it will probably never fully recover. Say what you want, but ol’ Vince sure is an optimist. So much so, that he placed his beloved product, the XFL in a movie set in the future. In the 6th Day not only has the XFL surpassed the NFL in popularity - it’s expanded! This assured that a month after the movie was released on DVD, it was already a hilarious anachronism.


Ah, well, we never did get to see those Roadrunners and Centaurs play, but we did get Arnold back in fine form, in the sort of ludicrous sci-fi vehicle that the 80s were supposed to have left behind.

The story takes place in a future “sooner than you think” in which the science of cloning has been perfected. It has solved the problem of famine and losing your beloved pets. If the fancy strikes you, you can clone just about any living thing you want ... except for human beings. Laws have been passed that forbid that. But wouldn’t you know it, a bunch of greedy bad guys are cloning humans on the sly, and they’re making their services available only to the extremely wealthy.


Never mind all that, it’s an excuse to have two Arnolds in one movie and I tell ya, seeing two Arnolds exclaiming “Cool!” in unison is worth the price of admission alone. Where else do you get such glittering one-line gems as “All I know is that there is somebody in my house, eating my birthday cake, with my family, and its not me!” Okay, maybe Jingle All The Way ... but let’s not go there today.


If you’re having Total Recall-deja vu, you’re not alone - director Roger Spottiswoode seems to have taken his visual cues from Verhoeven. It’s littered with glittering, automated sights and sounds. The future is a busy and chaotic place and once again, Arnold is just of out step with it all. But alas, that PG-13 rating means there’s no triple-breasted babes this time out, boys.

Hollywood hack-meisters Marianne and Cormac Wibberley (I Spy, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle) try to imbue the movie with some deeper “message” but they lack the writing chops to pull it off. The 6th Day seems to want to ignite some stimulating after-movie dinner debate, but its done with the subtlety of sledgehammer to the face. Then again, if subtlety’s what you’re aiming for - don’t cast Arnold.