R.O.T.O.R.

• Also known as Blue Steel and R.O.T.O.R.: Police Force
• Directed by Cullen Blaine
• October 27, 1987 (Italy) / July 28, 1988 (Video Premiere)

A prototype robot intended for crime combat escapes from its and goes on a killing spree slaughtering all in its path.

R.O.T.O.R. (also known as Blue Steel and R.O.T.O.R.: Police Force) has everything you would expect from a mid budget 80s film. It’s derivative, poorly acted, and illogical. It does its best to piggyback off the success of better films by making you think it is something like them.  I’m not sure if it’s meant to be RoboCop or The Terminator or a Frankenstein mash up of the two with the motivation to create a hyper brutal robot cop being the fear of a Mad Max-style future.

In the world of the movie the Los Angeles Police Department has enough money to toss around to run what amounts to a mini Pentagon to develop this proposed robotic police force. It’s not just a lab but looks to be an entire facility with a serious staff level. I can buy a little research and development room but this is a bit heavy. Somehow what worked in Tango & Cash does not here.

The lead scientist of the LAPD’s R.O.T.O.R. (Robotic Officer Tactical Operations Research/Reserve) projectCaptain Barrett C. Coldyron (Richard Gesswein) looks like he walked out of a late 70s/early 80s bar on some bad TV show. Tinted sunglasses. Tacky blazer that was mildly in fashion then. And a shirt opened at the top two buttons to show his manly hairy chest. And who can forget the hair that looks like it might be held seriously in place with a gallon or two of Aqua Net.

The acting is as good as you would expect from a really bad movie. It is laughably atrocious. Did they hire random people off the street? The plot careens wildly along on a figurative rocket sled bobbing and weaving into random elements with all the sophistication of a training video.

I’m not sure if R.O.T.O.R. was meant to be funny or serious. Sometimes I don’t know if the people behind this had an idea. After Coldyron gets kicked out of the rather well funded division there’s this weird romantic dinner scene with his girlfriend featuring a very generic 80s movie love song.

Naturally R.O.T.O.R. gets out and starts running amok because that’s what always happens. No alarms or anything go off to alert SOMEBODY something is amiss. And I love when it gets out that the person this machine in human form encounters doesn’t notice it’s not speaking in a human voice. Or even a real one. Back in the day you just accepted such stuff as stupid as it was. You couldn’t get away with something that obviously illogical today no matter how dumb the movie was and this was not a smart movie. 

While this movie throws around a lot of technical jargon it doesn’t even pass the Star Trek Universe test. At least when they spoke on an old Star Trek episode their technobabble sounded authentic. This sounds like somebody went through a dictionary and found a couple of cool words and decided to force them together into the script.

This is quite possibly a prime example of a dumb movie. And worse it is a dumb movie executed on a low budget. There is a certain charm but a charm often tempered by stupidity. I’m not saying they necessarily need it to play it straight but aim for something more fun or something more comedic. But its cheesiness and poor quality will keep you watching. I certainly stayed tuned to see how dumb it could get. And the finale is, well, the finale. I don’t even know how the ending ties into the beginning. At least the closing moments of the first ending. Essentially the whole movie is a flashback as told by the scientist.

The action scenes such as they exist here are more where the robot just brushes people off. He hurts hands and casually pushes an NPC aside. They couldn’t afford a wrestler or two or maybe a stuntman to get tossed through the air or beat up in a poorly choreographed fight?? Give us SOMETHING!

R.O.T.O.R. never quite found its footing. It’s good enough to watch, but it could’ve been so much better if it focused on being pure comedy or something more action oriented if still mindless.