Should I Watch..? 'Cyborg' (1989)

Cyborg is a sci-fi action film released in 1989 that was directed and written by Albert Pyun. The film stars Jean-Claude Van Damme in one of his early roles as a mercenary in a post-apocalyptic future tracking the leader of a murderous group of pirates who have kidnapped a cyborg that holds humanity's fate in its hands. The film also stars Deborah Richter, Vincent Klyn and Dayle Haddon. The film was one of a number of films developed by Pyun featuring cyborgs and was followed by Cyborg 2 (featuring Angelina Jolie's debut as a lead actress) in 1993 and Cyborg 3: The Recycler in 1994. The film received mostly negative reviews when it was released and didn't exactly set the box office alight either with domestic earnings of just $10.1 million. Despite this, the film was considered a success in part due to the film's ridiculously low budget although it wasn't enough to save production company The Cannon Group from financial collapse.

In the near future, the world has been ravaged by a plague known as the Living Death which has resulted in the total collapse of society and the breakdown of law and order. A small team of survivors are holed up in Atlanta with scientists working hard to develop a cure. However, a crucial amount of information is stored on a computer in New York and the only way to get it to Atlanta safely is to convert a person into a cyborg and have the data stored on the machine's CPU. A young woman, Pearl Prophet, volunteers for the role and undergoes cybernetic augmentation before leaving the city with her bodyguard, Marshall Strat.

Unfortunately, they are ambushed almost immediately by blood-thirsty pirates led to the ruthless Fender Tremolo. Marshall is critically injured as Pearl escapes, bumping into 'slinger' (a type of mercenary who helps folks escape the urban ruins) Gibson Rickenbacker. Before he can help her though, Pearl is kidnapped by Fender and ordered to escort him to Atlanta so he can monopolise the cure for himself. Gibson reluctantly decides to try and save Pearl and begins tracking them, driven by a thirst for revenge against Fender for his crimes against Gibson's family.

It's important to state the backstory behind Cyborg's production as without it, this is just a laughably bad piece of sci-fi nonsense. Production company The Cannon Group were in deep financial trouble by the mid-to-late Eighties and plans to develop a sequel to Masters Of The Universe and a live-action Spider-Man film fell through. Having already spent a sizeable amount of cash on sets and costumes, it was decided to not let the pre-production go to waste so Pyun was brought in to produce a film using these abandoned props. Cyborg is the film resulting from this decision and without meaning to sound condescending, it's remarkable how much of a movie Pyun was able to craft with essentially cast-offs from cancelled projects. This must be one of the smallest budgeted films of this type ever made, adjusting for inflation.

What's truly remarkable is how the film feels part of a much bigger world. True, Cyborg never stops long enough to explain itself but it adopts (or rips off, if you're being critical) a number of themes and concepts from other films at the time like The Terminator and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Lots of patchwork leather outfits, burning cars, decrepit factories, improvised weapons... you know the stuff. On first glance, it actually doesn't look too bad. The same can be said for the baby-faced Van Damme or the sunglasses-clad Klyn, who brings an imposing presence to the role of Fender. On the surface at least, it all looks like a real effort is being made. Unfortunately, underneath it all is deeply rotten...

• Part of what makes Klyn such a memorable character is his incredibly deep voice. Sadly, this was dubbed by an uncredited Branscombe Richmond as Klyn's natural voice was unusually high pitched. Audiences during test screenings would frequently laugh at Klyn's pre-dubbed scenes, necessitating a change.
• After his success in Bloodsport in 1988, Cannon offered Van Damme the lead in three films: this, Delta Force 2 or American Ninja 3. Van Damme chose this role but later admitted that he didn't like this film all that much.
• Several of the characters names are references to guitars and other musical instruments although no-one is entirely sure why.
• Jackson "Rock" Pinckney lost an eye during a sword fight with Van Damme during filming. He would later sue Van Damme and secured a settlement of $485'000. It's rumoured that the accident was included in the final film.

It isn't exactly hard to see why Cyborg is largely a failure. Despite the setting and the narrative, the film seems to be shot entirely on disused movie sets and every music video of the era. I'm afraid that it doesn't do that good a job of disguising the fact that it was essentially made for next-to-nothing, out of the goodwill of the people involved. Aside from Klyn and Van Damme, the film's cast are eminently forgettable and the action is composed mainly of slow-motion kicks, punches and grunts whenever knives aren't involved (knives which everyone hilariously sharpen the exact same way: slowly and with an odd degree of introspection, as if they're ruminating on some past tragedy which has lead them to this point in their lives). Dialogue seems to be reduced to the barest minimum for the most part - Van Damme's character speaks as little as possible as if trying to hide his European accent while Klyn's obviously dubbed voice is used sparingly. In fact, only the main female characters seem to have any dialogue although this doesn't explain why their parts are woefully underwritten and the result of a nastily misogynist screenplay.

Van Damme displays his usual physical prowess, performing the requisite moves as and when but generally speaking, the film's action scenes aren't enough to get your pulse racing. It feels horribly generic and dreary and worse still, populates its running time with some shameless padding - we see multiple scenes twice for no reason and during a pursuit, we keep cutting back to see each and every henchman or woman follow our heroes through a drain cover or trudging through the same bit of swamp. It's undoubtedly a one-star production trying to be something far greater than it is, aspiring to more expensive films in the same way that studios like The Asylum produce so-called 'mockbusters' today. Perhaps I'm feeling in a generous mood - after all, it's not like they had any real money to try and make the damn thing in the first place. It's not a good movie but being honest, the odds were stacked against it from the very start.

Anyone expecting to see Van Damme's legendary athleticism displayed in Bloodsport may find themselves disappointed to find that Cyborg is a depressingly familiar, low budget piece of tosh that fails to use its star properly. Clumsily made and unable to find its cheapness, the film is a dull trudge through every post-apocalyptic cliché imaginable and works best as an unintentional comedy. But I applaud it for trying its best with almost no budget and its ability to create a much wider world than a film like this deserves.

Great For: undemanding action fans, Van Damme completionists, Pyun's ability to conjure something from nothing, B-movie fans

Not So Great For: saving the production company from bankruptcy, troubling Hollywood's major players, anyone looking for a single original idea...

The Cannon Group, particularly under the ownership of producing duo Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, specialising in producing a high number of low-budget films that usually tended to be action thrillers, knock-off sequels or softcore erotica. In 1987 alone, when the studio was at its peak, it released no less than 34 different films including Masters Of The Universe, Jackie Chan adventure The Armour Of God, Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, Over The Top and Norman Mailer adaptation Tough Guys Don't Dance. Sadly, few of these releases managed any sort of critical or commercial success and by the end of the decade, the studio was more or less finished. Golan tried reviving Cannon at the turn of the millennium but it was to no avail and the company eventually disappeared for good.

By contrast, the star of Cyborg continued to enjoy success long after the studio themselves began their slow demise. The Nineties would prove to be his decade with star turns in films like Sudden Death, Time Cop, Universal Soldier and most famously, Street Fighter. But he never seemed to ascend to the same level as other Hollywood action stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis or even Chan - who wouldn't really find mainstream success until the end of that decade. Since the 2000's, he has mostly appeared in straight-to-DVD releases although he continues to make cameos in film like The Expendables 2 and voice appearances in animations like Kung Fu Panda 2 and 3 as well as Minions: The Rise Of Gru. It's a shame that such a unique talent these days is more widely known for his dated haircut and beer commercials.