13 Cyborg Films That Need Termination

In Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character describes itself as being a cybernetic organism. We know his type better as simply ‘cyborgs’.

The Oxford Dictionary describes a cyborg as ”a person whose physical tolerances or capabilities are extended beyond normal human limitations by a machine or other external agency that modifies the body’s functioning; an integrated man-machine system”.

The less formal Wikipedia says fictional cyborgs are portrayed as a “synthesis of organic and synthetic parts, and frequently pose the question of difference between human and machine as one concerned with morality, free will, and empathy. They may be represented as visibly mechanical or as almost indistinguishable from humans.

They are not to be mistaken with an android, which we’re classifying here as basically a robot merely shaped like a human being. Check out the lamest robots in film here.

Cyborgs can look like Yul Brynner or Arnold Schwarzenegger, more your robotic-based cyborgs that look human from Westworld (1974) and Terminator (1984).

… “The 600 series had rubber skin. We spotted them easy, but these are new. They look human… sweat, bad breath, everything. Very hard to spot,” so says Kyle Reese in Terminator …

Or they can look like the helmeted pair of Peter Weller and Darth Vader whose characters in the RoboCop and Star Wars series were once human but given mechanical body parts to not only survive, but thrive.

Wiki goes on to say that cyborgs in fiction often play up a human contempt for over-dependence on technology, particularly when used for war, and when used in ways that threaten free will. Cyborgs are also often portrayed with physical or mental abilities far exceeding a human counterpart (military forms may have inbuilt weapons, among other things).

There have been some great representation of cyborgs on the big screen, such as the aforementioned, as well as the replicants from Blade Runner (1982), headed by Rutger Hauer’s Roy Batty, and the Borg from Star Trek: First Contact (1996).

But, there have been some shockers. Here’s some of the worst …    

 

 

13. Cyborg 2

Released: 1993
Director: Michael Schroeder
Starring: Angelina Jolie, Elias Koteas and Jack Palance.

Not even the presence of a young Angelina Jolie can save this from being worse than its 1989 predecessor starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. Set in the Year 2074, Jolie stars as a PinWheel Corporation cyborg designed to seduce her way into a rival manufacturer’s headquarters and self-destruct … only she falls in love with a human.

Director Schroeder was back at the helm for the follow-up Cyborg 3: The Recycler (1994), and while the film is again based around Jolie’s character of Cash, the actress certainly did not return with Khrystyne Haje taking on the role. She was joined by Malcolm McDowell.

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12. Robocop 3

Released: 1993
Director: Fred Dekker
Starring: Robert John Burke, Mario Machado and Rip Torn.

After two enjoyable Robocop outings from director Paul Verheoven (1987, 1990), Fred Dekker takes the helm and the wheels completely fall off. This time RoboCop must protect the residents of Detroit from ruthless mercenaries hired by tyrannical company OCP to drive them out of the homes and make way for the new Delta City.

Peter Weller refused to reprise his role as Murphy aka RoboCop due to scheduling conflict with Naked Lunch (1991). Fortunately for him. Nancy Allen, Murphy’s partner from the first two films, only agreed to reprise her role as Ann Lewis if the character were to be killed off in the first half of the film. She and the franchise.

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11. Class of 1999

Released: 1990
Director: Mark L. Lester
Starring: Stacy Keach, Pam Grier and Malcolm McDowell.

In this loose sequel to Class of 1984 (1982), robot teachers have been secretly placed in the schools where the students have been running riot. The cyborg teachers do a decent job of controlling the unruly teens, until they go too far with the old corporal punishment, and some students get suspicious, not to mention some really red asses.

Director Lester’s career peaked in the mid-’80s with the aforementioned Class of 1984, as well as Stephen King’s Firestarter (1984), Commando (1985), with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Armed and Dangerous (1986), with John Candy. This was the start of his slide downwards.

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10. The Vindicator

Released: 1986
Director: Jean-Claude Lord
Starring: David McIlwraith, Richard Cox and Pam Grier.

A kind of modern-day Frankenstein story in which a scientist, in dispute with the dodgy research company he works for, is killed in an ‘accidental’ explosion, and brought back to life in the form of a lethal cyborg. The good doctor escapes, but while he still has his own mind, he has no control of his body suit, which is prone to go into kill mode. A fore-bearer to Robocop, released a year later, but even more crude.

Interestingly, co-scriptwriter Edith Rey cut her teeth (so to speak) on long-running children’s series Sesame Street in the 1970s, before teaming with David Preston to write Indian Jones-Star Wars rip-off Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983) and then this gruesome sci-fi/actioner. They both then returned to kids fare with the TV show Lassie.

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9. Knights

Released: 1993
Director: Albert Pyun.
Starring: Kathy Long, Kris Kristofferson and Lance Henriksen.

Set in the future, it features the interesting mix of a former world kickboxing champion in Long, and a former country singer in Kristofferson, who team up to defeat an evil cyborg warlord – played by a former cyborg, Henriksen, Bishop from James Cameron’s classic Aliens (1986).

From writer-director Pyun, who specialised (though that’s probably not the best way to describe it) in making post-apocalyptic cyborg movies. He was the man behind Cyborg (1989), with Jean Claude Van Damme, and Nemesis (1993), with Olivier Grunner, and Heatseeker (1994), all of which just avoided making this list.

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8. Omega Doom

Released: 1996
Director: Albert Pyun
Starring: Rutger Hauer, Shannon Whirry and Norbert Weisser.

Rutger Hauer steps back into the shoes of a cyborg 14 years after finding fame as Roy Batty in Ridley Scott’s epic Blade Runner (1992). This time in a post-apocalyptic future when cyborgs rule the earth, he plays the title character, a wandering sword-wielding wobot who steps into a civil war between two factions of cybernetic organisms.

The Dutch Mail Service issued a stamp in 1995 with Hauer on it, taken from a scene in one of his early films in Holland, Turks Fruit (Turkish Delight), directed by Paul Verhoeven. They may have been burning them after seeing him in this abysmal offering from B-Grade Cyborg movie king Pyun. Interestingly, Hauer was Verhoeven’s first choice to play the title character in his RoboCop (1987).

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7. CyberTracker

Released: 1994
Director: Richard Pepin
Starring: Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson, Richard Norton and Stacie Foster.

‘The Dragon’ stars as a security guard who takes a job working for a dodgy senator advocating for the use of a new kind of police officer called a Tracker. But of course it turns out these cyborg cops aren’t programmed ‘To Serve and Protect’ the general public. Such was the success of the film (yeah, right), a sequel was released the following year, which pitted ‘The Dragon’, now a secret service agent, against an arms dealer and his army of cyborgs.

The star of this blatant RoboCop-Terminator rip-off, The Dragon, is regarded as one of the greatest kickboxershaving held 10 world titles in three different divisions. But all the moves under the sun couldn’t prevent movies such as this one, with dialogue like ‘a computer killed my brother!’, from being completely KO’d.

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6. American Cyborg: Steel Warrior

Released: 1993
Director: Boaz Davidson
Starring: Joe Lara, Nicole Hansen and John Saint Ryan.

Following a nuclear war, the planet is ruled by an evil artificial intelligence, and the fate of what has become a sterile human race rests with a long-haired loner and the one woman who has been able to give birth – to a genetically-modified fetus. As the pair attempt to flee to the apparent safety of Europe, they must try and avoid the clutches of a deadly cyborg hot on their trail.

This totally shabby Terminator-Cyborg rip-off that also has some basic plot similarities to the impressive Children of Men (2006) and the underwhelming Babylon AD (2008), was written and directed by Davidson who thankfully has pretty much settled on just producing films (such as Sylvester Stallone’s upcoming The Expendables). The star, Lara, meanwhile has given up on acting and is trying to carve out a career as a country singer.

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5. Cyborg Cop

Released: 1993
Director: Sam Firstenberg. Starring: David Bradley, John Rhys-Davies and Todd Jensen.

A former DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) agent returns to active-duty after discovering that his brother, and fellow DEA agent, has been turned into a cyborg killing machine by an evil scientist and programmed to murder the President of a small Caribbean island called Saint Keith.

Not one of Rhys-Davies’ finest moments playing the villainous Kessel. But, at least the star of the Indiana Jones and Lord of the Rings trilogies, didn’t return for the two Cyborg Cop sequels, which were both released in 1995, and met with as much disdain as the original.

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4. Project Shadowchaser

Released: 1992
Directed: John Eyres.
Starring: Martin Cove, Frank Zagarino and Meg Foster.

Set in the future, a group of terrorists, led by a killer without a conscience (and a real brain – ’cause he’s a cyborg), hold the daughter of the US President hostage inside what must be a very complex hospital. In response, the FBI decides to unfreeze the building’s architect, who is in a cryo-sleep after a criminal offence, so as to help formalize a rescue. But, a technician instead thaws out a former pro-footballer imprisoned for manslaughter, who decides to help anyway. Brilliant.

This appalling Die Hard-Terminator mash-up was followed by two sequels in 1994 and 1995, also directed by Eyres and starring Zagarino as a killer terrorist cyborg. In the second movie he invades a nuclear base and in the third a spaceship in the distant future. The former pro-footballer hero from the first film is played by Cove, who was the devious Cobra Kai instructor from The Karate Kid. The video below is for the sequel.

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3. Eliminators (1986)

Released: 1986.
Director: Peter Manoogian
Starring: Patrick Reynolds, Denise Crosby and Andrew Pine.

A Mandroid, a cyborg constructed from the dead body of a downed pilot, goes on the run after one of his scientist creators, Dr Reeves, wants him ‘eliminated’. Heading to the jungles of Mexico, ‘Mandroid’ teams up with a rag-tag group of companions to try stop the evil doctor from his ultimate goal of travelling back in time and taking over the Roman Empire. Pretty ambitious.

Eliminators was the final film for the star, Reynolds, who, earlier in his career, appeared as a dancer in Hair (1979) and Xanadu (1980), and played one of the Krishna’s who get beaten up by Robert Stack’s character in Airplane (1980). Classic scene.

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2. Robo C.H.I.C.  

Released: 1989
Director: Ed Hansen and Jeffrey Mandel.
Starring: Kathy Shower, Burt Ward and Jack Carter.

Also known as Cyber C.H.I.C., a mad scientist named Dr Von Colon creates a crime-fighting cyborg … designed in the likeness of a Playboy playmate, or more to point, ex-bunny Kathy Shower. Robo C.H.I.C. must defeat a terrorist who plans to detonate an atomic bomb. The cybernetic heroine can do nothing to stop this bomb of a movie though.

In fact, Shower, who was also the executive producer, quit the picture soon after filming began and replaced by another ‘actress’ hired to impersonate her. Both women appear in the movie. You just know an actor is struggling when he appears in shite like this. I’m looking at you Burt ‘Robin the Boy Wonder’ Ward.

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1. Cybernator

Released: 1991
Director: Robert Rundle
Starring: Lonnie Schuyler, Jeff Jenkins, Christina Peralta.

The movie about a Los Angeles ‘cop-on-the-edge’ who uncovers a conspiracy regarding killer cyborgs rips off a host of sci-fi/action greats such as Lethal Weapon, Blade Runner, RoboCop, Magnum Force and even Raiders of the Lost Ark – in the most deplorable way. Check-out this hilarious review.

Cybernator is regarded as one of the worst sci-fi films of all-time made by a director who has been likened to 1950s icon of trash Ed Wood. Rundle went on to helm The Divine Enforcer (1992), Vampire Hunter (1994), Hell’s Paradox (1995) and the aptly-named Run Like Hell (1995). Cybernator’s lead, Schuyler, produces one of the worst acting performances of all-time. See it to believe it below.

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And one that’s not all bad …

Cyborg 2087

Released: 1966
Director: Franklin Adreon
Starring: Michael Rennie, Karen Steele and Wendell Corey.

Set, quite obviously, in the Year 2087, when all freedom of thought has been outlawed by a powerful governing body. In a reversal of Terminator (which itself most likely borrowed from this film), a band of free thinking resistance fighters send a cyborg back to the Year 1966 so it can prevent the scientific breakthrough that eventually leads to the future’s mass mind control. Government agents, fellow cyborgs called Tracers, are also sent back to stop him.

Rennie, who plays the good cyborg Garth A7, plays the visiting alien with a message Klaatu in the original The Day The Earth Stood Still from 1954.

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