aka Droid Gunner
- Produced and directed by Fred Olen Ray
- Written by William C. Martell
- Starring
- Marc Singer
- Matthias Hues
- Rochelle Swanson
- Robin Clarke
- Kim Shriner
- Executive produced by Andrew Stevens and Roger Corman
So one day, Roger Corman has a brainstorm. The American Film Market tradeshow is coming up really soon, and he realizes he has access to some locations nearby. What if he had a movie shooting then, so he could take people from the tradeshow out for tours of the set? It would be great advertising, not specifically for the movie being shot, but for everything that New Horizons has out and available.
Problem is, there are only a few weeks until the tradeshow. So he calls in Bill Martell, a low-budget screenwriter who’s made a name for himself writing scripts to specific budgets. (He’s also a prince of a guy, and you can check out his website Script Secrets if you don’t want to take my word for it.) Corman says, “Here’s the stock footage we’ll be using, here are the locations, here’s the basic idea for the movie. You’ve got nine days to deliver a script.”
The first rule of electronic safety: DON’T EAT THE RADIO.
Not a first draft. The final shooting script.
Bill goes home, and over the next nine days, he consumes Juan Valdez’s annual output and finishes the script. He walks into Corman’s office, hands it to him, and walks out the door. In the other door comes Fred Olen Ray; Corman hands him the script.
“Here,” he says. “You’ve got a week for pre-production, and $225,000. Make it.”
On movies like this, not only does the production story enhance one’s enjoyment of the final product, it sometimes even proves more interesting.
Now THOSE are spacesuits!
The story itself is more than a little Blade Runnereque. Marc Singer is Jack Ford, a “droid gunner” in a dystopian future Phoenix, where society is divided into “lower” and “higher,” and Ford is definitely among the lower of the low; even in the dive bars he frequents, he and his entire gunner profession are looked down on. (Several references are made to the smell of “‘bot oil,” which makes we wonder why ‘bot oil would be so terribly different than any other mechanical oil.) Droids, you see, are illegal on Earth, just as in Blade Runner, but darned if they don’t keep showing up; Ford is a bounty hunter specializing in ‘bots.
His newest case is a little different, though. See, Matthias Hues has stolen four pleasurebots from the Jupiter colony (with the help of some footage from Battle Beyond the Stars). Pleasurebots, in case you couldn’t guess, are mechanical prostitutes, and afford a reason to show some gratuitous female flesh (how good-looking are they? Well, one of ‘em’s Lorissa McComas, hubba hubba). The legitimate owner, Mr. Reginald (Cal Bartlett), has reason to believe that they’ve been smuggled into Phoenix, which is the new West Coast megalopolis now that LA has slipped into the Pacific, and he wants Ford to find them and get them back unharmed.
But since Ford’s used to bringing in severed robot heads for the bounty, Reginald hooks him up with a technician who can disable the pleasurebots without damaging them — Beth (Rochelle Swanson), a hoity uptowner who looks down on Ford with disdain.
Marc Singer, Extra Crunchy style.
Together, then, the Odd Couple sets out to find the pleasurebots, exploring whorehouses and dive bars and all the settings you’d usually find in a Roger Corman film. Ford’ main lead is a crimelord named Chew’Bah, played with a certain Jabba-the-Huttishness (including a chained dancing girl) by Robert Quarry; but since Chew’Bah is the one who set up the smuggling deal in the first place, he sends out goons after Ford and Beth. Fights, escapes, more stock footage…
After much this’n'thatting, they track the pleasurebots to the new born-again underwater city New Angeles (represented by footage from Lords of the Deep and a pipe-lined corridor in a water treatment plant that shows up in just about every Corman sci-fi flick), where hypocritical religious leader Humberstone (Robin Clarke) has intentionally imported the pleasurebots as contraband to his sinless paradise — see, without some sin, his followers have no need for religion. (Methinks Bill has some issues with organized religion.) But since Humberworth has tried to pull a fast one on Hawks (Hues), Ford and Hawks and Beth all team up to smuggle the pleasurebots back out again.
First time I watched this, back right after its release in ’95, my friend Chris and I were pretty bored; it was out of desperation that we started counting breasts, thus beginning an august tradition. Now, however, knowing the story of the production and especially the creation of the script, it’s much more entertaining. (That, and I think my standards have fallen in the meantime.)
“My mother once called me ‘Goldilocks.’ Once.”
I mean, if you’ve got to turn in a final, carved-in-stone script in exactly nine days, you don’t have time for such niceties as ambition and originality. You’ve simply got to get a semi-cohesive story down on paper, set in the locations available. And how do you do that?
Simple. You steal.
Similarities to Blade Runner have already been noted. Plus you’ve got that “man and woman who hate each other until they fall in love” thing that’s best exemplified by (though by no means original to) Romancing the Stone. Ford also has a musical pocketwatch right out of For a Few Dollars More, a borrowing emphasized by the fact that Ford ends up having a quickdraw competition over the watch with Humberworth’s lieutenant Walsh (Kin Shriner). Naturally, the watch is emblematic of a hurt in Ford’s past (which apparently ended up on the cutting-room floor), which is one of Bill Martell’s favorite tricks: Assigning an object as a symbol of the protagonist’s inner turmoil. (I know, it’s not original with Bill — Keats had it labelled as an “objective correlative” over a century ago — but Bill uses it with great frequency, to good effect.)
Despite all of this, Bill did let himself get creative in the patching together of these “homaged” parts, not to mention a bit playful. The pleasurebots are a pain to smuggle, as they won’t keep from stroking their thief. (At one point, to disguise them, Hawks has them dressed up as nuns.) When Chew’Bah orders Ford’s death, he also takes the occasion to set a budget for the flowers they should send to Ford’s funeral. And when Humberworth sends an assassin droid to take Ford out, naturally, it’s a big bruiser with an Austrian accent.
“Where are the catwalks? This the showdown — there’ve gotta be catwalks!”
And then, of course, you’ve got Fred Olen Ray up to his old tricks, which is basically using the stock footage Corman gave him (Battle Beyond the Stars, Lords of the Deep, and a tiny snippet of Star Hunter, which Ray also directed), and calling all his old friends and offering them parts (Marc Singer, Rochelle Swanson, Robert Quarry, Ross Hagen as a one-eyed pirate bartender, Brinke Stevens as a mutant cat stripper, Bob Bragg and Sam Hiona as Chew’Bah’s thugs, Peter Spellos as the employment “interviewer” for a whorehouse, Hoke Howell and Jeff Murray as street bums, Richard Gabai as a New Angeles plant worker, Steve Barkett as a space fighter pilot, etc., etc.). Say what you will about the final product, but it sure looks like the production was fun.
Which is probably why, despite its flaws, Cyberzone ends up being more fun than $225,000 should pay for on such short notice. Bill’s a professional; Fred’s a professional; and professionals know that you have to have fun under pressure or you’ll crack. Don’t take it seriously, and enjoy it for the throwaway low-budget trash it is.
A Notable Quotable:
“I’m cybertrained in judo and karate. I’ve got over a hundred hours on the simulator!”
“Well, that’s great. We run into any simulated killers, you can take over.”- Ford and Beth
Some Notable Totables:
- body count: 25
- breasts: 14 (same as that first viewing, six years ago)
- explosions: 4
- dream sequences: 1
- ominous thunderstorms: 0
- actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
- Matthias Hues (Hawks) played the second Klingon general in Star Trek 6
