Cold Fusion Video Reviews

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.

Addendum:

Bill Martell was kind enough to set the record straight on the whole “How this all came to be” story:

Close enough for government work. What actually happened is more complicated - but who needs all of the lurid details?

Here they are:

1) I had a treatment called Steel Chameleons about a female cop investigating a murder who uncovers an underground railroad for androids who want to pass as human. Her investigation takes her to a brothel with “pleasure droids” - designed for safe & sanitary sex. One of the PDs becomes her informant, she develops a relationship with him, and later decides to protect him from prosecution. She’s with the PD (police department) and he’s a PD.

2) Andrew Stevens wanted to start his own company and asked me to write 3 scripts that could be made cheap - I agreed to write 2. The first was going to be Steel Chameleons. Andrew’s scheme was to use other people’s money to make the films - he would keep foreign rights and the partner would have domestic. So my treatment was sent over to Corman’s company for approval.

3) Roger had these two guys running Concorde - Mike Elliott and Rob Kerchner. That’s who I had my meetings with. They were making 30 films a year at the time, so Roger was only involved in the really important stuff… and you know how important the script is. I went into the meeting expecting notes on my treatment… instead they wanted to start from scratch. They liked the idea of pleasure droids. Could I write a script about robot hookers from outer space? I asked if they had to be from outer space… yes. Did they have to be hookers… yes. Did they have to be robots… yes. “Okay, I can write that.”

4) Andrew was supposed to put up half of the budget, and in keeping with his “other people’s money” plan, he needed to sell foreign rights at AFM. The $ from foreign rights would make up his half of the budget. But he was a start up company, so he needed to be able to show the foreign guys what they were getting. That meant the film had to be in production during AFM so that he could have these foreign guys on set. So now I had an insane deadline - I had to start from scratch with a new story and get the script finished in time to get it cast and in front of the cameras by AFM. When we counted back the time for pre-production we realized I had about 2 weeks.

4) Andrew’s deal included 5 minutes of Corman stock footage. I decided to go from outer space to under water - lots of production value. There was also a cool futuristic car chase in one of the films, so I added that (it got cut out) and a foot chase scene through a rotating burning tube (also cut out).

4.5) I also couldn’t really start writing until Andrew & Roger had signed the cast. That sounds weird, but we needed names that were available at a specific time (AFM). What if I wrote a tough guy side kick and we ended up with Ruth Buzzi in the role? So the major roles were cast before I started writing. Matthius having a casual conversation with Marc while he had him in an arm lock would be funny - the same scene with Russ Tamblyn wouldn’t work.

5) Andrew and Roger agreed on Fred as a director. I had a meeting with him before I started on the script. I had met Fred years earlier at AFM at a screening of some sci-fi film he directed that was produced by the guy who produced The Blob and Dark Star. I think the movie was called Star Slammer and was a women’s prison movie in outer space. Anyway, Fred has a great sense of humor. I pitched him the story idea I had come up with, he thought it sounded okay… Now I had 9 days to write it.

(Fred also made contributions - Brinke Stevens cat-stripper was his idea… but she was supposed to be a hologram. When we couldn’t afford the FX, she became “live” in the bar. But many of the things you might think were Fred’s were mine - the head in the bowling bag was my idea.)

6) I wrote the script. Not much sleep. 10 pages a day. The first couple of days at 10 a day are okay, it’s the last couple that are impossible. Your brain is just used up and needs a vacation. One thing I’d never mentioned to anyone - I couldn’t take the robot hookers from outer space thing seriously, so I wrote a comedy. I thought it would be funny if these girls were the ultimate in boob jobs - they’re 100% fake! All bod and no brains. In your review you wonder if I have organized religion issues - maybe I do, but the villain was based on the Christian Coalition guy (Reed?) who was headline news at the time. I think I even took some of his dialogue from the CC guy’s speeches (he was making a speech every day at the time, and it looked like the country was going to adopt Christianity as official religion). Fred even cast a guy who looked like the CC guy. What was social commentary at the time looks odd now.

Also in the review you mention some places I stole ideas from… but missed the main place: The Empire Strikes Back. I knew that Jabba had been played by a human in a Star Wars scene that was cut, so I used that as an in joke with Bob Quarry’s character Chew^bah. The waterfront bar is the cantina from Star Wars, Matthius’ space ship is some variation on Millennium Falcon, etc. My goal with the script was to make fun of Empire and every other sci-fi film I loved.

You also mentioned the pocket watch “twitch” - which was from a Chinatown-like plot thread that got cut. The villain trying to corner the robot hooker market was like Noah Cross cornering the water market… except silly. So I gave Marc’s character a tragic past - a woman he loved who died. She gave him the watch. There’s parts of this still in the film, but the big scene is gone. The was even a “Don’t worry, Jack, it’s New Angeles” line.

I also think I snuck in a James Bond theme song title, probably a Sam Fuller film title, and other stuff into the dialogue. And the names are all action film directors from the 30s.

Part of the fun: Marc’s character is a guy who wants to get laid but can’t, Matthius’ character is a guy who has women throwing themselves at him but is more interested in making a buck. Every time Marc is about to get some luvin’ bad guys attack.

7) By the way - the script was based around locations. That’s why there are 3 scenes at the strip bar (a total of 8 minutes), 3 scenes at Chew^bah’s lair (8 minutes), 3 scenes in the office (8 minutes), etc. We struck it rich at this crappy warehouse converted into a studio because they had flats we could build into offices and were located in a bad part of town with lots of alleys. If you look closely at the villain’s office - you can see the paint drying on the wall! That’s how quickly this thing was shot. You might also notice that Matthius’ space ship set is the same as his mini-sub set (8 minutes total) - but the section of the set with the ladder was put in a different spot.

So I turned in the script and had a meeting with Fred. He asked if the script was supposed to be funny and was relieved when I said yes - we were on the same page. Here was the problem: Andrew and Roger (or at least Mike & Rob) wanted a SERIOUS film about robot hookers from outer space. So everything was played straight - except the bimbo pleasure droids kept walking into walls and had one track minds, and the winos shared recipes for Mutant Cat Au Vin, and everything was silly - but done with a straight face.

9) While the film was shooting my friend Paul Kyriazi was in town from Japan for AFM. Paul gave me my first paid screenwriting job (Ninja Busters - also a comedy because I couldn’t take the concept seriously). So Paul and I can be seen in the bar scenes. I’m sitting at a table with an eye patch, Paul is at the bar. We spent the day watching Brinke Stevens strip over and over again.

10) I’m at AFM sitting in the office watching buyers come in. Andrew has a bunch of posters on the wall for films that are just ideas at this point in time. There’s a poster for Invisible Mom with my name on it. Andrew needs to presell these movies - to get foreign buyers to pay UP FRONT before the films are made. Why? Because that’s where the money to make the films is coming from! That means the buyers have to have faith in the company based on their set visit to Droid Gunner. Will the company be able to turn those posters into movies… or go bust?

At the end of AFM they tally up the presales on Droid Gunner, and I’m sitting right there. The movies makes about 4 times it’s cost in PROFITS! The other films sell well, too - Andrew’s company is a success.

11) The film is screened for cast & crew, and afterwards we go to Dimples Karaoke Bar across from NBC - Fred buys us drinks on his credit card. (Fred is the nicest director I’ve ever worked with - I’d work with him again in a heart beat even though the budgets are so low the pay sucks). Everyone thinks this may be Fred’s best film - they laughed throughout the screening and seemed to like the schmaltzy serious stuff I put in there (Marc giving the girl a coin, etc). Lucas was talking about doing more Star Wars movies, and I thought that might turn it into a big cult movie.

When Roger releases the film on video, the title is Cyberzone. I want to know what the cyber part is, and where’s the zone? Plus, the video box is serious and the text on the back is about Marc Singer tracking down dangerous androids… um, how dangerous are those bimbo-bots? Fred and I realize that nobody got the joke. I worry that people who rent it thinking it’s going to be an action movie will be disappointed because it’s silly. But I get e-mail from Joe Bob Briggs - he liked it. Entertainment Weekly does a whole article on “pleasure droids” as a sidebar to their review. A couple of websites thought it was a great 6 pack movie.

It’s okay with me if people see Cyberzone and think it’s crap, but I like the movie for personal reasons - I had a great time. The film is what it is… best viewed while drunk. I think Rochelle Swanson is great - she did the perfect “girl with glasses who is a babe when she takes them off” - taken to an extreme because every time she takes off her glasses it’s to go undercover as a hooker. Hoke Howell cracks me up - he was perfect. Ross Hagen can make the worst lines I wrote sound good. The girls are all fantastic - they were playing parodies of themselves and were good sports about it. And Matthius delivered my favorite line in the script: “They’re like leeches!”

- Bill

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