Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Directed by Greydon Clark
• Written by David Reskin
• Starring
  • Darby Hinton
  • Julian Jurin
  • Len Donato
• Produced by Greydon Clark and Dan Slider

Perhaps a better title would be Dull Future. Or maybe Mind-Numbingly Banal Future.

Director/co-writer Greydon Clark has filmed a number of movies in Russia this decade, none of which (as far as I can tell) is actually set in Russia. I suppose he could have seen Charles Band single-handedly supporting the economy of Romania and decided to follow suit. No wonder Russia’s in such economic trouble.

Here’s the storyline, sounding better here than it played out on screen: After a plague, the cyborgs which humans had created as servants took over, keeping the last few sterile humans in a “park” which looks like vaguely European streets at night. The humans run clubs (like the dime-a-dozen ’90s club and the really sparely furnished Roaring ’20s) where the cyborgs come to drink, have sex, and generally show that their lives must suck if they do this for amusement. (See, their brains are still organic, so they have to satisfy all those human urges.)

But one human couple has somehow succeeded in having a baby, and the bartender of the ’20s bar uses the baby as a rallying point, that humans aren’t sterile, that they have a future. He and some friends gang up on some cyborgs and prove that they can be killed; he does his best to foment a revolt among the sheep-like humans and prove that there is something outside “the barrier” that confines the humans.

It could have been good. It wanted to be good. Unfortunately, it isn’t even remotely good.

For one thing, the actors aren’t. My feeling is that if you’re going to cut funds by shooting in Russia with a largely local cast and a handful of Americans in starring roles, chip in a little extra so you can afford at least one real actor. Darby Hinton, the bartender protagonist, emotes his lines with all the ferver and plausibility of a really bad insurance salesman. His cohort is a Russian actor who obviously learned his lines by rote.

And the androids are a handful of actors with buzz cuts, most of them with distinctly Eastern European features. (Budgetary plot point: There are only a limited number of cyborg models, so you can use the same actors over and over as different androids — but never at the same time, of course.) They all wear bright orange jumpsuits with clown collars. Seriously. Looks like the Soviet gymnastics team going to warm-ups.

And the special effects — hee hee hee. The cyborgs have these ray guns they bought at Toys’R'Us, see, and there are post-production opticals for the actual rays, but for added impact (or something) the actual prop guns have firecrackers in the barrels. When they shoot, there’s this little explosion of sparks. This means, naturally, that you can never show someone pulling out a gun and shooting; instead, someone pulls out a gun and then you cut to a different shot (after the fuse burned down) for the actual blast. Once or twice I actually saw a flame rising from gun barrel after shooting; the firecracker housing had caught on fire.

Oh, and the music. Really “exciting” improv sax played over a synth track. I’m sure the director realized that it sucked — but what can you say when the composer is also the producer?

The only reason I sat through the whole movie (with Red Dwarf beckoning on TV, no less) was to warn you all: Don’t rent it! Don’t waste that much of your lives! The box looks cool, sure, but it’s a lie!!