• Written and directed by Stephen Norrington
• Written by
• Starring
  • Brad Dourif
  • Eli Pouget
  • William Hootkins
  • John Sharian
  • Martin McDougal

This very easily could have been a forgettable movie. In many respects, in fact, it was; between the time I first saw it with Chris ten years ago and the present day, huge chunks of the plot vanished from my memory. This was career special-effects guy Stephen Norrington’s freshman effort both writing and directing, three years before he was tapped to helm Blade (1998), and it’s very much a B-movie in the Alien mold: A confined near-future setting, an EE-vil corporation, and an unstoppable killing machine with a head that’s all teeth. But amidst the direct-to-video mediocrity, there are a couple of facets that rise above the level of required adequacy, and one which seared itself upon our hearts forevermore. I’ll tell you when we get there.

In the meantime: The Chaank Armaments Corp. is in the middle of a public relations crisis. Their covert “Hardman” Project, experimenting with cyborg soldiers, has become public knowledge thanks to one of the experimentees going AWOL and killing a half-dozen civilians. To top it off, the company’s former CEO just recently died under mysterious circumstances, leaving the corporation in the hands of new chief executive Hayden Cale (Ely Pouget). The tough, androgynous name is supposed to make us think that she’s tough enough to survive in a “man’s world” and all, which is good, because her actions when we meet here characterize her as the world’s most naive Girl Scout thrust into the role of running an arms company. She is shocked — shocked! — to discover that there is illegal weapons research going on, and pledges to get to the bottom of it, over the objections of fellow executives Scott Ridley (Richard Blake) and John Carpenter (William Hootkins). Yeah. It’s one of those movies, in which naming the characters after genre-beloved directors is considered “clever.” Trust me; it’s not. It never is. Especially because it always seems to be the same half-dozen directors who are so “honored.” Even in Night of the Creeps (1986), one of the movies I love beyond all rational bounds, that particular contrivance is a sucking wound. And Death Machine is no Night of the Creeps. In fact, the next movie I see with names drawn from the Fanboy Who’s Who will probably end up with my foot broken off up its cinematic posterior.

Ominous corporations gotta have ominous boardrooms.

That distraction aside, Cale vows to shut down this and any other illegal project being developed in the bowels of Chaank, and to fire the creepy weapons designer who lives in the vaults, Jack Dante (Brad Dourif). The name may be yet another directorial nod, but in this case it fits the character, this diabolical mastermind who has infiltrated the entire Chaank network and security system, and of whom even Cale’s fellow executives are deathly afraid. But not only is the the nigh-omnipotent computer antagonist, but he’s a fairly well-drawn character. He’s underbelly-white, with lank hair and a bad wardrobe; his basement lair is festooned with action figures and taped-up centerfolds, which are as much an expression of his suspended adolescence as his fascination with neat ‘n’ cool weapons systems; and his behavior betrays him to be not only antisocial, but socially maladaptive, relating poorly to others and misinterpreting social cues. He wants to be seen as an extremely dangerous individual, when what he really is is a petulant child-man with a certain dangerous skill. The only false not is that Dourif is skinny, whereas the real thing would be pudgy and fleshy from a diet of Twinkies and Mountain Dew: Code Red.

Oh, and he’s got a tremendous crush on Cale. Just what every girl wants.

You may think that Dourif is thus the exceptional facet of this movie to which I referred. He is not. That is yet to come. Be patient.

“Warmongering? Actually, I’m all for it.”

Because in addition to Cale and Dante and the rest of the squabbling execs, we have three more characters, sort of leftist terrorists who want to wipe out Chaank’s crimes against humanity. (We meet them all puffing on massive joints; endearing, no?) The leader is — sigh — Sam Raimi (John Sharian), who looks like a career surfer ten years past his prime. And the other two are Weyland (Andreas Wisniewski), the blond geek whose name is half of a reference to the EE-vil corporation in the Alien movies; and the other half of the reference: Yutani (Martin McDougal).

Or, as we dubbed him when his name wasn’t quickly referenced, Rising Sun Dude.

And yes, Rising Sun Dude is the shining centerpiece of this movie, a pseudo-Asian (check the actor’s name, wouldja?) with the Japanese war flag painted on his face and shaved into his scalp. He speaks in clipped declarations and puts forward a face so stoic he makes your average samurai look like Paris Hilton’s latest disposable pet. He embodies a coolness so overflowing, it leaks in excess from his person and leaves a glowing trail of coolth behind him. RISING SUN DUDE, I KISS YOU!!!

Rising Sun Dude! Whoo whoo whoo whoo whoo!

Right. So. Anyway. Everything comes to a head this particular night, as Cale tries to find a way to lock Dante out of the corporation without the approval of the other execs. The Three Revolutionaries stage a covert break-in to blow up the Chaank computer core. And Dante, pissed at Scott Ridley for trying to oust Dante’s new “girlfriend” Cale, unleashes his latest toy on the exec:

The Warbeast. Or, as we dubbed it when its name wasn’t quickly referenced, the Killer Mechanical Squirrel.

You can probably already guess the design: About eight feet tall, a mass of hydraulics and carbon steel, with wicked-looking choppers occupying half of its head, and front limbs culminating in huge razor-sharp talons. It’s a prototype meant as a “battlefield morale destroyer,” and to that end it’s been designed to sense fear and hunt the fearful via pheromone trackers. It’s a stupid idea, naturally, and it would never make it out of prototype into production, but on the other hand it’s the natural weapon for someone like Dante to design, since it’d be so ass-kicking cool to fight one on your XBox.

CHOMP. CHOMP CHOMP. CHOMP. CHOMP.

And that’s it. Three execs (whoops — make that two), three rebel good guys, one vicious computer nerd, and one Killer Mechanical Squirrel, trapped in the company highrise overnight. There are doublecrosses among the execs, and inflated idealism among the revolutionaries (they didn’t even load any live ammo into their big-ass guns), and many attempts to trap or at least evade the Warbeast. Injuries and explosions abound, and Rising Sun Dude just keeps on being cool. How cool is he? You want to know? At one point he needs a tourniquet on his leg, so he reaches inside his belt, grunts, twitches, and RIPS HIS BOXERS RIGHT OUT OF HIS PANTS.

Yes, this is the point at which Chris and I became totally gay for Rising Sun Dude. Pity he doesn’t live to the closing credits (whoops, did I give too much away?); he should have been the focus of a whole franchise of uber-cool action flicks.

By the end, Cale has become easily converted to the revolutionary cause, since being an exec at an arms contractor doesn’t turn out to be nearly the dream job she thought it would be (yeah, it looks like they went cheap on your background check too, sweetie), and she and Raimi manage to bring ironic justice down both on the corporation and on Dante. As if there were any question.

I repeat: Rising Sun Dude! Whoo whoo whoo whoo whoo!

There’s not much here that would indicate that Norrington had anything like Blade in him; there’s certainly none of that hypercaffeinated energy to be had. Granted, the budget for Death Machine was only a fraction of the later movie’s budget. I also don’t know how much to credit his script for the interesting points of Dante’s character, since Dourif is a tremendously underrated actor, and could easily be responsible for his own character depth. But Rising Sun Dude? I can only imagine that the idea came along one day while Norrington was smoking what the revolutionaries are smoking when we meet them, and he decided to keep it in. For that alone, I thank him.

And Rising Sun Dude, you will live forever in our hearts!

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 12
• breasts: 2 on Dante’s porno video, plus about 20 on the pinups around his lair
• explosions: 15
• ominous thunderstorms: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
  • Brad Dourif (Dante) played “Ensign Suder” in three episodes of Voyager