The Beyond (2017)
Mysterious Portal Appears in Earth Orbit
A highly ambitious film about a mysterious alien portal that appears in Earth orbit and the attempts to explore what is on the other side
Cyborgs
A cyborg is a human (or in some cases alien) whose body has been replaced by mechanical parts. In its generalised usage a cyborg has come to mean someone who has used mechanical replacements for damaged parts or to enhance their abilities. The Transhumanist movement has embraced the possibility of cyborg replacement and refers to it as Augmentation.
On screens, we have had a range of cyborg heroes and superheroes ranging from The Six Million Dollar Man to RoboCop. The 1980s gave us a whole slate of evil cyborgs or action films with cyborgs battling in post-apocalyptic futures. The Cyberpunk Films genre depicts futures where such enhancements has become commonplace.
The Time Guardian (1987)
War Across Time
An Australian entry in the 1980s time travel film fad featuring Carrie Fisher engaged in a war across time in a time-travelling city
Tetsuo: The Bullet Man (2009)
Man-Machine Fusion
Shinya Tsukamoto’s third Tetsuo film is a disappointingly commercial concession that waters down all of the surrealism and wild sexual fetishism that made the first film so amazing
Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992)
Man-Machine Fusion
Shinya Tsukamoto makes a better budgeted sequel to his breakthrough hit. The first film was a masterpiece of guerilla filmmaking but the same frenzied fetishism is missing here
Black Road (2016)
Near Future Film Noir
Near future set science-fiction noir as a cyborg-enhanced hero is drawn in to conduct an investigation on behalf of a morally ambiguous femme fatale. Despite a reasonable effort made, this is a little too low key
Terror Beneath the Sea (1966)
Amphibian Cyborgs
Japanese movie made for international sales where a scientist has built a race of amphibian cyborgs to take over the world
Robowar (1988)
Amok Cyborg
From Italy, a blatant copy of Predator – only where instead of a military unit being hunted through the jungle by an alien, they are hunted by a copycat of RoboCop
Justice League: Doom (2012)
Animation/Comic-Book Superheroes
A relative disappointment among the mostly excellent animated DC superhero films, this pits each member of the Justice League with a matching super-villain only who seemingly kills them off
The Last Sentinel (2007)
Programmed Soldier
Action film with Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson as a cyborg soldier fighting a one-man war against rogue police drones of the future. A fairly generic assemblage of cliches
Robotrix (1991)
Female Cyborg Cops
Hong Kong-made copy of RoboCop where Amy Yip has her mind transferred into a cyborg body to track a mad scientist
Project: Metalbeast (1994)
Cyborg Werewolf
Typical 1990s video-released effort that stands out by dint of a far-out idea – a cyborg werewolf – even if in the end the film does nothing with it and everything only boils down to a standard monster movie that takes everything from the Alien playbook
Justice League (2017)
Comic-Book Superheroes
Zack Snyder completes his run through DC superheroes with mixed results. The introduction of the characters works well but Snyder too readily throws established continuity out the window, while the visual dourness becomes tedious
Justice League: Throne of Atlantis (2015)
Animation/Comic-Book Superheroes
Not so much a Justice League film as an Aquaman origin film, which at least conducts a character oft regard as a DC laughing stock with suitable dignity
Justice League: War (2014)
Animation/Comic-Book Superheroes
Another of the DC Universe Animated Films that rewrites the Justice League into DC’s New 52 continuity reboot. This changes the character’s origins and designs to little point
Iron Girl: Ultimate Weapon (2015)
Cyborg Bounty Hunter
A Japanese film about a cyborg-enhanced bounty hunter chick, the second in a series. This is sort of like RoboCop but played with a much more softcore focus
Knights (1993)
Post-Holocaust Kickboxing Cyborgs
Another of Albert Pyun’s post-apocalyptic kickboxing cyborg films. The film consists of almost nothing but action scenes as pint-size Kathy Long and a cyborg Kris Kristofferson battle warlord Lance Henriksen
The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time (2018)
Storm of Sharks/Deliberately Bad Film
The sixth of the Sharknado films, this has the usual crew fighting sharknados throughout history. With this comes the recognition there is nowhere more ridiculous and over-the-top for the series to go
Meatball Machine: Kodoku (2017)
Gonzo Japanese Splatter Film/Bio-Mechanoid Mutations
A sequel to Meatball Machine, the film that started the gonzo Japanese splatter genre, filled with wild mutations, over-the-top splatter, a surreal sense of humour and an obsession with schoolgirls in panties
I, Robot (2004)
Robots Amok/Isaac Asimov Adaptation
Disappointing adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s Robot stories. The film pays token acknowledgement to Asimov’s characters and universe and mostly seems interested in spectacular effects set-pieces
Mortal Kombat (2021)
Interdimensional Combat/Videogame Adaptation
A reboot of the film series adapted from the popular videogame. Produced by James Wan, this emerges as a kinetic and enjoyable effort that has clearly designed to introduce an ongoing franchise
Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms (2021)
Animation/Interdimensional Combat/Videogame Adaptation
The second of the Mortal Kombat animated films, this continues into another tournament, introducing a bewildering array of characters from the games amid a high degree of violence and bloodshed
Ghost in the Shell (2015)
Cyberpunk Anime
Another anime film in the Ghost in the Shell franchise. This was the fifth episode of the Ghost in the Shell: Arise reboot series that received a theatrical release
Nemesis 3: Time Lapse (1995)
Time-Travelling Killer Cyborgs
The third of Albert Pyun’s Nemesis films about time-travelling cyborgs – not much plot just action scenes and some moments of undeniable strangeness
Natural City (2003)
Cyberpunk Future/Androids
Wrongly referred to as an adaptation of the original Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, this South Korean Cyberpunk film does homage many aspects of Blade Runner
Prototype X29A (1992)
Post-Holocaust Cyborg Wars
This is a standard 90s direct-to-video SF/action film about warring cyborgs in a burned-out future. This has borrowed most of its moves from other films. Not a lot happens
Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver (2024)
Space Opera
Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon was intended as a two-part space opera saga. This first half emerged watchably and this is Part Two
Earth Star Voyager (1988)
Space Expedition
TV mini-series that came out hoping to ride the coattails of Star Trek: The Next Generation but looks dated barely ten years later. Somehow the idea of teenagers on a space mission didn’t get many audiences enthused
The Exterminators of the Year 3000 (1983)
Post-Holocaust Action
An Italian exploitation film that blatantly copies the plot of Mad Max 2. It offers the benefit of some vigorous action scenes and English-language dubbing that is out of this world
Roswell: The Aliens Attack (1999)
The Roswell Incident/Alien Visitors
Alien invasion film set around the so-called Roswell Incident. Faux science-fiction written by cliche the entire way
RoboCop 3 (1993)
Cyborg Cop
The third Robocop film killed the series off with a disastrous decision to go for a PG rating and pair Robocop with a cute kid
Sharknado 5: Global Swarming (2017)
Storms of Sharks/Deliberately Bad Film
By this point, the Sharknado series has gone from an amusingly tongue-in-cheek original to a series that is widely signalling that it is not taking anything that happens remotely seriously
Sharknado: The 4th Awakens (2016)
Storm of Sharks/Deliberately Bad Film
The bad movie hit of Sharknado was a surprise to everyone and spawned sequels. By this point, creativity appears to have dried up – essentially, the Sharknado series has jumped the shark
The Vindicator (1986)
Killer Cyborg
Canadian film about a man rebuilt inside a cyborg body. What started as a Frankenstein film is turned into a copy of The Terminator
Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (1966)
Doctor Who Film
The second of the theatrically released Doctor Who films intended to highlight the popularity of The Daleks, this is an improvement in that it dispenses with the first film’s buffoonish comedy elements
The Demolitionist (1996)
Female Cyborg Cop
Nicole Eggert stars in this cheap and rather laughable copy of RoboCop, where she is a police officer killed in the line of duty who is resurrected as an avenging cyborg vigilante
Dr Who and the Daleks (1965)
Doctor Who Film
This was the first of two Doctor Who movies produced during the height of Dalekmania during the 1960s. Alas a comedy element in the form of the asinine buffoonery of Roy Castle is allowed to dominate and kills the show off
LunarCop (1995)
Post-Holocaust Action
Low-budget Mad Max copycat with Michael Paré as an officer from the lunar colony who comes down to Earth to take on the marauders of the post-apocalyptic wasteland
Beyond Skyline (2017)
Alien Invasion
Skyline was a modest alien invasion film; this is a long-planned sequel. The new director has simply turned it into an action film and tediously deals with every alien encounter with gunfire, stunts and explosions
Heatseeker (1995)
Cyborg Kickboxing Competition
Another of Albert Pyun’s cyborg films set around a kickboxing competition where Pyun seems to have cut costs by using real competition footage with dramatically dull results
Test Tube Teens from the Year 2000 (1994)
Time Travellers from a Future Where Sex is Banned
Charles Band film directed by David DeCoteau, a lame softcore comedy where two guys travel back from a future where sex is outlawed and end up in a girl’s boarding school
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)
Interdimensional Combat/Videogame Adaptation
Sequel to the Mortal Kombat film. While the first film was fun, here anything resembling plot has been stripped away to concentrate on fight scenes such that the film blurs into a single shapeless action sequence
Terminator Genisys (2015)
Time-Travelling Killer Androids
A hodgepodge of competing elements – an aging Arnold Schwarzenegger, a soft reboot, alternate timelines, reintroduction of the familiar, twists to the familiar – that make no sense on a narrative level, least of all come anywhere near what James Cameron delivered back in the first two films
Cyborg (1989)
Post-Holocaust Kickboxing
The first of Albert Pyun’s kickboxing killer cyborg films featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme who was largely unknown at the time. Pyun creates wall-to-wall action but there is almost nothing else to the film
Defcon 2012 (2010)
After an Alien Invasion/Mayan End of the World
Amateur low-budget production about mysterious happenings in the aftermath of an alien invasion. This has many ideas but none of them much coalesce into a plot
Ghost in the Shell (2017)
Live-Action Anime Adaptation/Cyberpunk Future
This US-made live-action adaptation of the cult anime is a disaster on every level. The original’s haunting meditation on the dividing line between machine and human is diluted to being no more than a Cyberpunk action film
Future-Kill (1984)
Killer Cyborg
Low-budget attempt to make a Cyberpunk film. Essentially The Warriors with New Wave fashions as a group of frat boys are pursued by a relentless, psychopathic cyborg
Steel and Lace (1990)
Killer Cyborg
A killer android/cyborg film from the genre’s 1990s heyday with a tasteless concept where a raped woman kills herself and is then resurrected as an avenging cyborg. A bizarre melding of killer cyborg film and I Spit on Your Grave
The Car: Road to Revenge (2019)
Possessed Car
The Car concerning a possessed car is one of the forgotten films of the 1970s. Why it has produced a sequel 42 years later is a scratch of the head. Not that the two films even resemble one another
Fortress (1993)
Future Prison
Stuart Gordon, a cult director on the basis of Re-Animator, ventures into making an SF action film set in a futuristic prison. The film has a bone-headed script that feels like it is only rehashing cliches from every SF film
Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn (1983)
Planetary Adventure
Early Charles Band film made in the mid-80s 3D revival fad. A cheap planetary adventure that feels like a collage of other SF films around at the time, most notably Star Wars and Mad Max 2
Inspector Gadget 2 (2003)
Cyborg Cop/Cartoon in Live-Action
A video-released sequel to the live-action Matthew Broderick film starring French Stewart. This is played as much more of a cartoon and amped to a maximum level of slapstick inanity
Frankenpimp (2009)
Gonzo Exploitation Homage
Possibly THE worst film ever made. Tony Watt throws an mash-up of exploitation elements together in an incomprehensible plot. A film that made me want to hammer a nail through my eyeball rather than keep watching
Superman III (1983)
Comic-Book Superhero
The nadir of the Christopher Reeve Superman films, one where the desire to add a comedy element in the form of Richard Pryor overtakes and wrecks what is already a random and unfocused plot