(Note: I have edited this post 30 times using Bloggers editing tools to set the font and size, and it literally does not work, another reason to move somewhere else. I've changed the font for this specific post with 30 attempts and look at it. I've chnaged the font size 30 times to make it bigger, look at the quality of Blogger -->)
Hello. It's time to update this blog. It may even move. There have been several changes to blogger since I've last used it. I don't appreciate these changes. Also, the lists here need to be updated. There are at least 1000 movies in these lists, however, more need to be added and they need to be updated. Because of the changes of Blogger, many pages I created here either no longer exist or actually cannot be edited. That sucks. The intention of this site was to offer information about all these Cybertronic Films, and expand with links and trailers. Originally, the main information was linked to IMDB. This needs to change.
I will be leaving Letterboxd along with all my lists. All the major movie websites are about to become completely unreliable, since they are now owned by huge corporations, and they will begin dictating to people what they can and cannot post, and the straight information may change in the next coming years. This site will either remain open, or be moved and expanded. I no longer trust IMDB, Letterboxd, Rotten Tomatoes, The Movie Database or any other huge movie website. This information should be maintained and archived in a place without any of these proposed changes by these sites.
What should be coming here is complete lists, but info that will be archived and protected regarding these films. Access should be to all people around the world without censorship. Also, my reviews should remain as they are, without censorship, which also means I may have to move this entire site.
For now, hundreds of new films will be added to the lists here on this site, so that no one has to ever visit Letterboxd again if they do not want to. Thanks for visiting.
Repo Chick
“Repo Chick”
After watching Repo Chick I had a vision. Francis Ford Coppola is going to make a Prequel Trilogy to “The Godfather” entirely made with green screen CG. As a matter of fact, every movie you’ve ever seen is either going to suffer the demise of a “Prequel Trilogy” or a “reboot” with catastrophic results, it must have been in all the directors’ contracts from the very beginning. This “could” have been a good idea, at least until somebody said, “we’ll shoot it all in a studio with a green screen.”
I don’t know the story behind “Repo Chick” and I don’t want to know. There isn’t simply a big difference in filmmaking from Repo Man to Repo Chick, or style or acting, the most astounding thing is while shooting the first scenes somebody thought it would work, the differences mean nothing when you’re staring at the screen and realize these people aren’t even trying. At some point these directors we’ve all come to know either stop giving a shit, or they become so out of their minds with arrogance they think people will just suck up anything they put on video. Oh, there is something being said in this “movie” but truthfully, I’ve sort of seen it already. Watch “War, Inc.” or “Terminal City Ricochet,” which are both much better movies. There’s a couple ‘new statements’ here, but really, the “Chick” who they picked to lead their movie is just fucking awful to watch and you simply don’t care what the fuck is being said no matter how “relevant” it is supposed to be. Oh, believe me, I “get it” I get who she’s supposed to be, and it’s dull, it’s cliche, it’s not really all that clever, and since the actress is just not going to give any kind of performance, well fuck it, there’s nothing here to keep anybody interested. Plug in the fake backgrounds and ‘effects’ and it looks pretty much like you’re watching a crappy made-for-youtube amateur movie.
The composition of shots, the close-ups, this becomes annoying to watch… Perhaps it was made for $1000, but add to the fact that this movie is retreading similar plot points and ideas in “Repo Man” I ask, why did you make this “movie” because it really isn’t “fun” which is the biggest selling point of “Repo Man.” That was such a “fun” movie that you want to watch it again and again, no matter the cheap effects, what the fuck happened here? What the fuck were these people thinking? This isn’t fun, and it surely isn’t funny—not in execution it isn’t… there are a great many “poorly executed” movies which end up still being something to see, it pains me to say it, but this isn’t schlock, it’s god-awful and boring.
It’s not really a sequel, it’s sort of a ‘remake’ but not really, at best, it’s “imitation” Repo Man, it’s like somebody on Youtube decided to rehash “Repo Man” with some sort of new contemporary set of ‘issues’ or social criticisms but fails pretentiously because their execution of it is so bad. It literally is like watching a movie “trying to be” like Repo Man with almost nothing that was anywhere near anything like the original, as if they didn’t really know what made Repo Man so good…as if George Lucas has made a ‘remake’ or sequel to Repo Man, or as if Peter Jackson, after falling on hard times, scraped up a few thousand bucks and set out to produce the ‘reboot’ of Repo Man, but not even caring how bad the CG looked, nor that there was no CG in the original, nor that there could have been anything to the ‘performances’ of the actors in the original, and it wasn’t about the acting, or the set pieces…or anything for that matter.
This movie is literally an insult to Repo Man, just like Phantom Menace is an insult to Star Wars, or the Hobbit is an insult to Lord of the Rings, or Star Trek (2009) is an insult to the 1960s Star Trek. It keeps being said, over and over, “what the fuck are these people thinking?” “Why the fuck would they do this?” There surely isn’t any hidden irony here in making such garbage ‘re-visitations’ of previous works. I can only assume that there is in fact a ‘secret rule’ in filmmaking, that if you make a great film, you must follow it up with some sort of shitty sequel which doesn’t simply show that you just don’t have it any more, but that you don’t even understand the movie you previously made at all. Perhaps when filmmakers become successful, they just stop trying, they don’t care any more, they’re too well fed and too lazy to bother with suffering for their “art.”
This is one more movie to add to the ever-growing list of movies which should never have been re-visited by their creators.(or by anyone else for that matter). Prometheus. Star Wars. The Hobbit. I have a feeling Avatar 2 is going to suck so bad that people will be astounded that James Cameron even made it. I have a feeling that “Clive Barker’s” Reboot of Hellraiser will make people wonder what the fuck he was thinking, and on and on and on. Just stop. Just stop. Just stop. If you truly have no vision for your sequels, prequels and reboots, just stop. If you’re not willing to suffer as much as you did making the original, don’t try, how about something ‘new’ for a change? Is that too much to ask? Perhaps they actually do run out of fresh ideas, and hope that people won’t notice. Sure we do like to see sequels if there’s a good enough reason… Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skulls is the perfect example of “why the fuck did you make that movie?” Did we ask for this? No. Did we say, give us anything so long as it’s called “Indiana Jones.” Nope. Well, perhaps we did in the end, assholes went and paid for it didn’t they?
In this case, it’s not some big-budget remake, and nobody even knew this thing ever came out (on video) at least I didn’t, but for fuck’s sakes all this movie does is force the audience to ask themselves, “this is the guy who made Repo Man?” “What the fuck happened?” Aside from the fact that there’s better CG effects on youtube videos, this movie just has nothing going for it. Clearly somebody thought it would be funny, but they’d be wrong, in order to be fun or even funny, you have to try, you have to ‘get there,’ not just let the video roll on and sip your coffee and say, “well that was good, we’ll fix it in post.” The fact that they’re shooting this all on video gives them the ability to do 1000 takes if they have to in order to get something good, but instead, it looks like this shit. And by “this shit” I mean I’ve seen “this shit” before. “This shit” is what you see from countless Asylum and SyFy movies, and worse, any Troma Movie made/released by Troma in the last couple years. A bunch of shitty actors on video pretending to make a movie with a video camera. If you’re not going to give us anything, if it’s all done with a computer, then this is not the experience of watching a movie.
I am reminded of the “Plasmatics” music video where Wendy O’Williams drives a bus through a wall of television sets. It’s all real. She drives a real bus through a stacked up ‘wall’ of old real television sets, busts through them, shit flies everywhere, she jumps off the bus and it explodes. It’s all real, all practical pyrotechnic effects, everything you see is staged, but all real. There was a time when even something as simple as this was real art that entertained. Yes, it was a stunt, and it was sensational, but it was all really happening, captured on 3/4 inch video, and it was greatness. Alex Cox could have made this “movie” so much better by even shooting it in VHS, or by going out to the desert , or collecting junk, or shooting in an old abandoned factory or anything, but what he did was make the perfect example of how not to use the shitty fake digital technology that exists so you can sit on your ass and not really try. I get his use of toys instead of real cars or objects, but it doesn’t work, it may be a vision of some sort of ‘style’ but the execution simply isn’t there. Look at “Manborg,” which is made exactly the same way, but since there’s some creative shit going on there in props and design and heavy use of callbacks to pop culture it works enough to ‘get you there’ and there’s a lot more going on to keep a person interested in watching. If you’re going to use this CG shit for everything, you better have something that balances it out. “Manborg” is one of the few movies which manages to come up with that thing that will balance out the cheesy awful quality you’re seeing. Yes, it’s supposed to be cheesy, but there’s enough going on to keep it going. I think it fails to make much of a comment on anything, but it’s still worth something. “Repo Chick” offers absolutely nothing new short of a few drab and poorly executed comments on the economy, and it is not trying heavily to get all this across, as a viewer, your eyes glaze over and you don’t even want to give a shit because you keep thinking of the studio they’re shooting all this video in, this CG shit just isn’t good enough, it’s one of the reasons Phantom Menace fucking sucks. It doesn’t matter how much money you spend or not on it, it just ALWAYS sucks for the simplest reason: you notice how much the people making it aren’t really trying.
The characters in “Repo Chick” are nowhere near as interesting as the ones in “Repo Man,” and this is ultimately the biggest flaw. They could have been, but the cast pretty much sucks, and they’re not really doing anything interesting most of the time. So, if the characters pretty much suck, you’re watching a bunch of actors on green screen talk to nothing, shit, it just sucks man. There is something going on here with all this shit in this movie, but it’s lazy, it’s like somebody took a big shit full of laziness and said, well, here you go, this is my next “Repo Man” eat it up, because I don’t care, I threw in some lines there about the shitty world you live in, but I wasn’t paying attention if the actors were doing their jobs or not, I didn’t even look at the dailies, and I sent the footage off to the computer guys and they used their “plug-ins” or whatever and well, there you go.
My advice to anybody out there who wants to make their own movie with no money, use VHS, don’t use widescreen digital shit with CG effects. Shoot it on old video cameras, use shitty practical effects, rubber masks and fireworks, go to a junkyard, don’t buy realistic costumes, go to thrift stores and just buy a lot of different colorful shit that has nothing to do with realism, don’t even try to make a ‘real movie’ and do you know what will happen? You’ll end up with something watchable, you’ll end up with something that ends up looking ‘real’ because it will be more ‘real’ than any of this shit people have been making for the last decade. If you have a little more money and can afford 16mm film, shit, you’ll end up with a classic even if it doesn’t have a plot, because it will look 10 times better than any of this new shit. People will remember it. They’ll sit through it. All this new shit all looks the same and it all sucks.
Don’t waste your time here, “Terminal City Ricochet,” the original “Repo Man,” “Repo Men,” “War, Inc.” and pretty much any episode of “Land of the Lost” is better than this crap. Sorry Alex Cox, and anybody else out there with a video camera and a computer, you have to actually “try” in order to make something even worth watching, the computer won’t do it for you.
Invasion of the Mindbenders (1987)
Starring Roy Thinnes of the 1960s series “Invaders” and “The X-Files.” This is another Canadian production.
Finally, I was able to find this movie, and after the first 30 seconds, I thought perhaps I may be wasting my time… This is an extremely low budget… cheap… and ridiculous movie… it has really bad over-acting, bad sound, bad editing, cheap production values, and is attempting to be some sort of “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” silly teen comedy… and essentially fails at this, but…
I had fun watching this shitty movie. Anyone who has seen “Interface” (1985) perhaps might be interested in this. This high school (like any high school) is having problems with a few students, and the principal (Roy Thinnes) has this guy from the “Behavior Modification Research Institute” try out a new system which uses sound to control behavior of students. This is not so far fetched, one can go to youtube and punch up videos which have certain frequencies on them which are designed to do exactly what is being presented in this movie. The movie’s not that smart though, but this technology does in fact exist, and there’s a whole bunch of things people have used it for, and I’ll leave it to you to listen to them and decide or imagine what could likely be out there in real life… They are going to shut down the student radio station (because they don’t like rock n’ roll anyways) and broadcast these subliminal sounds over the speaker system to make students docile and suggestible. The main characters are the student D.J.s at the radio station and of course rebel goofballs who wear headphones all the time so they are immune to the mind control and decide the faculty have to be stopped.
As soon as I saw the Max Headroom poster on the wall in the high school radio station, I had to see where all this
There’s little things that happen here and there, and lines here and there which are actually commendable, and since this is not a Hollywood production, you get something that strays a little from something you might see from Paramount, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox or whatever. You get terrible acting, but better over-acting than weak acting. In this case it works a little better, though I can see this being annoying to some people out there. It’s rebellious at heart and subversive at heart, and even though this isn’t even on the level of Class of 1984, or Class of 1999 for that matter, it’s silly concept of brainwashing students, where rock and roll is the antidote, and turning them into mind-controlled robots carries this movie exactly where you’d want it to go. This is terribly made, and that could be enough all by itself. They set someone's head on fire... for real, and that could be worth seeing...
There’s some good ideas (at least fun ones) in this, and like Interface (1985), if you can handle the ridiculous performances and bad production value, there’s some fun to be had here. Clearly this film is lacking in professional quality, it’s like watching somebody’s first attempt at filmmaking, where they borrowed money from their uncles and used their credit card, but the difference here as it so often is from independent movies from the 80s is… it’s still on film! Film somehow makes this all the more viewable than something people make today with an HD video camera. This is what you’d call a ‘crap movie’ but one still worth watching if you’re interested in old 80s obscure movies, and still want to be entertained. I was surely entertained, and actually had fun, I didn’t even fast forward anything. Personally I wanted to see what they were going to do with the ‘mind control’ plot with the computer programs, the subliminal tones, and how the kids rebel. Like Interface (1985), it’s all pretty pretentious, but there’s still something there trying to say something or do something subversive, funny or crazy with the premise. Sometimes even Troma Films don’t even have that, that silly edge which one might describe as ‘punk’ or rebellious, we’ll call it ‘80s satire.’ It’s not anything profound exactly, it’s simply trying to be outrageous and if it’s not only crazy but has something like allegory, or any kind of social commentary, no matter how pretentious, it can still all be worth it. This is a stupid movie most definitely, and it does try a little too hard to be funny, and attempts to be other movies out there that it isn’t, that it couldn’t be if it tried, but in spite of this, it’s still interesting to watch what they do with it.
This isn’t exactly “so bad it’s good” but there’s enough “bad” that either I kept watching because I wanted to see just how hard they would try, or just what was it they were trying to do. In some sense what is here is in Class of 1999, only instead of cyborg teachers, it’s simply this mind-control plot. This isn’t the only movie of it’s kind, and I’m guessing it is trying to be one of these other kinds of movies, but it is still satire, so in a world where it seems nobody even gets what satire is, perhaps I’ll take what I can get. Any movie which attempts to make statements like this, like what you might see in movies like “They Live” is still worth watching in my opinion, because there are so few of them, no matter how ‘bad’ they really are.
There’s a lot of trash out there pretending to be ‘satire,’ and there’s satires that are so trashy they get sidetracked from their central purpose. This might be considered a 'must see film' if you've decided to go out and film your very own movie, look at what's working and what isn't, a perfect teaching tool for those attempting this sort of comedy. The production value can end up being so bad, it's hard to believe, and yet, I've seen worse from LIONSGATE. There are even big budget films that can't manage a story as coherent as this one, which is even more depressing. You have been warned, but if you're into weirdness, this is worth a look.
I'm going to have to make a solid list of movies like this, they seem to be of their own category, like Interface (1985), The Tower (1985) and a few others which have absolutely terrible production value--the worst, bad acting, and ridiculous plots, but there's something so weird about them, they're actually worth watching.
The Young Ones (2014)
Starring Zod (Michael Shannon) and Nicholas Hoult from the Xmen.
This movie is not what I expected at all. For some reason I expected some sort of “post-apocalyptic” futuristic tale about how these young people deal with life or some sort of situations illustrating how difficult their lives are, or what strange conflicts they face in the future…or something like that. This movie did not really go into territory like that, but this is no “SyFy” movie of the week either.
I was reminded of “There Will Be Blood” or some peculiar Steinbeck novel or a play or some kind of “western” dealing with family life on the open range like “Shane” or something—only taking place in the future. It begins in what first comes to mind as some sort possible ‘post-apocalyptic’ scenario, with people from what could be “Mad Max” marauders trying to break into some guys “bunker-water well” shed. Like characters from “The Book of Eli” trying to steal some survivalist’s water. They get caught, there’s a shootout, and are introduced to our main characters who are not necessarily “Mad Max” survivalists or characters from “The Road” but more like characters from a western drama about an old farm and people trying to make it during the Dust Bowl era. The ‘future’ seems potentially “post-apocalyptic” but rather, vast areas have turned to desert, a corporation like that seen in “Sleep Dealer” is in control of the water. This is something still quite possible and imaginable.
The circumstances are introduced, and it is future America, and while there still seems to be some civilization left, it looks more like something of a western with technology just a little beyond ours, and yet it would seem, something of a collapse must have occurred. This could be only a decade from now, where corporations own the water, water is more expensive than anything, and people live like they did over a hundred years ago, only they have robots.
Like a scene from Star Wars A New Hope, the farm boy and his father travel to a major town to buy a robot ‘mule’ so they can continue to cart supplies up to the ‘company water station’ out in the middle of nowhere. It’s their only livelihood unless and until the father can get water to his farm. “Luke and Uncle Owen” have been depending on their water pumps which have run dry. This does not however turn into an action film at any time, it turns into something more like “There Will Be Blood” and the politics and life circumstances of something akin to frontier ranchers in the old west. It is interesting to say the least, as the drama unfolds, a future life of a family is met with all manner of misfortune due to the water corporation, and neighboring rural characters and their schemes. It becomes a Steinbeck novel or something and though there are all sorts of circumstances which involve futuristic technology, this could have been a story made to take place during the time of the first oil companies, or mining companies in America.
This is nowhere near as harrowing as “The Road” or as deeply conceptual as “Book of Eli” but it could perhaps take place in a world similar but a few years out from those time periods, or perhaps something which takes place in the same world as “Sleep Dealer.” It could be a few years after “The Postman” and if you were to compare it to where we are actually at today, this looks like it could be what our world will be possibly around 2025, likely after more environmental decay and perhaps an economic collapse or two. The ‘reality’ of the setting is not so much central as more of a backdrop to a tale which likely occurred a hundred years ago as well. The more things change, the more they stay the same, and we revisit the same degradation and misfortunes people did a hundred years ago.
The “Young Ones” are only a few characters responding to this situation, but it isn’t a horror story about cannibalism and post-apocalyptic anarchy, it is likely everything these people go through has happened in American history a long time ago, and I believe this film is essentially alluding to this through it’s ‘ranchers’ having a hard life and being screwed by both greedy companies and unscrupulous young men with no futures in desolate lands. This is not as epic in scope to “The Postman” nor as visceral as “The Road” but it could be a kind of “post modern” companion piece to stories like those. After the events of “The Postman” civilization starts to come back, and the fascist cult of the Holnists are wiped out, but no utopia is born, and old time western living returns complete with greedy mining companies or other capitalist ventures bent on stripping what’s left of resources. As sad to say as this may be, but this is likely a story which will be carried out not too long from now by those who survive whatever ecological or economic collapses we now face.
Now all someone needs to do is remake “Little House on the Prairie 2029,” and we’ll have a new genre of post-modern Americana where “Postman” and “Book of Eli” will fit in and won’t be considered “post-apocalyptic” any more as people who live through catastrophic collapses will endure and begin living through situations like this in real life. As the west coast becomes radioactive, the deserts of the southwest grow, the prairies die from genetic engineering interference, the bees die, and the weather and climates change, and fascist super-corporations take more and more, the life of people in America will appear more and more as it once did in the 1800s. Lawless lands, futuristic pioneers, anarchic gunslingers, corrupt resource-stripping small town governments, along with the rest of the expected futuristic scenarios will all actually take place. People will be living out these stories and it won’t be much different than it was in the 1840s, only there might be a few robots or drones out there, perhaps here and there some fascist corporation will be stealing human beings to experiment on or steal body parts or something, and maybe a cyborg or two, and the people who are left to rot in bigger cities will be still living in Blade Runner Land, but outside, in places like those in Automata or many other dystopian films, there will be altered but still wild landscapes where people destroy each other in a variety of ways to survive.
What we need to understand today is that this is the actual future we face, and not all our lives will be the same as Rick Dekkard’s or Mad Max, or Kevin Costner in “Postman.” People will be caught up in quite a variety of situations, and all dystopias will be taking place all at once, as they have already begun now. People watch films like “The Road” and they might fantasize about trying to be on top of the situation by loading up on guns and canned food or whatever they decide, but they might try responding to the apocalyptic or dystopian situation they are actually currently in the middle of rather than all attempt to react to the same fantastic one. The reality here is, you might end up choosing to be Burke (Paul Reiser) in ALIENS to ‘survive,’ or you might choose to be Mad Max, or worse, but right now is when you will be deciding on who you are going to have to be because in fact this is it—right now, this is where it all begins.
Currently I would suggest that most people in America are trying to get Carter Burke’s job as fast as they can so they can ‘survive’ no matter who they are or where they come from, but I would highly recommend that this delusional response is only going to make things worse. Some people are going to be forced into positions they never dreamed would happen to them, and people better wake up to the fact that there no longer is a ‘common morality’ that can be expected from society any more, whether you come from the right or the left. People will now do all kinds of weird things to ‘survive’ and come up against all sorts of peculiar circumstance in this emerging dystopia one simply cannot really be prepared for. You might end up as Harry Buttle, and get ‘Swatted’ just because of some bureaucratic error. Whatever the case may be, reality is science fiction now, and “The Young Ones” in a few short years will be nothing but an ordinary “modern drama.”
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