Tag Archives: robot

Gen-Y Cops (2000)

June 2, 2022 Ken Miller Leave a comment

Directed by Benny Chan and written by Kiu-Ying Chan, Kiu-Ying Chan and Bey Logan, this Hong Kong film stars Edison Chen, Stephen Fung, Sam Lee, Paul Rudd and Maggie Q. It was released in the USA as a Syfy Original Film on the Syfy Channel in 2002, under the misleading title JACKIE CHAN PRESENTS: METAL MAYHEM. (Jackie Chan did have a cameo in GEN-X COPS, which GEN-Y COPS is a sequel to, but he doesn’t appear in this movie).

Undercover cops Match (Fung), Alien (Lee) and Edison (Shen) have to deal with a group of villainous tech guys out to steal the prototype American RS1 attack robot during an international military technology exhibition in Hong Kong, but Edison is injected with a hypnosis drug by former hacker friend Kurt, which compels him to take part in the theft of the American robot. Now the Hong Kong cop trio must attempt to recover the stolen robot whilst avoiding a bunch of trigger-happy FBI agents, led by Agent Curtis (Rudd), who believe Edison is a willing participant in the heist. Fortunately for the Gen-Y Cops, Jane Quigley (Q), another FBI agent dealing with the case, starts to believe Edison is innocent.

At first Agent Curtis tends to shoot first and ask questions later

Curtis tries to stop Edison from escaping... by attempting to shoot him, of course! — Curtis tries to stop Edison from escaping… by attempting to shoot him, of course!

FBI agents played by Paul Rudd, Maggie Q and Mark Hicks

This sequel to GEN-X COPS (1999) begins with a demonstration of the RS1’s powers (back in the USA), where it withstands flames and heavy machine gun fire, can hit flying objects with pinpoint accuracy… and can delicately pick up a piece of tofu with its metal fingers (I’m sure that last ability will always come in useful for an attack-bot!) The RS1 does get momentarily hacked, however, though this doesn’t prevent the FBI from concluding it’s still safe to take this lethal killing machine to Hong Kong for the military tech show.

Richard Sun hams it up a bit as villainous hacker Kurt Lee

The technology exhibition show itself is wittily handled, introducing such robots as Hong Kong’s D1010, which can predict lottery numbers and is repeatedly mistaken for a trash can, France’s Jerry L robot, which gets its head ripped off in a fight with RS1, and China’s Tung Fung robot, which loses one of its arms during a display and is mockingly referred to as a ‘One-Armed Boxer’.

The RS1's extendable hand grabs the Jerry L robot's neck and wrenches its head off! — The RS1’s extendable hand grabs the Jerry L robot’s neck and wrenches its head off!

GEN-Y COPS has its fair share of lowbrow humour, including the moment idiotic cop Alien scrapes his dandruff into the FBI’s coffee cups, and any hope the film has of being taken seriously is severely hampered by the fact the protagonists, especially Alien, come across as borderline buffoons much of the time, with scenes of them accidentally blowing up a car and giggling like schoolboys, all of which prevents them from even remotely resembling professional law enforcement officers.

Alien, played by Sam Lee, is a hyperactive, brainless fool in much of this movie

Alien brushes some of his dandruff into the coffee he's going to give the FBI... — Alien brushes some of his dandruff into the coffee he’s going to give the FBI…

The script makes an effort to use a lot of English dialogue, written by Bey Logan, though it tends to depend too much on generic terms like “hey, man” and “goddamn it’, but the movie does finally kick into gear, proving to be a pleasing, amusing sci-fi-tinged actioner, with robot rampages, shots of the heroes diving in slow motion from explosions and a full body burn stunt during the finale.

A typical piece of Hong Kong-style car stunt action

Mainly brought to life via practical effects, the RS1 has a Transformers-like head and looks really rather good onscreen, using a rocket launcher, machine guns, a flamethrower and even an extendable fist to wreak havoc wherever it goes. It’s a shame, then, that a showdown with the Tung Fung robot at the end uses low grade CGI to create the Chinese automaton.

The Tung Fung robot and the D1010, which is better at predicting lottery numbers than fighting!

GEN-Y COPS gets an unduly bad rap from many reviewers, but it’s a mindlessly enjoyable, throwaway flick that boasts gunfights, flashbacks involving a man dressed as a lobster, kung fu skirmishes and a decent robot adversary. Plus, there’s the added pleasure of seeing a youthful Paul Rudd go from potential adversary to good guy, taking part in some Hong Kong-style fighting. He even speaks a little Cantonese!

Rudd takes part in a kung fu fight on some shipping containers

One of the flashbacks in which Edison recalls a fight with a man-sized lobster!?

My advice is to put your brain on hold and revel in the colourful nonsense.

Also known as Jackie Chan Presents Metal Mayhem

The RS1 robot was made by Global Effects (Chris Gilman, Brian Bero, Jeff Jingle and Skip Wilder), who created one puppeteered robot, plus a costume. This suit was then repurposed/ remade for use as Chris Gilman’s ‘Protocop’ costume in KISS KISS BANG BANG (2005).

The Terrornauts (1967)

April 8, 2022 Ken Miller Leave a comment

Could any film actually live up to the exploitative promise of this lurid poster artwork?

Three staff members of Project Star Talk (Simon Oates, Stanley Meadows & Zena Marshall) are working at a radio telescope site when they are taken to an asteroid fortress by a space ship. Also carried along for the ride is an accountant (Charles Hawtrey) and a tea lady (Patricia Hayes). The group meet a robot and must pass some tests before using the fortress’ missiles to save the Earth from an armada of alien vessels.

Carry On movie regular Charles Hawtrey plays accountant Joshua Yellowlees

THE TERRORNAUTS is a British science fiction film made by Amicus Productions, based on Murray Leinster’s 1960 novel The Wailing Asteroid. The screenplay was written by sci-fi author John Brunner and the film was directed by Montgomery (BATTLE BENEATH THE EARTH) Tully.

There’s no escaping the fact that THE TERRORNAUTS was definitely done on the cheap… and I do mean very cheap!

Ah, look at those super-realistic planets!

The film resembles a brightly-coloured, low budget Doctor Who episode. But if you look beyond the threadbare production values, you’ll find that THE TERRORNAUTS does have an interesting premise: a long-gone alien race has left its tech behind so that mankind can defend itself from an interstellar foe.

I do also like the alien critter, revealed as a hologram. If you can imagine an unrealistic man-in-suit creature costume designed by a surrealist… that is what the alien looks like!

The alien's 'face' — The surreal alien’s ‘face’

The alien's eye, which is on its torso — The alien’s eye, which is on its torso

The lurid poster (claiming we’ll be seeing ‘The virgin sacrifice to the gods of a ghastly galaxy!’) highlights a moment in the movie where the heroine is accidentally teleported to a planet and is nearly sacrificed by a bunch of green-skinned savages.
This in-your-face poster artwork promises, of course, far more than the film could ever hope to deliver.

Yikes! This is the poster's depiction of the sacrifice scene... — Yikes! This is the poster’s depiction of the sacrifice scene…

...and this is what the attempted sacrifice actually looks like in the film! — …and this is what the sacrifice scene actually looks like in the film!

Don't worry: Sandy gets saved — Don’t worry: Sandy gets saved

Here’s the pre-production concept artwork for the hologram alien, by designer Bill Constable, showing that the strange being was always intended to have an eye positioned at an odd place on its body.

This concept for the alien creature makes it resemble a surreal tree stump

And here’s another couple of shots of the alien as seen in the film, with its eye located on its waist…

Not the most realistic alien costume ever produced!

Who are you lookin' at? — Who are you lookin’ at?

Some lobby cards…

Finally, here’s the UK DVD cover…

Gog (1954)

March 6, 2022 Ken Miller Leave a comment

Dr. David Sheppard (Richard Egan), from the Office of Scientific Investigation, is called in to investigate mysterious deaths happening at a top-secret government facility located beneath the New Mexico desert. David teams-up with Joanna Merritt (Constance Dowling), who is another OSI agent working undercover at this facility, which is being used to construct a space station.

The facility’s super-brain computer NOVAC (Nuclear Operative Variable Automatic Computer) oversees and co-ordinates all the equipment in the underground facility and the OSI agents eventually realise that a rocket-like enemy plane, invisible to radar, has been sending radio signals to NOVAC, causing it to murder scientists in a variety of ways. The computer controls two robots, called Gog and Magog, and these mobile devices are also eventually used to attack the facility’s staff. These machines are finally ordered to go to the nuclear reactor control room to trigger a chain reaction that will create a nuclear explosion, but David intervenes and goes on the offensive with a flame thrower!

Magog starts to smoke after David attacks it with a flame thrower — Magog starts to smoke after David blasts it with a flame thrower

GOG was the final part of the trilogy of Office of Scientific Investigation (OSI) movies. The previous two films were THE MAGNETIC MONSTER (1953) and RIDERS TO THE STARS (1954). They were all produced by Ivan Tors, who wanted these scientific OSI movies to be a little more fact-based than normal, eschewing stories that were more typical in this era, such as invading aliens and giant monsters.

David is shown a scale model of the space station by head scientist Dr. Van Ness (Herbert Marshall)

This focus on trying to make the story more ‘realistic’ is to be commended, though it does mean there are rather too many scenes in GOG where scientists talk at length about the experiments they are working on. To add some zip to the tale, however, a series of mysterious attacks on scientists punctuate the film, involving such menaces as a sabotaged centrifuge, a deep-freeze room, deadly tuning forks that kill via sound, a berserk solar projection mirror and a radioactive isotope hidden in a plant pot.

A hapless scientist is trapped in his own freezer room

The test subjects on the sabotaged centrifuge are killed

Dr. Zeitman (John Wengraf) shows off one of the robots in his computer room

Herbert L. Strock’s direction is workmanlike at best, but the film perks up considerably when Gog and Magog finally go on the rampage. These robots, each equipped with multiple arms and a priapic flame-producing tube, are taken on by hero David, who torches Magog with a flame thrower and, once he is out of fuel, batters Gog with the nozzle of the flame thrower! The overall threat is eventually extinguished when American military jets (stock footage) shoot down the mysterious rocket plane. The identity of the enemy state responsible for the sabotage is never revealed but, as this is a Cold War era story, I assume it was the Russians.

Though made on a low budget, GOG is a good-looking, colourful production. I liked the location the film was set in: a secret underground laboratory with its different security-graded levels, I thought Richard Egan was a decent, no-nonsense, stoic lead and Constance Dowling was fine as his OSI partner and love interest.

GOG was shot in 3D, but the craze was already on the wane when the film was released, which perhaps added to the movie’s lacklustre box office. Tor would go on to focus on animal-themed film and TV productions like FLIPPER, DAKTARI and GENTLE BEN, plus adventure series like SEA HUNT, THE AQUANAUTS and RIPCORD.

This Italian poster focuses on the death-by-tuning-forks moment

'It became a Frankenstein!' — US poster: ‘It became a Frankenstein!’

After GOG was finished, producer Ivan Tors married Constance Dowling and brought one of the movie's robots back to his home — After GOG was finished, producer Ivan Tors married Constance Dowling and brought one of the movie’s robots back to his home!

The robots like to wave their arms about!

Monster Zone

Tag Archives: robot

Gen-Y Cops (2000)

The Terrornauts (1967)

Gog (1954)

Devoted to every kind of movie and TV monster, from King Kong to Godzilla, from the Blob to Alien.