American Cyborg: Steel Warrior (1994)
Today, I'll be reviewing an Israeli post-apocalyptic action movie from 1994, one of countless such genre movies churned out by Cannon Films and legendary producers Golan and Globus. Expect lots of action, lots of blood, lots of mullets, and very little else, but also expect to be rather entertained in a mind-numbing sort of way.
Our movie is set in Charleston, South Carolina, a sleepy old port city along the Atlantic coast. The real Charleston is a sprawling metropolis of about 600,000 people with a historic district, ghettos, military bases, suburban enclaves and legions of cute Southern Belles looking crisp and cool in the sweltering summer heat. I was just there in '98 for work, and I got to tell you, it's a very pretty city. It's also a primary nuclear target in any exchange scenario you want to envision, with a major US Navy base, an Army Depot, a nuclear reactor, and a fair amount of industry all concentrated in a relatively small space.
The Charleston of American Cyborg: Steel Warrior, however, consists of a single abandoned, run-down tractor factory west of Tel Aviv, Israel. Seriously, one building. If you look closely, you can see the same staircases, the same walls, the same machinery, the same girders, the same rooms in shot after shot, the only differences being lighting, some prop dressing and camera angles. This is cost savings at its most obvious, though I'm sure it did save a ton of money that could be used for other, more impressive, special effects. Oh, that's right, there aren't any special effects, so maybe the extra money just went to buying the director a new Mercedes.
Charleston, circa 2016.
It's 17 years since the nuclear war to end all nuclear wars laid waste to the world. A dicey clue suggests the war was around 1999, so that would place our timeframe about 2015. At the time of the war, an ultra-sophisticated artificial intelligence computer system was running the world, using robots ("cyborgs", though they are more accurately "androids") to "help humanity". After the war, however, the "System", as we will call it, took over and started to exert control over the pitiful remains of the human race. All survivors were herded into the ruined cities and kept contained until they died naturally or killed themselves off in the quest for food and safety.
The crowded streets of ruined Charleston.
To impose their unique brand of justice, the System created "killer Cyborgs" to enter the cities and "eliminate" anyone who dissented. The Cyborgs are virtually indestructible killing machines who look like regular male humans. I think there's only one mass-produced type (the one we see), a big strapping dude, about 6'4" 250, who looks like a Czech hockey player or maybe a German industrial rock guitarist. This model of Cyborg comes standard with infrared vision, the hearing of a bat, computer interface plug in his finger, a tenth degree black belt in Karate, and an outfit of black leather spike-studded motorcycle jacket, black jeans and combat boots.
The Cyborg!
The anthropomorphic nature of the Cyborg is not explained, though we can assume that it's the same reason used in The Terminator series, to allow the robot to blend in enough to gain entrance to human redoubts. That said, the decision to make a standard Cyborg model that looks so continental is strange, as you'd think something more American-looking would work better. Anyway, if you are trying to instill fear and respect in your human slaves, then I'd suggest something fifteen-feet tall and bristling with 30mm cannons and flamethrowers, crunching through the rubble on thick steel treads, dispensing justice through the liberal use of heat-seeking fragmentation rockets. But that's just me.
The Cyborg, again, check those metal studs on his jacket.
While most of the huddled masses in Charleston have given up hope of anything better, a courageous band of rebels is working out of sight to defeat the evil hegemony of the robots and the System and return humanity to its glory days. Our movie is about this resistance movement, as seen through the eyes of a single woman, and the vile machine that seeks only to eliminate her before she can bring hope to the rest of humanity.
Ok, I know, I know, American Cyborg: Steel Warrior is a blatant rip-off of The Terminator, T2, Blade Runner, RoboCop, Van Damme's Cyborg, and about a dozen other similar "homages" to the genre. But we knew that already, right? I'm not going to waste my time comparing our movie to those that came before it, we have better things to talk about.
Like how these rebels have somehow managed to create an underground laboratory beneath the ravaged streets of Charleston, fully stocked with salvaged computers and scientific equipment. A large group of smartyhead doctors is working on the most pressing detriment to the survival of the species, namely that since the war all females are barren.
The lab, how do they hide from the System the massive amounts of electricity needed to run all these computers?
All, that is, except for one young woman, most providentially named Mary, who amazingly has live ova inside her. The scientists have taken an ova from her, mixed in some sperm, and created a "test tube baby" that is the "only hope for humanity". The fetus, now about four weeks old, is kept in this wicked cool glowing see-through containment unit about the size of a soccer ball.
The fetus in the jar, floating contently in there, giving us a creepy smile every now and then.
Mary will be our film's heroine, our Sarah Conner figure but without the buff pecs. She's played by Nicole Hansen, a attractive twentysomething blonde who looks remarkably like Darryl Hannah in the face. She's a rotten actress, incapable of effective line-reads for most of the movie, but she's hot, so that makes up for it. Her single outfit for the entire film is a low-cut tight red top, black cotton leggings, Rosie Perez hoop earrings, and the most ridiculous pair of fringy leather calf-high boots you've seen since...well, since 1994.
Mary.
The problem is that the lab in Charleston doesn't have an incubator sophisticated enough to properly gestate the fetus to full term. Hey, why didn't they just leave it inside Mary? They never explain that. However, over in Europe, equally as war-ravaged but not as oppressed, they have the necessary incubator. Via ham radio, Charleston and Europe have arranged for a boat to sneak over to America and pick up the fetus and take it back overseas.
Mary and her baby, not exactly what every young girl dreams of.
The other problem, and more pressing to our film's plot, is that Charleston is crawling with Cyborg killers, especially the docks, which are "restricted". The scientists have no choice, however, and so they equip and arm a small team to take Mary and the fetus to the docks. Time is of the essence, as the fetus in the containment thingie can only survive for 36 hours.
That map behind them looks more like Tel Aviv.
Now, clearly, the System isn't too happy about the prospects of humanity breeding again. Receiving some intel on the human lab, the System sends down a Cyborg terminator (hehe...) to wipe it out. Armed only a submachine gun and his indestructible fuzzy goatee, the Cyborg storms the lab. At that exact moment, the team is nearly set to leave for the docks, the fetus loaded up in Mary's backpack.
Mary spends a lot of this movie looking at her watch, as did I.
The carnage is swift and bloody, the Cyborg taking much return fire but shaking it off as he's nearly bulletproof. The Cyborg brings a prop-tweaked Kalashkinov AKS-74U submachinegun with some sort of weird cover around the barrel. It also seems to have a bottomless magazine, as he fires zillions of rounds throughout the movie without reloading once.
The Cyborg and his weapon.
I think I'm going to keep a running tally of a few things. First, the number of humans killed in the movie, next the number of blood-pack squibs used, which it seems that Cannon Films bought on discount sale. I'll also keep note of how much ammunition the Cyborg uses, based on the AKS-74U's 635 rounds per minute of 5.45mm on full-auto (per crazygunfreakwithnolife.com).
Total dead humans in this scene: 22
Total blood squibs used in this scene: 21
Total rounds fired by the Cyborg in this scene: 508
Only two people make it out of the firestorm alive, Mary and one other woman. The Cyborg sees them escape, and as his programming told him to eliminate all the humans down here, he gives chase. Nothing we will see suggests that the Cyborg is aware of the baby in the jar, he's just following orders.
The girls make it to the surface, hotly pursued, and are trapped at a high chainlink fence. The Cyborg shoots the other girl dead (to artfully hang on the fence) but Mary escapes the hail of bullets. Mary spends the entire rest of the movie dodging bullets, and still keeps her hair beautiful.
Cyborg-vision, in wide-screen!
The Cyborg is then held up by a group of scavengers who appear out of the shadows to pounce on the still-warm corpse of the girl, looking for loot and maybe even tasty flesh. The scavengers try and fight the Cyborg, but he's a hard metal robot with a machinegun and kung-fu skills, so you know how that works out for them.
Total dead humans in this scene: 4
Total blood squibs used in this scene: 6
Total rounds fired by the Cyborg in this scene: 74
Nice touch, those glowing eyes.
Mary, meanwhile, has made it to some random abandoned building, where she's not running very fast, and hiding too much, and really can't be surprised that the Cyborg soon catches up to her. It's dark in there, and in one of the film's neater touches, the Cyborg's eyes light up like little flashlights on goggles filmed from about 100 feet away so it looks like they are internally lit. More gunfire, more running, more of the Cyborg looking menacing, much more of Mary looking scared and breathing heavily. Another bunch of rounds of 5.45mm ammo fired, and still not one hit on Mary. You'd think a Cyborg with cool fire-control programming and laser eye-ball sighting like RoboCop would have better aim.
Total rounds fired by the Cyborg in this scene: 116
I wonder why a robot needs visual language cues.
They chase and run and hide and shoot and generally test my patience for about five minutes. In the end, Mary, showing vastly more resourcefulness than expected, manages to drop an engine block (!) on the Cyborg, pinning him long enough for her to escape out into the alley.
Backlighting, a very common camera trick in this movie, used for dramatic effect.
The streets, even at nighttime, are thick with wandering people. Fashions run the gamut from Blade Runner-esque transparent plastic raincoats to surplus Israeli Army combat fatigues. Cootie-infested hookers call to passerbys and bums beg for money in the muddy streets. There are also dangerous criminal gangs preying on the weak and the stupid, and it is into the arms of one of these gangs that Mary now stumbles.
Check the dude who looks like Gary Glitter.
Just when it looks like Mary is dead meat, a knife comes whistling in to thump into one of the gangsters! Out of the shadows comes our movie's hero, the rugged and deadly Austin, the prototypical wasteland avenger and rescuer of damsels in distress. Austin is played by b-movie specialist Joe Lara, a big buff Lorenzo Lamas-wannable with a spectacularly flowing mullet and a finely chiseled chin. He's armed with a variety of knives, a pistol, and an AK-47 with the pistol grip (which is probably a fake prop as he never uses it once). His outfit is typical Mad Max-like, with a lot of camo and olive drab, leather pants, bandoleers with numerous flappy pouches, and way too much chest hair showing. Most oddly, in most scenes he has a bulky rucksack on his back, with a huge shiny silver metal messkit that dangles down by his hip, making him look a bit like a PA-version of an 1849 California gold prospector.
Austin, that's awesome hair.
Anyway, the gangsters make a go of it against Austin, but they don't stand a chance. Austin is both well-armed and well-schooled in martial arts. He stabs, he kicks, he tosses them over his shoulder. The bad guys swing knives and sticks and even a medieval mace (!) but Austin dodges, spins and parries them all. And then he kicks their asses.
Dead humans in this scene: 1
The gangsters down, Austin rifles through the pockets one of them and retrieves some battery packs that he later says were stolen from him. Mary sees Austin as her only chance for survival, despite having just met him and really not sure what kind of man he is, and begs to go with him. Austin, however, isn't interested in some girl tagging along and leaves her there.
Austin and Mary, he's so tall.
Mary follows Austin anyway, not really having anything else to do, and they both end up in the shop of a local arms merchant/scrap dealer/Watto-esque sort of dude. The merchant is an awesome visual character, an Arabic man dressed in a mobster pinstripe suit and spats, and strangely wearing a neck brace (maybe just because it looks cool).
The merchant, proving that just because there has been a nuclear holocaust and killer robots that's no excuse for bad fashion taste.
Austin is there to trade the battery packs for some RZB tablets. These are "anti-radiation pills" that you need to consume if you are to have any hope for a long life in the ruins. The merchant is driving a hard, and unfair, bargain when Mary pipes up. She claims that she's on the way to the docks to meet a boat carrying a huge supply of RZB tabs, and if Austin helps her get there, he can have all he can carry in payment. That's a blatant lie, of course, but it's just too good an offer for Austin to turn down.
Mary offers Austin the promise of RZB.
But, boom! The wall explodes inward and the Cyborg jumps through the hole! The merchant's bodyguards start shooting, but the Cyborg guns them all down. He then shoots the merchant in the head for daring to haggle with him. That's why capitalism is doomed to failure.
Total dead humans in this scene: 4
Total blood squibs used in this scene: 6
Total rounds fired by the Cyborg in this scene: 52
The merchant tries to make a deal with the killer Cyborg, one guess how that works out.
Austin now jumps out, putting himself between the Cyborg and Mary. A pretty one-sided fight develops quickly, with Austin trying his best to hold off the Cyborg with everything from knives to lead pipes to two-by-fours. But he's hopelessly outmatched by the killer robot and ends up inches from death.
Fight!
Mary saves the day here, by popping up with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher (this is an arms merchant's shop) and blasting the Cyborg in the midsection, allowing them to escape in the resulting puff of smoke. The Cyborg, however recovers quickly. It's said that he's made of some sort of "liquid metal" (how original...) so he can "heal itself" quickly. Oddly, though, the oft-bullet riddled black leather jacket he wears seems to "heal itself" between scenes as well...
Ok, so Austin knows the way to the docks. He says he's been there once, a long time ago and he didn't like it much. The docks are forbidden to humans, "on the other side of the barrier", but the sewers run down to the sea and that's one way to get there. The tunnels are mined, however, and we see them gingerly stepping around the dinner-plate sized mines, laid haphazardly in the shallow murky water.
The sewers, strangely well-lit.
But the Cyborg has tracked them to the sewers and gives chase. The Cyborg has a special vision program that allows him to see the residual heat signatures from footsteps on the cold dark ground, which is pretty cool. As he catches up, he starts shooting down the tunnel at them, but hits only some poor innocent rats, caught in the crossfire and tragically gunned down in the prime of their lives.
Total rounds fired by the Cyborg in this scene: 31
Heat-seeking vision!
Down in the tunnel, Austin rigs a mine as a booby trap, setting his rifle on top of the mine trigger. As he and Mary egress to the surface, the fast-moving Cyborg trips the mine, sending a blast wave of smoke and flash gushing out of the sewer entrance. They both realize that a mine, no matter how big, won't stop the hunter for long, so they set off at a steady trot.
We see this exact same set of stairs about ten times in this movie.
The sewer route now out of the question (why again? why can't they just go further down the line and reenter the sewers?) Austin and Mary have to travel above ground, rapidly now as the Cyborg is back on their tail. Travel during the daytime is risky, both due to the increased chances of detection by robots from the System, and the skin-scorching solar radiation. All those nukes in the air 17 years ago have apparently weakened the o-zone layer enough to make a summer sunburn particularly deadly. When forced to travel in the sun, Austin and Mary stick to shadows and wear sunglasses and these dorky headscarves. The Cyborg, however, is unaffected by the sun and the heat and continues to dress like the drummer from the band Danzig.
As night falls, they go to a safe house of sorts, clearly somewhere Austin has stayed before. There's some books, some knick-knacks and even a big American flag tacked up on the wall. Austin shows some considerable kindness to Mary, really for the first time, and she appreciates the gesture. Exhausted, Austin sleeps on the couch while Mary takes the bed (aww, how sweet).
"And, like, then we all went to, like, Old Navy and bought these, like, cute sweaters..."
But, as always, the Cyborg enters! Another fight in the ruins, another chance for Mary to run and scream, for Austin to conduct a fall-back defense, and for the Cyborg to look damn cool.
Total rounds fired by Cyborg in this scene: 42
Very RoboCop-like, eh?
All these Austin-versus-Cyborg fights (and there are a most tedious amount of them) follow the same pattern. The Cyborg shoots a lot and misses. Austin then moves in close and hits and swings and jabs, and the Cyborg parries everything and then smacks Austin in return. Back and forth, back and forth. At the end of the sequence, something fortuitous happens (the Cyborg falls through a floor, or trips, or something) allowing Austin and Mary to escape once again. When injured, the Cyborg "bleeds" a syrupy whitish liquid, just like the android in Aliens. I swear, this movie rips off so much stuff from other films that it wouldn't surprise me in the least if Mary suddenly put on a gingham dress and burst out in a rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow while little Austrian children dance around her.
White blood.
The Cyborg is two seconds from killing Mary when Austin trips him over a ledge (see, I told you). The Cyborg falls onto a long auger bit, conveniently pointing straight up. But even that isn't enough to stop the killer robot, as in short order he breaks off the auger and "heals himself".
Get up, it's just a flesh wound.
Anyway, Mary and Austin escape again and run like hell. Running low on supplies and ammo, Austin votes to take a short detour to where he has a hidden stash of ammo. Once there, Mary stands guard while Austin goes down into a huge empty holding tank. He has a rope hidden nearby, which he uses to rappel down into the darkness, gas mask over his face to hide the fact that it's a stuntman. His stash, however, has been raided!
Rappelling down into the tank.
Up above, Mary is caught by a woman with a pistol and held captive. The woman tries to put the moves on Mary, suggesting that there's room inside her pants for the both of them! "Why don't I climb in there with you and we'll enter a three-legged race?" the woman sneers, "Drop your drawers, bitch!" Mary is pretty dense here, and doesn't seem to understand what the woman is suggesting, though it's pretty clear to us.
The butchy woman, Carp.
She's saved by Austin, who disarms the woman and then starts to talk to her (!). It seems that she's a "friend" of his, though a trigger-happy twitchy friend, and it was her who emptied his ammo stash. Her name is "Carp" and she's short and annoying and lesbian in a bad butchy sort of way. She gives Austin the bullets back and he and Mary head off, with the woman telling him to come back some time.
Not long after that, the flames of jealousy begin to lick at Mary. She tries to pin Austin down on the exact nature of the "friendship" that he and Carp have. Austin coyly holds his ground, claiming that Carp is "as close to family as I have", though he can see now that Mary has gushy feelings for him. Kill me.
I'd pick her, too, she's hot.
Now, Mary couldn't keep the secret of the fetus in the pack from Austin forever, right? And it finally happens, she slips on some muddy rocks, he reaches out to steady her and his hand accidentally brushes open the backpack, exposing the freaky baby in the tube. Austin is understandably freaked out and demands that Mary tell him the truth.
Mary explains her reasoning, though I was more interested in the Burka, which makes her look a bit like Queen Amidala.
Mary gives it all up now, admitting she lied about the RZB tabs, owning up to the baby being hers, and begging Austin to help her to the docks anyway. Austin, not without reason I say, rages that he doesn't care, that he was lied to, and he's leaving back for the city and Mary is on her own. Mary tries hammering on Austin's sense of humanity, noting correctly that this baby might be the last hope for the race to survive. "Don't be mad." she says, but Austin is too angry to listen right now and he leaves as promised. He does, however, give her a pistol and what little ammo he has left, and he seems genuinely conflicted about what he's about to do.
Nothing says I love you like a handgun.
But leave he does, and Mary is alone again. She stands there forlornly for a minute, clearly unsure what to do. But she knows that she carries the hope of the human race on her back, and bodyguard or no bodyguard, she has an obligation to get the baby safely to the docks. Off she heads...
...into a nest of cannibals! These will be the "Leeches", a group of radiation-mutated flesh-eaters (all-too-common fare in cheap PA movies, and rarely done realistically, especially here). The Leeches occupy a former church, where they keep their loot and cook up any hapless victims that they catch.
Church.
Their latest snack is soon to be poor Mary, captured quite easily when she wandered somewhere she shouldn't have. She's tied to a vaguely cross-shaped iron beam, stretched out like she's been crucified (the religious undertones in this movie are mostly subtle, but occasionally quite striking, as in this scene). It doesn't look good for her, the cannibals chant "Food!" as the Head Leech tells her that they will honor her great physical beauty by "tasting her" (I said that to a girl once, cost my brother $150 to bail me out of jail...).
Head Leech.
Austin has a change of heart and rushes to the scene to rescue Mary and the baby. The Leeches turn to confront him, armed with knives, pikes and swords. Austin pulls out a pistol, a small 9mm Beretta automatic, and starts shooting. It's strange to see Austin, a big burly hairy dude, holding that dinky little girly pistol. Eastwood would have had a huge chrome .44 Magnum and a pack of unfiltered Lucky Strikes if he was in this scene. Stallone would have had a big blue-steel Desert Eagle revolver with a laser sight. Swartzenagger would have some big-ass Gatling gun firing armor-piercing rounds. Oh, and Chuck Norris would have killed everybody in the room just by threatening to unleash one of his legendary roundhouse kicks, half of the Leeches would have collapsed out of sheer envy of Norris' uber-manly alpha-manliness (I admit it, I have a man-crush on Chuck Norris. And I don't care what you think, you can't understand our love).
One day he will be mine.
Anyway, Austin empties the clip and then tosses the empty pistol at another cannibal before jumping in with fists a-flying. The cannibals are poor fighters, basically just mindless zombies rushing headlong into Austin's flashing blades and swinging boots. Joe Lara did most, if not all, of his own stunts in this scene, and he is indeed in excellent physical condition. And between takes the make-up girls made sure his mullet was properly flowing.
The Leeches
The Head Leech escapes with the backpack (though he doesn't know what's in it), and Austin gives chase. Out on an open roof they punch, kick, gouge, shove and generally abuse each other until Austin gets the upper hand and dispatches the Head Leech. The baby is saved.
Dead humans in this scene: 20
Blood squibs used in this scene: 3
Mary on the cross.
Mary and Austin now share a quiet moment in the church, amidst the bloated bleeding bodies of the slaughtered Leeches, no less. They talk about the future, about the past, and about why Austin came back for her. Mary tells him about her childhood in a bunker as the bombs fell and how robots killed her family. Austin, though, doesn't share his childhood stories yet. But they kiss a nice slow long-time-coming kiss as the music swoons.
It's about time, the sexual tension was killing me!
However, before Austin can get past first base, the Cyborg punches his way into the room! Good Lord, this guy never gives up! Yet another fight develops, this one a wicked one, with fire axes, pistols, knives, metal poles and size 13 Israeli combat tanker boots all used in a variety of messy, violent ways.
Total rounds fired by Cyborg in this scene: 14
Another awesome entrance, the Cyborg gets a lot of these.
Austin cuts off one of the Cyborg's arms (!) and pushes him into an elevator shaft (!). But, as he falls, the Cyborg manages to grab ahold of one of Austin's arms (!). In a rather bloody and gory sequence, Austin's arm is ripped out of its socket! Austin screams in pain and clutches the stump. He then sees that inside the bloody stump are a bunch of wires and electrodes!
What's this, wires?
And now we have our movie's "stunning" and "shocking" plot twist: Austin is really a cyborg! Who knew! Well, I guess you might have figured it out before now, there were a few clues dropped. Like the fact that his head wound healed miraculously without a scar, just like the Cyborg, and he seemed to be able to take an incredible amount of physical punishment and still keep on his feet, just like the Cyborg, and even that one bit where the Cyborg seemed to realize Austin was one of them. Joe Lara's acting style is also cyborg-like, if you know what I mean.
Ouch, that's gotta burn.
Mary points the pistol at Austin, and screams at him about betrayal and lies and deceit and that time she caught him text messaging that girl from work...wait, not, that was me last week. Anyway, Mary is pissed, she thinks Austin has been in cahoots with the Cyborg to get her baby (despite all the evidence to the contrary) and is this close to putting a bullet in Austin's head. But, her emotions get the better of her and she just runs off, leaving Austin to sort out his own emotional crisis alone.
By the way, we never get any explanation about Austin being a cyborg. Just accept the fact that he, like Rick Deckard before him, had to find out the hard way that his insides were made by Sony and GE.
Mary is pissed, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
Mary then somehow (?) makes it to the docks alone (?). We see the Atlantic Ocean at sunrise, the gentile waves lapping at an elevated causeway as Mary walks along. What about all that ominous talk about how the docks were "forbidden" and how even super-studly Austin wouldn't go there anymore? Maybe by now Mary has learned enough about wasteland survival to do it alone, but a little more exposition might be in order.
The Atlantic, which looks a lot like the eastern Mediterranean here.
As Mary looks for a way around a high fence, the only sign of a "barrier", it starts to rain. Oh oh! It's acid rain! Mary jumps under an overhang as the toxic rain sizzles all around her. She pulls out her canteen and tries to wash the acid off her exposed skin, and off the backpack, which took quite a dousing before she found cover. Why wasn't this acid rain mentioned before? It makes sense, though, with all the contamination in the air.
She doesn't wash her face off I notice.
Just then, who should appear behind her but Carp (the lesbian woman from earlier)! What the hell? She claims that she followed Mary here to get some RZB tabs for herself, sure that Austin (that rat) wouldn't cut her in on any like he promised (just like a man...). Carp is actually here to be helpful, which is surprising as I sorta pegged her earlier as a traitor to the cause.
Carp again.
Carp shows Mary a way down to the water's edge, through a short tidal overflow tunnel that leads under a wide pier. The tunnel is an easy traverse, despite the week-old corpse being eaten by rats and the scary organ music. Mary is extremely happy to make it to the water, her long journey across the city finally over and now her baby will be safe. Right on cue, she spies a ship offshore, with a few guys coming towards her in a small power boat.
Water's edge.
Suddenly, the Cyborg bursts up out of the surf a few feet in front of her! What the holy hell! Die, already! Who do you think you are, the Terminator? Oh, and the Cyborg has "regenerated" his arm that was cut off, though it's now all black and gooey-looking. He's lost his submachinegun, but he's still got the advantage over a 110-pound girl.
"Raaahh! Vote for me!"
Mary freaks out and runs (well, sloshes through the knee deep water, the actress is really getting a workout in this movie) away screaming bloody murder. She hunkers behind a corroded pier support, pistol in hand, heart pounding. The Cyborg wades around under the pier, searching for her.
Hiding behind the pylon, breasts heaving with the tides.
Mary shoots the Cyborg in the eye (!), giving her time to run out onto the open beach. The scriptwriters then suddenly forget the whole "sunlight is bad" thing as the tank-top wearing Mary runs around in the bright sun. They also seem to have forgotten the season, as all the other actors and extras in this entire movie have been dressed like it's September in Greenland, and now all of a sudden it's a sunny tropical day. Oh well, moving on, the Cyborg pegs Mary in the back of the head with a well-tossed hubcap (really) and it looks like our heroine is finally going to loose.
She is very cute, I'll say, now that we see her in full sunlight.
Just then who should come running up to tackle the Cyborg? It's Austin! And he has two arms! What the hell! Ah, remember back when he cut off the Cyborg's arm before loosing his own? Well, while we were away, he somehow managed to sew the Cyborg's arm onto his own stump and make it work!!!! Sure. I'd make more of this, but it's late and I have to work in the morning so I'm just going to let it go.
Austin and the Cyborg fight in the surf. They punch and jab, hold each other under the water (though not sure what that's going to do, they're both robots) and clutch and grab a lot. We get some close-ups of the Cyborg's face, the fake eye damage really apparent. I know they were trying to do a Terminator thing with the eye, but they need better make-up guys to do that.
Eye damage.
Austin then puts out the Cyborg's other eye! Blinded, the Cyborg is defenseless when Austin slashes open his stomach, reaches in and grabs a handful of wires and pulls them out! Good lord! The Cyborg expires, drifting away on the waves before exploding in a big puff of smoke and flame.
Austin pulls out his wires, ouch.
The boat then pulls into bay, a half-dozen Europeans at the rails. The baby is rushed aboard and put into the incubator just in time. Notice that the men on the boat handle the baby a million times more gently that Mary has all movie, she's been bouncing and tossing him around in every scene.
Baby in the incubator, pretty creepy.
The baby safe, Mary wants Austin to come with her to Europe. "The baby needs a father." she says, but Austin only replies that he can't, but "The baby will have a great mother." Time is short, so they exchange a last kiss and Mary gets on the boat. The end, yet another lonewolf wasteland PA hero who chooses the life of solitude and danger over a life of comfort and sex with a beautiful woman.
Dumbass.
The end.
Final statistics:
Total dead humans: 51
Total blood squibs used: 36
Total rounds fired by the Cyborg: 837
Written in September 2007 by Nathan Decker.
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