Oh, Canada: Manborg

This is glorious in its insanity!  Today's film is Manborg, a film that I have been looking forward to seeing for a while now.  Thanks to Blockbuster Video Stores all going out of business- sorry, guys-, I got my hands on it quite cheap- $4.99 to be exact.  Well, it was certainly a better value than Death From Above- that's for damn sure!  The down-side is that Maynard got to see it before I did.  The up-side: I own it on DVD, which means that I own the film and the Bio-Cop trailer.  Score!  I will get around to covering that thing on its own soon enough.  So what is Manborg about?  Do I need to spell it out?  It's about a Manborg that fights evil and tries to save the day.  If you really need to know more, you may not be the film's audience.  To see a glimpse of what this intentionally-retro-looking Import film is like, read on...

The evil Count Draculon is leading his forces of HELL to take over the World!  He kills our hero's brother and then the man himself.  Is he truly dead though?

A mysterious man takes his body and restores him.  He creates a MANBORG!

He regains consciousness and discovers that the creatures have taken over the World and force humans to fight for their amusement.

There are actually alot of similarities between this film and Actium Maximus.  The differences are important though.

For one thing, this film has a hero.  He's MANBORG and he has a machine gun hand and a missile hidden in his elbow.  Who else can make that boast?

Also unlike Actium Maximus, the Special Effects (as chessy as they are) are satisfying.  Watch him shoot this guy into a dozen pieces!  It's ridiculous!  It's over-the-top!  It's...well, awesome.

In a really silly bit, he must fight the Gladiatorial Arena's top fighter.  This Claymation monster is ludicrous and gets blown up with a missile.

The only thing that tops this design is NM-E, the 4-armed T-Rex robot with machine guns for hands from Ultraforce.  That thing...is just too awesome.  He needs to be in Avengers 2.

I will be a bit vague on the plot from hereon out, since I do want you to see this piece of goofy awesomeness.  I will say that they eventually break free.

They must go through a training montage (of course!) to prepare for the final battle against Count Draculon and his evil henchmen.  Are they up for the task?

Look at this guy and say that you're in a rush to go fight him. I dare you.

To find out who wins, who loses and how much carnage is raised, see the movie.  Trust me- it's ridiculous!  The End.

There's not much more to say about how great this thing is.  I was not 100% sold on the film, to be honest.  It had the possibility of turning out to just be dumb.  Let's be honest: this sounds like alot any number of Troma films out there.  Thankfully, it is treated seriously.  Yes, the plot is silly and everything that happens is pretty much ludicrous.  Why the film works is that they treat it seriously, but also don't act like it is high art.  Actium Maximus acted like it was the next Star Wars.  Where did that get it?  It got it bundled on a DVD with Star Worms II (which isn't actually a Sequel- don't ask), that's what!  Manborg is ludicrous, silly and another word I've probably used about 600 times in this review so far.  Like I said, I was skeptical, but they knocked it out of the park.  See it!  Buy it!  See it again!  Now all they need to do is make Bio-Cop a full film.  I'll get to that quite soon...

Next up, a special look at the bonus feature with Manborg.  Can the bastard child of Robo-Cop and The Toxic Avenger be anything but weird?  Stay tuned...