Albert Pyun strikes again! Omega Doom is a 1996 Film that is not all that memorable. Here's what the Internet tells me- try to follow this. Cyborg is the first Film in a Trilogy of Films (most famous for featuring Angelina Jolie in Cyborg 2). Seems simple. However, the Director made 2 different Films that *also* featured Cyborgs, so we get a second, unofficial Trilogy of Cyborg, 1993's Knights and this Film. Somehow there's a Cyborg Trilogy without the Cyborg Sequels- logical! The Plot of this one is basically 'What if Yojimbo was about Cyborgs?' Initially I was thinking that this was a bit of a retread for Pyun, but then I remembered that I was mixing up The Sword and the Sorcerer (by Pyun) with The Warrior and the Sorceress (not by Pyun). You can see the confusion, no? Another key thing to note is that I'm not sure that Pyun ever learned what a Cyborg was. The Characters here are Androids (Robots designed to look like humans) and not Cyborgs (Humans with robotic parts/limbs). I guess there might be a fine line if you replace, for instance, everything but the human brain with a robot body...but that's not what happens here. So basically, the 3rd part of Pyun's Cyborg Trilogy does not even feature Cyborgs! The big Star here is Rutger Hauer, who clearly had a thing for Sci-Fi. Would it be worth it today? Let's find out...
In a dark Future (not to be confused with Greydon Clark's Dark Future), Humans and Robots battle.
Since this Film has a tiny budget, we only get to see 2 of them against a Green Screen.
Hauer's 'Cyborg' is shot in the head, which makes him forget his 'hate all humans' programming.
Some time later, he wanders to a small Village.
Since it is Yojimbo, there are two warring Factions (of supposed Cyborgs).
Since this, again, is cheaply-made, there are only like 6 or 7 Residents in total.
He helps out one 'person' who has been decapitated and who's head is being abused by one of the residents.
He's an Android, so its more of an inconvenience than anything though.
The two sides both try to get him to work with them. I mean, it's
Yojimbo.
Curiously, one of the groups (lead by Shannon Whirry) looks like they came out of The Matrix...which wouldn't come out for 3 years.
Will he work with them?
Will he just destroy them?
You know what happens right?
He defeats the bad guys, helps the good guys and recites some pretentious poetry (a requirement for Hauer, it seems).
Since not much interesting happens, here's Omega Doom from the Transformers Universe.
A pretentious, but pretty dry affair. If you take away the Cyborg/Android stuff here, not much of interest happens. A guy wanders into a mostly-empty Town. He works with both Factions. He betrays both Factions since they are evil. He leaves. That's the basics of the Story. How you make it interesting is to first make the Hero interesting. I love Rutger Hauer, but the part is so underwritten that he can only do so much. His mild sarcasm helps...but not that much. The next option is to make the bad guys interesting. Yeah, no so much. One of them wears random outfits (including a metal mask) and is angry all of the time. Another group, as noted, are early Matrix fashion adopters. Neither one does much of note, so that's not going to work. The third way is to make the location interesting. It's a mostly-empty, mostly-wrecked Village Set that has probably been used on 20 other Films like this. To be fair, many Films have made good use of abandoned Sets (google Abandoned Film Sets to see some) to look the part. Once you see this place once, you've seen it all. They never go anywhere new- despite teasing a trip somewhere- so that's a no go. The Film just has so little to offer, unfortunately. If you like the pretentious kind of Bad Movies, this might work for you. It would be good Rifftrax fodder, but I don't recommend it on its own. Now I guess I need to track THIS one down too, huh?
Next time, a once-rare Vincent Price Film. I found the VHS 'in the wild,' so is it a hidden gem? Stay tuned...
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