8.28.2011

Review: Eliminators

Image courtesy of VHSWasteland.com and Vestron Dan

1986
Directed by:
Peter Manoogian
Category: Cult Classics

Wow. It's amazing how your memory as a kid watching a film like this back in 1986 can be so off the mark.
I remember this flick fondly, having had the VHS in my home and watching it often. I don't know, I think  it might have just been that badass cover or the cool concept of the Mandroid. In either case, I was way off the mark and as I watched this tonight all I could think of was when will it be over. I wanted to just stop watching it but then thought, "what if it had something super cool at the end. A saving grace?". Not here folks.

Mandroid. Mercenary. Scientist. Ninja. 
Each one a specialist. 
Together they are ELIMINATORS!

So I feel before I go any further that I should say that the title and the tagline are completely misleading. They are not a group of specialists who come together to form an elite group called the Eliminators. They're not like the A-Team or anything, so you can't give them a name like Eliminators like they're soldiers of fortune or some shit like that. That kinda pisses me off as I was thinking this was going to be a totally different kinda flick and what I got was a lame super low-budget kiddie Saturday afternoon popcorn flick clearly aimed at kids. Oh, and that badass tank looking thing that the Mandroid rides? He only uses it for the first 10 minutes of the movie and that's it. When he "was" using it, that thing was sweet! But then he detaches himself from it and puts his robot legs on and that's how he moves around for the rest of this things. Again, another misleading factor you need to know before going into this. 

So they are "NOT" Eliminators, but rahter a group of people that just so happen to come together by chance and not on any real mission. The mercenary is not a mercenary but a river guide. And he's only in it for the money. The ninja only shows up in the last 15 minutes of the movie and only by chance as he's on his own mission to look for his father who's been missing. The mandroid is a half man half android who was created and designed for space missions. The thing is that the evil scientist Abbott Reeves uses Dr. Nora Hunter's science and technology for evil and when he tries to destroy the mandroid, he escapes and enlists the help of Dr. Hunter. Only then does she learn her inventions are being used for Reeves own personal gain and not for a space program like she had intended. So Hunter and the Mandroid take off to go find this Dr. Reeves and stop him from using this technology for evil. 

I don't want to get into any more of the plot as honestly, it's a waste of time. I was severely disappointed in almost every aspect of this thing. Production, effects, story, direction, editing, structure.....everything. The only decent aspect was maybe the acting, but that's it. It has a pretty decent opening, but drags severely in the entire middle only to be given a big ending that feels half assed and a wasted opportunity due to the extremely limited budget. It's almost like why bother if you know you don't have any money to make it look at least decent? 

So the writing team of Paul De Meo and Danny Bilson have done mostly low grade stuff with the exception of a few television series and The Rocketeer, which was actually really good. They also wrote the original Trancers. After this they wrote another movie called Arena that was also directed by the director of this disaster Peter Manoogian from 1989. That movie, if I remember correctly (and my mind's not playing tricks on me again) was not half bad. It was about gladiators in space who fought for a show or something and the star was a Christopher Reeve lookalike except with blonde curly hair who fought all these different aliens. Low-budget but much better than this stuff. I'm sorry, but this guy just does not have the chops to direct a movie. And certainly not something with this kinda story that "could" have been badass had it had a more competent director and sharper script. I mean, who doesn't want to see a movie about a Mandroid, ninja, mercenary and scientist on a quest to stop evil? The concept is cool, but the execution was to put it simply, bad.

Eliminators.......pssh! They should have saved that name for something way cooler than this.
I do love that VHS cover art though. It at least has that going for it and must be the reason I kept thinking this thing was badass. Funny.

A special thank you to Vestron Dan and VHS Wasteland for the VHS cover scan.

3 comments:

  1. The cover art is great! We have this in our pile of movies to watch, and we keep skipping it. After your great write-up of this dud...will keep skipping it. Haha.

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  2. Skip it dude! I kept waiting and waiting for something cool to happen, but I ended up being so bored that I started doing other stuff while I was trying to finish it. lol.
    It doesn't even fall into the "it's so bad it's good" category like Never Too Young To Die. It's just bad.

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  3. Will do. Once my brother and I watch everything else in our pile, we will get to Elimators (and the Jay Leno-Pat Morita "classic" Collison Course..lol)

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