Manborg

Stop motion magic.

Manborg is a 2011 spoof/homage to cheesy action/horror/sci-fi from the late 80s/early 90s. So, it takes the most ridiculous aspects of films like Cyborg, Robocop, Hellraiser, Terminator II, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Hardware, Mortal Kombat, etc. and turns them into a brilliantly entertaining film that should satisfy fans of Full Metal Yakuza, Hobo with a Shot Gun, Tokyo Gore Police, Isle of the Damned and most of Troma's output. It's unbelievably good, a result of mixing conventional latex effects, stop motion, and comically bad laptop effects.

Manborg was originally a soldier in the last great war against Hell's armies, led not by Satan, but by the dreaded Count Draculon, a bio-mechanical demon created on a shoe-string budget. But of course, that soldier was killed in combat and made into a super-warrior, only to wake up in a futuristic time full of future cassettes and future locks and total world domination by Hell.

A blonde Peter Sellers plays a future Dr. Strangelove.

Manborg is quickly captured and locked up with several archetypal prisoners --Liberty, the Australian punker whose power seems to be to shoot two revolvers at once while dancing, Mina, the kick-ass knife ninja chick who has the power of going into anime attack mode, and #1 Man, the superstrong and disciplined martial-arts master. They are held captive by the evil Baron and his henchmen Dr. Scorpius and Shadow Mega, a hot cyborg woman, and forced to fight in an arena against Hell's minions and giant robot monsters.

Liberty, his sister Mina, and #1 Man. The good guys.

All of the usual action cliches follow: Manborg suffers from amnesia and can't explain himself, so he is not trusted by the other prisoners. But then he quickly masters his robo-human powers and becomes their hero. They break out of prison and go into hiding. Heads get blown off. Lots of scary skeletal and zombie-esque bad guys in Nazi-style uniforms. Liberty and #1 Man try to make a box of instant macaroni, blah, blah, blah. 

A jailer-bot and Shadow Mega. Bad guys.

The movie works great as a parody, but also contains a lot of really witty and bizarre additional humor, and some really great horror effects. Totally recommended if you like anything cool. It kept me entirely entertained the whole way through and I laughed out loud at least a dozen times. It's great. Made me happy.

RATING:

Message from Space

The year is 1978. Someone in Japan saw Star Wars and wanted to recreate that level of sci-fi magic without doing any of the things that actually made Star Wars magical. That being said, Message from Space really is rather entertaining as a space opera in the tradition of the old Flash Gordan serials.  Naive, fun entertainment.

But it is not without its retro absurdities, so it is satisfying on many levels. It's extremely plot heavy; Wikipedia's synopsis is almost 2,700 words. I won't bore you with all that. I'll just say that the story doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it is very satisfying as a feel-good adventure movie. The costumes and airships alone are reason enough to watch Message from Space.

Imagine Star Wars with these characters.

Eight magic walnuts fly through the galaxy searching out heroes to save the world. Have fun figuring out why these eight in particular are chosen. A Princess Leia and her body guard (unhairy Chewbacca?) go in search of the heroes the walnuts have chosen. Vic Morrow plays a cross between Obi-wan Kenobi and Jack Flack from Cloak and Dagger. He finds his walnut in a glass of Scotch. A deposed prince played by Sonny Chiba is forced to fight against his own people to save the universe. Yeah, it's epic.

Darth Vader with lots of horns.

Then someone decides that the only way to save the world is to blow up the world.

Parts also seem like a pagan Christmas pageant.

There are plenty of awkward scenes: R2D2/Twiki on guard duty holding what appears to be a long flintlock musket. The heroes floating through space without space suits, collecting space fireflies in a meteor belt. Epic battles in which everyone has a laser pistol in one hand and a sword in the other. And Gredo wants to marry Princess Leia.

Memorable quotes:

"Earth is on the verge of annihilation. That must not happen."

"Forget about your medals, [R2D2/Twiki]. There are more beautiful dreams in space."

RATING: