The Sincerest Form of Fraudulence :: Dying Hard While The Dudikoff Abides in Robert Lee's Cyberjack (1995)

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“After tonight, God will be lucky if I return his calls!”

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In the not to distant future, Nick James is circling the drain. Several years removed from an incident where a bad decision during a stand-off got himself nearly (and his partner definitely) killed in the line of duty, James (Dudikoff) is now a barely functioning alcoholic, who lost his job as a policemen, is currently in hock to his bookie for an exorbitant sum of cash, money he lost betting on the hometown baseball team, money he doesn't have, which finds him striking a bargain with a friendly security guard to hide out for the night at Quantum Industries, where he works as a janitor -- sorry, as a custodial engineer, in an effort to save his kneecaps from being broken. 

James is fairly friendly with most of the staff at Quantum, recently budding a bond with one of their chief research scientists, Dr. Alex Royce (Kaiser), over a dead car battery and their mutual love and diehard loyalty to the Neptunes, that aforementioned shitty baseball team (OF THE FUTURE!). Royce works in tandem with her father (Fraser) as they try to perfect an "organic computer virus," which is your garden variety bits and bytes contagion they have merged with some *ahem* 'neurological protoplasm' because of SCIENCE!. Well, actually, it was designed to be a Super Anti-Virus but my eyes kinda glazed over during the expository sci-babble, here, so, yeah, moving on... 

Despite pressure from an over-eager CEO, the younger Royce is leery over the project's effectiveness and feels more RnD testing is needed. Dad, however, feels it's almost ready to launch. (Three guesses on whose side the CEO will be on?) Well, turns out someone else thinks it's ready to roll, too; a criminal mastermind named Nassim (James), who, coincidentally enough, was the perp' who killed James' partner; and he plans to steal the virus for his own nefarious purposes. (Purposes you won't believe even when I reveal them later.) Which brings all our characters together and the audience up to speed when Nassim and his band of Class of Nuke 'Em High rejects clandestinely infiltrate the Quantum building, eliminate all the security personnel, and that CEO, with ruthless efficiency, before rounding up all the remaining staff into the Royce's lab, where he makes his demands known. 

Ah, but remember, and unknown to Nassim and his goon squad, there's an extra player lurking in the building. Someone looking for a little redemption, a little revenge, and the score of the Neptune's game. Someone who is handy with a monkey-wrench, and knows just how to use it... 

It's not often a direct to video knock-off opens with a preamble credited to Dr. Stephen Hawking, but here ya go. The 1990s truly were a glorious time of conjecture on where computers would take us. Some place bad or some place good depended on who was doing the screenplay. By 1995 the internet was just starting to stretch its legs, 'virtual reality', 'cyber-crimes' and 'hacking' were new buzzwords, and yet, even some ten years after TRON (1982), no one in the movie-making business seemed to understand how computers actually worked. Still more fiction than science, then, 90% of this kind of cinematic conjecturing was total horseshit; but it was ah-mazing to behold and revel in its horsehittiness. Here, the notion is to merge man and machine. E'yup. Nassim wants to inject the Royce virus into a chip implanted inside his head, which, in theory, will either kill him or turn him into an ersatz Brainiac / MCP program that will allow him to infect everything to satiate his lust to rule the world! [Insert maniacal laughter here.] Like I said: horseshit.

Thus, when The Celluloid Zeroes decided to do Knock-Offs, Rip-Offs and Frommage Homages for this latest roundtable, I immediately knew I wanted to do a Michael Dudikoff movie. The problem was narrowing it down to one choice. I mean, there's his gang-banger version of The Dirty Dozen, Soldier Boyz (1995); or his Platoon clone, Platoon Leader (1988); The Hitcher begat Midnight Ride (1990), with Mark Hamill taking over for Rutger Hauer (-- don't laugh, it's better than you'd think); he's The Most Dangerous Game in Avenging Force (1986); and The Hunter becomes the hunted in Moving Target (1996). However, in the end, the choice was fairly easy: Cyberjack a/k/a Virtual Assassin (1995), which not only apes Die Hard (1988) with a vengeance, and is set in the dystopian future of Paul Verhoeven's Robocop (1987), it also steals several terrible ideas from Johnny Mnemonic (1995) and The Lawnmower Man (1992). Noodle that line of code for a bit, fellow programs. 

Don't get me wrong. I love this movie, and The Dudikoff something fierce. As the legend goes, it was being spotted while working at a restaurant by a fashion editor that launched Dudikoff's career; first as a model, then as an actor. Dudikoff always had the looks of a leading man, and the moves to be an action hero. (He's well-versed in Jiu-Jitsu). Acting wise, he's somewhere on the scale between Lorenzo Llamas and Jan-Michael Vincent, meaning he's just fine when he's cast in his comfort zone as the quiet loner who is called upon to bust some heads. His first big break came playing one of Tom Hank's bosom buddies in the raunch-com, Bachelor Party (1984). This was followed by Radioactive Dreams (1985), Albert Pyun's most-Pyunical hard-boiled post-apocalyptic musical. (Again, not as bad as you'd think.) After that, Dudikoff started working steadily for the Go-Go boys at Cannon Films, teaming up with Steven James in the American Ninja series and plugged into countless other Cannon fodder. Thus, from 1985 thru 1994, the actor took the lead in nearly a dozen films before Golan and Globus called it quits. 

Cast adrift, Cyberjack was Dudikoff's first feature after Cannon went tits up. And I think it's one of his best efforts. Sure, Dudikoff is no Bruce Willis, but then Nick James is no John McClane either. Hiding out in the holographic lab and thoroughly distracted by a hologram set on "Bump 'n' Grind," James is blissfully unaware of Nassim's hostile takeover. And once he does find out, his first notion is to flee the premises as quickly as possible. However, the terrorists and the building's compromised automated defense systems prevents this. 

Thus, once our reluctant and barely sober hero is pressed into service, Cyberjack doesn't stray too far from McTiernan's template; but lets give due credit on some of the tweaking the production and FX team managed to pull-off, rather deftly, to stir up the sediment to obscure the obvious, including several nifty scenes involving more of those holograms and a well-executed go-motion robot drone the (eventually) alerted police send in, who first mistakes James as one of the bad guys, meaning Nassim, the building, and now the cops are all out to get our hero. What's a guy to do? 

I'll tell you what he does: flexing those old cop muscles, mixed with his janitorial know-how, our boy systematically eliminates Nassim's rainbow coalition of goons; highlighted by an outstanding full-body burn when the first goon gets the hell Molotov'd out of him, and surviving two brutal encounters with Meghan (Hasfal-Schou), Nassim's Nubian gladiatrix, decked out in leather shorts and a metal breast-plate. (Grace Jones-lite, my ass. She was awesome and then some.) Meanwhile, after her father sacrifices himself trying to destroy the virus with a self-destruct protocol, Alex has one hour to abort these fail-safe measures and save the virus or Nassim will keep killing off all the other hostages. 

With the clock ticking, as his men are slowly whittled away, Nassim realizes the fly in his ointment is no ordinary janitor and who he really is. James does the same, realizing this is the same man who tried to kill him and ruined his life. But before he can reach the lab, Nassim manages to inject himself with the virus, which, one, doesn't kill him, and two, gives him the ability to shoot green laser-beams out of his eyes, and three, allows him to use his new skills to hack into the cybernetically linked-up S.W.A.T. team that just broke into the building, turning them all into a brand new batch of heavily armed witless minions. But Nassim has no intentions of stopping there. Nope. He's still bent on infecting the world -- and all he needs is a proper uplink with only one half-dead, beaten-to-a-pulp man and a plucky scientist left to stop him. 

Now, as much as I love The Dudikoff, I think I might love Brion James even more. The veteran character actor was always a welcome sight on my screen and was one of those guys who was seemingly in everything before we lost him in 1999. (Just scroll through his IMDB credits and boggle.) Every good hero needs a great villain, and here, with his ever-evolving accent, hilarious asides, and maniacal relish, James is clearly having a ball as the ruthless Nassim. 

The financial success of Die Hard spawned a whole new genre: Die Hard on a [fill in the blank]. You had Die Hard on a boat; Die Hard in an amusement park; Die Hard on a train. Here, we have Die Hard OF THE FUTURE! Still, no matter how hard you try to hide it with all the lasers, holograms and drones, the central premise of Cyberjack has been rock stupid. Then, this plot granite gets even harder for the whackadoodle climax, which ends just like you know it will. But, again, the film manages to go the extra mile to overcompensate for its own predictability. And for that, props to all involved for trying a little harder and squeezing just a little more out of every dollar in the budget. Or, in this case, every loonie. 

Filmed in Canada and financed with Canadian money, this was another film shot expressly for home video. (Admittedly, most of Dudikoff's output for Cannon followed the same pipeline.) However, without the crutch of crappy CGI, DTVs of this era don't quite carry the same stigma of the Asylum or Swhy-Fwhy originals of today. Prism Entertainment was another home video enterprise that briefly got into the production business, netting genre fans not only Cyberjack, but Galaxis, Sleepstalker, and Project: Metalbeast. 

First time director Robert Lee does an admirable job of managing the film's momentum, which never lags once it gets going. And checking out his credits found him moving up, sort of, as an AD on the likes of Freddy vs. Jason and Shoot 'Em Up. Most of the film's producers broke in providing vehicles for Shannon Tweed and fuel for Cinemax's steamy late night line-ups, which would explain the origin of that stripper-hologram and the prerequisite T'n'A shot. Credit also to production designers Linda Del Rosario and Richard Paris for making something out of nothing and the F/X team of Gitte Axen, Andy Stevens, and Gary Paller for turning nothing into something not only passable but fairly effective. 

On top of all of their endearing efforts, however, it is The Dudikoff and James (and Kaiser and Hasfal-Schou) who push this particular knock-off into the win column for me. (And I cling to a hope that The Dudikoff will find his way into The Expendables franchise.) Will it do the same for you? Maaaaaybe. To find out, Cyberjack is currently out of print on DVD but is dirt cheap used. Last check, there were also couple of versions streaming on YouTube. As always, your bit-rate may vary. 

This post was part of The Celluloid Zeroes' The Sincerest Form of Fraudulence: The Great Rip-Off Roundtable, where the collective head o' knuckle delves into the often hilarious world of cashing in, cinematically speaking. Please follow the linkage below and read on, won't you? Thank you.

Checkpoint Telstar :: Battle Beyond the Stars.

Cinematic Apocalypse ::  Insemenoid.

The Terrible Claw Reviews :: Carnosaur 2.

The Tomb of Anubis :: Death Racers.
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Cyberjack (1995) Everest Pictures Inc. :: Prism Entertainment Corporation / EP: Masao Takiyama, Barry L. Collier / P: John A. Curtis, Robert H. Straight / AP: Christian Bruyère, James Thom / D: Robert Lee / W: Eric Poppen / C: Alan M. Trow / E: Derek A Whelan / M: George Blondheim / S: Michael Dudikoff, Suki Kaiser, Brion James, Topaz Hasfal-Schou, Duncan Fraser, Alvin Sanders

The XYZ's of a Criminally Overlooked Misfire :: Sam Raimi's Crimewave (1985)

"I'm the Captain of this elevator.

And we're stopping on every floor!"

 

Aside from being one of the most unrepentantly ferocious horror films ever made, and inspiring the greatest psycho-billy song ever recorded, The Evil Dead (1981) should also be noted for bringing Sam Raimi and Joel and Ethan Coen into the same cinematic orbit.

As the legend goes, after a grueling shoot, with their opus at long last in the can, the Renaissance Film trio -- director Raimi, producer Rob Tapert and star Bruce Campbell -- took their raw footage to New York, where editor Edna Ruth Paul and her assistant, Joel Coen, awaited to hack and splice it all together.

At the time, brother Ethan was an accountant for Macys, but as the film began to take shape, Raimi and the brothers Coen hit it off after Paul insisted he take a look at one of their scripts, which would eventually be filmed as Blood Simple (1984), where the Coens stopped being known as Joel and Ethan and officially became the Coen Brothers.

Liking what he read, and finding that they had similar sensibilities, Raimi then dusted off an old script of his own about a pair of bumbling killers called Relentless; and together, Raimi and the Coens fleshed it out considerably, with a hope that it would be a possible follow up once The Evil Dead was completed and released.

Sam Raimi

Ethan and Joel Coen

Now, it was while touring the finished film in Europe that Raimi and Tapert found a champion in producer Edward Pressmen -- Badlands (1973), Phantom of the Paradise (1974), Conan the Barbarian (1982), who liked the cut of their gib so much he helped them shepherd that follow up -- now under the title of The XYZ Murders -- into production by securing them financing through AVCO Embassy.

Turns out, however, that that would be the last bit of luck the soon-to-be-troubled production would encounter.

“At the time we had no idea how good of an experience Evil Dead was,” said Campbell (If Chins Could Kill, 2001). “Sure, we burned off four years of our lives and didn’t pocket a cent, but we had total creative control. Jumping into the big time meant dealing with the excruciatingly specific and alternately vague demands of a studio -- unlike Michigan dentists, Hollywood executives took an interest in EVERYTHING.”

It began with the casting, where the AVCO Embassy suits demanded that Campbell be replaced by a more bankable star. (Hell. I know when I think of a bankable star, I think of Reed Birney. Sheesh.)

Couple that with a grossly underestimated budget (-- as the novice filmmakers did not take into account union fees and other incidentals with their original proposal), resulting in a shoot that ran both over time and over budget, leaving neither camp very happy with each other; and conditions did not improve when a rough-cut was finally screened.

Upset with the overblown antics and nonsensical story-line, the studio basically seized the film and shooed Raimi and company out the door. After wrenching it away, AVCO Embassy then re-cut the film and redid the score, making the thing even more convoluted and nonsensical, slapped it with a new and -- staying with the theme -- nonsensical title, and then, by now having lost all faith in the project, quietly released Crimewave (1985), which just as quietly disappeared soon after.

Ever since the film has been treated like a red-headed step-child by its creators, loathed by their fans over the way they were treated by the studio hacks, and basically unheard of by everyone else. To that end, Crimewave has few defenders, but, despite all of its problems and flaws, and there are many, I’m here to tell you that I am an unabashed fan. 

Also, it’s nowhere near as bad as you’ve heard and, I think, the film is rather brilliant if you can look at it with an un-jaded eye. And the central plot isn’t all that convoluted to my eye, but tends to get lost in the thunder of the utter chaos surrounding it.

Basically, a security expert hires a couple of hitmen -- one a brutish thug (Smith), the other a weasel personified with a thing for electricity (James) -- to bump off his business partner. Things go staggeringly awry from there and a farcical comedy of errors follows as more and more bodies start piling up. See, the assassins have to keep catching and bumping off witness after witness; the toughest catch being the victim’s wife (Lasser).

Meanwhile, a hapless dope (Birney) becomes an unwitting dupe as he tries to protect his dame (Wilson) from becoming the next victim. Bedlam and an astounding amount of property damage ensue, which all culminates in one helluva car chase (-- with an extended cameo by The Classic).

Often described by the few who have seen it as a feature length tribute to the The Three Stooges, I think Raimi and the Coens had a loftier model in mind and were inspired, instead, by the screwball comedies of Preston Sturges -- Sullivan’s Travels (1941), The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944), with the usual trademark “Shemping” thrown in to fill in the gaps.

You don’t have to squint too hard to see Eddie Bracken and Betty Hutton running through a lot of these slapstick set-ups and gob-smacking gags -- especially that elevator gag. (Anyone else notice how much Butch’s dad looks like Joe E. Brown?) This notion was then cross-pollinated with the Looney Tunes, allowing these characters to inflict and sustain an inordinate amount of hit-damage, exemplified by the extended game of cat and mouse between Faron and Mrs. Trend:

The scene where Faron sinks his fingers into the carpet and pulls the hysterical woman and the whole room, en masse, toward him is right out of the Tex Avery / Chuck Jones playbook. 

But that’s just a teaser to the truly inspired scene as the chase continues through a security door display, with Faron plowing through each door just as fast as his victim can close them.

Honestly, I think your reaction to that kind of humor will gauge whether you’d like this film or not. Would I have loved to see Campbell in the lead? Absolutely (-- and he’s great as the heel, Renaldo). 

To be fair, Reed Birney isn’t that bad as our hero, Vic Ajax, but the part was geared for and would have been better served by the guy he replaced.

And I’m embarrassed to admit but it wasn’t until I screened it again for this write-up that I realized Vic’s love-interest, Nancy, was played by Sheree Wilson, destined to play Chuck Norris’ main squeeze in Walker, Texas Ranger (1993-2001).

Meanwhile, known for being one of the former Mrs. Woody Allens and the star of the short-lived but fondly remembered Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (19876-1977), Louise Lasser holds her own in a role that required her to drop her neurotic shtick to scream and run around like a chicken with its head chopped off. And as our cartoonish killers, Paul Smith and Brion James are damned near pitch-perfect.

Thus, with all that (burgeoning) clout behind the camera and a game cast, one can’t help but wonder what went so wrong to cause that big of a knee-jerk reaction from the studio? 

As is, one of Crimewave’s biggest problems is that if you take a step back you can easily see that its parts are better than the whole. Kinda like how certain cars are more valuable if they’re chopped up and sold for parts.

I would love to see a DVD release of it someday; preferably a director’s cut to see if maybe all those parts gelled better. But I don’t think that will ever happen, from what I’ve read, as all involved want nothing to do with it.

And I guess one good thing did come out of Crimewave. After the film landed with thunderous thud, Raimi and his collective head of knuckle needed a fast rebound or their viability might have been shot forever. And that rebound turned out to be a sequel all involved thought they’d never (have to) do. 

Take that, haters.

This here post is part of The Raimifest Blogathon, which originated over at the S-Mart Smart Things that Don't Suck. Thanks to Bryce for throwing out such a wide net for contributions, and now all you Primitive Screw-Heads, Darkmen, and slightly Radio-Active Do-Gooders click on over and check out the other well worth your while entries.

Crimewave (1985) Renaissance Pictures-AVCO Embassy / D: Sam Raimi / W: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Sam Raimi / C: Robert Primes / E: Michael Kelly, Kathie Weaver / M: Arlon Ober / P: Edward R. Pressman, Irvin Shapiro, Rob Tapert / S: Reed Birney, Sheree J. Wilson, Louise Lasser, Brion James, Paul L. Smith, Bruce Campbell