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

Trailer Park :: In Space No One Can Hear You Laugh -- Except Me :: Stewart Raffill's The Ice Pirates (1984)

Our film opens with a Lucas scroll and a redundant narrator, both cluing us in that even though the Galactic Wars have ended, most water bearing planets were obliterated by the same. Now, with only one source left in the entire known galaxy to produce this life-sustaining fluid, the evil Templars, who control the planet Mithra, and its water flow, hold the rest of the universe under a very wet thumb. But, this tyrannical monopoly is constantly under siege by roving bands of rebellious space pirates, who ambush Mithroid convoys and pillage their cargo of precious ice...

Video courtesy of velvetjones666.

Speaking of such devils, with the opening plot dump safely tucked away, our movie proper begins with a small pirate ship clandestinely zigzagging its way through a line of ice-freighters until it finally latches onto one undetected. Led by the roguish Captain Jason (Urich), a boarding party, augmented by several cantankerous robots, punch their way through the hull. Now, even though Jason's chief mechanic, Roscoe (Roberts) swears these robots are top of the line, all visual evidence shows that Asimov's Laws of Robotics have been chucked out the airlock as these ever-malfunctioning automatons don't obey orders very well and appear to be constantly on the verge of falling apart. After a successful breach, if the trailer didn't make it obvious enough, the film shows its low-balling comedy hand early as the pirates have managed to tap their way into the enemies' toilet, complete with a rubbery E.T., pants around his geeblars, trying to pinch one off ... Moving on, then, while trying to avoid a sentry patrol, the pirates stumble into the quarters of Princess Karina (Crosby), subdue her nanny, and, over the protests of everyone else, Jason, thinking with that slight bulge in his pants, decides to kidnap her Beautifulness for ransom. But, they've tallied too long and the alarm has been raised. And so, with the stolen ice and pilfered princess in tow, with some of the best robot-carnage every committed to film, the pirates make it back to their ship and blast off just as the Templar gun-ships come into range.

Outgunned, Jason gives the order to break up his ship for a better chance of escape to rendezvous later on Zagora, the Pirate Moon. With that, the ship breaks into three component pods and scatter. And while the others escape, Jason and Roscoe aren't so lucky as they are shot down and captured by Lord Paisley (Caillou), who liberates Karina, and sentences our heroes to be slaves of the empire -- and did I mention that before becoming a Templar slave one must first be castrated and lobotomized? It's true. Luckily for Jason, Karina has other plans and *ahem* saves the Captain's log from this dire fate. But, there's a price. Seems Karina needs Jason and his crew to find her father, who, allegedly, finally found the legendary Seventh World, orbiting somewhere near the center of the galaxy, which, if you were paying attention to the opening scroll, is rumored to have an almost unlimited amount of water. Of course, whether it really exists or not, the Templars, obviously, would rather keep this discovery a secret at all costs, making our merry band of Ice Pirates the most wanted fugitives in all six systems, dead or alive -- preferably dead.


You wanna know something? I will never, ever understand the fathomous depths of hate for this movie among my niche of B-Movie Brethren. To even invoke its name brings swift sanction and censure. Feh. Heathens. Even outside my circle, The Ice Pirates takes way too much grief for being just another badly Xeroxed Star Wars -- in this case, coming out in 1984, a Return of the Jedi -- cash-in from 20th Century Fox's rival studio, MGM.


Produced by John Foreman, whose career arc went from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to this to Mannequin 2: On the Move, The Ice Pirates was a collaboration between writers Stanford Sherman and Stewart Raffill, who also directed. Sherman's credits date back to writing for the old Batman TV series, which would go a long way in explaining why the script's tongue is so firmly planted in its cheek -- and I freely admit this bawdy goof of a film nearly bites itself in half in a few spots. Sherman also penned the previous year's sci-fi fantasy epic, Krull, which also involved a lot of questing and meandering as it spurted along, with every known British character actor in tow. Raffill, meanwhile, was a double-threat. Before The Ice Pirates, he mostly wrote family films, like the back to nature Wilderness Family and the lion-fueled road movie, Napoleon and Samantha. After, he helmed the equally gonzo but highly entertaining The Philadelphia Experiment before crashing and burning with the mind-blowingly gawdawful E.T. knock-off, Mac & Me, before salting the ashes with the even more gawdawfuller follow up to animitronic-puppets gone bad, Tammy and the T-Rex (-- which I soooo hope is still on both Paul Walker and Denise Richards' resumes.) Which, I guess, if you added all of those elements into cocktail for audience consumption, maybe I can understand why some people tend to throw rocks at this, uh, unique comedic formula.


Still, it never slows down and keeps right on trucking -- warping? -- along, which tends to bowl over all the groan-inducing bits. But at the same stroke, it doesn't allow the good parts much time to shine either. [That's me shrugging right now.] But, eh, the cast of mostly TV vets is fine and appear to happily run with it. (In fact, the whole thing feels like an expanded TV pilot.) In the lull between Vegas and Spenser for Hire, Urich makes a fine scoundrel and Roberts, reprising his similar second-banana role in Manimal, and his robots, are fine as the comedy relief. Crosby, known forever as the girl who shot J.R. Ewing, has some bite as Karina, easily matching and countering Jason's every move. In supporting roles we find the always reliable Ron Perlman and Anjelica Huston, who you would think would be completely out of place but she kicks some major ass, here. Also adding some muscle is former NFL'r John Matuzak and the Pimpbot 3000, which helps our heroes get off Mithra and back to Zagora, where several leads await Karina that will, hopefully, reveal her father's location.


However, even if they do find him, and he confirms the Seventh World's existence, there are still no guarantees they'll reach it. You see, many other expeditions have tried to find the fabled water planet and everyone of them, until now, failed, catastrophically, because of a massive acceleration hiccup in the space-time continuum that surrounds the center of the galaxy, explaining why the crews who managed to make it back out in their crumbling ships were radically aged and decrepit or dead.


But, even though Jason and Roscoe accidentally infect their ship with a case of Space Herpes (Venereal Odiousus Comici Propsus -- and too long of a story to tell here), they manage to find Karina's father in the care of prissy Prince Wendon (Villanch) and his robot Glamazons. Alas, it was all a ruse as Karina's father was dead all along, killed by the Templars, but he left her the means to navigate safely through the time-warp. And so, with Lord Paisely in hot pursuit, we reach the inspired climactic battle, a work of sheer genius as the combatants are caught in the accelerated time loop, aging and graying and gestating (trust me) and creaking and shriveling with each passing second, that the written word just cannot give due justice to it. You'll just have to tune and see for yourselves how our heroes manage to eke out a victory with the help of some cavalry from a most unexpected source.



Most of the futuristic sets and props for The Ice Pirates were pilfered wholesale from Logan's Run. Aside from them, the special-effects are pretty standard for the time: stock sound-effect lasers and model spaceships -- that bank around rather oddly. But despite these sci-fi trappings the anachronistic film honestly owes more to the old pirate movies of the 1930's and '40s. Even Bruce Broughton's rousing musical score is more Errol Flynn than Darth Vader. Everything else is designed for a quick laugh: a nice booger-picking scene, a plucked alien parrot, but they're mostly there to clutter up the background -- except for that Space Herpe; another by-product of the '80s, where sexually transmitted diseases, along with casual drug use, were the epitome of high comedy. Overcompensating for this, and where The Ice Pirates positively excels, is in it's production design -- especially with all the wide variety of robots. And what makes the frenetic robots here so great is that they seem so plausibly real. These things aren't sleek and streamlined but are big and clunky and prone to breakdowns and malfunctions. Hats off to Michael Shane McCracken, Michael John McCracken and Ray Raymond for the designs and Gary Brockette for the choreography during the chaotic robot carnage. For the most part, these robots were played for laughs, too. And when one of the scared robots crapped his pants -- jettisoning a stream of oil, bolts, and washers -- before going into battle, and the next robot in line slipped and fell on the soiled oil-slick, I nearly crapped my pants from laughing too hard.


So, there ya go: booger-picking aliens, Space Herpes, and a robot that craps his pants. If that isn't enough of a ringing endorsement for The Ice Pirates, then I don't know what else can be said.


The Ice Pirates (1984) JF Productions :: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer / P: John Foreman / AP: Dennis Lasker / D: Stewart Raffill / W: Stewart Raffill, Stanford Sherman / C: Matthew F. Leonetti / E: Tom Walls / M: Bruce Broughton / S: Robert Urich, Mary Crosby, Michael D. Roberts, Anjelica Huston, John Matuszak, Ron Perlman, Natalie Core, Alan Caillou, Bruce Vilanch

YouTube Finds :: Just When You Thought It Was Safe to -- Ah, Forget It. Just watch!

As a wise man once said, It started small. Like it always does [from the book of Egg Shen: Chapter Burton, Verse Jack] -- and then quickly spiraled out of control so badly that we all wound up here ... Okay, so, it all began at work several days ago, where I was completely dumbfounded to discover that several of my co-workers were blissfully unaware that there'd been a JAWS 4. And no, JAWS the Revenge didn't ring any bells, either, which led me to ruin YouTube's bandwith, showing all these scoffers this glorious clip of just-add-water WTF...

Video courtesy of AAEJZ.

... and then, well, after watching that giant chunk of stoopidity (-- and, believe it or not, the studio-mandated overhaul ending is even worse), I had to convince them that the film was real and not some internet hoax. (Yes, that's Lorraine Gary. Yes, that really is Michael Caine. Yes, that's the Last Starfighter. No, I didn't know sharks could hover out of water like a dolphin. And, no I didn't know sharks could roar, either...)

Like I said: Even worse.
(Nope. That's not a hoax, either.)

Anyways, as I passed this anecdote on to others more well-versed in the lore of franchise-killing sequels, my good friend Jessica Ritchey threw out this awesome nugget of awesomeness: "It's rare a franchise will produce it's own cheap Italian knock off." And after I stood up and applauded this latest round of brilliant insight (no, really, go read her blog), it got me to thinking about this:


a/k/a Great White, a/k/a The Last Shark; the true Italian busted-block knock-off of the JAWS franchise. So much so, as the legend goes, Universal got an injunction against the film, bringing it's theatrical release to an abrupt end and making a(n official) domestic home video release nearly impossible. But in this age of the internet, after a little poking around, I see that L'Ultiomo Sqaulo is now available, serialized on YouTube -- complete with Turkish subtitles for all of us to enjoy...

Video courtesy of 123jewis.

(At least I think those are Turkish subtitles...)