Somebody apparently wondered, "What if Robocop went bad like the Terminator?" and thus ROTOR was born. While the idea of Robocop being evil and going on a murderous rampage has potential, it is a massive failure due to gross incompetence. But at least it has the decency to fail spectacularly.

Should I start with the fact that the male lead is named Coldyron ("Cold Iron")? The fact that he is obviously dubbed? The fact that our first shot is of an empty freeway while a voice-over claims it's in gridlock?

Maybe I should start with the dialogue. The dialogue in this movie is some of the silliest I've ever heard. There's inane technobabble, ham-fisted philosophical discussions, contradictory statements, failed metaphors (the one about skeletons in a tin coffin in particular) and nonsensical one-liners. The most memorable exchange involves the main characters discussing the use of "illogic" to stop the renegade robot. I don't have room to transcribe it but it's on the quotes page here. It's a real masterpiece.

The characters are even more ridiculous than the dialogue. There's Willard, the comic relief police robot, Buglar, the psycho police chief, Dr. Corinne Steele, jive-talking janitor Shoeboogie, and ROTOR himself.

ROTOR fails to inspire fear as a villain, instead resembling an amalgam of the leatherman and the cop from the Village People. He is supposed to walk through some chairs effortlessly but visibly struggles. When he tries to grab people he conveniently reaches over their heads. He is supposed to be this emotionless killing machine but visibly shows anger many times. Shoeboogie is this ethnically confused Casanova wannabe who only appears to accidentally awaken ROTOR and then inexplicably disappears.

And then there's Dr. Steele. This character has to be seen to be believed. She is played by a steroid case with a skunk mullet. They try their hardest to feminize this hulking brute by putting her in full makeup, dubbing her voice with a more feminine one and putting her in an ugly dress and glasses but like most everything else in this movie it fails.

The pacing is atrocious. It takes so long to show the hero's morning routine at the beginning that it felt like it was being shown in real time. We spend another five minutes watching him have lunch and dinner with his girlfriend, a character who serves no purpose. We see him fight off random thugs at a mini-mart and we even get to see the store clerk karate chop one of the robbers. All of this occurs before ROTOR wakes up. A third of this movie could be cut, at least.

The production values are no better. Most of the acting is awful. The only passable performance is from Margaret Trigg, who plays the damsel in distress. Richard Gesswein, who plays the male lead, looks like he's perpetually constipated and Dr. Steele barely registers a pulse despite valiant efforts to dub her with a more convincing and emotive voice. Shoeboogie, the oblivious janitor, is the epitome of a jive turkey. As bad as they are, the extras are even worse. The only character I could stand was the police robot, Willard. His primitive design and goofy one-liners actually made him sort of endearing. Fight scenes are hopelessly telegraphed and performed like the actors are on sedatives.

The characters act like idiots. ROTOR's weakness is a car horn yet Sonya, the woman who becomes ROTOR's prey over a speeding violation, is the only one who thinks to use this against him and even she seems to forget when it's plot-convenient. The hero finds her, tells her to drive around aimlessly all night and she does it! Dr. Steele shoots ROTOR once, then drops the gun to fight him bare-handed! The film ends with Dr. Coldyron getting gunned down in broad daylight in front of a police station. ROTOR has an absurd feature called "Sensor Recall," an ability that lets him literally see the past but yet he's weak to car horns, and lastly, the ordinary citizens of Dallas seem unusually hostile towards ROTOR, despite the fact that there's no reason for any of them to suspect that he's anything other than a normal human police officer.

There is ineptitude behind the camera too. They negate the colors to display electric shock, day switches to night at the drop of a hat, many conversations occur over the phone or outside of a car or a building. The ROTOR demo film is an obvious miniature model with bad stop-motion. Dry ice is used for smoke. The obvious scare chords are cheap and hilarious. The climax features multiple lassos appearing out of nowhere to ensnare ROTOR and a showdown between Dr. Steele and ROTOR is filmed out of focus and fifty feet away. Even the credits have mistakes (note the botched copyright notice, the absence of billing for Shoeboogie, and the song sung by "Larry's Dad").

There's so much to talk about in this movie I barely have room to cover the plot. Just picture Sarah Connor being chased by a Radio Shack quality T-1000 while Robocop's OCP corporation and a female Arnold Schwarzenegger go out to try and stop it and you'd be in the ballpark. The filmmakers were sadly so deluded they set up a sequel with Coldyron's nephew and a new ROTOR designed to resemble Dr. Steele. After the trainwreck that is this movie, you can only laugh at such hubris.

In conclusion, this is one of those movies that leaves me conflicted as far as a rating, because in terms of film-making itself, it's a one, but for entertainment value it's at least a seven. It's a shame that so few people know of this movie because if ever there was a movie that was crying out for a midnight showing with audience participation and costumes, it's this one.

I've seen my share of bad movies and when I read the entertaining reviews of a truly awful film I am amazed that there always seem to be some knucklehead that gives the film a ten rating even though there is no redeeming value whatsoever. The woefully inept Ben & Arthur is a prime example. Now is the time for me to become said knuclehead as R.O.T.O.R. is one of the most entertaining bad movies ever.

Professor/Cop/degreed sci-fi writer Coldyron performed by Richard Gesswein and dubbed with the voice of Loren Bivens (Why? Did he have a British accent?) has created the prototype cop of the inevitably lawless future with the help of man/woman/beast Dr. Steele (Jayne Smith) the only scientist in the world with a skunk mullet. After an accident at the Tactical Operations Lab, which also happens to be the Dallas Hilton, R.O.T.O.R. becomes operational a full twenty five years too early. Somehow he acquires skin and a uniform complete with porn star mustache and desert eagle and begins his tour of duty. When a couple is pulled over for speeding by R.O.T.O.R. he executes the driver causing the passenger Sonya (Margaret Trigg) to flee the scene with the maniacal machine in pursuit. This is the bulk of the movie. Poor Sonya has to drive nonstop for hours on end while Coldyron and Dr. Steele babble in lame pseudo-intellectual speak about how to stop R.O.T.O.R. Lucky for her that it takes at least 5-7 seconds before R.O.T.O.R. can aim and pull the trigger. The ending is even more absurd as R.O.T.O.R. is defeated quite easily with the right combination of car horn and thin rope.

The dialogue is what makes this movie so much fun. There is a scene where Coldyron meets the "L.A. scientists" and the inclusion of Beach Boy references makes the whole thing sound absolutely bizarre. The cast and crew of the Dallas Tactical Operations Lab are a hodgepodge of stereotypical eighties characters, hipster janitor, dorky scientist, and his comic relief sidekick in the form of the annoying Willard the Robot. One quip has Willard asking a female secretary for "those seven digits" which begs to ask what he would do once he had them. The pacing of the story takes some interesting liberties as Coldyron gets a call from his boss and is suddenly fired yet he is still a cop? This scene is followed by an inexplicable montage of Coldyron and his girlfriend going to lunch with the synth-heavy "Hideaway" song. Did they really think that the viewer needed to see this? As bad as this all seems I found myself with a smile on my face as this ended which is the ultimate purpose of this movie, to entertain. Those of you who remember the eighties ought to give this epitome of a good/bad movie a view.

A little Terminator, some Judge Dredd, some RoboCop - throw them all together and you get ROTOR, which really means Robotic Officer of the Tactical Operations Research/Reserve Unit. Far from defunding the police, this future cop is the dream of Captain J.B. Coldyron, a scientist who runs the police robotics lab. He also manages a ranch, because, well, I have no idea how he can afford that on a police scientist salary, but here we are in the said future.

Anyways, Earl G. Buglar, Coldyron's commander in the police department, has been stealing money for the ROTOR project and now has to have something to show to corrupt senator Donald D. Douglas - who sounds like a Stan Lee character name - before election time. Seeing as how all J.B. has to show for himself is a goofball prototype and a ripoff of Johnny 5*.

That's when ROTOR gets activated and goes on the loose, killing off fiancees and stalking their women. J.B. finds the woman who made the chassis of this killing machine and together, they try to stop him. You know what his weakness is? Loud noises. So how does he fire his gun or use his car's siren?

This movie pretty much has a Mad Max ripoff poster going for it and not much else. Seriously, even for someone like me that can smile through the worst Italian cinema has to offer can find little joy within this movie, especially when one of the robotic advancements is a TOMY toy made five years before this movie.

*That robot is named Willard and was played by APD2, a robot purchased in 1986 by the police department of Addision, Texas. Other than the IMDB notice that APD2 led the Christmas parade that year, there's no mention anywhere of him on the web, a curious thing when you think that a police department had an actual robot in its employ and no one talks about it. Also, Texas is the first state to use a bomb carrying robot to kill a criminal. On July 8, 2016, that robot ended a standoff with a heavily armed suspect following the shooting of several Dallas police officers at a protest march.