From: donnell@mantaray.micro.umn.edu (Your Heinous)
Newsgroups: alt.cult-movies
Subject: Re: Circuitry Man & Biggles
Keywords: galloping hoofbeats in the night remind me I married a centaur
Date: 9 Oct 92 14:48:40 GMT
Organization: none

In article <1992Oct9.012530.7602@ucselx.sdsu.edu> maxc1104@ucselx.sdsu.edu (Avoid normal situations.) writes:
>>donnell@barnacle.micro.umn.edu (Your Heinous) writes:
>>
>>>Never heard of Biggles, but I liked "Circuitry Man" quite a bit. 
>>>It's a kinda cyberpunk story about a chick who has to make a delivery of a
>>>silicon-chip-based drug. <You jack it into a socket in your skull> Her companion
>>>is a pleasure robot that is programmed with a false set of memories about
>>>the love of his life, that make him controllable. The effects are good,
>>>Dennis <Breaking Away> Christopher has a nice role, and the villain "Plughead"
>>>is cool. Rent it!
>>
>>>					--Judex--
>>>(PS- I thought this was much better and more marketable than "Hardware", but
>>>it was never released to theaters. Pity.)
>
>  I rented it a couple days ago.
>  I'm afraid I must disagree with you, Monsieur Judex -- with all due respect,
>of course, yourself being a fellow devotee of Deranged Cinema -- re your plug
>of _Circuitry Man_. (GROAN!) I liked some of the ideas (a cyberpunk road
>movie! Streuth!), but:
>  1. Remember the beginning where Dana Wheeler-Nicholson (curses, I can't 
>recall her character's name) makes the horse sculpture fall off the shelf
>to distract Juice's henchpeople and then makes the scissors fall into her 
>hand? The implication is that she has psychic powers of some sort, and then --
>despite the countless life-threatening situations she gets into -- she never
>uses them again. What the Dickens?
>  2a. There is a difference between being under the constraints of a low budget
>and being lazy. Those fight scenes were HORRIBLE! So much was missing that 
>could have made those scenes exciting that you'd swear you were watching De
>Palma's _Scarface_ on network TV!
>  2b. Or: When Danner the pleasure 'droid makes that absolutely perfect 
>billiards shot, we're reduced to watching the reaction shots of the onlookers
>while hearing assorted sound FX of pool balls knocking. It's NOT FUNNY! 
>The least they could have done was have some stop-motion stuff, or some 
>tracking shots of the balls a la _The Color of Money_, or at very least faked
>it with editing so that it would have been fun to watch!
>  2c. Ms. W-N is an amateur fashion designer. She models it for Danner, 
>who comments approvingly. We never see the gown! Aaaigh!
>  3. If I see one more movie in which the characters behave soley according
>to the whims of the screenwriter, I'm going to projectile vomit all over
>the three theater rows in front of me, or my color monitor, whichever it
>happens to be.
>  4. Plughead, like many '80s and '90s horror/SF villains, suffers from the
>Freddy Krueger Disease. He spews too many wisecracks. I liked one of 'em
>("As I always say... why jack off when you can jack in?"), but that's
>about it.
>  All this is IMHO, of course, but... <sigh>...
>
>							Love & kisses,
>
>						The Stainless Steel Moviegoer
>
>					Loss of interest, question, wonder!
>				           -- Metallica, "The Frayed Ends of
>								Sanity"		

Sorry, but I still like it. And the problems of this film are shared by most
of the films I have watched lately. I never said it was "good", I said it
was "cool" or "Interesting{. I don't share your dislike of the fight scenes,
and I still think they did a fine job for the money. Of Course, maybe I 
should rent it again, I haven't seen it in a year or so. Still better than
everything shown on "USA Up All Night" in the last 9 months....\


					--Judex--