From: maxc1104@ucselx.sdsu.edu (Avoid normal situations.)
Newsgroups: alt.cult-movies
Subject: Re: Circuitry Man & Biggles
Summary: Circuitry Man: Thweh!!!
Keywords: galloping hoofbeats in the night remind me I married a centaur
Date: 9 Oct 92 01:25:30 GMT
Followup-To: discussion of CM & Biggles
Organization: The Special Corps

>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"