R.O.T.O.R.

Plot synopsis:
A leading scientist in the field of police robotics, Dr. J. Barrett C. Coldyron (Gesswein with voice over by Loren Bivens), whose corrupt boss, Division Commander Earl Buglar (Michael Hunter), orders an experimental police robot prototype - dubbed R.O.T.O.R. (Robotic Officer of the Tactical Operations Research/Reserve Unit). He wants it completed in 60 days so that Senator Donald D. Douglas can take public credit for the project and use it to catapult himself into the White House.
Coldyron warns Buglar that the prototype is several years away from completion but is forced to resign and is replaced by his incompetent assistants, Dr. Houghtaling (Stan Moore) and his robot Willard. In Coldyron's absence, R.O.T.O.R. is inadvertently activated and put on duty. The robot executes a motorist (James Cole) for speeding and terrorizes his young fiancée, Sonya (Margaret Trigg), who the robot views as an accomplice in her boyfriend's infraction. Upon learning his creation has escaped, Cpt. Coldyron enlists the help of his beautiful colleague, Dr. Corrine Steele (Jayne Smith), who designed the unit's combat chassis. Together, Steele and Coldyron track down the rampaging robot and attempt to stop it from killing again.

Tags: murder

Review:
Unfortunately for us, such laws had yet to be invented and this lady behind the counter said that they didn't have RoboCop yet, but they had R.O.T.O.R. Now being young and naïve, we looked at the box and saw that both films had similar letters in their titles and R.O.T.O.R. had a picture of a robot man jumping off a bike and firing a gun.
Yes it is, but if the punishment for speeding was death then we'd all drive a little more carefully.Well, the budget isn't quite up to that of Water World, and I think that it was made by a group of friends (one of who was going through that transition of man to woman), but I can't really get mad at these guys 'cos at least they tried.However, heed my warning.
Dr. Steele, by the way, is a bodybuilder woman with a skunk on her head.The opening scene reveals the end of the movie immediately telling you that you are wasting an hour and a half.
These three guys (the director, writer and star) came up with enough money to take RoboCop, The Terminator, and Judge Dredd (which was merely in comic book form at the time) into one completely awful masterpiece.When we go back to the beginning of the story, the clock strikes 5:00 and Coldyron wakes up.
It just makes no sense at all.I won't go into too many more details, but the worst part of the entire movie must be the fact that ROTOR can take off his sunglasses AND SEE INTO THE PAST!
None of the technical jargon even sounds like it makes sense, but he didn't even try going into sensor recall.You have to see SENSOR RECALL in action to truly appreciate it's sheer madness.At the conclusion of the movie, Coldyron utilizes a technique Shoeboogie spoke of earlier to kill ROTOR, as if to tie everything together in some sort of nice neat way.
Another is that a few pieces of string defeat this unstoppable supercop.Another is that I am trying to make sense of a movie in which the comic relief is delivered by a Robot who can think on his own, but the supercop won't be ready for another 25 years.ROTOR is the worst movie ever made.
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.
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?
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.
A perennial favorite at 'bad movie nights with friends', this piece of solid gold belongs in a film museum somewhere..
Ya know, little things like making sure that it doesn't suddenly go from day to night to day again from one shot to the next, or the benefits of having two consecutive lines of dialogue that are related logically to each other, or finding actors who don't literally read from cue cards or stare at the floor to make sure they hit their marks.After hearing about this movie's pure awfulness for so many years, I finally got to catch it on On Demand.
Needless to say, it did.If you do choose to subject yourself to the pure bliss (or pure torture, depending on your tolerance for really bad movies) of ROTOR, make sure you stick around for the very end of the credits.
Also any movie that has a line like "what is this some kind of bad sci-fi flick".
If you merely want to kick back and watch some good unadulterated nonsense this is your picture, if you are trying to expand your mind and learn more about the world of robotics, than watch Short Circuit, R.O.T.O.R is much too technical for you.Final word: big guns, motorcycle riding lunatic robot cops, poor voice overs and shallow character depth render this movie highly potent and watchable (maybe not RE-watchable, but you should subject yourself to it at least once in your life).
Police robotics expert Captain Coldyron (Richard Gesswein) attempts to track down R.O.T.O.R., a renegade robot cop who punishes every crime with death.R.O.T.O.R. has me completely baffled: it's a dreadful 80s sci-fi film that rips off other better known classics (notably RoboCop and The Terminator), but while there's nothing particularly unusual about that, it is so thoroughly terrible in every imaginable way that it's hard to understand how such a dire film actually came into being.
Gesswein's charmless performance; the pitiful action scenes; the lousy 80s music; the embarrassingly bad stop-motion endoskeleton that practises karate; Dr. Steele, the muscle-bound female scientist with the 'skunk-stripe' hairdo; Shoeboogie, the moronic 'American Indian' lab assistant; Willard, the comedy-relief police robot with the peaked cap; the diabolical dialogue (my favourite line being from Coldyron's strangely poetic account to the police "a buttery morning sunlight painted a golden glow through the ranch house windows"; the man sure has a way with words): so much cringe-worthy nonsense in just the one film is hard to take.Although part of me would like to believe that R.O.T.O.R.'s awfulness was intentional, a calculated attempt to appeal to B-movie fans who lap up such trash, I sincerely doubt it, the film alternating too wildly between complete inanity and total seriousness; part of me would also dearly love this to be a genuine case of bad film-making (the 80s being THE decade for such drivel), but I find it impossible to accept that people can be THAT untalented..
Richard Gesswein is Dr. Coldyron (if there's one thing I love about this movie, it's that name), a scientist working in the tactical / robotics department of a Texas police force.
The good doctor must now go out and find his Frankenstein monster before it can harm too many people.Man, I've seen a number of "so bad it's good" low budget B movies in my time, but this one really takes the cake.
The action is pretty rote: our robotic villain barely roughs up a few people, kills even less, and spends most of the movies' running time relentlessly tracking down Sonia a.k.a.
Michael Hunter, who'd had a small role in "RoboCop" (viewers new to this one will likely automatically be reminded of that much more popular film), is the crooked commissioner Buglar, and he's a real ham."R.O.T.O.R." must be seen to be believed.
Did Cullen Blaine and Budd Lewis know they were making a bad movie?
It is a good laugh if you have friends over who like to watch bad movies because this one has a plethora of questionable things in this movie to make fun of.
There is a Rifftrax version of this movie that is very funny and I suggest watching that the first time through this awful film..
ROTOR has moments, just MOMENTS mind you, that could have been cool but bad acting, casting, directing and script bring things down to MST3K level pretty quickly.
Found a gem...hybrid terminator and bad robot cop knock off with mullets, tons of yokel accents, stiff dialog, and hilariously timed synth music.
I watch a lot of bad movies and rate some of them far higher than I should.
The special effects are dreadful, the dialogue is silly and nonsensical, the music is beyond annoying, the actors have zero charisma, the acting is painful to watch, the few attempts at comedy are cringeworthy, the ending is totally ridiculous, and the whole thing is a boring mess.
I don't know why the characters in the movie go through so much trouble to defeat the robot when all they really needed to do was lay on a car horn and disable it.
Cheap ripoffs like this movie really makes Robocop look outstanding - and this is another cheap ripoff of Robocop (and a bit of The Terminator).
I can say this movie is awful but better than the worst ripoff of all: Robo Vampire (1988).This film started out a little interesting right at the beginning where the car with the man and woman stopped in the road to see the lead actor all covered in blood leaning over a dead woman - that scene was interesting but when they got to the police station and the lead actor was telling his story the film became very blah to me very quickly.
R.O.T.O.R. is not one of those films.unlike most of the b-movies of the 80's R.O.T.O.R. is actually bad enough to be good: the loose and ridiculously padded shot direction (how long does it take to walk five metres to your horse, and why do we have to watch all of it?), hammy performances, lengthy and clumsy dialogue, hilarious special effects (the stop-motion endoskeleton display, the absurd 'sensor recall' thing R.O.T.O.R. himself does).
i remember watching this film when i was about 15,it was in our local video library with a 2mm thick covering of dust,so my friend suggested renting it out,90 minutes later over 4 cans of special brew we still could`nt stop laughing,if you can find it,watch it for the incredably hammy acting and cardboard special effects,even better check out the end scene fight,where a certain advertisment for a 4 wheel drive vehicle will give you hysterics.
There are indeed plenty of laughs to be had here, but they mostly come from the pretentious dialog, cheap set pieces, dumb character names, poor action scenes, and hilariously bad music and songs.
But when a lab accident succeeds in activating the android, causing it to run amok, Coldyron must find a way to stop it.Ask many genre fans what they believe to be the worst genre film of all time is & the answer would usually be either PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE or ROBOT MONSTER (some wags might suggest Uwe Boll's craptacular adaptation of HOUSE OF THE DEAD).
Everything about it, from the poorly written script, to the horrendous dialogue, even to the extremely cheesy visual effects (just watch the scene where a stop-motion robot skeleton does karate chops!), is so bad that it causes anyone watching to either die from embarrassment or to die from laughing so hard – in any case I recommend taking out a life insurance policy before sitting down to watch the film.Budd Lewis, who tries to multitask as best he can (in addition to writing the script, he also produces, conducts some of the visual effects & does the art direction), only to fail on almost all counts.
People with a low tolerance for inept cinema are likely to faint or even die from a stroke during the first half hour already and even experienced bad movie fanatics will, in fact, face severe difficulties to sit through R.O.T.O.R from start to finish.
Imagine everything  and I do mean every slightest thing  that can go wrong in a film, and you pretty much have an apt description of R.O.T.O.R. We're talking basic story ideas that desperately attempt to cash-in on previous blockbusters ("The Terminator", "Robocop") abominable acting performances from a largely amateur cast, completely incoherent narrative structure (with flashbacks within flashbacks etc), errors in continuity that are as large as life itself, miserable dialogs and pathetic attempts at inserting comical elements, a soundtrack that makes you want to rip off your ears, "special" effects accomplished without any budgetary means and hands down  the most pathetic depiction of a cyborg ever.
In the future humanity is on the verge of destroying itself which leads to the scientists at ROTOR to make a cyborg policeman who goes berserk and starts killing people for speeding, now it's up to the scientist to destroy him while (in the film's most laughable moments)he waxes philosophical about the robot's place in the universe.
This thing makes those godawful films from India look like high art.
OK, most of the idiocy here is obvious, but here's what I want to know:How could anyone be so dumb as to think a robot cop who is programmed to act as judge, jury, and executioner would catapult its sponsor to the White House, even if it worked perfectly?Now, I can see how a talented demagogue might be able to whip up a temporary popular enthusiasm for such a thing.
Okay; I'm not a director; I'm not a producer and I may not be a good actor, even, but I could have done everything on this movie better(including sweeping the sets afterwards)!R.O.T.O.R. seems caught in a cultural time warp; see, it's set in the "not-too-distant-future", but was made in 1989, while all the actors look like they're livin' like it's 1979 (even feathered hair makes a comeback!
Unless you like to inflict pain on yourself, or want to try using this film as a drinking game, avoid this movie at all cost..
If you watched the movie and did not get that none of this was in any way a serious attempt at anything more than making a "bad movie" after seeing the first ten minutes, I can't help you.You should have had more than a clue after seeing the gratuitous Beach Boys references, the overwritten dialog ("He's like a chainsaw set on frappé!"), the lame jokes about Pee-Wee Herman, the acting that was over-the-top, but then again just shy of not over-the-top enough to be amusing, and the fact that most of the cast has dubbed over voices.
I have tried 3 times to watch this movie all the way through.
However while there are starving children all over the world and people persist in waste money on making movies like this, I will not be a happy bunny.Although I am a fan of B-movies, do not watch this film, I would however endorse recommending this movie to someone you didn't like as you will have wasted two hours of their lives watching this pants film.What annoys me is that the box looks really bad (in a good way) the acronym R.O.T.O.R. brought a wry smile to my face as I imagined the worst acting.
Dialogue, bad effects, movie genres, and by far the most god-awful acting since "Laserblast".
But where other bad sci fi movies fail, ROTOR succeeds...
I don't feel like wasting anymore time over this movie, but since it was the worst film I've ever seen, mainly due to the unbelievably horrible over-dramatic acting, I had to let others know.
The acting is BAD, (not bad meaning good), and includes an obvious transvestite playing a female engineer, which could have been a great example of "camp" casting, except that the movie expects us to believe that this is a real woman!!!
From the horrible acting to the bad graphics this was going to be a gut buster.One of the first actions is the setup for the end of the movie.
ROTOR would have benefited hugely from a name star in the Coldyron role, that would have brought the interest level way up.By far the best character in the film is Willard, a "happy birthday Paulie"-style robot who wears a hat, answers the phone (not seen) and is even sassy.
Boy, does this hilariously horrendous honey possess all the right wrong stuff to qualify as a real four star stinkeroonie: Ham-fisted (mis)direction by Cullen Blaine, an absurd plot that's played ludicrously straight, clunky martial arts fights, an appalling Native American stereotype secondary character named Shoeboogie, a blithely preposterous script complete with unavoidable cheesy one-liners, ineptly staged action set pieces (the awkward fight between ROTOR and three rednecks is simply sidesplitting!), an irritatingly bouncy country rock soundtrack, terrible acting from a hopelessly lame no-name cast, primitive computer graphics, an annoying comic relief robot called Willard, a gloriously ridiculous conclusion, and even a surprise bummer ending.
Wherever ROTOR goes (remember he looks just like a human police officer) some hick wants to fight him.
however if you want to see a movie that's a clinic of bad film-making, then R.O.T.O.R. is, without the slightest doubt, an amazingly awesome tour de force of cinematic ineptitude!The plot goes something like this: Captain Barrett C.
And in no time R.O.T.O.R. the super-cop, with a head full of bad wiring, starts murdering civilians - and so the question is WHO is up to the challenge, WHO can stop the R.O.T.O.R.!The movie gets more and more inconsistent, illogical and downright scattershot as it goes, but the keyword for R.O.T.O.R. has to be: anti-climatic.
Come to think of it Dr. Steele does next to nothing, other than look painfully ridiculous and did anyone notice at one point during the finale, that Coldyron called Sony "Tony", so evidently even the names of the characters slipped the minds of the actors - just one more mistake in a movie that's over-flowing with them.
The movie has no idea about whether it wants to be a comedy or an action film.It has elements like the comical police robot, which I think was probably not a cheap prop to build, but really didn't help the plot along.
Other scenes like the buck toothed cook getting his face pushed into a grill, you are no sure if these are supposed to comedic or horrific, so they end up being horrifyingly bad.The plot is that a Police Scientist develops a Robot for the future in 25 years when civil society has broken down and they need robots that will just flat out execute people for traffic violations because..
In fact, at the end of the movie, the main character, Coldyron.
the movie was made in 1989, but it looks more like 1979.
better yet: watch it for the camp value to see how bad a movie can go wrong.