R.O.T.O.R. (Rifftrax)

Film Year:  1987
Genre:  Science Fiction, Action, Comedy (?)
Director:  Cullen Blaine
Starring:  Margaret Trigg, Richard Gesswein, Jayne Smith, Caroll Brandon
Rifftrax Year:  2014
Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

The Movie

In hopes to reduce casualty rates among police officers, a scientist (who apparently thinks he's an action hero) works on a new robotic police officer named R.O.T.O.R.  But his superiors are unhappy with how long the project will take, fire him, and look to push the deadline into the near future.  Soon enough R.O.T.O.R. is activated by accident and heads off to punish some criminals.  His first target is a speeding pedestrian, who R.O.T.O.R. shoots through the head.  The victim's girlfriend is then targeted by R.O.T.O.R. for aiding and abetting, and he then goes in pursuit of her.  Action scientist then learns that R.O.T.O.R. has been activated, calls an even more buff action scientist to his aid, and sets out to save the woman's life.

I've seen lots of bad movies in my many years of being a MSTie, but R.O.T.O.R. left me somewhat speechless.  This movie isn't just a lesson in how wrong movies like RoboCop or The Terminator could have gone if they weren't guided by talent, but rather an exorcise in making the most obnoxious movie it can out of it's premise.  Reading over the premise of the film in preparation for this review I expected just a cheap, cheesy cash-in movie, not too dissimilar to films like Escape 2000 or Robot Holocaust.  R.O.T.O.R. does something worse than that, it feels like it's aware it's going to be bad so it makes up for it in smugness.  With self-referential and overdone humor that wouldn't be too far out of place in a soft-core porn film, R.O.T.O.R. always feels like it's proud of itself for knowing it's a bad movie and bragging about it.  This is seriously one of the most smarmy bad movies I've ever seen.

With all of that emphasis on poorly placed and executed humor, the script is straight up garbage.  But even if it weren't the execution probably would have destroyed it anyway, because the first half of the movie is almost nothing, as plot points are belabored beyond reason to get the film past eighty minutes.  R.O.T.O.R.'s charm might lie in how charming you find it's caricature-style performances, as every actor in this film feels like they're doing an over-exaggeration of a trope (especially our lead actor, who is doing his best bad Clint Eastwood impression).  The only actress who can be semi-taken seriously is Margaret Trigg, the lead victim who R.O.T.O.R. is chasing, because she has taken the task of being the token screaming and running girl.  She's not a great actress by any means, but she's pretty much the only anchor of credibility in this heap at all, so good for her.

Being a crappy 80's action movie junkie, I went into R.O.T.O.R. hoping to love it.  But at every turn R.O.T.O.R. rubbed me the wrong way.  It's attempts at being smug and clever just sucked all the fun out of it, and I might just have found my least favorite movie of the decade.

The Trax

I love the 80's.  I love everything about it, and I love the aesthetic of it's bad filmmaking.  It usually doesn't take much for me to love an 80's film on a riffing project, but watching R.O.T.O.R. unfold as slowly as it was I found myself craving riffs to make the movie as enjoyable as it should have been.  For the first forty-five minutes I found myself unfortunately let down because nothing they were doing was hitting the spot.  Mike, Kevin, and Bill are in a silly mood and throw silly, upbeat remarks at the film for a while.  It's really all they can do, because for the longest time the movie is giving them nothing to work with.

"Bribe is too cheap.  Sentence:  Death!"

Once R.O.T.O.R. finally hits the screen, the quality of the quips finally begins to upswing, and while the movie pain can bleed through on this one, the fact that the movie is finally resembling an actual movie makes our boys feel less lost than they were in the first half.  There are some solid laughs at the expense of the chase between R.O.T.O.R. and the woman, and the absurd situations that either get in the way or escalate it.  There are also some hilarious quips at the second scientist who comes to the rescue, who is a female bodybuilder with the most 80's striped mullet you'll ever see, and it swells into an absolutely insanely incompetent climax.

If I were to judge the riff based solely on it's high points I'd give it a pass, but for me that opening forty-five minutes is a problem.  I was constantly checking the time and wondering if maybe I should have selected a different riff for today, because I was getting a little antsy waiting for something to happen in the movie or for our boys to really give me a good laugh.  I'll even it out and say maybe check this one out if there is nothing really all that better that's readily available.  But I'd conclude by stating that my reaction to this riff may have been the movie's fault and not the riff itself.

Average