Since the earliest stages of Mankind's first attempts at engineering, we have found ways for machines to do work for us. From the first pulley systems in wells, to wind and water driven mills. A man in ancient Persia built a "Tea Girl"...an automated machine that would, once activated, brew, pour and then serve tea, complete with sugar and cream, like a sexy little half-dressed cuckoo clock. Some of the machines we've made are to make dangerous and burdensome jobs less so, therefore saving lives and easing the physical stress of workers. Over time, however, more people are doing less physical labor- yet we are still unsatisfied to do it ourselves. It is more 'efficient' to have a machine do it for us. Slowly this idea crawled through centuries and decades of innovation until finally analog became digital and mega-computers the size of a room were reduced to the "mini-computers" we use now. But even before we had these ideas of computers, we dreamed of man-like machines.ROBOTS.
For all who eagerly sing the praises and potential of robots, there are those who cry out against them, foretelling of mankind's destruction and the fall of civilization. These tales of Robot-horrors came long before the initial release of The Terminator in 1984. Amusingly, the very TERM 'Robot' was coined by Karel Čapek's brother Joseph for the play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), which debuted on stage in 1921. (It's a wonderful read and I recommend it to everyone, as an occasion to watch it is rare.) The term is from robota which means drudgery, which perfectly illustrates man's reason for their creation- to do what we don't want to. This is amusing because, Rossum's robots weren't made of machinery but rather biological material. Something we would now relate as "Genetically engineered", "biological constructs" or as "clones." They are not what we perceive today-- or even what came to permeate literature and film in the following decades!
While Isaac Assimov played both sides of the philosophical fence- Robots are
good. Robots are bad. Movies like 1927's Metropolis did the same, showing a need for balance between man and machinery, although Fritz Lang's Maria was held up as being superior to human kind. Other films like the golden calf of 50's sci-fi The Day the Earth Stood Still presented robots as a terrible weapon that could destroy mankind! It did, however, still bear the message that it was man's own wickedness that would be at fault. While giving us the classic lines:
"Klaatu Barada Nickto!" and (my favorite) "I'm impatient with stupidity," it also offered up this exchange:Klaatu: I'm worried about Gort. I'm afraid of what he might do if anything should happen to me.
Helen: Gort? But he's a robot. Without you, what could he do?Klaatu: There's no limit to what he could do. He could destroy the Earth.
Other films, throughout the 60s and 70s still created classic and cult horror with killer robots. The Earth Dies Screaming in 1965, as did this horrible, campy film. 1973 brought us the best theme park ever, with Yul Brynner as the original Terminator- a bloodthirsty cowboy robot in Westworld. In 1975 men found the answer to all their problems and created The Stepford Wives. 
But it was the 1980s that I was there for, when the end of the world would come on August 29, 1997: Judgment Day. That was what The Terminator told us. That not just robots- ARMIES of fucking robots and a Master Super-computer called Skynet would obliterate humans forever...only, not really forever because Kyle Reese came back from 2029 and then in 1991 they made a second movie and then a third one came out in 2003 and now a fourth one is due out in 2009 - but damn if those Robots aren't persistent.
What I also remember from the 1980s were the Super Giant Robot cartoons! My absolute favorite was VOLTRON. It was a hero team cartoon where they had giant lion robots that combined to form the massive Voltron Super Giant Robot. And then there was Mazinger Z! He was just a big, bad ass, muthafuckin Robot ya'll! And amidst the onslaught of Japanese anime cartoon series, a new series made its way to both American and Japanese screens.
Transformers.
These guys were created by Takara and Hasbro toy companies, and the cartoon was quite literally an 2254 minute long advertisement that spanned (with repetition) over three years (1984-1987). But these guys were awesome! They could be anything! Cars, Trucks, planes...the really bad guy, Megatron, even turned into a gun!! Something you would NEVER see in a cartoon today. These guys were innovative. They didn't fit together to form something big and crazy....they transformed into it. And it was an epic battle of good, Autobots, versus evil, Decepticons. Plus, they had the added awesomeness of being ALIENS too, from their home planet of Cybertron. There was no mistaking that these guys were humongous. They even had BIG names. Optimus Prime. Megatron.
So merely by looking at the progression of Robots throughout the Lore (yeah, they are still kinda fictional people), its easy to see trends. If they don't look COMPLETELY Human, for example, Rachel in Bladerunner, then they began as slightly more futuristic looking tin cans and have slowly evolved. The Super Giant Robots were thicker, clunkier looking, even the first Transformers by today's thinking. Then as Robotech came along a new idea for Robots was made. One in which we could SEE a more mechanized form. As we came to understand more about machines and computers, the desire for the sleek, rounded 'futuristic' image was no longer 'futuristic' but rather fake. It belied an innocent ignorance to the true workings and superior engineering of machines that we now (so humbly) possess. So we fell in love with Mechs. The other beauty to Mechs, or Mecha design was that it could - at any time- if not always, require HUMAN CONTROL. Mechs are usually just giant suits with people inside, but now those people have all the power of ...
SUPER GIANT ROBOTS.
The nostalgia we have for the Model B-9 Environmental-Control Robot of the original Lost in Space TV series, will never leave us. (In fact, buy your own.) That rounded, blinky-lighted monstrosity will always remind us of the day when robots from outer space would burn us to ash with giant laser beam eyes. Just like the Super Giant Robots of the 1980s cartoons will always bring me to reminisce with joy about stomping around on matchbox cars and Lego house as a kid. And how much quicker long road trips passed when I imagined what the passing cars and semis would look like if they stood 40 ft tall and fought with each other.
The impending release of Steven Spielburg and Micheal Bay's version of Transformers has brought about a lot of debate. Should they have maintained the nostalgia and made exact copies of the cartoon/toy robots; or is their modernized--and mechanized versions acceptable? While normally I feel that messing with a good thing is never the best, I don't know that I feel that is the case here. I think, rather, they have attempted to maintain the awe and wonder we had as kids when we first saw Optimus Prime kick Megatron's ass. But since you and I were ten years old the mechanized world around us has grown up too. Computers can show more than just spinach and lime green screens in blocky-pixelated type. We've got telephones that don't need wires, have date planners, calculators, internet and email all built in and smaller than our wallets. Shows like Modern Marvels and Mega-Builders has enlightened us to how industrial machinery, warfare mechanics and massive structures actually work.We don't watch cartoons the same way anymore either. It's okay to be an adult that watches cartoons.So amidst all the debate, I offer you this. Is it not possible for the Transformers to evolve from the clunky Super Giant Robots of our youth, through the Mecha fittings of our adolescents to transform themselves into a modern day idea of robotic wonderment? Whether you prefer the glossy tin cans with exhaust tubing for arms and antenna for ears, or the jacked up Japanese Mechs, one thing is certain:
Giant Fucking Robots are coming.
____________________________________________Classic Optimus Prime and MegatronNew Optimus Prime and Megatron
*Mecha Image is "M-18G Juggernaut Assault Mecha" by MobileSuitGio
Let us establish this immediately, merely so that it is out of the way and you can proceed in ignoring my endless bitching; write it off as Elitist jibber-jabber: I am not easily impressed by horror movies.While I do love a good psychological thriller and I really love movies that dare to splash about in religious dogma like a three-year-old in mud. Asian Horror certainly catches my attention and seems to be the horror genre that claims fame to most of my personal favorites. Yet I routinely give American horror a chance, testing their porridge over and over in the hope that some day they will get it right. For me, however, almost every time, its just too damn cold. This one lacked flavor, originality and the texture was all wrong.I speak of the 2006 "straight to landfill" release, "Blackwater Valley Exorcism."
Speaking from a marketing point of view...I think the name killed it straight off. I was, however, feet-up on the couch nursing a migraine and jonesing for a good exorcism freak-fest. Once again, I paid for Free, which equated to an hour before I found my headache was getting worse and I turned the shit off to put on "Mythbusters," a far better way to waste my time. Especially if by 'far' one means light years apart and by 'waste' one means "I'd rather watch Adam Savage extract boogers than ever watch this again."Although the name had already forewarned me of the crap writing that awaited, it had to be good! It's based on an actual event! If by "based", they mean they heard this story from their cousin who heard it from this girl at summer camp, who heard it from her brother, whose second-cousin twice removed was actually there!! And if by "event" they mean "something happened at this place one time."
I selected the film from the "Free-on-a-dare" list and sat back to watch. At first the film had my finger wavering over the 'exit' button as weakly written and worse acted foreshadowing was played out- the hints of a past love affair between a priest and a blonde unfolded. Then it cuts to a desert scene, a burly Mexican with a rifle and a coyboy, complete with hat, wander aimlessly shouting a name...only it sounds like two different names so I wonder if maybe they are looking for a person AND a dog...THEN it gets promising. The gutted carcass of a rabbit is found, viscera everywhere but no animal in sight. Then the cowboy spots something. A woman. She stands, her back to the camera, wearing only a silky slip, shoulders hunched, bloody hands trembling at her sides. They rush to her. The camera reveals her to us. A young girl, hair in her face, blood coating the bottom of her slack jaw, eyes half rolled in her head.I thought "ALRIGHT! Now we're getting somewhere."
The girl bared a vague resemblance to Keira Knightly, which was interesting in itself as I thought perhaps this was some old movie she'd done that was unearthed and
presented to capitalize on her fame. Alas it was not. The young woman playing the demon possessed Isabelle, was in fact, Kristen Erickson. She would prove to be the only convincing actress in the extent of film I subjected myself to. This, however, is not a fantastic achievement as I don't believe that writhing around and trying to seduce or outright screw each male in turn requires a real depth of emotion, any wealth of acting talent. She was interesting enough to watch to be the only reason, though, that I kept the movie on.Isabelle's parents, Ely and Blanche, win the "Worst Parents of the Year" award for me. Played by Randy Colton and Leslie Fleming-Mitchell, respectively, their teenage daughter eviscerating a rabbit with her teeth is not enough to prompt them to take her to a hospital and have her committed. No, surely she just needs rest! To ensure that Isabelle wasn't involved in some crime- more terrible than a Bunny-cide, the sheriff needs to have a look at her...while she lays on top of her bed covers in a silky slip that barely hides her under-eighteen-and-still-illegal-naughty-bits. Played by Jeffrey Combs, who you may recall from 2004's "Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!" fame, the sheriff is revealed by the Demon in Isabelle to be a rapist, which makes logical sense to the plot and therefore eliminates the chance of the Sheriff showing up again to stop the impending Exorcism.While Randy Colton waffles between being shocked and outraged over his daughter's condition, Leslie sits in stupification. She wildly insists Isabelle is possessed, succumbing to only one completely random outburst of tears with an arbitrary hint of sexual longing...on the shoulder of a ranch hand. He, we later learn, is Luke- Isabelle's secret, older boyfriend. Luke, played by Paul Kapellas serves his function and stands about prettily insisting he loves Isabelle and will stand by her even though her lips are peeling, her teeth are rotting and she's developed a taste for raw bunny.If the completely over-used tool forbidden love-yes, Luke is a complete tool- isn't enough the on-staff Veterinarian McCall is brought into the picture. He, logically, points out that he works with horses and that Isabelle should go to a hospital. (Good thing someone's thinking). But this ranch doesn't have enough Tools, so of course it is revealed that McCall is having a torrid affair with Blanche and to prove it, the possessed Isabelle shows Ely their love letters. She also fills his head with graphic images of Mom and the Vet gettin' nasty...so it could all be a trick of the Demon, or it could be true. They don't really say in the first hour, at least.
While all this unfolds, Father Jacob, played by Cameron Daddo in desperate need of a haircut, is sent by the Diocese to investigate the need for an Exorcism. No one, mind you, has at this point called the Diocese. Over the course of one day, Isabelle has eaten a rabbit, begun to look like she licked her lips then kissed a bowl of instant potatoes, and started brushing her teeth with motor oil. Miraculously, the church is alerted and sends out Father Jacob. If this is not the case then these poor people only have one set of clothes. Damn raising horses is expensive.Writer Ellary Eddy isn't done pumping pointless love triangles and sexual tension into this film yet!! We bring back the blonde from the beginning, Claire, played vapidly by Madison Taylor, who we now learn is Isabelle's sister and find that Father Jacob 'done her wrong.' Eddy is still reluctant to tell us what exactly in a pathetic attempt to hold onto whoever might still be watching. But that's not enough, the Demon in Isabelle has to plants seeds of MORE sexual tension by hinting at Father Jacob having watched Isabelle in the shower once. This, of course, also offers Director Ethan Wiley an appropriate moment to insert the gratuitous teenager tit-shots required by the Filmmaker's Association to qualify any movie as "Cheesy Horror Schlock." This too is left vague as to whether it is true or merely Demon imposed fantasy.If the unnecessary subplots and poorly written dialog haven't given you an aneurysm yet...just wait. Our Mexican friend from the beginning proves that he is more than a stereotypical extra. Miquel, performed with appropriate mysteriousness and Latin moodiness by Del Zamora, argues his way into Isabelle's bedroom....alone with her. What follows was the only scene of real meat or interest to me at all.Right up until the FUCKED IT UP.Miquel forces a cross into Isabelle's hand. Predictably we hear hissing and sizzling...ridiculously, Isabelle doesn't fling it at his head. Miguel then starts saying prayers, presumably to determine if she is actually possessed or just has a skin affliction and can't lay still. Then Isabelle hops up on all fours, snarling at him like a dog and in Latin- which logically a Meixcan ranch hand would know- Miguel and Isabelle have the following conversation:Miguel: That thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies...Isabelle/Demon: ...and the tongue of thy dogs red with the same.Miguel: You know Psalms 65?Isabelle/Demon: No! Psalms 67!!Now all things considered this exchange is great and Kristen Erickson delivers her part with convincing evil (with the help of some guy's voice and a few sound effects). HOWEVER...my Christian raised brain tickled at me and poked until finally I couldn't bare it and I got up, dug out Elliot's old bible and flipped to Psalms...because I just didn't think they got something right. Frighteningly enough, I'd been steeped in enough bible verses that my inkling was correct.It was Psalms 68, FUCKERS. 68;23 in fact.*sigh* So now finding that the only well written exchange was wrong because Eddy couldn't take two seconds to look in a damn bible...my mood was immediately plummeted again and pushed down like someone forcing garbage into a compactor. We now find that Miguel is, of course, a former priest, who no longer has faith in God. Yawn.Through an absurd montage Father Jacob and "Padre" Miguel make Suzie-Homemaker versions of their vestments- because if you're going to exorcise a demon, it must be done wearing a mutilated white nightgown and a curtain valance. They make their first attempt at the Exorcism- FINALLY- at which point the Vet is brought back from a sot of horse Tranq that SHOULD have killed him, so that he can act as the "Medical counsel," and poor Isabelle is tied to the bed with a cross sport-taped to her hand. The Demon in her says the expected foul epithets and taunts them. One taunt insinuates the Miguel was responsible for his family's death-- another character point picked from a hat of trite tools. This revelation sends Miguel running from the room at which point he collapses on the couch crying like a woman spiking on hormones. The mysterious Mexican Padre-turned tough-guy falls apart, out of character and out of my favor completely.Unable to stand it any further- I shut the film off. I don't even care what happens next. Unless Isabelle rises up with the bed in flames, bites the head off her mother, uses the crucifix on Father Jacob in ways he's only fantasized about and eviscerates the rest of them with her bare hands to demonstrate how to properly kill and eat a rabbit....it will not rise above the DREK that it is and managed to respark my interest. The writer and director pussied out on the language, Faggot being the foulest word uttered; pussied out on the inuendo, only vaguely suggesting that the cop got a hummer and that Daddy 'touched' her; and completely pussied out on killing anyone- Mom downed a bottle of pills but was miraculously saved when the Vet, Claire and Ely made her vomit into a bucket that just happened to be in her bedroom. Groan.I mean really guys. Linda Blair was TWELVE and she at least feigned masturbation. The only masturbating done here was when Ethan Wiley and Ellary Eddy even presumed to waste anyone's time and money to make this trite, regurgitation of soap-opera horror.If anyone watches the last half hour, don't tell me what happens....I think I prefer the one I made up for myself.
WARNING: Spoiler Alert...everyone dies...but in very creative ways.
My digital cable company has free movies, which is great, because I'm cheap. There is, however, an old saying 'you get what you pay for.' Yeah. Well I paid with an hour and a half of my life that I can never get back. It was entertaining in that Elliot and I added our own commentary and snickered between ourselves at personal jokes that we found far more amusing and entertaining than the film itself. Then, some people may argue that is all B-Horror movies are good for, self amusement.Mindwarp has a fascinating concept behind it. A young rebel is exiled from an alternate-reality world fed directly into people's brains to give them a different reality from the one that exists outside, a world with uninhabitable conditions and no sky, because humans destroyed it with war. Overseeing this virtual reality is the 'System Operator' who oversees every thought, every reality, every life within The Matrix--Oops...I didn't mean to use that word.
Actually...I kinda did. The truth is that even the tagline of this film recalls the premise of The Matrix. "In the future, life will be a dream, and reality a nightmare." The Wachowski Bros beckoned us with "Welcome to the Real World."The Matrix was made nearly ten years after Mindwarp, which leads me to think that the Wachowski Bros may have been cult-followers of Bruce Campbell or Angus Scrimm and saw potential in this horribly uneven sci-fi/horror film. With the exception of the trite script and the atrocious acting (mostly on the part of the female lead...ok, really just about everyone sucked) the core concept of the story was rather interesting.Amusingly cast with Marta Alicia- don't worry if you don't know her...there is a reason why- Judy Apple is a restless young woman l
iving in a sterile room with her mother. She isn't content to "Dream" in the virtual reality system called "Infinisynth," which is apparently run on an early '80s Dos system sometime after 2037. We are led to believe she is a bad-ass chick because she does push-ups and situps like some prison inmate waiting out a decade long sentence. She sustains on green goop that looks like paint-dyed oatmeal, and despises the Infinisynth system because "its not REAL." Her defiance of the system leads to her being "exiled" which involves to men in ski masks jumping her, stuffing her in a white body bag and injecting her with ambiguous-but ominous yellow stuff.She awakes in a cold, dead, desert world at the base of a crucified skeleton in a wedding dress. Judy wanders looking for signs of life and falls into a sinkhole of quicksand. Marta Alicia's acting talents, at this point are barely being tested as she merely stands and sinks holding her hands up and screaming "Help! Someone help me!!" The scene is reminiscent of the old silent capers when the useless--er, I mean HELPLESS female stands loosely tied to a pole in ropes she could probably step out of. She's spied by two mutant men on a tractor (yes...a tractor. It's after the apocolypse...the Jaguars were incinerated) and by a mysterious man covered in fur but for all intents looked like one of the Sandpeople on Tatooine in Star Wars.
The Sandman is, of course, Bruce Campbell come to rescue the damsel from the ugly, cannibal mutants of the creatively dubbed "Dead lands." He comes not with a shotgun, or a mechanically attached chainsaw prosthetic, but with a crossbow which from a distance works great. Once he's left to battle one of them up close, however, he fishes in an iced over puddle and miraculously finds a serrated bad-ass sword...or a very conveniently placed swordfish skeleton. Either way he manages to save the useless-- er, helpless Judy. The mystery man is Stover, the last of his kind to survive on the surface under the 'burnt sky' having lost his family, and notably his wife, who just happened to be the crucified skeleton in a wedding dress. He wastes no time putting the moves on her and after one small skirmish with the mutant "Crawlers" Judy already whines that if she could go back to Infinisynth, she would. Hardly the bad-ass chick that a main character should be in an action film. Hell, Ellen Ripley faced down a space ship full of acid-blood man-eating-parasitic aliens and didn't whine until the end and by then, i think she fucking earned it.A short passage of time is shown, but its vague so it could have been a day or a month, and "finally" Stover and Judy get it on a mere five minutes into their on screen meeting. I was so relieved, I mean...I was starting to think that Stover would NEVER get the girl cus Bad-asses like Judy don't need men. So with that issue resolved and all of us breathing easier with all that sexual tension....the Crawlers attack them while they're still in bed naked!! But don't worry, they get their clothes on in a miraculously fast blink of an eye- cut of the camera- whatever ...What follows is an A-typical Sci-fi hostage situation. The healthy, fertile female is thrown into a makeshift infirmary to be properly prepped by the aging, now useless and bitter menopausal woman while Stover is thrown into the pits to work with the lowly Crawlers, digging for salvageable trash. Post-apocolyse, remember...they are so post-apocolyptic they don't even have shovels! He has to dig with a pipe, which you are not allowed to even think could be used as a weapon....because he has to find that baseball bat later which is far more effective than the lead pipe or the machete the other guy drops...Shut up and roll with it. It's Bruce Campbell. He can use a baseball bat if he wants!While Stover engages in a lot of unnecesary violence, since the Crawlers are pretty dim witted and he can easily duck and dodge them...but its a horror movie too so we need to have the blood spurting and the guts flying and the unexplained Crawler hanging from
the ceiling and spurting slugs or leeches or worm entrails...he does that instead. Judy, however, seems to have passed into a long lost episode of Star Trek. Her evil female overseer is Cornelia, played by Elizabeth kent (again..no need to look for her elsewhere) and a soon to be doomed girl-child Claude (Wendy Sandow...never to be seen again...). She tries to lure little Claude into thinking she has some God-like ability to save her from despair because she's "a Dreamer from Infinisynth and you must let me go!" A compelling argument to be sure. Cornelia, however, doesn't buy it and taunts Judy with plans of putting her in "The Hatchery" which to any woman sounds pretty damn unpleasant especially when the only males to be seen are Crawlers.Cornelia's acting and costume seem to come straight from one of the many 
Human-with-a-different-species-name alien planets from Cpt. kirk's days. In fact, she almost looks like a failed I Dream of Genie audition. Thankfully her role requires less range than Judy's and Elizabeth only delivers to us Overacted Spite and Underacted Mourning. Meanwhile Marta continues to deliver watered down fear with a sprinkle of 'sneezed-at Bad-ass' and bad-porn moans of discomfort. She does, though, look tantalizing in her white sport bra and panties collared and shackled in a suspended chair whose purpose was never explained outside of inciting frighteningly erotic and grotesque images of kinky Crawler sex. But hey, if Cpt. Kirk were there, he'd have tapped that ass.Through a series of absurdly convenient events and anti-climactic battling, Judy and Stover end up in the Temple with all the Crawlers and their Priest figure "The Seer," played by Angus Scrimm. Angus, as you may recall was The Tall Man in the
Phantasm series of horror movies. I can only imagine he was desperate for money or owed a favor to end up in this film, not to say that the rest of his career has been spectacular...after all...Bruce Campbell was in this too. The Seer spouts religious rhetoric about The Dreamers and likening it to heaven, then takes out Claude's eye with his long metal skeleton fingers and trows her down a shoot into what is, in effect, a giant improvised meat-grinder. Her blood flows out through a series of tubes into a water fount and into a bath tub as if she'd been juiced in a giant Cuisinart made of car parts. All the Crawlers partake of her blood (in skulls of course) and Cornelia forces Judy to drink too.The Seer is revealed to be Judy's father- DUH DUH DUUUUN...which she should have figured out the second he started talking but has to wait for his human skin hood to come off first. Then Daddy reveals his evil plan!! Judy will bear his PURE BLOODED CHILDREN! Because an apocalypse, computer-induced reality, mutants, and a child in a meat grinder weren't enough....we need INCEST TOO!Of course we do. Don't be silly.And just to prove how serious he is, Daddy orders that Stover be "Calmed down" and put back to work. "Calmed Down" apparently means locked in an underwater cage in which leech-like fish can infest Stover's body. The males burrow into his brain and inject his nervous system with toxins that "feel like being tickled from the inside" and the females infest his body with their eggs. When the larva are hatched they eat his insides to get out and he's dead. So Bruce isn't going to save the day in this one. After a few repetitive scenes of Daddy chasing Judy and telling her how perfect their children would be and that she MUST see things his way, Judy gets Stover out of the cage and pries the female egg-layers off his skin...the males are, alas, still in his brain. Daddy gets pissed with Judy and says if she won't see it his way then she'll "see everything" meaning, he isn't going to take her eyes out before he throws her in the meat grinder. Then he throws her in the meat grinder.Judy, of course, manages to catch herself-- oh, wait no....that would make her bad ass....oh that's right....her bomber jacket catches on the edge of the shoot and manages to hold her weight above the grinder. Then Stover arrives to save her!! Yay for predictability!! He hits one guy with the baseball bat and, of course, all the other Crawlers can see what an ass-kicking machine he is and back off. Then Stover takes on Daddy. He loses the bat. It lands by Judy's feet. She kicks it up. Catches it. Then wedges it.....in the meat grinder.....and stops the blade.Yay for implausibility!!So...I don't want to ruin it for you, but Angus gets the grind. Yes, the meat grinder that can't devour a wooden baseball bat juices up Daddy at which point, Stover decides it's a good idea for he and Judy to rule the Crawlers and he makes her drink her dad's blood.No wait. It gets better.As she beats him off and runs, Bruce looks up in classic wild-eyed Bruce fashion and calls "Judy, you don't understand...I love you!"Judy escapes to the Dead Lands determined to get back to "In-World" and her Infinisynth Matrix--er...yeah....and Stover chases her madly, pleading for her to come back. He catches her, and......Dramatic pause....He pukes leeches and slugs and intestinal looking things all over her. It is, quite possibly, the best part of the ENTIRE fucking movie. So worth sitting through an hour and twenty minutes of horrible acting to watch Marta Alicia take a face full of viscera. Its probably the most genuine expression she makes in the entire film. And Stover has such a classic line just then. You must watch it for that. If you continue past this point...you will be shocked and appalled at the complete Twist at the end. Its so....shocking. I was shocked. Truly. Yay for bad writing.
Since the earliest stages of Mankind's first attempts at engineering, we have found ways for machines to do work for us. From the first pulley systems in wells, to wind and water driven mills. A man in ancient Persia built a "Tea Girl"...an automated machine that would, once activated, brew, pour and then serve tea, complete with sugar and cream, like a sexy little half-dressed cuckoo clock. Some of the machines we've made are to make dangerous and burdensome jobs less so, therefore saving lives and easing the physical stress of workers. Over time, however, more people are doing less physical labor- yet we are still unsatisfied to do it ourselves. It is more 'efficient' to have a machine do it for us. Slowly this idea crawled through centuries and decades of innovation until finally analog became digital and mega-computers the size of a room were reduced to the "mini-computers" we use now. But even before we had these ideas of computers, we dreamed of man-like machines.
For all who eagerly sing the praises and potential of robots, there are those who cry out against them, foretelling of mankind's destruction and the fall of civilization. These tales of Robot-horrors came long before the initial release of The Terminator in 1984. Amusingly, the very TERM 'Robot' was coined by Karel Čapek's brother Joseph for the play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), which debuted on stage in 1921. (It's a wonderful read and I recommend it to everyone, as an occasion to watch it is rare.) The term is from robota which means drudgery, which perfectly illustrates man's reason for their creation- to do what we don't want to. This is amusing because, Rossum's robots weren't made of machinery but rather biological material. Something we would now relate as "Genetically engineered", "biological constructs" or as "clones." They are not what we perceive today-- or even what came to permeate literature and film in the following decades!
good. Robots are bad. Movies like 1927's Metropolis did the same, showing a need for balance between man and machinery, although Fritz Lang's Maria was held up as being superior to human kind. Other films like the golden calf of 50's sci-fi The Day the Earth Stood Still presented robots as a terrible weapon that could destroy mankind! It did, however, still bear the message that it was man's own wickedness that would be at fault. While giving us the classic lines:
Other films, throughout the 60s and 70s still created classic and cult horror with killer robots. The Earth Dies Screaming in 1965, as did this horrible, campy film. 1973 brought us the best theme park ever, with Yul Brynner as the original Terminator- a bloodthirsty cowboy robot in Westworld. In 1975 men found the answer to all their problems and created The Stepford Wives. 
But it was the 1980s that I was there for, when the end of the world would come on August 29, 1997: Judgment Day. That was what The Terminator told us. That not just robots- ARMIES of fucking robots and a Master Super-computer called Skynet would obliterate humans forever...only, not really forever because Kyle Reese came back from 2029 and then in 1991 they made a second movie and then a third one came out in 2003 and now a fourth one is due out in 2009 - but damn if those Robots aren't persistent. 
What I also remember from the 1980s were the Super Giant Robot cartoons! My absolute favorite was VOLTRON. It was a hero team cartoon where they had giant lion robots that combined to form the massive Voltron Super Giant Robot. And then there was Mazinger Z! He was just a big, bad ass, muthafuckin Robot ya'll! And amidst the onslaught of Japanese anime cartoon series, a new series made its way to both American and Japanese screens. 
These guys were created by Takara and Hasbro toy companies, and the cartoon was quite literally an 2254 minute long advertisement that spanned (with repetition) over three years (1984-1987). But these guys were awesome! They could be anything! Cars, Trucks, planes...the really bad guy, Megatron, even turned into a gun!! Something you would NEVER see in a cartoon today. These guys were innovative. They didn't fit together to form something big and crazy....they transformed into it. And it was an epic battle of good, Autobots, versus evil, Decepticons. Plus, they had the added awesomeness of being ALIENS too, from their home planet of Cybertron. There was no mistaking that these guys were humongous. They even had BIG names. Optimus Prime. Megatron. 
So merely by looking at the progression of Robots throughout the Lore (yeah, they are still kinda fictional people), its easy to see trends. If they don't look COMPLETELY Human, for example, Rachel in Bladerunner, then they began as slightly more futuristic looking tin cans and have slowly evolved. The Super Giant Robots were thicker, clunkier looking, even the first Transformers by today's thinking. Then as Robotech came along a new idea for Robots was made. One in which we could SEE a more mechanized form. As we came to understand more about machines and computers, the desire for the sleek, rounded 'futuristic' image was no longer 'futuristic' but rather fake. It belied an innocent ignorance to the true workings and superior engineering of machines that we now (so humbly) possess. So we fell in love with Mechs. The other beauty to Mechs, or Mecha design was that it could - at any time- if not always, require HUMAN CONTROL. Mechs are usually just giant suits with people inside, but now those people have all the power of ...
The impending release of Steven Spielburg and Micheal Bay's version of Transformers has brought about a lot of debate. Should they have maintained the nostalgia and made exact copies of the cartoon/toy robots; or is their modernized--and mechanized versions acceptable? While normally I feel that messing with a good thing is never the best, I don't know that I feel that is the case here. I think, rather, they have attempted to maintain the awe and wonder we had as kids when we first saw Optimus Prime kick Megatron's ass. But since you and I were ten years old the mechanized world around us has grown up too. Computers can show more than just spinach and lime green screens in blocky-pixelated type. We've got telephones that don't need wires, have date planners, calculators, internet and email all built in and smaller than our wallets. Shows like Modern Marvels and Mega-Builders has enlightened us to how industrial machinery, warfare mechanics and massive structures actually work.We don't watch cartoons the same way anymore either. It's okay to be an adult that watches cartoons.
