Death Machine

In the near future, the Chaank Corporation is under fire for its creation of unethical weapons and involvement in war crimes. New Chief Executive Hayden Cale (Ely Pouget) has been brought in to fill the vacancy of the old executive and right the ship much to the ire of executives John Carpenter (William Hootkins) and Scott Ridley (Richard Brake). Hayden Cale in the course of her duties seeks to put an end to the development programs of weapons developer Jack Dante (Brad Dourif), a man as psychotic as he is brilliant and keeps himself from being terminated by holding leverage over the other executives. As Dante nurses a growing obsession with Cale, Chaank becomes the target of anti-war/anti-corporate saboteurs Raimi (John Sharian), Yutani (Martin McDougall), and Weyland (Andreas Wisneiwski) who intend to blow -up Chaank's mainframe. After circumstances see Carpenter, Cale, and the saboteurs collide at Chaank's headquarters, Dante unleashes his latest creation, a murderous robot called "Warbeast", after them.

Death Machine is the writing and directing debut of effects artist Stephen Norrington. Norrington had worked on a number of genre films since the 80s (including Aliens and Lifeforce) but had grown tired of effects work and wanted to try his hand at writing. As Norrington continued to dabble in effects work while trying to find financial backing, a producer on the film Split Second for which Norrington was providing the effects had taken an interest in one of his scripts as a possible sequel and also took note of another script Death Machine which was viewed as a commercial enough idea that producers brought on board Norrington as writer and director and secured international financing. While the film was given a relatively quiet direct-to-video release in the United States, it did become something of a springboard for Norrignton that lead to him directing Blade. Death Machine isn't any more or any less than it promises and depending on what you're looking for that might be enough.

At its core, Death Machine is what happens when you mix Die Hard, Robocop (or perhaps more fitting Robocop 2), and Alien together into a trashy genre exercise that doesn't have any loftier aspirations other than setting up kill scenes. While per the cyberpunk 101 playbook it follows the old standards of unethical corporations operating without regard to human life or impact on the world, it's mostly used as window dressing so we can justify the selling point of the killer robot. As per usual, Brad Dourif is delightfully slimy playing the unhinged Jack Dante who's basically what Charles Lee Ray would be like if he had technical expertise. Nobody delivers on crazy like Dourif and you can see why his character (as well as the film's violence) led to several different cuts of this movie. Most of the characterization doesn't go for too much depth save for maybe Ely Pouget's Hayden Cale, but they do what you expect in a movie like this and play it well. The real star of the movie is the titular "warbeast" or Death Machine and structured like if the Cain model from Robocop 2 were mixed with a T-rex it's certainly a memorable killer robot and is used for some fun setpieces. The setpieces are made all the more impressive by the fact the budget was only $3 million and Norrington certainly knows how to stretch it effectively.

Death Machine is the kind of movie where it's very much "what you see is what you get?" and if you're looking for something involving a killer robot on the loose and you've already watched Hardware, this will definitely fit the bill. It's pure bloody pulp, but enjoyable if you're into that sort of thing.

Watching this little movie after a decade or more , gave me the creeps again , still fresh , original , where the talent and actors' dedication , attention to detail , and the story count , and another proof that young directors must learn their ropes from the scratch ,and not from a 100 - million budget hand-outs , that turn their product into mush and the material to eternally laugh about! The movie is based on the shenanigans of a large weapons manufacturer corporation called Chaank, which has been accused of using children to produce super warriors and their new executive appointee , brilliantly portrayed by a little known E.Pouget with a tiny personal secret, who is determined to find out what exactly ' s been happening in the bowels of the beast , under the leadership of a brilliant young prodigy appropriately named J.Dante , played by B.Douriff ,and you have got to see this character , a sort of post-punk hippie with dreadlocks and an insatiable appetite for porn in all forms, who has secretly devised an ugly gadget ,and then the whole business gets very nasty , when every access and door is hermetically sealed,and the Dante guy sets a few conditions ,the most important being ' to interface ' with his unrequited blond obsession, or else the beast will get you ! If this movie reminds you of some other classics , namely –Hardware , Alien , Carpenter's movies ,you are on the right track , as all the actors even bear the familiar names ,e.g. Scott Ridley , Yutani , Carpenter etc. Briefly , still fresh , amusing , and above all, hardcore , and utterly bleak !

Demented inventor Jack Dante (Brad Dourif) is busy building terror weapons for the amoral Chaank Armaments corporation. The new female chief executive wants his operation shut down but before she can get rid of him some inept saboteurs break in and Dante lets his toys loose.

If you have even a passing interest in sci-fi or cyberpunk you are going to love this movie. Nothing dates faster than science fiction but there are exceptions and this is one of them. Sure, they have printers the size of an oven and speaking computers that sound like a female Stephen Hawking but most of the technology on show looks credible for a near-future setting.

The casting is spot on, Brad Dourif is highly entertaining as the nutcase genius and the rest of the cast are pretty good too. I didn't expect much from this movie but I was entertained, if you haven't seen it give it a try I think you'll like it.

Just as a final note, this movie currently has a totally unfair score of 5! That puts it on a par, in the minds of voters, with surefire crap like the lamentable Stepford Wives remake. IMDb should save people the trouble of voting and just give everything made this year a 10 and everything made earlier a 5, the final scores would be about the same.

Got a $1 videotape of this at a thrift store because it was a video shop screener, which usually means not viewed much and still in good shape. This was, and it was a nice surprise for a dollar, and it was what "Hardware" should have been.

Without giving away too much of the story, it is about a war weapons development corporation that has a renegade inventor who builds a killer robot called the Warbeast. The renegade inventor, Brad Dourif recreating his Wise Blood character in part, is also insane and eventually the Warbeast is let loose. There's also a neat sequence where the Warbeast battles a human cyborg reminiscent of Alien 2, seems to be intentional. The Warbeast resembles a mechanical Alien, and "Scott Ridley" is a character. Many other characters named from film personalities as well.

A little sluggish at first, but really makes up for that later in the film. Also, probably not enough of the Warbeast slaughtering folks visible for some gore-hounds, but what there is, is well done. Seems like they were about two characters short to really create a good rampage by the Warbeast, but budget constraints notwithstanding, they did a very good job overall.

One of the characters yells at his friend: "You just knew Ho-Ho was going to turn out to be the fat, sweaty, desperate psycho!" And of course, we all did too...

There is no question what this movie was. There are even characters named Scott Ridley, Sam Raimi, and John Carpenter. While the surface of the film is a long-corridor (Aliens) horror movie, what lies beneath is sort of a manic, director-oriented comedy that reminds me more of Evil Dead 2 than anything else. The hyper sound to dead silence, the overly dramatic lighting, the first-person Missile Cam, the cool line followed by backlit explosion... it all leans towards a wild but fun ride through all of the most common camp in these types of movies. It's a satire subtle enough to pass as just another bad horror movie, if you're not paying attention.

Brad Dourif (who was B-B-B-B-Billy Buh-Bibbit, a long time ago, and the voice of Chucky-- and might become a little more prevalent in film after being in the upcoming Lord Of The Rings trilogy) is the great shining spot in this film, and alternates from acting well (check out his outpouring at the end) to completely terrible (awful references to hacking... "Molebdenic composite"?). And all of the best subtle jokes are bad guy parodies-- my favorite example is his inability to get his threat right over the monitors: "Turning me off won't turn you off. No. Wait. Turning you off--" click.

But the real flair here is in the direction. None of this would work if it wasn't played half serious with the sights and sounds. As the climax builds, the ambient noise cuts out completely for the doors to chime "Welcome!" cheerily. The HUD from the machine's point of view displays 1P and Hi Score. The Robocop-style machine whirring in the Hardman gear as Raimi actually gets into a fistfight (!) with the machine... there is never any "set 'em up, knock 'em down" standard cue that *these* are the jokes... but there they are. Dig in.