R.O.T.O.R.

R.O.T.O.R. is a 1988 American science-fiction film, directed by Cullen Blaine.

Plot
An prototype crime-fighting android named R.O.T.O.R. is accidentally activated, and starts pursuing a woman named Sonya with the intention of killing her over a minor offense, along with anyone who gets in its way. The Dallas Police Department are forced to bring back R.O.T.O.R.'s creator, Barret Coldyron, who had previously quit the project over a disagreement, in order to save Sonya's life.

Why It Sucks

 * 1) The storyline is a blatant rip-off of The Terminator, focusing around an unstoppable android who is determined to kill a woman, and a man who is out to save the woman. Except that whereas the Terminator was out to kill Sarah Connor in order to prevent the birth of John Connor, who would be the savior of humanity, R.O.T.O.R. is just out to kill Sonya over a traffic violation.
 * 2) * It also contains some elements that seem to rip off the first RoboCop. However, this could just be coincidental, as the movie was supposedly filmed in late 1986, before RoboCop was released.
 * 3) The movie has absolutely no idea what it's trying to be. When it's not trying to just straight-up copy The Terminator, it has a lot of hand-to-hand action sequences that (along with the Dallas setting) make it feel like a Chuck Norris action movie... and when it's not doing that, there are a bunch of weirdly out-of-place comedy scenes involving a bungling scientist working for the Dallas P.D., and his robotic sidekick Willard, who looks like the robot from Lost in Space if someone put a cop's hat on it.
 * 4) Terrible acting throughout, which is made even worse by the fact that most of the cast have been overdubbed by other actors, who give lifeless line readings.
 * 5) Awful direction from Cullen Blaine (aka Cullen Houghtaling), who had a long career as an animation director on various TV shows, but never worked on any other live-action movies, and it shows!
 * 6) Dull, repetitive soundtrack, which feels like a poor attempt at copying the soundtrack from The Terminator.
 * 7) False Advertising: Not only is the poster a rip-off of the poster for the first Mad Max movie, but it completely misrepresents R.O.T.O.R.'s design, showing it as fully robotic, whereas in the film, R.O.T.O.R. is a robot in human flesh. The robot design in the film looks nothing like in the poster.
 * 8) The storyline is incredibly padded, especially in the first half, which has a lot of pointless scenes with Coldyron hanging around with his girlfriend. R.O.T.O.R. doesn't even come online until shortly before the halfway point of the movie, and lots of the sequences where it's trying to kill Sonya take twice as long as they should, thanks to it only ever walking very slowly towards her.
 * 9) Thanks to the poorly-considered choice to have a framing story with Coldyron talking to some police officers, there's no real suspense to the storyline, as we know that Coldyron and Sonya are going to survive and succeed in destroying R.O.T.O.R., and there's no reason to care about anybody else.
 * 10) * It's also not clear why Coldyron needs to even brief the police on the full backstory of the incident in the first place, since it was the police who called him in to help!
 * 11) The movie can't make up its mind as to exactly what Coldyron's job is supposed to be. He starts out as a scientist and the designer of R.O.T.O.R., then is suddenly mentioned as being a detective when he's trying to track down Sonya, and then is said to be just the person who programmed R.O.T.O.R.'s personality, with Dr. Steele as the person who designed its body.
 * 12) Stupid dialog, especially Coldyron's threat to "make more noise than two skeletons making love in a tin coffin" when the police are trying to cover up the incident.
 * 13) Various logical problems with the storyline, including why R.O.T.O.R. has a locker with a uniform and a fuelled-up and ready-to-go motorcycle when it wasn't supposed to be activated for several years, and why Sonya doesn't bother exploiting its being paralyzed by the sound of car horns to just immobilize it until help can arrive.
 * 14) The hand-to-hand fight sequences are laughably bad. They pretty much look like fights from the 1960s Batman TV series if someone had forgotten to put in the "ZAP!" and "POW!" graphics.
 * 15) R.O.T.O.R.'s other creator, Dr. Steele is introduced with about 20 minutes of the movie remaining. Not only does she have a laughably stupid appearance, with a younger actress clearly being made up to look old by dyeing a white stripe in her hair, but she doesn't even accomplish anything other than distracting R.O.T.O.R. for about a minute before he kills her.
 * 16) Awful ending, with Coldyron suddenly getting shot dead in a parking lot by a minor character who appeared early in the movie, and then his previously unmentioned nephew building R.O.T.O.R. Mark 2, who looks like a younger Professor Steele for some reason that's never explained.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) There's a lot of unintentional hilarity from the poor fight scenes and stupid dialogue.
 * 2) The cinematography is actually pretty decent by the standards of a low-budget movie.
 * 3) As ridiculously out-of-place as he is, Willard the Robot is actually quite an endearing character, and his line "I get the feeling that this is how The Terminator got started" is one of the few legitimately funny moments in the movie.

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