"We've got to find a hideaway, a hideaway into the night!"

One of the things you can always tell about the quality of a movie, is whether it has synth-line soundtrack which guarantees that it was made in the 80's, is perfect for Bad Movie Knights and is most likely a movie of exceptionally poor quality. Although in the case of R.O.T.O.R., it only qualifies as two out of the three in this rule. In that R.O.T.O.R. isn't made with poor quality, because it's made with no quality at all. Also it's also hard to believe the movie was made in the late 80's, since the production values and special effects recall the early 60's in their overall "timelessness".

R.O.T.O.R. is a Texan rip off of Robocop, except the difference is that R.O.T.O.R. is a renegade robot gone beserk rather than a robotic cop that actually worked. Actually it's somewhat symbolic in that where as Robocop worked, R.O.T.O.R.indeed is an unholy monster of a film. Oh and the best thing of all is that instead of making robot parts, we instead cast an actor who's overall calling card seems to be reaching into a car at various times. (Indeed R.O.T.O.R. sticks his arm through a window trying to grab our heroine, more times than he actually kills people. Hilarious!) What is even more priceless is that our hero played with oscar winning intensity by Richard Gesswein, who looks like a more drunk version of Nick Nolte, spits out such priceless lines as "Freeze you monster!" all of these single elements could make a four-star movie seem awful, but I haven't even gotten into the character of Steele who wears a skunk mullet, and (as Jabootu points out) uses a gun to whack R.O.T.O.R. with, instead of shooting him. Priceless. Almost as funny as the skunk mullet, though not quite.

The title itself is enough to warrant a laugh only because it's so direly stupid. R.O.T.O.R. stands for Robotic Officer Tactical Operations Research Unit, of course one would then say shouldn't it be called ROTORU? But then again logic is one of those things that doesn't apply here. Another aspect of the movie which makes this perfect 3AM fodder is that the hero's gun keeps changing. For instance the hero wields a colt python that is when he shoots it. However when he conceals it, it looks strangely like a B.B gun, The B.B repeaters that sell for say, $19.99. Of course back then it was about $10.99. (I know, I had one) Indeed strangely the R.O.T.O.R. cop wields the same gun and when he goes into the water the gun mysteriously turns into a B.B repeater. Truly Charles Bronson would be proud. Hed be even prouder of dialog like this

To Wit:

"Ha, you get to watch, you get to watch me blow her brains out! You going to stop me, all you got is a newspapter!"
"I got more then a newspaper and you get to guess what it is!"
"No, AHHHHHH!"

At this moment the gun shoots a fireball (Literally it's like a bullet laced with C-4) and the guy flies backwards, this would be more convincing if we didn't see the shot guy move after the initial killshot. Movies like R.O.T.O.R.are great because you get to realize that there are still treasures of bad movies still available. You just have to look hard for them. R.O.T.O.R. is the perfect bad movie, a speciall helping of all that is terrible about the genre and in doing so it has provided the viewer with countless hours of laughter. As for the actors and the careers, most of them went back to who knows what, although our skunk mulleted bodybuilder woman played "Mary Turd" in Flesh Gordon 2. Of course my theory on why the actors involved in this movie never went on to any other movies, is mainly due to the fact that the actors looked at this movie and knew with all solemn truth, that there was no possible way to ever top this.

If not for American Kickboxer 2 and Sgt Pepper's Heart Club Band (Both will be reviewed and both will earn 10s by yours truly) this would be invincible in the stakes of hilarious bad movies. (It's on par with Troll 2)

Hamlin Grade: 9

Ryan