I got a real kick out of how cheap and crummy this was. The addition of flexible ductwork and/or John Saxon seems to make any movie automatically futuristic. When Saxon is both the most famous and least horrible actor in the movie you have really got something there. I have to give him credit - he always does his best, Just being a workmanlike performer as he is, in comparison with the poor acting of every single other person in the film, makes him look like Sir Laurence Olivier or Richard Burton. The creaky archaic computer graphics, and the odd clunking noise each letter made as it appeared on screen, the Competitive Armwrestling sub-plot, the grand finale shot at Arcosanti (Paolo Soleri's abortive utopia which even twenty years ago looked like a futuristic ruin) all combine into a weird stew of goodbadness. It isn't often that a movie reaches a real crescendo in its final moment, but this film's "how the hell do we end this?" finale is a real masterpiece of inadvertency. Strangely, I was never bored for a moment as every scene was at least as screwed up as the next. I have rarely witnessed a scene more affecting than the torn-off head of the female cyborg grating out "THEY WILL DEE STROY YEW" in her atrocious accent, an even worse accent than that of Paco's nemesis Raoul. I don't believe I will ever watch this again, nor could I recommend it except as punishment, but it was quite a thing to see once.
Review of Hands of Steel
