Hands of Steel is set in the near future where air pollution has become a major factor, hundreds of thousands of people are dying because of simply breathing in polluted air & powerful environmental activist Rev. Arthur Mosely (Franco Fantasia) is planning on doing something about it & exposing the organisations & people behind it. Powerful businessman Francis Turner (John Saxon) is worried by Mosely so he has devised a plan to send an almost indestructible cyborg named Paco Queruak (Daniel Greene) to assassinate him, Paco enters Mosely's room & is about to kill him when some vague memories when he was still a man enter his head & make him abandon his mission. Escaping into the desert Paco makes his way to Arizona where he meets Linda (Janet Agren) & becomes involved in arm wrestling before Turner & his other hired assassins track him down with order's to kill him no matter what...
This Italian production was co-written & directed by Sergio Martino (changed to his usual Martin Dolman for English speaking territories) & is known internationally under a few different titles including Hands of Steel in the US, Fists of Steel here in the UK & Atomic Cyborg which was the title on the version I saw, taking itself extremely seriously this has no less than seven (!) screenwriters credited to it which I find amazing. Set in the not too distant future you sense that this was an Italian attempt at a rip-off of The Terminator (1984) with the cyborg character sent to kill someone important & even contains an almost exact replica of the sequence when Arnie repairs his damaged arm. There's not much here to suggest that Hands of Steel is set in the future, sure there's a brief sequence where Paco drives through some acid rain which is quite literally acid as it burns & melts his car but otherwise the action & setting is pretty much contemporary apart from a few cyborg references. There are a couple of subplots that never really go anywhere, the arm wrestling scenes, the hunt for Paco by the FBI who find him at the end but the film finishes before any sort of final confrontation & Turner's obsession with killing Paco to keep him quiet which should have been the main focus of the story but we never learn how far deep Turner is in or why he wanted Mosely dead so badly or why he had to create a cyborg from a complete stranger & hope it worked rather send his own people in to kill Mosely. None of it makes much sense although it moves along at a fair pace, it has a few decent action scenes & some unintentionally hilarious dialogue, just listen to Pace & Raul trade insults as it pure comedy gold with exchanges like 'anyone know this piece of Rat turd?' & 'he's as strong as a wet fart' particular highlights. At just under 90 minutes there's some fun to be had with Hands of Steel with it's funny dialogue, silly action, subplot about arm wrestling & daft story of a big tough cyborg regaining his humanity & falling in love but it's far from a classic.
Shot mainly in the Arizona desert the future world that hands of Steel portrays isn't that far removed from the world now, I mean polluted air & corrupt organisations sound very familiar. There's not much blood or gore here, a cyborg is decapitated, a few people are shot, Paco rips someone's heart out & a Snake is karate chopped in half by Paco which probably accounts for the cuts to the original UK VHS release back in the 80's. There are some OK fight sequences & a bit of a car chase at the end as Paco & Linda try to escape & are pursued by hired assassins in a helicopter. It's during the filming of these scenes that tragedy struck on set as a helicopter crashed into a bridge & killed both the pilot & star Claudio Cassinelli.
Probably shot on a low budget the production values are alright as far as they go, being filmed in real locations help the look of Hands of Steel but it just doesn't look futuristic enough & when it does try to be futuristic it ends up looking silly like putting thick piping over cars for no apparent reason. Daniel Greene is awful as the cybernetic hero, Janet Agren & George Eastman, John Saxon & the late Claudio Cassinelli provide better support & are far more watchable.
Hands of Steel, Fists of Steel or Atomic Cyborg whichever title you see this under it's a decent enough post apocalyptic sci-fi action thriller that I imagine was made as a rip-off of The Terminator with added arm wrestling. Good for a few laughs & undemanding if silly entertainment.
This Italian production was co-written & directed by Sergio Martino (changed to his usual Martin Dolman for English speaking territories) & is known internationally under a few different titles including Hands of Steel in the US, Fists of Steel here in the UK & Atomic Cyborg which was the title on the version I saw, taking itself extremely seriously this has no less than seven (!) screenwriters credited to it which I find amazing. Set in the not too distant future you sense that this was an Italian attempt at a rip-off of The Terminator (1984) with the cyborg character sent to kill someone important & even contains an almost exact replica of the sequence when Arnie repairs his damaged arm. There's not much here to suggest that Hands of Steel is set in the future, sure there's a brief sequence where Paco drives through some acid rain which is quite literally acid as it burns & melts his car but otherwise the action & setting is pretty much contemporary apart from a few cyborg references. There are a couple of subplots that never really go anywhere, the arm wrestling scenes, the hunt for Paco by the FBI who find him at the end but the film finishes before any sort of final confrontation & Turner's obsession with killing Paco to keep him quiet which should have been the main focus of the story but we never learn how far deep Turner is in or why he wanted Mosely dead so badly or why he had to create a cyborg from a complete stranger & hope it worked rather send his own people in to kill Mosely. None of it makes much sense although it moves along at a fair pace, it has a few decent action scenes & some unintentionally hilarious dialogue, just listen to Pace & Raul trade insults as it pure comedy gold with exchanges like 'anyone know this piece of Rat turd?' & 'he's as strong as a wet fart' particular highlights. At just under 90 minutes there's some fun to be had with Hands of Steel with it's funny dialogue, silly action, subplot about arm wrestling & daft story of a big tough cyborg regaining his humanity & falling in love but it's far from a classic.
Shot mainly in the Arizona desert the future world that hands of Steel portrays isn't that far removed from the world now, I mean polluted air & corrupt organisations sound very familiar. There's not much blood or gore here, a cyborg is decapitated, a few people are shot, Paco rips someone's heart out & a Snake is karate chopped in half by Paco which probably accounts for the cuts to the original UK VHS release back in the 80's. There are some OK fight sequences & a bit of a car chase at the end as Paco & Linda try to escape & are pursued by hired assassins in a helicopter. It's during the filming of these scenes that tragedy struck on set as a helicopter crashed into a bridge & killed both the pilot & star Claudio Cassinelli.
Probably shot on a low budget the production values are alright as far as they go, being filmed in real locations help the look of Hands of Steel but it just doesn't look futuristic enough & when it does try to be futuristic it ends up looking silly like putting thick piping over cars for no apparent reason. Daniel Greene is awful as the cybernetic hero, Janet Agren & George Eastman, John Saxon & the late Claudio Cassinelli provide better support & are far more watchable.
Hands of Steel, Fists of Steel or Atomic Cyborg whichever title you see this under it's a decent enough post apocalyptic sci-fi action thriller that I imagine was made as a rip-off of The Terminator with added arm wrestling. Good for a few laughs & undemanding if silly entertainment.