Circuitry Man

I REALLY like this film! I discovered it while checking out the filmography of Vernon Wells, who I first saw in 'The Road Warrior' in 1981. His over-the-top performance made me seek him out as one of the 'Ultimate Villains'...like Alan Rickman, Gavin O'Herlihy, Billy Drago, Max Phipps or Arnold Vosloo. (If these names don't ring a bell, you need to check them out!) These are people who always deliver for me! Contrary to one reviewer, I like Jim Metzler, as well. He is perfectly cast as the android sex robot. If you liked Dennis Christopher's wonderful performance in 'Breaking Away', you're going to undergo a catharsis when you see him in 'Circuitry Man'! 'Circuitry Man II' isn't bad either.

After an environmental holocaust, all of the surviving humans have moved underground. With no new frontiers to explore they choose to expand their minds to the extent that one of the most important luxuries to be acquired is a pleasure microchip. "Lori" (Dana Wheeler-Nicholson) is a bodyguard living under Los Angeles who has been pressed into service to protect a smuggler by the name of "Juice" (Lu Leonard). As it so happens, Juice has a briefcase full of microchips she wants to exchange for money to a criminal by the name of "Plughead" (Vernon Wells). Things go wrong during the exchange and Lori winds up with the briefcase and attempts to flee to the underground city of New York with Plughead in hot pursuit. Accompanying her is a pleasure android by the name of "Danner" (Jim Metzler) who agrees to help get her to her destination. The rest of the film involves the chase and the troubles Danner and Lori encounter along the way. Now, although this wasn't necessarily a bad move, I found the wardrobes and some of the characters a bit too far-fetched for my taste and the acting was second-rate as well. That said, in my opinion the only two people I thought contributed anything of interest to this film was Dana Wheeler-Nicholson (who was attractive) and the character of Plughead. Other than that everything seemed to have a hollow feel to it. Others may disagree but overall I found the film slightly below average.

The positives:

Vernon Wells (Mad Max, Commando) is awesome. The setting and the concept are actually great.

The negatives: The movie, when you piece it all together it just misses the greatness it could of had.

Being relatively new to the genre of the psychotronic film, I was a little unsure what to expect with this film. A when the movie channel warned of graphic violence, I got even a little more nervous. What were they thinking? Take away a couple of f bombs and you've got a PG movie. As a matter of fact, why would anyone want this to be rated R? The target audience should be kids under 16 and me. Yeah I liked this movie. I liked how the filmmakers got around the fact that this was a low budget movie by coming up with ideas that nimbly sidestepped the issue but without taking away from the science fiction theme. I liked the exuberant performances of Vernon Wells and Dennis Christopher. I liked the cynical performance of Paul Willson (who to me will always be the Bonanza theme song guy from "Cheers"). And I liked the fact that this film at no point took itself seriously but never winked at the camera. Show this film and "Buckaroo Banzai" to your teenage kids tonight.

In this environmental disaster sci-fi flick the Earth has been left devastated by exploitation by man. The air has been rendered unbreathable by years of pollution and people have been forced to live in underground cities. A female bodyguard joins forces with a gigolo android with an appalling haircut - the circuitry man – in order to deliver sexual pleasure microchips to an underworld character on the other side of the country. They are pursued, however, by a gang led by an eccentric criminal called Plughead – a man with a headful of sockets.

From the above synopsis it should be reasonably obvious that Circuitry Man is a film with quite a lot of imaginative ideas. Given the clearly low-budget you have to cut the movie some slack and say that it at least tried to bring something different to the table. However, it would only be fair to say that the premise is greater than the delivery, as it essentially becomes a chase film once our heroes run away from the bad guys. But it still has enough originality to keep it entertaining for the most part. The Plughead character is played by Vernon Wells who played the very campy bad guy in Commando. It was also followed by a very bad sequel.