Since I don’t believe in Fate I must concede that sometimes things just happen. It was pure chance that led to the worst film producers of the 1980s, Golan & Globus, signing the worst martial arts star ever to grace a cinema screen, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and then getting the worst filmmaker, well, ever, to direct him in a movie. The terrifying conjunction of Golan-Globus with Van Damme and Albert Pyun resulted in Cyborg, one of the most terminally embarrassing movies that they ever put their names to - and don’t forget, that’s a combined filmography which includes Nemesis 4, Universal Soldier: The Return and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo.

In fine Post Apocalyptic movie tradition we are told by a voiceover that Civilization has collapsed. As if that isn’t bad enough the meagre survivors have also been struck by a deadly plague. There are rumours of a cure but the voiceover-person is none too happy about this - “I LIKE this world!” he snarls. Then we open on the movie’s sole good bit, a cool-but-cheesy matte painting of a desolate New York, the Brooklyn Bridge having long ago collapsed into the Hudson. It’s an image that really belongs in a cooler movie, which is probably why it was used on all of this trainwreck’s promotional materials.

Forget the groovy painting, because now we’re off to one of our stock cheap-ass Post Apocalyptic (hereafter abbreviated to Po-Poc) locations: a bunch of ruined buildings. Pearl Prophet (Dayle Haddon) is running from a bunch of Mad Max refugee pirates led by Fender Tremolo (Vincent Klyn). She is offered some brief assistance by Gibson Rickenbacker (Jean-Claude Van Damme), a ‘slinger’ - see, all the characters are named after guitar-related products, so Jean-Claude is a guitar-slinger. It’s some form of humour, possibly a mutated futuristic one that isn’t remotely funny. Anyhow Gibson is knocked unconscious and Prophet, the titular Cyborg, is taken - but not before some cheap stop-motion to show that she is mostly robotic.

When Gibson awakes he decides to follow; Pearl revealed to him that she is taking information that will lead to a cure for the plague to Atlanta, and even though he pretends to be a bad-tempered git Gib inevitably has a Heart of Gold™. Before long he hooks up with Nady Simmons (former Miss California Debi Richter), who is here to act as Gib’s conscience, occasional damsel in distress and source of (sadly very brief) bare breasts.

Later that night, Gib spends a long time sharpening his sword, which affords us ample opportunity to flashback to a time when he had slightly different hair. He was looking after a widow and her kids, and in spite of his crusty exterior he began to like having them around. Naturally this hints at a tragic past, but we’re interrupted by the need for a fight scene. This takes place in another traditional Po-Poc location, that of a derelict building in the middle of a forest. This fight scene is significant as it’s the only halfway decent one in the film - ‘halfway’ being the operative word.

Subsequent to the fight Gib and Nady happen across the sea, which prompts Nady to strip off and go swimming. Later she tries to tempt Gib to sleep with her, but he refuses as if he’s still burning from the loss of his One True Love… and sure enough there’s more dreamland flashbackery to suggest just that. Flashbacks are the order of the day it seems since Pearl is having one of her own - she remembers volunteering to become a Cyborg in the first place, which seems to involve having every bit of herself replaced by electronics - still, unlike the two other movies in the series this one does pay lip-service to the fact that a Cyborg is a combination of living tissue and electronics.

The next day Gib and Nady catch up with Fender at the best Po-Poc location of all, an abandoned factory. Action ensues but only because Gib decides not to shoot the bad guy he has DIRECTLY IN HIS SIGHTS, so that he can engage in some kung fu with him instead. An annoying element is the guns that the characters carry; they appear to have minigun-style rotating multiple barrels, but presumably due to cheap-ass production costs they only fire out of whichever barrel is at the top. I hate gadgets that don’t follow through. Anyway, Gib manages to reach Pearl but she refuses to leave. She doubts he can beat Fender and at any rate, he’s taking her in the right direction.

Gib and the wounded Nady escape down a manhole, and since this is a low-budget, plot-lite Cannon picture you may be wondering where all the lovely FILLER has gone. Well, it’s coming right up during the next sequence. Allow me to try and summarise, in text form, the next 15 minutes or so of the movie; Thug goes down manhole, shot of Gib running through tunnel, next thug goes down manhole, Gib running through tunnel, a couple more thugs go down manhole, Gib fights the first thug, few more thugs go down manhole, Gib runs through tunnel, thugs run through tunnel, last two thugs go down manhole, Gib fights a couple more thugs, Gib running, thugs running. Gib exits tunnel through different manhole, runs through field. Runs through field some more. First thug comes out of manhole. Gib runs through field. Second thug comes out of manhole. Gib runs. Thug runs. More thugs come out of manhole. Gib fights first thug. More thugs running. More thugs come out of manhole. Viewer puts foot through TV.

Eventually there’s nowhere else to run and no thugs left in the manhole, so Gib has to stand up to Fender. Given that he’s named after a cooler guitar Fender kicks Gibson’s arse, and Gib finds himself crucified and left for dead. This is handy because it allows Gib to reflect on the final flashback, wherein we discover that the cute widow, along with her family, had been killed by Fender back in the days when he, too, had different hair.

Gib manages to escape with Nady’s help, and the two of them catch up with Fender’s gang as they enter Atlanta. There’s another nice matte painting here depicting the ruined city, but unfortunately when the final battle begins there’s little evidence of this location. Instead they find themselves fighting it out next to, in and on top of an authentically Po-Poc rusty car. Despite having the crap knocked out of him on every previous encounter, Gib manages to beat Fender, who responds by making the same “Rraaaagggghhhhh!!!” noise whether he’s hitting, being hit, or just kinda standing around. Nady is killed in the struggle, but don’t feel too bad because one of the dead widow’s kids, Haley (Haley Peterson), hooked up with Fender - who killed her mother, you may recall - and has just been sorta hanging around waiting for Gib to be victorious so she can be friends with him again.

Finally, Pearl gets back to her scientist buddies, who reckon they could use a tough guy like Gib. “We’re needed out there,” he mutters, before he and Haley set off to put some considerable distance between them and Cyborg 2.

In case I didn’t make it clear in the preceding synopsis. Let me spell it out; Cyborg is bloody terrible. It features pretty much all of my least favourite low-budget sci-fi clichés, including cheap Po-Poc locations, costumes made from leather and car parts, generic possibly-mutant guys with their faces covered to hide the fact that they’re all the same stuntman, and a tragic hero’s past retold in flashback. Pyun must take much of the blame for both this and the extremely odd directing. The camera lingers on people standing around doing nothing, fight scenes are filmed in excitement-sapping slow motion, and there’s a LOT of footage of manholes. And running. And manholes…

Then there’s the whole thing with the character names being based on musical equipment. Contrary to what you may have read in reviews elsewhere, they aren’t all makes of guitars. Sure, Gibson, Fender and Rickenbacker are all guitar brands, but Tremolo is the name for the guitar bridge that Eddie Van Halen uses to go wawawa-eeeeeooooooowww! Pearl is a make of drums, Prophet a kind of synthesizer and Nady make those cool wireless radio packs that allow rock guitarists to swing skull-&-naked-chick axes around their necks without being garrotted. There’s another guy I didn’t mention, Marshall Strat, whose name comes from the leading rock amplifier brand and the world’s best-selling guitar model. None of this pointless detail makes the names any less stupid, it’s just that the whole issue has been dissected at length by Lyz at And You Call Yourself A Scientist, and I didn’t want it to look like I had nothing new to add. Lyz also neglected to mention that the name Brick Bardo, here an evil thug played by Ralf Moeller (Gladiator, the Conan TV series), turns up in a colossal seven Albert Pyun movies; this, Alien from L.A., Bloodmatch, Deceit, and the title character played by Tim Thomerson in Dollman and Dollman vs. Demonic Toys. See? I can do filler too!

This movie came out at the beginning of Van Damme’s ascendancy to brief stardom, emerging as it did between Bloodsport and Kickboxer. It was also one of the last big hits for Cannon, before Golan & Globus fell out over who could make the worst Lambada movie. As for Pyun, it’s probably his most celebrated picture. It isn’t quite as infamous as Captain America, But isn’t a patch on the fun sword-&-sorcery knock off - entitled, conveniently enough, The Sword And The Sorcerer - that launched Pyun’s career as a director. Since then his output has been increasingly mired in DTV martial arts and sci-fi flicks of a standard that makes Cyborg look like Bladerunner. Hmm, given that all of the principal players have subsequently fallen on leaner times, it seems that there’s quite a bit of Cyborg-related bad karma floating around. I wonder if there’s something to this Fate thing after all…

Dave Thomas, 28^th September 2003