Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Hands of Steel

Published Apr 8, 2022, 10:01 AM

This week’s classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema is 30 percent human, 70 percent robot and 100 percent lethal -- because the subject is the 1986 Italian sci-fi action film “Hands of Steel,” a cyborg arm wrestling movie set in the dystopian future of 1997. (originally published 3/19/2021)

Hey, welcome to Weird How Cinema Rewind. This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and it's yeah, so it's Weird How Cinema Rewind. This is an older episode of Weird House Cinema. Uh, this is what a terminate Italian Terminator rip off movie that we did. Yes, basically, yeah, we got some some John Saxon action in here. We've got some George Eastman action in here. It's uh, it's a lot of stuff blows up. There's some arm wrestling. I mean, this has it all the personable George Eastman and it's an Arizona movie. So if you if you haven't heard this episode, well now at the time, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind, a production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird How Cinema. This is Rob Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're going to be taking a look at the nineteen eight six film Hands of Steel, which is an Italian Terminator clone that asks the question not just cana cyborg fall in love, but can a cyborg appreciate the finer points of arm wrestling? That's right. This one also known as a Vendetta dal futuro I guess Vendetta of the future. Uh. And then I've also seen it credited with another title, um um, the Italian for hands of stone. Maybe that was a working title. I'm not sure that many did. Pietra. Yeah, yeah, why would it be hands of stone? This cyborg definitely does not have stone in him. He has metal in him. We see it up close. Now, there was a funny thing about this. You might ask, Okay, is this movie an Italian rip off of Terminator? And the answer is yes. But it's more than that. It's also, as we've said, it's about love and it's about arm wrestling. But I would say there's a strange quality this movie has, which is that it rips off movies that po to date it. So when I was watching, I was thinking, it's not just a rip off of Terminator, it's also in a way a rip off of RoboCop. The RoboCop didn't come out until at least a year after this movie was made, and it's also kind of a rip off of Universal Soldier, which didn't come out until several years after this was made. So actually it's uh, it's what's the word for that? It's almost kind of a mystical concept of like the idea that predates the thing from which it is derived. Yeah, it is is a holy artifact. This this movie. I could I was also thinking about this when it came out, because I knew that it had this arm wrestling elements. So I'm like, oh, this was probably also influenced by Over the Top, the stallone arm wrestling movie, but that didn't come out till a year after Hands of Steel, so you see a lot of that going on in this. Now to your point, it does have elements from these other films. I've seen it referred to as a hybrid film or even the ultimate hybrid film um, which on one hand, yes, you do see a lot of um uh of of borrowing of elements from other films at the time, especially in Italian cinema. Uh. But then I also feel like I have to cut a little slack two films like this, because all movies are hybrid movies, you know. Uh, They're varying degrees of artfulness of doing it. But yeah, a lot of films came out influenced by Terminator. Um not all of them. Uh, we're great, but but this one is not bad. I mean I enjoyed it from from start to finish. It has some weird choices in it, and uh, it's a shot almost exclusively in Arizona. Little known fact the state motto of Arizona the cyborg state. Yeah. Also, one of the things about this one is a lot of the posters for it and box art would advertise that our hero in this is thirty percent human, se robot, and a hundred percent lethal. He says that in the movie. Remember when there's like the reveal scene. It's a tender, uh sort of love scene. Remember when when Linda is like what are you and he's like, I'm thirty percent human and seventy robot. He doesn't say the lethal part, but but he's like, got it down to the percentages? Yeah, I mean he knows is that by weight or by volume? Um? I guess by volume. That's why I interpreted. I was thinking, like, which, like the different limbs and organs missing? Right though? We never get a clear picture. I don't know. There's some flashes of schematics and whatnot, but I don't think they really contain that much information on this premise. I guess now that we've said the thirty percent human robot. That that's sort of already the elevator pitch from the movie, right, Like, what else is there to say, except well, he's an assassin. Right? When is this movie set. It's set in the future of so, you know, a little over a decade into the future. Now are past. But yeah, it's about a cyborg assassin who rediscovers his humanity. Uh. Meanwhile, his murderous hand lers pursue him across the Arizona Waste Land in order to keep him from falling into the wrong hands and of course getting away with his change of heart. You're not supposed to change your heart if you're part of team bad Guy. That's right. Let's hear that trailer audio seed with mission as directed, and don't let there be any mistakes, no tra lies, no tra lies. Just follow my orders. We won't think of my body has been bionically reconstructed, all right? Yeah, I was. I was instantly intrigued once I once I heard this. This is one I had not seen before. I have just finished watching it this morning, and uh, I remember the the VHS box art I think, or maybe the DVD art. It has this wonderful illustration of our lead character with what really seems to be an arm of steel, and so um yeah, it's uh, it's a it's a sci fi extravaganza. So if you watch the credits for this movie, they named the director as somebody named Martin Dolman. Now Martin Dolman is not a real person. That is the the pseudonym the Nomda. What's the movie version of Nomdager? Not Nomda? Cinema of Italian director Sergio Martino, who is famous for having directed a lot of classic, famous slush, infamous Italian B movies and jello films. That's right. He's noted for having said that while some directors create sparkling wine, he creates soda pop. But at the end of the day, he'd rather have a good soda than a bad sparkling wine. Which I think that's a fair comparison. I mean it's I think it's up for the viewer to decide which this is. If this is a good soda pop or if it's a little bit flat. I don't know it. It got the fizzy sensations going for me. But Martino, he's he's directed all sorts of pictures. He has sixty six credits on IMDb up through and they include spaghetti, westerns, comedies, various genre pictures uh, and of course this one is a sci fi action flick. Uh. I would actually say that this movie is a room temperature can of Schwepps ginger ale, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, it looks like it's made from all natural ingredients, though I don't know if there's any high fruit toast corner up in here. This This feels like it's just got sugarcane. One. One picture from Sergio Martino that is near and dear to my heart is Screamers from nine, which we might in the future come back and look at in greater detail. I owned this one on Blu Ray. Uh. I've talked about it a little bit on the show before. It was originally titled Island of the Fishmen, but then it was released by Roger Corman in the in the US with this new title and a new opening sequence featuring Cameron Mitchell. And I think the new opening sequence sequence was actually directed by Jim way Narski of Chopping Mall Fame. But it's a it's a wonderful film about fish people and treasure and Explorers in which a human being does not turn inside out despite that being the like the promise the on the on the poster ard and the VHS box art for Screamers when when I was a kid. Oh, I think that was the context in which it was originally came up. It was like we were talking about movies where the poster or the box and the title give you absolutely the wrong idea about what's in the film, like not Yeah, so Screamers as promoted by Corman and company. Yeah, it just seemed like it was going to be a body hard nightmare that I wanted no part of as a child and would be you didn't reluctant to engage in even as an adult. But really it's just a wonderful Fishman film, and Martino directed it. Martino also directed a number of Jealo movies. UH. If you're not very familiar with Jealo movies, this is a term that sort of a loose designation for uh, an Italian subgenre of like murder mystery type movies that are that that in a way pre date the emergence of the slasher genre in America, where there would be like a knife wielding killer and a number of characters who would get murdered one by one while some characters try to figure out what the identity of the killer is, and usually the identity is revealed at the end and it's some kind of bizarre twist, like, oh my god, I couldn't believe it was that person. And so Martino has a number of movies like this. One of the ones that stands out in my memory is a is a weird one called All the Colors of the Dark from nineteen seventy two. I love the title. I've not seen it, it's been a while, but if I recalled the story of a woman who I think she's supposed to be Italian but living in Great Britain, and she ends up believing she is pursued by the members of a satanic cult. But I think there's a twist ending um now. In terms of the writing on Arms of Steel, Martino has story credit, but he shares screenplay credit here with five other people. I'm not going to list them all, but they were individually involved in such films as Zombie, Um, Bronx Warriors, Missing An Action, Argo Man, The Fantastic Superman, and Devil Fish. I think I think I've seen all of those. One of the writers is named Elizabeth Parker Jr. Which, much like Martin Dolman, is actually an anglicized pseudonym, this time for Elisa Briganti, who wrote a bunch of well known Italian B movies. I think she wrote full cheese movie Zombie and a number of gross out movies. Of of that ilk M all right, as far as the cast goes here, we're gonna we're gonna get to our hero, to our cyboard. But I want to start with the the the the uber villain of this picture, the character Francis Turner, because he was played by John Saxon, who lived nineteen thirty six. I think when you told me this, I was like, oh, John Saxon, then it can't be bad. Yeah he is. Uh. He is a legendary American actor, mostly appeared in in B movie or a lot of B movies and genre pictures. Um. In this he's the mastermind who hired the cyborg assassin and then has issues with his job performance. He's he's very much a corporate suit villain for the most part. In this you could call this movie a deadly game of cat and mouse that ultimately boils down to a performance review. Yes, yeah, but so John Saxon is weird because he's one of those actors who mostly did bad movies. But I do just always kind of her cup when he shows up in a film. I mean, he is in some great movies too. He's an Inner the Dragon. Oh yeah, he's uh which is you know, of course is fantastic. That's a classic. He's in a Nightmare on elm Street, you know. So he's in some A list films as well. But if you scroll through his like all all the B movies he did, you will come across a number of huh I've never heard of that? Yeah, Like just just to name a few in addition to the ones you just mentioned. He was in Black Christmas, he was in Battle Beyond the Stars, Prisoners of the Lost Universe, Beverly Hills, Cop Three, Wes Craven's New Nightmare. I actually like that one from dust Till Don Dario or Agento's Uh Tina brey Um, Antonio the the Antonio Margaretti horror film Cannibal Apocalypse. That's one that he's I think he's the star of that one. I haven't actually gotten around to seeing that one, but it's infamous. Uh. He was in two episodes of Night Gallery. And he was also in another Tino film, The Scorpion with two Tales from nine two. But but I agree with you, even no matter what the movie is, when Saxon shows up, I get kind of excited about his presence, like he's a dependable actor. He's he was never a bad actor. But it's like, um, he's kind of like B movie royalty. It's like that Dick Miller factor when he shows up. I wouldn't put Saxon for me quite on the same level as Dick Miller because at least Dick Miller is always funny. You can feel Dick Miller, I think brings comedy two roles that even that wouldn't be funny on the page if you just like read the character's lines. It's not a comedic performance. It can just be like a you know, a straightforward minor bit part where he plays a shop owner or something. But somehow in his delivery, Dick Miller always makes the character funny. Yeah, whereas Saxon, it's more just knowing that it's Saxon and knowing that he was in all these films and that he you know, he fought alongside Bruce Lee. You know he He's just just a legend of of this caliber picture. All right, let's get to a hero then. Okay, this is Paco. How do you say his last name? Yeah? Uh, this is This character was played by Daniel Greene, who was born in nineteen sixty and is still out there working. So he is our oily muscled up cyborg um. Green was on Falcon Crest back in the day. He had small roles in various mainstream comedies such as Kingpin. Uh. He did a lot of TV work. He's been every everything from a police officer on Three's Company to a hunk on Night Court and even popped up in Eastbound and Down. So this is the guy who did a lot of work. And he must have been Martino must have like working with him at least, because he was in five films from Martino overall, this one beyond Kilimanjaro, After the Condor, The Opponent and American Rick Shaw The Opponent by the way boxing movie. Daniel green So I got a sense, I don't wonder what you think about this. That often on the set they'd be setting up for a scene and Daniel Green would start to make the argument I think my character would be shut listen this scene and they're kind of they're like, I don't know, that's not in the script. And he's like, no, hear me out right, it's hot, you know that. And he's been working or doing this thing, and so like the shirt would be off and they're like, okay, Daniel. Yeah, it's hard to argue with that chest, I guess because but in these scenes where he's shirtless, he seems more shirtless than a normal shirtless human somehow. Maybe again just because of his muscles, he's like one point six percent shirtless to the to the regular one. So we'll be talking about him a lot because he's he has a lot of fun in this. But then, of course we have our female lead, and that is Linda. I don't know that Linda has a last name. H Yeah, I don't recall if they say it, but that that goes along with the writing for the character. Really. Um she's played by Janet Agrin, Yeah, Swedish model turned actor who appeared in Red Sonja as well as the Lucio fol horror film City of the Living Dead, among many others. Yeah, it seems like She mostly starred in various kinds of Italian exploitation movies and horror films, and a couple of I noticed in the list of some Z tier shark movies. Have we've done a shark movie on weird house cinema yet? I mean, I feel like I've spent I've wasted so many hours of my life watching terrible shark movies. I can't believe we haven't even gotten into the shark realm of cinema yet. Oh we should we Well, we'll have to save that one for Shark Week, right, Oh yeah, Okay, that's an idea. But so here's the thing I discovered earlier today. I was trying to find out more about Janet Agrin, and I discovered she actually had a limited musical career, and I could only find one recording of one song by her. It was a nineteen eighty four single, So this movie came out in eighty six. This musical number pre dates the film that we're talking about today. It's a Night four single called Teddy Bear, which is a deeply bizarre Italian disco song where the the instrumental track on it actually somewhat whole psycho killer by the Talking Heads but kind of but kind of popped up so like make Psycho Killers sound a little bit more manically happy. And then the song appears to be literally about a Teddy Bear. The choruses Gimme, gimme Teddy Teddy, My Teddy Bear. I don't know if something is lost in the translation of this, but this song is just like a doorway to untold realms of suffering. It's the box from the Hell Raiser movies. You should look it up and listen to it to summon the chains out of the walls. I'll share a link to this on the blog for this episode, but let's go ahead and ask Seth to play the legal limit on Teddy Bear. Okay, see see you want more, don't you do you? Okay, keep listening, you'll get to where you'll you'll you'll be up for that second listen. I think I ended up listening to it twice. Pleasure and Pain in Divisible, All right, let's let's go and talk about the character Peter Howell in this played by Claudio Cassinelli, and this was this one. This gets a bit tragic, but it's necessary to discuss because he's one of our main sub villains. He lived through five. He played Zeus in the Looferregno Hercules movie The Adventure of Hercules, which I remember seeing as a kid, and that's another very musclely movie. But Cassinelli sadly died during the production of this film in a helicopter crash uh in Arizona, I think, uh. For this reason, his character is largely absent from the final showdown. And there's another character played by Roberto Bisacco that fills his basically fills in his role or his character fills in the villain role in the early parts of the film. So the the ultimately ultimately the finished product, you know, it shows the sign of them having to write and film around the fact that one of their um one of their lead actors, died during the filming of the motion picture. Wow, that is sad, and that that now explains things about the plot that did not make sense to me before. That there is a strange sort of like trade out of characters at multiple points. Yeah, so uh said, He's good in it, as as as is Roberto uh Bisacco, who basically plays a similar character. But yeah, it's it was kind of weird to watch and knowing that was going to occur, especially when we get to the scenes with the helicopters with the bridge, because what apparently happened was the chopper clipped the bridge and then the chopper plummeted four hundred feet into the Colorado River. Um. But a constant in this though, no matter which villain character is present, there's this guy with round sunglasses. Yes. Um. And I'm not sure who play who this character is or who plays him. I I spent a lot of time looking at the IMDb list for this movie and it seemed impossibly short for the numb of humans that are actually in the film. It's possibly this guy Andrea Coppola, but I'm not sure. I don't even recall if we learned this character's name. He's just the bet the hinchman with sunglasses who's there in every scene with the bad guys. Yeah, so he has a lot of screen time for an actor that I couldn't quite pinpoint now. And now a sub villain of note in this film is the character of Rale Moralists, who's a what would you call him? A trucker? A mean trucker. He is a bad trucker that this movie has a number of bad truckers and it and some good truckers. I mean, it runs the gamut of of trucker morality. You get a real stand up trucker who shows up in the ending sequence. But some of the truckers we meet early on are aggressive, loudish, no good dudes. And George Eastman plays Raoul. They're the leader of the bad truckers. Yes, George Eastman speaking of of like a treasured trading card, of of of somebody's or at least I spot in the film, and and and instantly I'm I'm hooked. Uh, this is this is big George Eastman. This is uh, this is a guy that pops up in a number of B B two z uh films from Italy from this time period. Have you seen George Eastman in a film before it? Was this your first time? Joe? Oh, I know I have, but I don't remember which one. Uh, well, you know what, I bet I've probably seen him in at least parts of movies that I've never watched the whole thing of. Like I know, I've watched part of anthropop Vegas but did not complete it. Oh okay, well, yeah, we'll get to that one a second. I completed it. Uh, it was. It was a journey. But so he's Eastman is always memorable because he's one of those character actors that has just such a distinctive look. Uh. He has this physicality uh, and just a knack for playing crazy. It's like any kind of crazy. Didn't always play crazy over the top characters, but when he does, he's memorable. Um and uh, yeah, he's an interesting character. He was born Luigi Montefiori. He's sometimes credited under that name, sometimes credited as various other names, but the name George Eastman shall be the one written forever in B movie lore. And it's easy to see why he got a lot of work, first in spaghetti westerns and then in various genre pictures because in his prime, this man was a little over six six, and I've seen him. I've seen him promoted as being six nine, which makes me think six six is probably accurate, because you tend up to build your big men as being even bigger than they are. He is a big dude. I think he's even like the lead guy in this movie, Daniel Green, is very he's a very large guy, but Eastman is taller than him. I think, yeah, Yeah, he seems to tower over everybody in the film. Um, he was lean but muscular, and he often spouted this impressive beard. So he's one of these guys you see just other you see some pictures of him, you'll be like, Okay, he's handsome, sure, but then you see eyes as you see these images where he's like really making crazy eyes, or he's grinning with these enormous He's got this enormous, like perfect grin, but it's just a little too wide, like it's the grin of Satan. So he's always a lot of fun. Sometimes he plays non villains, but he tends to excel at playing dirt bags, warlords, monsters, and he's played some notable examples of all of those. For example, he was in in Zo g castarelli three post apocalyptic film Warriors of the Waste Land, playing the post apocalyptic leader one. He was again in the Joe Diarmato low budget monster slash slasher film and Thropophagus from nineteen eighty and Absurd from eight one. Uh So in these movies he plays essentially the same character, an insane killer with a mutant healing factor. Uh they're very low budget, only loosely connected. Uh. In the first one, he's this grotesque cannibal monster in class Wartmann who's kind of uh oh, what was the character in Dante's Inferno who goes mad because he had to eat his Emily? Oh? Well, I can't remember which one it is, but it's Ugolino and Ruggieri there together in the very lowest layer of hell, those who like betrayed can I think or something or betrayed betrayed people. It was like the worst kind of betrayal as imagined by Dante. And they're like frozen in ice together right at the bottom of hell before you get to Satan himself. And it's Count Ugolino and Archbishop Ruggieri, I think, and one of them is just gnawing on the other one's head like it's a ham. Yeah. So it's that energy without any of that um uh, without any of that depth. Uh. But it's like, I think he's supposed to have been a guy who in his family who were shipwrecked on this Greek island, and then he had to eat them and it drew drove in mad and so now he's just a cannibal wild man who kills and eats anybody who shows up to vacation there. Uh. He dies at the end, and the memorable scene is that he's disemboweled and then he pulls out some of his own intestines and starts chewing on them. Um, so it's you know, it's it's a notoriously grizzly scene and um and otherwise it kind of I guess, slow film, but it's one of those where kind of like Texas Chainsaw Masker, where the the film quality is such that everything feels slightly more real because it feels like you're watching, um, like a documentary footage or something. Yeah. Yeah, Eastman, I would say, generally exists at the nexus of a lot of really gross movies. Yeah. Uh. They did a sequel again, titled Absurd, and apparently the story on this was like they're they're like, okay, we made money off of this first one. It was actually a hit, so we're gonna do a sequel, and Easton was like, I don't know, and they're like and then and then Jodi Amat is like, here's the script, and Eastman's like, yash. So Eastman rewrites it and it's essentially a Halloween clone. Uh, but it has some memorable scenes in it, and his character in that is named Mikos, and it's a little more pronounced that he has some sort of mutant healing factor. But in that that one, he doesn't have any makeup. It's just straight Eastman crazy face, which I think is one of the appeals of character actors like Eastman, because in a film that can't really afford any kind of special makeup, special makeup effects, Eastman's face is the special effect you know. Oh, yeah, I know what you mean. Uh. He was also in n The Bronx Warriors nineteen after the Fall of New York blast Fighter Rabid Dogs. He was in the seven Barbarian Twins movie The Barbarians that I haven't seen yet, but but I know you purchased for us, Joe. Oh that's right, I forgot I had that. Well, that came on like a double featured disc that I got with some other B movie I've forgotten. Now I'll have to go check in a bit. But yeah, you know, I love my leather diaper Barbarian movies, and this this appears to be a two diaper affair. Um. So one thing that I love is that that Joe Eastman is in all of this just righteous garbage. Uh. And yet a number of Sunday school classes may have glimpsed Eastman when they watched Richard Gere uh as King David in n five movie King David. This is the one that that had gear and then uh also had Edward Woodward in it as King Saul Um, but in it, of course as a King David movie. So you're gonna encounter at least some flashbacks of David and Goliath. Who's Goliath. It's George Eastman. Oh okay, yeah, that makes sense now. Um. Eastman worked a lot with the Joe Diamato. They created some against them, just really trashy films with each other. But not only as an actor for Eastman, but also as a writer. Uh. It turns out he did it to in the Italian National Film School, and I guess he was. I haven't seen any of I think any of these later works, but he worked mostly as a screenwriter for Italian television from the early nineteen nineties onward. Uh. And he directed a couple of films as well, or well, I think he stepped in and like did some scenes on a couple of films, but there's only one that he wrote and directed, and that's a nineteen nine mad science horror film titled Metamorphosis, which I haven't seen it in his entirety. I think that's when I started watching late at night once and had to go to sleep instead. And you have not resumed the journey since. No, But now I want to know. I'm like, I want to see see what he brought to the table on that. But yeah, George Eastman always a treat when he pops up. But also I guess when Eastern pops up. You also have to question should I be watching this? Uh? See other actors. Donald O'Brien is in it, playing Professor Ulster, a short role. He was born in nineteen thirties a French actor. Interestingly enough, he played to the character Petro, who I don't really remember from the six film adaptation of the Name of the Rose, but b horror fans probably know him better as the titular Dr butcher m D from Zombie Holocaust, which was also promoted as Dr butcher m D. I'm not familiar. Oh, I I don't think I've actually seen it, but I'm I'm familiar with it by reputation. Uh so, Uh, it's it's sort of on the list, I guess, just because I like the idea of there being a doctor Butcher m d. But then again, Butcher's not that uncommon of a last name, so there have to be some Dr Butcher m d S out there. So we know that George Eastman plays the bad trucker in the movie, but there's also a trucker who turns out to be a good trucker, and that is the arm wrestling champion Blanco. Yeah, Blanco seems to be the regional arm wrestling champ played by a guy named Darwin Swalve who lived American Broadway actor who played a heavy and a number of notable films because he's just kind of like this big bulldog of a guy. Uh. He was in Police Academy six, Heartbreak Ridge, Summer School Cry, Wilderness, which is a terrible bigfoot movie. But he played a wrestler in Barton Fink. Oh did he play Wallace Bury in that? Uh? He's just credited as being wrestler, so he might be the other wrestler in Barton Fink. I don't specifically remember him. Now. One of the big connections with this film is with the music, because this movie has a score by Claudio Simonetti. Yeah, talk to talk about legends. One of the biggest names on this picture for sure. No notable for his his solo work, but also his work as part of Goblin. Um. His electronic and prague rock scores helped many an Italian genre film to come to life, oftentimes more so at least I don't know, and I think many people have been come to life more than they would have with with any other music. Um, and also the work of Seminettie and Goblin. It ultimately influenced and inspired an entire generation of electronic artists. Seeing Goblin in concert is is a real treat. And I've seen Goblin in concert twice. These are really good shows. Uh. They tended to be sort of split half and half between stuff based on movie themes, so they do like a I don't know what felt like a kind of weird improvisation based on the score to Tenebrae or or one of the other Dario Argento movies that they did the score to. Those are some of their best scores. But then also there would just be like Italian Prague rock with shredding synth saxophone. Yeah, um, it's a it's a it's a definite sound. Again, it's it's It's been very influential. I would say probably some of the best scores and the best known scores that he worked on were Uh, Suspiria, Deep Red, Um, Tenner Brey. I'm also extremely partial to his work on Warries of the Wasteland, which I mentioned earlier from nine three Um but it's um. And I guess another thing I love about Claudio Simonetti in Goblin is that this means the music that has kind of become Halloween music. I feel like increasingly, I don't know, at least in the circles I moved through, Like if you see a Halloween playlist, you're gonna get some of Semonetti's sound. And I think that I love Monster Mash, but I far prefer a great synth score. Yeah, me too. So one thing that I would like to point out about the music in this movie is that I feel like the score of Hands of Steel is very funny, but not because it's bad, like it's it's it's a good type of whatever. This type of score is mean in some ways, it's uh, it's sort of a terminator score rip off, but it's also got the great original Claudio Seminetti magic. And what's funny about it is the way that it sometimes kicks in with a sudden transition or cut in what's happening on screen. So there's one example that you might recall. Uh, there's a scene where I think there's no music in the background at all, and it's just it's just our our protagonist, our borg man sort of haggling with a junk car dealer about whether or not to get a car. And it's a slow moving scene and they're just talking about like, oh, yeah, i'll give you that car for I'll give you give it to you for two hundred extra bucks. And he's like deal, okay, no music in the background, very calm, and then just slam cuts to him driving on the highway and it's like, yeah, I love it. Well, let's let's go ahead and see if we can get SETH to give us the legal limit on the On one of the tracks from this soundtrack, this is the that the track titled Atomic Arm. All right, I have to say if you if you love that and I I loved it, then you can stream or buy Uh. Seminetti's soundtrack for Hands of Steel on band Camp. It's on there, published under Italy's rust Blade Records, and you can even get it get a physical version on silver vinyl. And this I was checking, this was just released last month, so um that what luck. You'd think they sponsored this, but they did not, because we did not get Silver records in payment. How did you find this movie? By the way, I just wanted something Italian, uh, you know? And I started looking around and I wanted something that what that wasn't like to ums Italian horror movies A yeah, or you know, I didn't want. I didn't want something too boring either, and so this seemed to be like Dead Center. This seemed to be like the good Punching Zone. This is a good find, alright, So I guess it's time to start breaking into the plot of this baby. I don't know if you had the same association I did with the very beginning, the very beginning of the opening credit montage, because what I immediately felt I was watching at the very very beginning before the music changed, was an industrial dystopian take on the opening credits of Twin Peaks, though once again this predated Twin Peaks. Huh. No, I didn't get the Twin Peaks note so much. But but yeah, it starts setting the stage for some sort of just near future dystopia, some hell City in the background, but would not really go into hell City so much because most of the seems to take place either on the outskirts of of Hell City or more specifically, out in Arizona. Yeah, it's only hell City for a few minutes at the beginning, but no, I'm gonna hammer like if you watch it again. At the very beginning, there's this dreamy, almost Angelo Bottle of Mine type music sort of sort of floating along over shots of drab urban alleyways flooded with fog and oil refineries just belching smoke and flames into the atmosphere. People just generally having a hard time. It's showing you, like a lot of people appearing to suffer. And then suddenly the soundtrack just shifts into high gear from out of nowhere. The drums, bass, and saxophone come along and it's clear that Nope, this is going to be a NonStop thrill ride. This is not a dream. You walk through Twin Peaks. One of the funny things we see during the opening credit spontages is showing you these scenes from like you know, blasted industrial landscape and and uh in a dystopian city. But it also keep showing these posters and banners with a slogan that says you have no future and what appears to be a guy who says that like a guy pointing a finger, the guy with a white beard. I think we're going to find out who this guy is in a minute, and it's this dude named Reverend Moseley. But I was just thinking, like, so, how did this guy get so popular with the message, like bringing his you have no future message to the nation tonight? Yeah, I don't know if I don't know if something's lost in translation there or um if it's more of a situation where there's more to it, like you have no future under the current administration. I think that's what it's supposed to be. I think he's saying, like things are bad, you need to take control of your life. But I just don't think you have no future is a good way to message that. No, I mean I don't. I wouldn't want to wear that on a on a button, right, But I guess so we we pretty soon meet this guy, the old guy with the White Beard. He is this guy named Arthur Moseley, Reverend Arthur Moseley, who seems to be talking about his message seems to be an ecological one, like he's talking about pollution and how industry is destroyed this world and air pollution is killing people. And we see him in the headquarters that's set up in like a seedy hotel where he's got assistants who are helping him out and talking with the police about how he needs protection. And then there's a great piece of futuristic technology in here where you see Mosley speaking into a word processor that takes voice dictation. So we got that on one hand, Mosley and all his friends and the police who seemed to be like, whoa, you know, the people want you dead. We gotta we gotta help protect you. And then on the other hand we meet Turbolog. This is the protagonist of the film. He when we first meet him, he's driving a red muscle car and he's just this this gentleman of beef who gets his own high octane soundtrack. Yet again of those transitions, like when it cuts to him immediately new music, really driving forward, heavy beat. Yeah, I mean, you gotta get that electronic in there. You gotta have your music be at least electronic, because he's seventy electronics. Oh that's a good point. And so we see him come into the same hotel where Mosley and his people are hanging out, and as he's moving around in the hotel, I gotta say, Claudio, we know you do great work, but some of the music in this sequence in particular, is as close as you can get to the Terminator soundtrack without a lawsuit. It was really on the nose. But anyway, we see Daniel Green, the Gentleman of Beef, coming back to his apartment and it's it seems to be on the floor below where the anti pollution guy is, and so he's wandering around his apartment. We also see another piece of great future technology, which is the the Cyborgs watch, which is just like a digital watch, but it's I guess it's got a calculator on it. Maybe this was an early time for that, I get. I mean, at the time, this is probably a super advanced watch. But it's got like a an l C D display. I mean, it's it's really special. But so we see him in his apartment and he's got mustard in his apartment. I want to know that this is a store mustard at room temperature guy, because it's just sitting on the kitchen table, not in the fridge. And we watch him take a shirtless nap, and we watched the sunlight glinting off of his well oiled body, you know, it's like shining in beams off of his packs in the side of his face. And then he starts getting visions of faces and voices. Right there's this David Strathern looking guy who suddenly pops up in in the cyborgs head and tells him to proceed with mission as directed and don't let there be any mistakes. And this part I found very funny because we see the beefy guy begin to obey the messages, like he leaves his apartment and he's got these cold, dead eyes as he's walking up the stairs. But then you also kind of hear the the David Strauther and looking guy his voice in the background, still talking, but it's quieter, saying like neutralize, Did I say neutralized? Neutralize? That's part of the problem. You need to be really firm with these instructions. But so he goes up and he does an attack on Mosley's headquarters. Right, he kicks in the door and he's clearly there on a on a on a deadly mission. Yeah, and he takes out like a security guy or an assistant an aid with one of the most ridiculous, um martial arts maneuvers I have ever seen. Uh, it is such a weird, weird attack that I have to if you haven't seen it, I have to explain it to you. So, if you were to cross your arms on your chest like you've been mummified, and then you're to lash outward so that your arms close like a pair of scissors, presumably around the victim's head, but do so so that you are you are smacking them with the backs of both hands. It's a double backhand. Yeah, but it's it's so weird because this can't possibly work. Like I'm not a martial artist. Again, I should stress um, but this doesn't seem like it would be effective even if you had cyborg arms of steel. It's just I just can't imagine how this would help generate any kind of force or even that much surprise. Why do you need surprise? You're a cyborg with arms of steel? Oh? Who made you the expert on cyborg martial arts. What I would just like to point out is that he kills this dude with the arm crossing dance move that Elizabeth Berkeley does in Show Girls. Yeah, yeah, it is. It is like that. Um. I mean there are some like pro wrestling and even martial arts moves uh that have like a double arm attack, like I guess the most one of the most famous ones would be the double ear clap double ear slap rather where you like, you know, you slap the ears with both arms with both hands at the same time. And there's like a work version of that as well. There's also the dreaded Mongolian chop, which is like doing to twin karate chops to like the side of the neck or the shoulders at the same time. And those make sense. They're you know, they have impact to them, and you can also say, well, they're you know, they're especially with the Mongolian chop. It's a little theatrical and maybe surprising to an opponent, but I've never seen anything like this. I've never seen the Paco Special before and I don't know if I'll ever see it again, but it's it's beautiful in its absurdity. Do we know who did the martial arts choreography in this movie? I don't know. We should, we should, maybe I'll look that up after the fact that it's interesting, I'll report back. But it's not like the four The fight choreography is bad in this There's some fun stuff, especially later in the picture, uh, which we'll get to in a bit. It's just that this was creative to a degree that is just unbelievable. Like I applaud it though, you know, because he could have just punched them and we wouldn't be talking about it. He did this ridiculous thing and it made the film more joyful. No, of course. So he does that move to the assistant, and then he moves on into the next room, and his target is in the next room. His target is the the old guy with the beard, Arthur Moseley. And I believe Arthur Moseley is supposed to be blind, right, so he doesn't recognize what he looks like, but he just senses his presence and he says, you've come here to kill me, haven't you. But I'll but you'll never kill the work I have begun. Well, go ahead and do it. And so Daniel Greene starts hearing the voice in his head against a neutralize neutralize, and then I swear what it looks like happens next is that he kicks him in the groin to death. Yeah, and the old man's like, oh yeah, and and that's it. But yeah, you don't see him make any contact with him. You have like a like a point of view from the old man of him attacking. So it Yeah, when I watched it, I'm like, I guess, I guess he kicked him in the groin, which is a weird choice, especially, I mean, maybe maybe it's in line with someone who does that weird hand shoppy thing from the previous scene. I don't know. Now, the movie makes clear later on that this is not what happens. It's supposed to be that he just punched him really fast in a way that's like not humanly possible, but that that's not what it looks like at all. Right, Yeah, so it's it's weird to watch, for sure. But so Cyberlug escapes out the window, he escapes into the sewer, and then it's not really a sewer, it's just like a whole way under the street with a gauntlet of eternally sparking high voltage cables on each side, and they at some point I think the police look down there and they're like, no, no human being could get through here. That's a clue. Um. And then we see him escape in a futuristic car, which is just some eighties car with extra stuff glued to the back of it. It's got some pipes and bars on the on the hatch. Yeah. I mean, if you can't afford the full free jag, this is the way to go. Yeah. Uh. And then there's one sequence I really loved, which is like he drives into a forest. It's this pine forest that has a sign in front of it. This says warning acid rain ahead. Yeah. I love this. Love this part as well because you know, it brings back headlines from that time period about acid rain. And then the idea it's a nice world, be a building. You know, this is a place that's the world that's ravaged by pollution, that mostly is trying to fight and our hero has to drive through a bunch of of acid rains. Sadly, when he gets to the other side, we don't have like that cartoon moment where the car has been just melted away to nothingness. But but you do smoking, right, you do see it coming through. At one point, he's driving through and it's dripping through the ceiling of the into the cabin and it's like burning the seat next to him. But he's fine. I guess I wonder why it could be. It's almost as if he's not destructible by the normal means of harming a man. Uh. But so anyway, you have the acid rain. And I love also the idea that acid rain would be a constant, localized hazard in this world. So it's not like there are clouds that float around and could rain down acid in multiple places. It's just like, here's one area where the road goes under acid rain, and you can put a sign there. I like it's very folkloric, right, It's like the Haunted Woods or something. Yes, Humbaba's seven acid terrors. He takes them off one at a time and rains them down on the car. Oh. And then we also we find out, despite the fact that it looked like the old guy Mosley got killed by the kick, in fact he is still alive. And they wheel him out on a stretcher and they take him to the hospital. Uh. And then we get to meet the bad guys. We go into the belly of the beast. We're in some kind of evil bunker where we see the indoctrination voice guy, you know, Mr Neutralize, and he is hanging out with round sunglasses guy who we mentioned earlier, and they're trying to figure out what went wrong with the assassination. Why was Mosley not killed like he was supposed to be. And so they start looking up digital files on the on the cyberlug, and we find out Neutralized guys called Cooper and uh and I love these screens they pull up. I attached a couple of shots I took of these screens. Rob One is just a picture of Annual Green's face and it says negative characteristics Colon Nune. But we also learned things about him. We learned that his name is his real name is poco Quiak, that he's from Page, Arizona, that that his instructor was this guy Cooper, who's you know, the Mr Neutralized, the guy talking in his head. He was trained for thirteen months at Fort Bragg. He was tested on August twelve, and then I think they couldn't fit the rest of the screens they had already cycled through into this summary screen. So what was supposed to say, like efficiency maximum lethality, maximum negative characteristics none, but instead they just shortened that to efficiency characteristics colon none. This is this is not good design, folks. People will be able to pause the movie in the future. Yes, Now, the Page Arizona that is worth noting because it was filmed A lot of it was filmed in Page Arizona. So if we have any listeners out there who have been to Paige Arizona or live in Page Arizona, are you listening to the show in Page Arizona right now? Let us know. So eventually we meet John Saxon and he he's the big boss of the bad guys. He is maximum suit and he's supposed to be some kind of vicious corporate overlord. They're not really specific. I think the issue is that he's an evil, uh, polluting corporate guy and Mosley has been saying pollution is bad and that can't be tolerated, so he has to kill him. But his name is is Mr Turner, Francis Turner, and uh he says, okay, we've got to find Paco Querrak before the FBI does, and so he sends his guys off to to do that. Now, now we cut back to Paco on his on his journey through the desert and one of the fun So there's a number of things. He's cruising along the desert highway in the dark. Uh. We we've seen that he's been through the acid rain area. The acid rain leaked through the ceiling and was burning the inside of the car. But also we see in his car he has a TV embedded in the dashboard. It's sort of down near the gear shift, which is just amazing future car design? Are they? Are they doing that now? Are they making cars that have a TV in the dashboard? Surely if it's closer to the windshield at least Yeah, I think it's at least higher up. I don't have one, but you you see him. You see cars around that have some sort of enormous screen there. I guess it has like it's maybe supposed to have a bunch of like road data on there. But I'm but it's I don't know. It looks like a TV to me. Sure you can hack it to watch Hands of Steel on it while you're supposed to be driving. I mean, driving is boring. You know, you gotta you gotta have something to pay attention to while you're doing it. P s A. Keep your eyes on the road, folks don't want Do not watch movies while drive, at least do not. But then we get the car trading scene I already mentioned earlier with the funny musical transition out of it. He trades cars, I think because he's trying to throw the people tracking him off the trail, and uh and so Paco. Then he discards the second car that he got and he like drives it off a cliff and then just starts hoofing it through the desert. He's just walking through the bad lands and eventually comes upon a highway motel that's going to be sort of the home base for the rest of the movie. It's called the Champions Oasis. As soon as he goes inside, he notices that it is a mess. There are beer bottles all over the place. There is rotten bacon on the counter with earwigs crawling around on it, which was a good touch. And I noticed something else about this place. It's similar to the interiors in Terry Gilliam's dystopian movie Brazil, in that there are just ducks everywhere, you know, snaking from wall to ceiling in every direction for no apparent reason. Though I think in in Brazil like that, there's supposed to be some satirical value to that set choice. It like it like in a way, it symbolizes that this is a society that is extremely complicated, but nobody knows how anything works or why anything is happening the way it is. In this movie, it just seems to be like, let's let's make this roadside bar look a little more futuristic. Yeah, just throwing some ducks. You can get some ducts that your your local hardware store, but and it'll look like the future. And the thing is this is accurate because it it kind of foretells the the office design choice that would become fashionable in the decades to follow, where instead of having uh, you know, the white tiles covering up your duckt work, you have exposed duck work so you can just which I mean. I like, I've been in a couple of offices now that have that design and it is kind of neat to stare up and wonder, Okay, I see how all the air conditioning connects. I see some weird. Um you know, keys and knobs and whatnot and the that are I guess supposed to be accessed by professionals. Uh so in a way, Yeah, this this design is accurate. Champions Oasis has original brickwork. Yeah, no, it actually doesn't. It's all like wood paneling. What do you call that? Like really thin wood paneling that goes over the walls. Oh yeah, yeah, it does look like wood paneling. It looks, it looks. It does look just authentically um gross, Like they found an actual gross bar and they just threw up some ducts and uh and started shooting. Oh. Another thing, I took a screen capture of this because I noticed on the inside of the door leading into the Champions Oasis is Garfield. It's just a poster of Garfield says have a nice day, So Garfield exists in this film's reality canon like that. Also really funny detail was the full exchange that is the very first meeting of the two main characters of this movie. Janet Agrin walks out as as Paco comes into the place, and she says, can I help you? He says, I'm looking for a place to stay. She says, come in you ever Arm wrestle. He says no, Well, because we find out that is what this community lives for. They are all about the arm wrestling. It's the the only institution, aside from drinking, that that is holding everyone together. That's right. This humble desert motel is a sort of an innocent oasis of arm wrestling in this otherwise messed up world. Now, of course they start arguing over whether he can stay there at the hotel because does he have money? No, he doesn't. I think. He says he can do work, but she says something cynical about that, and then we cut to uh, some stuff the bad guys are doing. So the bad guys go and they end up intimidating this scientist who I think helped create cyborgs and there and they're threatening his work that he's like, do whatever you want to me. You can't, you know, you won't get information out of me about how to catch this cyborg because you're trying to use cyborgs for evil. And they're like, well what if I do this? And they just start smashing his stuff in his lab and he's like, no, my precious work. So he gives them a clue. He reveals that maybe the reason that Paco did not complete his mission is that he malfunctioned because of memories of his past, his childhood in Arizona. And they're like, oh, great, that's what we need. And then they shoot him. And then it's a double double cross and Sunglasses guy shoots Cooper, the main guy who did the indoctrination, yeah, which which in a way works as a nice little twist in the film. It kind of drives home that ultimately Turner is so evil that he's just that everybody's disposable, you know, even the guy that seems to be his second in command uh here, or at least his main guy on the case. Uh and he'll do him in as well. But out of film. I suspect that these scenes were shot later in the production, after Claudio Cassinelli had died. And you know, so again this is that the situation where Claudio Cassinelli, I'm guessing, was supposed to be central here and more tied into the ending of the film, But since he in that tragic crash, they had to write and film around that. I think that makes sense. Now we go back to Paco and Linda, the the manager of the oasis, and they're there. I guess they've already resolved whatever their original conflict was, because he's like, it's okay, he's staying there now. And he's like, why did you let me stay? And she gives the backstory. She goes, who knows, maybe the memory of the girl who showed up afraid and broke thirteen years ago, lost and now where to stay, or maybe it's because there's a whole lot of wood out there that needs chopping. Uh so, And I guess this is the implication is, Look, this guy's got big muscly arms. He can be put to good use chopping wood. And he brings up the question, Uh, do people still use wood? I didn't know people still used wood? And she says yes, especially since the ecological movement led by Reverend mose Lee. And I'm very confused here. So it seems that the anti pollution guy is causing people to burn more wood. Yeah, it does. It does seem weird. I guess they were burning worse things than would um stop heating your house by burning tires. Yeah, But then also there's the question, It's like, what would are you about to send him out to chop in the middle of Arizona, no trees anywhere around. And then when we see it the woodpile by the way, it just looks like a giant pile of garbage there is, they're tires and stuff in it. It doesn't seem to be primarily made of wood, though when he's done with the job, we do see it is mostly would but uh, but of course here's another chance for Paco to take his shirt off and get to work. And later we see that he finishes the whole week's work in a single day. So it's like Hercules and the Stables, you know. Yeah, and Janet is astonished. She's like, wow, what a man. Uh. And then we also get uh, John Saxon meeting with with sunglasses guy and they talk about this euro hit man that they're going to hire, who John Saxon says is infallible. They tell me, I think his name is supposed to be Peter Howell, but it always sounded like Peter Hollow. And this is Claudio Cassinelli, Yes, this is it, this is him. Then there are some scenes there's a whole b plot about uh, these agents at the FBI and scientists trying to figure out what was the weapon that was used to attack Mosley. So they're like asking him about what it was. He's like, it was small but very hard and there and they don't know what that could be. And they've got like a computer simulation that i think scanned his wound so they can determine what type of object made it. Yeah, it's weird, Yeah, that he hit him with something small but very hard and um, And of course we were going to find it out increasingly that what happened was is, yeah, that he had these flashes of his his past and that he pulled the killing blow. He didn't like put his full might into it. So I'm like, did he punch him with like just a thumb or something like? What accounts of this? Well, anyway, you knew we were going to get to some arm wrestling eventually, So the first of a couple of arm wrestling sequences is coming up. This happens because some some rough truck boys come into the Desert Oasis, the Champions Oasis, and they start being aggressive and threatening with Linda and Paco, and of course this leads to a confrontation because Paco is already protective of of of Linda and her place and this this leads to an arm wrestling challenge. The leader of these bad truck guys is Raoul, who is played by George Eastman. And Raoul is just constantly talking trash. Yeah, he's just he's just snarling and leering, like he's he's taller than everybody and so he's he's kind of just looming over everyone and just just he's just like a wolf. He's wonderful, thoroughly menacing presence, like if if he were actually in a restaurant I was in, I would leave. Yeah, he has some pretty fun lines to the one part he says, anyone know this piece of rat? So it leads to an arm wrestling challenge that he like insults Paco, and then Paco's like, I'll show you what cyborgs are made of. Uh, And so they all start making bets on who's gonna win the arm wrestling. They say, Raoul's gonna wipe the floor with this bum, but Linda bets a thousand dollars on Paco to win, and of course Paco does win, right because he's got he's I don't know, it seems kind of not fair actually that he's like a machine. And George Eastman is just a human. But I don't know, maybe since George Eastman is like provoked him into it, it's not cheating. Eastman's character does just about everything imaginable to make you not root for him, so right, it's it's easy to forgive the cyborg cheat here. Yeah. But then of course a big fight breaks out after Paco wins. Everybody starts fighting and Paco has to has to beat up all the bad truckers. And then I realized that, Okay, this is actually Terminator meets road House. Did you think about that? Yeah, without the high minded um um bouncer philosophy that that makes Roadhouse so great, But yeah, it is very This setting is very roadhouse, and you get a roadhouse style um slopper knocker. But I don't know. At the end of the movie, there's some philosophizing that's very much on the level of pain don't hurt. Yeah, yeah, true. Now by this point, Linda is obviously falling in love with Muscle Borg. He's he's just walking around with his shirt off all the time, and she's like, wow, you must work out a lot, and he goes a little um and they're they're setting things up for another big arm Wrestling Showdown, because this time he's got to go up against the real champ Blanco, who is like undefeated arm wrestling. Uh dude, and uh, and it's going to be in a rattlesnake match, which I don't Maybe we can explain the situation there in a minute. But Raoul of course tries to cheat here by luring Paco out into the desert to do a good deed. They say like, oh, some children are trapped in a crashed car, and then Paco goes down to try to rescue them, but it's a trap by Raoul and his buddy, and they drag him on a tow truck and beat him up and leave him for dead in the desert. But he, of course is a muscle cyborg and so he survives and escapes and makes it back in time for the big match. Yeah, despite having been beaten with with metal pipes and left for dead in the desert, he shows up like Raoul is already already boasting. He's like, oh, I guess I guess you have beefy man. He's too uh, he's too chicken to show. And then he shows and when we get this fabulous arm wrestling scene between Paco and Blanco, and it's it's just so it is over the top. It's more over the top than I imagine anything in the movie over the top because again, rattlesnakes are involved. It's a rattlesnake match, and they have this this this mechanism. They have like these little enclosures for rattlesnakes, like see through plastic or plexi glass or something on either side. And then there's like a cuff, a locking cuff, So if you force your opponent's hand all the way down, uh their hand, their wrist will be locked in this cuff and that will also open the cage for the rattlesnake, and the rattlesnake will come out and bite you or I mean it will bite your opponent. So it's not just as simple as like there's a there's a basket of rattlesnakes on either side. Now there's like this whole elaborate mechanism. They put a lot of thought into making the best possible high stakes rattlesnake um arm wrestling competition. Which of the five writers streamed this up, I think all of them. I think I think that's why it's so elaborate that it's someone's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, you can't just have a basket of rattlesnakes, because we're gonna want real rattlesnakes. You're gonna we're gonna need an enclosure. No no, no, how are you gonna trigger the rattle snakes to come out? Well, how's the arm gonna be held there? So all these ideas came together and they kept they kept all of them. This is the convoluted product of Rattlesnake arm wrestling group think. Yes, but it's a terrific scene. I mean, I love a good arm wrestling sequence. And you see him in like like in a lot of a lot of films, like there's one in the Fly. Uh yeah, it's just a primal test of strength. Now afterwards, I guess, even though Paco wins, he's sort of I think injured in what's going on or I don't know if he's injured by what what George Eastman did do him earlier or in the in the arm wrestling. But then we get a scene just straight out of Terminator is just like a copied shot where his arm is open and he's working on the machinery underneath the skin, which you have metal stuff terminator moment. Yeah, and this is just the first scene in the movie I think where it's like fully confirmed, like, oh this, Yeah, he's definitely a real cyborg. I mean, I guess characters have been talking about it, but now you see the machine underneath him. Oh. Another important note about the big Rattle Snake arm wrestling event is that he wins. He gets Blanco's wrist into the cuff, the snake comes out to bite Blanco, but then at the last second, um our cyborg hero comes into the karate chop and cuts the head off of the rattlesnake, saves Blanco, saves him. That will become important later on. Well, but here I guess we're into the full the exposition backstory cyborg reveal part of the movie. Uh So, simultaneously, we're cutting back and forth between the police figuring out what's going on. One of them, who's I believed, like a police forensic scientist named Dr pekin Paw. Um, Come on, folks, um that named Dr peckin paw Who's like, I think we know what could have caused the wounds to Reverend Moseley a cyborg fist and they show it on the computer screen where it's a fist, but they're like, but no fist is capable of providing that amount of strength. And then also Paco just directly reveals his backstory to Linda. They have they have a tender romance where where he's like, you know, He's like, I was one it's uh something, I don't know. He was a soldier or something like that. And then and then I remember I was in a crash. And then I awoke in Reverend Moseley's room and I was supposed to kill him, but something stopped me. And uh, and I realized I couldn't be just a borg. I had to be something more. And he escapes, and of course they talk about love. He's like, how can you love me knowing that I am more bored than man? And and she's like, I care for you, Paco, and they kiss and it's just beautiful. It's like, like, how can you love me knowing that I am only thirty percent man? And she's like, I would love you if you were only twenty eight percent man. I guess I got it wrong if I said he's not more bored than man, because the organ is that he's how can you love me? Knowing I'm more Cybe than Org. But anyway, Uh, she is going to she loves him, and she's going to help him escape to the Mexican border later tonight because they know he's being hunted by both the FBI and I guess they know he's also being hunted by John Saxon's people. I think, so yeah, Well, I mean he's been he's been dodging people the whole time. He has to know that his handlers are coming after him, right, So John Saxon's henchman track him down with the help of of treacherous George Eastman, who has who has given away his location, and so they got guns and helicopters and surveillance all around the champions oasis. Uh. And then we get a great scene where they're like some decoys who show up at the hotel who presumably are just trying to get a motel room, but instead it turns out there they're part of this nefarious plot. And just a note on the future fashion here, most of the fashion in this movie is not anything different than like what you I mean, Like they don't have like weird you know, back to the future to style futuristic clothing. It's just people wearing like flannel and jeans and stuff. Yeah, it's the hard times version of the future. For some reason. This one couple who shows up on a motorcycle. They are like back to the future to style stuff like so one is wearing football pads as a vest and the other is wearing see through plastic shorts, like just wearing like two ziplock bags for pants. And the great thing about the female here that's wearing the zip block bags for pants is it's quickly revealed it's a trap and she is a killer cyborg as well. It is cyborg versus cyborg, and this is this fight seems pretty great. Yeah, it's it's got it's not that long, but it's it's in a it's in a tight spot. It's in this hotel room. Uh. We quickly see that she like she's shot, but then she's up again. She's got cyborg damage, she's got killer cyborg nails. There's a there's a fun bit of fight choreography, and it ends with him he ends up putting the rival cyborg and a full nelson and then going from a full nelson to a full head rip. Just twist the head off, and we get that wonderful moment that you see in so many of these uh these films, the films of this caliber, where the head falls onto the floor and then you have that effect where someone has like a false um floor around their necks. So you get that that that shot of the decapitated head talking, it's Ian Holman alien. Yeah, yeah, except she except the head is going they will destroy you. Yeah, that's that's pretty much the voice. Yeah, oh yeah. And also I love how when she first announces uh is, she first starts trying to kill him. So she's got like these killer metal nails that she's stabbing him with, and she says, I am the perfect cyborg, and I have been sent here to kill a traitor, which sounds like she's taken it too personal. I thought cyborgs were just supposed to do their mission. But she does not sound like she is dispassionately executing programming. She's she's taking it personal. She she's like really mad at this guy. Well, I think one of the things to keep in mind is that it's it's early days with cyborgs, as as they reveal more later in the picture. Uh and and he's the best. He is the even though he's flawed, even though his humanity is leaching back in Like, he's the best. So even though he's very cold at the beginning, I guess this other cyboard is who's still like the second best cyboard, the best thing you could possibly send in to try and kill him. Um, you know she's not perfect. She's clearly got too much human emotion wrapped up in this whole killing the opposition thing, right. His profile says negative characteristics none her says negative characteristics taking it too personal exactly. But from here it basically just goes on into a very long action chase sequence that's got John Saxon's dudes chasing and shooting after Linda and Buddy Borg. They're being pursued mercilessly by by the Saxonites and uh oh, and there's a great part where while they're running around from trying to escape them, Blanco shows up, the the other you know, the arm wrestling champ. And he shows up. He's a really stand up guy. He he just like drives a truck in to help them get away. Yeah, he ends up giving his life to save our our hero in this film. So that's the pretty good Yeah. In the meantime, meanwhile, you've got um sunglasses guy. And then ultimately I think Saxon gets on on this too, using shotguns to fire rockets. Like they take a rocket grenade Robert rocket propelled grenade or something and like stick it in the front of the shotgun, and then used the shotgun to fire it, uh, which which ultimately it looks it looks good. I'm just part of me was wondering, like what that just looks like you stuck like a nerf in the shotgun. But on the other hand, it does it looks good. I still bought it completely. In film. Now, when Blanco gets blown up, you think that Linda has also been killed, but then it turns out that she survived, and so, uh. Muscle Borg is very upset because he had discovered what love was, but now the one person he loved is dead, and so he goes into a rage and these soldiers are coming after him. They come after him. He like goes into this old factory it's like some underground stuff, and they come after him with a laser and he kills all of the soldiers who were coming after him and then John Saxon comes in after him personally, which, yeah, that really seems like something that this corporate jerk would do. I'm going to physically personally go in there to shoot at the guy I'm trying to get um. But he picks up the laser and is trying to shoot Paco, but Paco, of course bests him, and then he grabs John Saxon and he's like holding him by the neck and he says, you thought you could own me by controlling my brain. But what people like you don't realize is that you don't own a man until you control his heart. And then he literally pulls out John Saxon's heart. Yeah, it's it's it's a quality kill. Um. Yeah there. It seems like there are some other ones too. He's doing a lot of head crushing against the minions before he finally gets to John Saxon. But yeah, then he finishes John Saxon off with the heart. Rep Oh, and then we get the reveal Linda is alive and it's a very love conquers All type ending. She's like he's in the factory, running around with a gun outside shooting at the police, like just in a rage. You know, he's in a violent downward spiral because he thinks Linda has been killed. But then she reveals that she's alive, and she comes in to talk him down, and uh, he's like, they won't let me live, and she's like, yes, they will. She says, quote, they know that you were normal before you ended up in that laboratory. Um, and she says, and you saved the best part of you, the soul. Yeah. Yeah, the soul managed to bleed its way back into the whole cyborg equation and uh turned to the the the evil scheme on its head. But then I would say, so it is mostly a love conquers all ending, except in the very last few seconds there's it suddenly gets kind of ambiguous and I don't know what to make of it. So Paco peels back part of his head and reveals something underneath there. I couldn't tell quote what it was, something like some piece of metal in his head is glinting, and and he's like, but is it a soul? And then she's like and then it just cuts to music. Yeah. Well, and then also there's some some text on the screen that says it was a day in our near future. The era of the cyborg had begun. Um, the t in this sentence is really confusing. But and it also feels a little bit like Pucci died on his returning to his home planet right where. It just kind of comes out of nowhere. But but I liked it nonetheless, So like, did did they get to go off and like have a nice peaceful life together after this? Uh? Sure? Why not? I mean maybe it was utah, Uh, don't placate me, but no, I like to I like to imagine that they they settled in Arizona, they maybe maybe right there in page Arizona, and uh, you know, lived happily. Ever after Mosley brings around, uh you know, brings about better environmental policies for the world. Um, but it is the age of the cyborgs. So maybe, I don't know, the cyborgs are an important part of bringing about a more environmentally sound future, maybe an all cyborg powered future. Yeah, I mean maybe maybe if you're only thirty percent organics, you end up caring more about those organics. You're like, look, I've already lost seventy of me too, machine, I've only got thirty percent left, So I'm going to be environmentalist that's right. The cybe is not everything. You know, your organ is precious. Be good to your organ. Oh. By the way, that the bridge where we have the big showdown at that bridge is Navajo Bridge in Grand Canyon National Park. In the film, we see just a single bridge that was built in since the filming of this movie, a second bridge was built right alongside it. In The old bridge is still there though. It's open for pedestrian and equestrian use. So if you you find yourself in this part of Arizona check it out. You can apparently walk out there on the on the bridge where the big showdown takes place. I do love a good pedestrian bridge. Yeah, I mean, and it's a it's a gorgeous bread That's one of the things I enjoyed a lot about this movie. But I did really enjoy getting to see the Arizona countryside, even if the film quality is not, you know, perfect, especially since I had trouble finding this one and ended up watching one of there's several different rips of it on YouTube, so I ended up just picking the one that looked like it had the best film quality. It looks like it has been streaming on Amazon Prime in the past, but it was marked currently unavailable right now, so I had to make do with this. That title is hands of Steel. I know at least a couple of times in here we said something like arms of steel or I deal. I wrote arms of steel at least once and had to go back and correct it, but probably said it anyway. Vendetta Adult, Futuro, Vengeance Future. Now. I know you had some thoughts about the cyborg acting in this. Oh yeah, there was something that just popped up a few times in this movie. I can't remember what the specific instances were, but it's a It's a thing you see every now and the now and again in some B movies, especially, I feel like I've noticed it in some Italian B movies is actors delivering their lines literally without acting. And and this is different from bad acting. You know, bad acting is when a person attempts to inhabit a character and does a bad job. It's you know, it's a poor reading where it is implausible, not appropriate for the scene, something like that. Instead, this is a phenomenon where the line delivery is literally just a delivery. It's like reading a sequence of words out loud off a page. Yeah, and I guess sometimes that's probably a product of dubbing. Oh, I think absolutely it could be that. I don't remember what specifically had in mind, but I noticed there were a few of those in here when I was watching it. But then again, if one character is a cyborg and therefore you know, seventy pent machine, then a certain kind of a cold read it kind of makes sense. And then if another character is played by John Saxon, who often has that kind of stern delivery anyway, you know, regardless of he's the villain in a cyborg film or if he's Nancy's dad Nightmare on Elm Street, you know you're only going to get a certain level of energy from Saxon. Intense but medium energy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I see what you're saying. I mean, Saxon was always trying to play it cool, which is dangerous for an actor. Like you can have a cool persona as an actor, but if you try to be too cool, you limit yourself from you know, the full range of emotion you could display on screen. Yeah. Meanwhile, George Eastman was not trying to play it cool, at least in this In that picture and most pictures I've seen him and he's he's basically trying to be a cartoon wolf out of a Looney Tunes cartoon. He's Jim Carrey's the Mask without animation pretty much. All right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and close this one out again. As of this recording, I don't know of a good place to go and stream this aside from finding you know, rips of it. But there have been some editions that have come out on DVD before, so you might be able to rent it or pick up a physical copy. But if you are interested in the soundtrack again, go to Russ Blade dot band camp dot com because you can definitely listen to the whole thing there by yourself a digital copy or get that precious silver vinyl. And I looked and looked at it appears that a number they have a number of different releases from that from that record label. That's that seemed really interesting. I was listening to a few tracks here and there, but also multiple Goblin releases. And if you would like to listen to more weird house cinema, well this publishes every Friday, and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. Our usual science episodes are on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We usually have artifact on Wednesdays unless it is being um uh, you know, preempted by something. We have our listener mail on Mondays, but Friday is just a time for us to discuss weird pictures like this, So come on and cut loose at the picture show and one more thing. I'll also include some of this media that we discussed at the block at some uted SMUTA music dot com. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feed back on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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