Cyborg ** (1989, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Deborah Richter, Vincent Klyn, Alex Daniels, Dayle Haddon) – Classic Movie Review 5,932

Jean-Claude Van Damme gives an impressive, entertaining display of martial arts prowess, killing off bad guys with his bare hands, in writer-director Albert Pyun’s tacky, low-budget 1989 American futuristic fantasy martial-arts cyberpunk film Cyborg.

The young Jean-Claude Van Damme at the height of his burgeoning arts hunk career plays a slinger (guide) called Gibson Rickenbacker who meets a woman called Pearl Prophet (Dayle Haddon), who reveals she is a cyborg (computerised android), and helps her to battle bloodthirsty pirates to bring back a cure for a deadly plague. Fender Tremolo (Vincent Klyn) and his murderous gang want the cure for themselves and kidnap Pearl.

Van Damme gives an impressive, disreputably entertaining display of martial arts prowess, killing off several bad guys with his bare hands, and the wasteland settings with burning trash cans are convincingly apocalyptic, in writer-director Albert Pyun’s tremendously tacky, low-budget ($500,000) 1989 futuristic fantasy from Cannon Films.

The result is not exactly great but it is quite busy, fast, entertaining and short (at only 85 minutes) so it should keep sci-fi and Van Damme fans pretty damme happy anyway.

Also in the cast are Deborah Richter, Alex Daniels, Ralf Moeller [Rolf Muller], Jackson Pinckney, Blaise Loong, Haley Peterson, Terrie Batson and Janice Graser.

Cyborg is directed by Albert Pyun, runs 85 minutes, is made by Cannon Films, is released by The Cannon Group, is written by Albert Pyun [credited as Kitty Chalmers] and Daniel Hubbard-Smith, is shot by Philip Alan Waters, is produced by Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan, is scored by Kevin Bassinson, and is designed by Douglas Leonard.

Pyun wrote the film to use sets and costumes for his cancelled sequel to Masters of the Universe (1987) and his cancelled Spider-Man, planned to be shot back-to-back for financially troubled Cannon.

Pyun wrote the storyline in a single weekend, with Chuck Norris in mind, but Cannon Films offered Van Damme the lead after the success of Bloodsport. The film was shot in 23 days in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Cyborg did well, grossing more than $10 million in the US against its tiny budget of $500,000, and was a nice little earner on video.

Violent scenes were heavily cut to gain an R rating. In 2011, Albert Pyun got hold of the missing tapes of the original cut of Cyborg. The Director’s Cut features Pyun’s editing and unreleased scenes.

A 1993 sequel followed: Cyborg 2 aka Cyborg: Glass Shadow (1993) with Elias Koteas, Anjelina Jolie and Jack Palance. Angelina Jolie said that after she saw the film, she ‘went home and got sick’.

Jolie made her screen debut as a child with her father Jon Voight in Lookin’ to Get Out (1982). Her next film was Cyborg 2 11 years later.

Cyborg 2 is followed by the 1994 American direct-to-video film Cyborg 3: The Recycler, starring Malcolm McDowell and Khrystyne Haje. 

He isn’t Jean-Claude Van Damme at all. Jean-Claude Camille François Van Varenberg was born on 18 October 1960,

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5,932

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