Eliminators (1986)

PG | 1hr 36min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

80s kids will tell you, hand on heart, that the decade cannot be beaten as a playground for preteen imagination. The rise of MTV, ‘kids in peril’ movies, larger than life wrestling heroes, the practical effects horror boom, an abundance of toys and action figures, the clunky gadgets of a pre-digital world and so many TV shows and cartoons that catered to impressionable young minds made for exciting times in an era of Star Wars-led cultural marketing. It was a great decade for gullible tweens to grow up in.

Through the eyes of adults who were pressured into buying those products, it was all rather cynical. Today the oppressive ad-driven landscape has become second nature, tunnelling its way into our subconscious from every possible avenue, but prior to the 1980s laws had been in place that protected society, particularly children, from the insatiable suits of Madison Avenue, who quickly realised that television was the perfect outlet for reaching young and impressionable minds. In the early part of the decade, the Reagan administration would institute the deregulation of advertising, leading to an explosion of ads peddling sugary treats, cartoons and toys, the latter becoming interchangeable.

Featuring super catchy theme songs and explosive concepts, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Hot Wheels, Pound Puppies, Gem, Captain N: The Game Masters, Sky Commanders, The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin, GI Joe: The Real American Hero, Care Bears, Creepy Crawlers, Dino-Riders, Dungeons & Dragons, Challenge of the GoBots, My Little Pony, M.A.S.K., Transformers and Centurions, cartoons that made up our whole world, were specifically made to flog merchandise, and flog it they did. Even TV shows like The A-Team, though not made specifically to sell toys, got in on the act. It’s amazing to think that all of those wonderful memories were the by-product of corporate opportunism.

Released slap-bang in the middle of the cultural marketing surge, Eliminators has all the attributes of a sure-fire merchandising hit. Had it not been for the fact that the film was the product of B-movie producer and former Empire Pictures king Charles Band, lacking the budget and commercial scope of the plethora of popular 80s properties that it so crudely taps into, it may very well have been, featuring high-concept characters who would have flown off the shelves in an era of Hasbro hegemony.

Ironically, Eliminators, released during ‘Empire’s’ short-lived theatrical peak, was one of the most successful movies of their ill-fated run with returns of $4,601,256. Their only significant hit was Ghoulies, which, capitalising on an era of shameless Gremlins rip-offs, raked in a not-too-shabby $35,000,000 at the US box office, leading to Band’s audacious attempt at expansion and subsequent financial collapse. His goal, much like Golan-Globus and the Cannon Group, was to establish a production company to rival Hollywood’s big players. It didn’t work out that way, but he left an indelible mark on many of us.

Eliminators is like Star Wars on an A-Team budget, featuring a cast of colourful and suspiciously familiar characters who were ripe for the Kenner toys/George Lucas treatment. The movie’s lead character, Mandroid (Reynolds), is a mixture of The Terminator, Robocop and a character from high-concept kids cartoon Centurions: a half-man, half-machine with detachable tank tracks and enough gimmicky weapons and tools to put Inspector Gadget out of business. In terms of hitting all the right commercial notes, Mandroid is a wonder of resourcefulness.

Though various cultural comparisons can be made in a production that plays out like a pastiche of classic action movies, even drawing comparisons with the likes of Seven Samurai & The Magnificent Seven, some of the Eliminators are straight out of the Star Wars franchise. We have the movie’s Han Solo clone, Harry Fontana (Andrew Prine), who does a fine job of reproducing someone resembling the galaxy’s most lovably self-aggrandising rogue. In terms of charm, Fontana is the real star of the show, a smug and selfish smuggler who ekes out a living escorting passengers across treacherous waters on his trusty, piece of junk boat. Sound familiar?

Harry is in it solely for the money until reluctant sweetheart Nora Hunter (Denise Crosby) brings out the best in him à la Princess Leia. The part of Fontana was originally written for Empire Pictures go-to actor Tim Thomerson, whose neo-noir, bargain-basement Rick Deckard act would achieve cult status in priceless, tongue-in-cheek sci-fi outings Dollman and the Trancers series. Thomerson is a hard act to follow, but Prine’s Fontana is the kind of super cool antihero who you can really get behind.

Playing the role of quasi Jedi is Conan Lee’s Kuji, a high-kicking warrior with spiritual powers who sets off on a mission to avenge his father. His similarities with Luke are ultimately marginal, the character instead filling the hugely popular ninja void in a somewhat peripheral role that still proves superficially memorable. In a martial arts obsessed era that produced sleeper hit franchises such as The Karate Kid and an oversaturation of ninja movies such as Enter the Ninja, Ninja III: The Domination and the American Ninja series, it’s a savvy bit of cross-genre marketing that had kids the world over tying belts around their heads and throwing invisible shurikens. There is even a cute little droid in the R2-D2 mode, which bleeps and teases and generally acts as the comic relief, sharing a strong bond with creator Nora, who is actually the scientist behind Mandroid’s synthetic parts, though she is understandably horrified to discover that her work has been bastardised by the morally corrupt professor Abbot Reeves (Roy Dotrice).

Another commercial element that Eliminators shares with Lucasfilm is a knock-out promotional poster that, emphasising the film’s colourful cast of characters, feels truly epic. It doesn’t have the world class aesthetics and composition of the Star Wars posters but it does a bang-up job of emulating them in a more humble fashion. Even if you’re one of millions who still hasn’t seen this movie, you’ll surely remember its poster hanging from the dusty walls of your old VHS haunt at a time when canvas art was king. It is undeniably striking, the perfect web for a nest of adventure-hungry tykes out hunting for their next weekend rental. In an era of VHS oversaturation, promotional posters played a vital part in selling inferior, low-budget products, making them seem much more spectacular than they actually were, and the artwork for Eliminators knocks it out of the stratosphere. The folks at Madison Avenue would have been proud.

That’s not to say that Eliminators will underwhelm. In fact, if you’re anything like me, the movie will exceed expectation and then some. Like most of Band’s productions, there’s a sense of childlike naivety to the whole affair. You get the feeling that those involved had an awful lot of fun making it. The characters are likeable, the action irresistibly naff, and the script is genuinely amusing at times, be that accidental or otherwise. For such a low-key outing with meagre sets and locations, there’s a real sense of adventure that can’t be denied.

As the film’s commercial poster boy, Mandroid also has a surprising level of depth, with a sense of moral conflict worthy of mainstream sci-fi. A downed pilot transformed into a half-man, half-machine, Mandroid toils with his semi-human predicament while attempting to curtail the dastardly deeds of a bunch of slack-jawed baddies and their egomaniacal charge. His emotional quandary is almost identical to that of the Murphy character from Paul Verhoeven’s ultra-violent satire Robocop, the character struggling with retrograde amnesia and the conflict of not belonging to either side of the organic coin. Interestingly, and against all of our cynical instincts, Eliminators was released a whole seventeen months before the bigger budget Robocop, resulting in at least one instance in which the movie’s influences are not so clear cut.

Mandroid was discovered by the egomaniacal Reeves, a thespian villain who, though possessing no supernatural abilities, has the aura of an Evil Emperor type, wielding scientific contraptions that fire deadly electrical currents. Reeves has been sending Mandroid back in time to the decadent days of Ancient Rome, where he himself eventually intends to travel back to, becoming the ruler of civilisation and altering the future irrevocably with his vast scientific knowledge (though you have to believe he’d be drawn and quartered as an evil sorcerer if he pissed off the wrong emperor). Dotrice adds some much welcome acting clout to a movie crammed with Cannonball Run boat chases and tongue-in-cheek battles that prove as gaudy as they are infectious.

If you’re a sci-fi nut, an avid excavator of B-movies or an 80s kid high on the nostalgia of cotton candy commercialism, Eliminators will be right up your street. It may not be from a galaxy far, far away (far from it in fact), but all the other ingredients are there in spades, its main differences typically a by-product of the film’s financial shortcomings. Instead of the vastness of outer space our heroes traverse a closely shot wilderness no bigger than a national park, its variation on the Death Star a dingy, underground lab in Mexico that is something akin to the gaudy Mel Brooks sets found in the likes of Young Frankenstein, but the concept would have been perfect for the current Marvel cinematic universe, resembling an 80s proto-Guardians of the Galaxy.

In relative B-movie terms, Eliminators is actually very well made, and though the movie is little more than a derivative pastiche of other popular 80s productions, it is so to its credit, proving itself a uniquely memorable piece of plagiarism that carries its own inimitable charm. From the movie’s iconic cover art to its cheapjack special effects and gimmicky characters, this is B-grade 80s excess at its finest, a gaudy gem of the VHS era that’s just begging to be rediscovered.

Enter the Ninja

Despite its humble budget, some of the cheapjack special effects on display in Eliminators are nothing short of charming, and if you were a fan of ninjas back in the mid-1980s, you’re in for a particularly fun time.

After being confronted with a gun that ‘turns your atoms inside out’, high-kicking stealth assassin Kuji clogs the cannon’s mechanism with his throwing dagger, causing the machine to glow red and throb into nonexistence along with the two hick cronies manning it.

Return of the Ninja

You can’t do high-concept, B-movie sci-fi without improbable, barely passable moments of technological or supernatural prowess, something that Eliminators clearly understands.

While penetrating the tunnels of Reeves’ underground lair, the gang run into a slight problem: the only feasible passage to his lab is blocked by a razor-sharp fan that spins with the unbridled ferocity of a motorboat propeller, and with the option of sabotaging the engine out of reach, their mission seems doomed to failure.

That’s until Kuji somehow manages to dive through a gap in the propeller, which though shot in slow motion doesn’t slow down, making his feat as far beyond the realms of plausibility as you could ever stretch to imagine. A mouse pepped up on amphetamines would have died trying.

That Familiar Force

Eliminators doesn’t hide its derivative aspirations. In fact, it’s surprising Lucasfilm didn’t hit Band with a copyright injunction (presuming he was even aware of the film).

Of all the moments that reek of Star Wars plagiarism, one in particular brought a special grin to my face. After being captured by an indigenous race not unlike the Ewoks, Han Solo of the waters, Harry Fontana, manages to squeeze a fully blown kiss with the shocked and dishonoured Nora Hunter into an escape plan involving throwing some bullets into a fire.

Later, Fontana’s Princess Leia confronts him on the matter:

Nora Hunter: ‘You know, they don’t speak English.’

Harry Fontana: ‘So what?’

Nora Hunter: ‘Well, why didn’t you just say ‘Nora, throw your bullets in the fire’?’

Harry Fontana: Wouldn’t have gotten a free smooch.

The legendary Charles Band produced a plethora of endearing schlock fests in his pomp, and this may be his high-concept, low-grade masterpiece. Fun, exceptionally paced and filled with memorable comic book characters, is a movie that captures the inimitable cheapo charm that made the 80s such a wondrous time to be a child.

Edison Smith