bad/awesome flixxx review: Eliminators (1986)

"That's Italian. It means "We kick ass." "- Ray

"We got robots, we got cave men, we got kung fu...What is this? Some kinda goddamn comic book?- Harry

"Dismantle the Mandroid, we have no further use for him."- Abbott Reeves

This was suggested by my good buddy Tim "True Believer" McLaws. I had never seen nor heard of it until he posted the trailer up for me to watch a while back. This one has a little bit of everything. After watching said trailer, you'll probably fall into two different camps: the ones who say, this looks like SHIT- and the ones who say, this looks like SHIT, but I MUST see it. If you are a fan of movies that are simultaneously low budget, stretching that budget for every single nickel that they can get out of it, AND don't really do a good job of it, or either the vision is beyond that budget, well this one might just be for you. A bunch of nobodies really, except for 2 longtime tv actors (a veteran cowboy guy who looks too young to have been acting in 1957, and kind of looks like Shaggy from Scooby Doo, & the blond chick with the scullet from Star Trek the Next Generation) star in ELIMINATORS!!!







Ok, get a load of this: A half-man/ half-tank cyborg called "the Mandroid" is sent back in time by an evil scientist named Abbot Reeves and his buddy Takata. They've just figured out this time machine and sent the Mandroid back to retrieve a shield from a Roman soldier. Takata really likes the Mandroid, but Reeves doesn't give a shit about him. The Mandroid has memories that he can't really remember but something about he used to be a pilot and he crashed and Reeves pulled him from the wreckage and turned him into the Mandroid. Reeves looks like he's about to die, and he plugs some cord into his side and this juice goes into him apparently giving him his fix of whatever he needs to keep him from suffering. He tells Takata to dismantle the Mandroid, but Takata is like, "He's human!" but Reeves doesn't care. Takata tries to help the Mandroid escape but gets killed. The Mandroid blasts his way out of Reeves compound (which must be somewhere in Mexico- that would explain why all of Reeves henchmen are Mexican), and at some point decides to go by the name John (aka John Doe- yeah, clever).



Takata's last words were for John to go find Colonel Hunter, b/c he's supposed to be a badass technology wizard and help John fix his parts. So he does, and it turns out that Col Hunter is a hot(?) chick scientist who's pretty smart and ol Abbott Reeves stole all of her ideas. Even the ones to build the Mandroid were ripped off from her "Mars probe". Mandroid vows to go kill Reeves no matter what the cost and he's pretty sure he's up to no good. Col Nora Hunter gets John to let her come with him to fight Reeves and she brings along this 80s toy robot that they say is like cutting edge technology called S.P.O.T. Spot looks so dated that its just downright laughable. So they head down to Mexico(?) or somewhere in South America where theres a river. They hire this scamp of a riverboat captain named Harry Fontana, who is like a down on his luck, take all comers/ treasure hunter/ guide for hire type dude. He has a lot of enemies in town, like Bayou Betty the lesbian boat guide and her bumbling French partner guy. Seriously, the characters are all carefully and painstakingly constructed in all of their many idiosyncrasies.



Then they go on a boat ride looking for John/Mandroids old plane, and are chased by Bayou Betty and some other "guides" over and over and then finally chased by this big fat henchmen in a speedboat with shotguns. John & Nora fire Harry just to go on foot when they get down far enough and then Harry ditches the fat man. Then Nora gets stuck in Johns old plane and Harry has to rescue her. Proving his worth, he wants to be a part of the team convinced that they are looking for sunken treasure. Nora promises to cut him in for 1/3 the loot. Then they are going through the jungle and get caught by CAVE MEN!!! Obviously some Reeves time travel experiment, they narrowly escape the Neanderthals (and I shit you not- they introduce a FUCKING NINJA INTO THE CAST- ONE HOUR AND ONE MINUTE INTO THE FUCKING MOVIE!!!) with the help of Takata's kung fu master son Kuji who is out looking for his father. They tell him his pop is toast, but he joins up anyway to get revenge on Reeves.



So then this "motley" crew of "unlikely" heroes heads over Reeves headquarters and break inside. Then Reeves captures them and comes out to reveal himself transformed into a young man. With the success of his time travel machine, he has decided to split from this time stream and head back to become the newest Ceasar in Rome, and he built himself some powerful Iron Man style Mandroid armor that blows the mandroid's shit outta the water. He shoots Mandroid, then encloses the others in a lightning web or something. Mandroid comes alive long enough to absorb the energy, but then he dies. Then Nora, Harry and Kuji make a run for it to try and stop Reeves from going back in time, ultimately changing history forever. They are too late, but Harry kind of punches the keyboard, and "OH NO"! Too bad! Old Abbott Reeves gets send to 15 bajillion years BC, where he is "the Ceasar of Nothing". FREEZE FRAME ENDING!!!!! Of their three faces laughing!!! Isn't that how all the hour long tv dramas ended in the 80s??? Charlie's Angels- "hahaaha, we really pulled a fast one on them." CUT! All 3 girls faces frozen in laughter forever. What a pile of shit! I can't believe they didn't say anything about the Mandroid. He was the one that brought them all together, and he's just laying back there in the other room, and they're all giggling in front of a bunch of rigged up keyboards. WOW. I wish they would pay me to come up with ideas. I would be rich as fuck.