Cyborg

The Cannon Group was in financial trouble. Two million dollars had been spent on the pre-production of their next two feature films, “Spider-Man” and a sequel to “Masters of the Universe.” Cannon could not afford to maintain the licensing rights with Marvel and Mattel, so both projects were cancelled. Cannon approached director Albert Pyun with a proposal. He would be given $500,000 to make a movie using the existing sets and costumes. Pyun spent a weekend coming up with the storyline for a new feature. This week’s movie was “Cyborg” from 1989. Dayle Haddon plays “Pearl Prophet,” the Cyborg of the title. She travels across the post-apocalyptic wasteland of America to New York to download data into her electronic brain. She then must make her way to Atlanta where scientists will use the information to cure the plague that has brought civilization to an end. She is captured by a warlord named “Fender,” (Vincent Klyn), who nonetheless heads for Atlanta with the Cyborg where he intends to gain power by securing a monopoly on the cure.

Having introduced this plot line Pyun pushes it aside to focus on a mercenary named “Gibson,” (Jean-Claude Van Damme), who wants to free the Cyborg but is primarily interested in getting revenge against Fender for murdering his girlfriend. Deborah Richter plays Gibson’s likable sidekick “Nady.” (For some reason all the characters are named for companies that manufacture musical instruments.)

What follows is an endless series of fight scenes in which Fender kills Nady, Gibson kills Fender, and Pearl makes it to safety. It is fairly watchable and somewhat entertaining, but never really good. The film performed reasonably well at the box office, but not enough to save the Cannon Group. This was the last feature released under the company banner.

During filming Jean-Claude Van Damme accidentally stabbed actor Jackson “Rock” Pinckney with a prop knife, blinding him in one eye.