Eliminators (1986)

Really Surprised!

As Good As It Gets

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

You just can't lose with the wacky PG-rated nonsense in this irresistible, campy genre picture. It knows full well that it's a B movie, but the cast and crew were clearly having a fine old time, and that feeling is infectious. The story has a "let's throw different kinds of ideas into the mix and and see how they hang together" appeal. The result is a harmless diversion with a lot of humour and a fair bit of action. The actors play it for all that it's worth, to be sure.Our four character heroic team is made up of Harry Fontana (Andrew Prine), a charming rogue of a river guide, Nora Hunter (Denise Crosby), a young scientist, Kuji (Conan Lee), a ninja, and a "mandroid" (Patrick Reynolds). The mandroid used to be a pilot before a power mad villain, Abbott Reeves (Roy Dotrice) got a hold of him and turned him into a half-man / half-machine experiment. Now the mandroid has escaped and wants revenge, first seeking out Nora who then hires Harry to transport them through Mexico to Abbotts' lair.As written by the reliable team of Danny Bilson & Paul DeMeo and directed by Peter Manoogian, "Eliminators" should prove to be quite a hoot for kids of all ages. As said, it's pretty harmless. The youngest members of the audience should take to "Spot", a cute surveillance robot created by Nora. It's hysterical when the neanderthals are introduced into the plot. As it turns out, good old Abbott was messing around with time travel. Just wait until you hear what his ultimate goal is; you may howl with laughter as this viewer did. Sex and violence are kept to a minimum; note that future 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' co-star Crosby has a scene where she removes a wet top, but does so with her back to the camera.The cast is a pleasure to watch. Prine is an interesting choice for the lead; originally Tim Thomerson was meant to play Harry, and one can easily imagine Thomerson in this comedic role. Crosby is appealing, and Reynolds and Lee are okay in their parts. Dotrice is an entertaining bad guy, and further antagonism / comedy relief is supplied by Bayou Betty (Peggy Mannix), a butch competitor of Harry's.One can see early on that this is never meant to be taken too seriously, and this extends all the way to the final shot, an absolutely hysterical "freeze frame" moment.Highly recommended to lovers of '80s cheese.Seven out of 10.

The essence of being human is to fail, and in that ELIMINATORS is a human movie. There's a mandriod, the dude is worried about his leg units, this movie also has a ninja. Was this movie used to launder drug money into or out of the country? Was this movie used by the C.I.A for their M.K.Ultra mind control experiments? Did anyone know while they were making this movie that it would look like this in the end? These are the questions one must wrestle with when viewing ELIMINATORS. Actors appear in this movie but they are seemingly unaware that filming has begun, this movie features a director whom probably had some sort of vision however misguided that vision turned out to be. Some person some human being put forth effort to make this movie and they failed.

*Spoiler/plot- 1986, A brilliant scientist who's mastered time travel and recently created a Man-driod (half human and half machine) from a former crashed pilot named John is transformed into a mechanical slave with extensive weapons. The scientist is an evil madman whose sole aim is to rule the world and anybody that doesn't do his murderous commands. As such, Man-driod is out to avenge himself against his creator. He gains the help of a beautiful Air Force scientist. And a Mexican jungle guide, named 'Fontana' helps this pair to get back to the madman scientist's headquarters. Along the way a mysterious Kung Fu expert joins them with his mission to avenge his madman's assistant scientist murdered father, all killed by Dr. Abbot 'madman' Reeves.*Special Stars- Andrew Prine, Denise(Annette) Crosby, Patrick Reynolds, Conan Lee, Roy Dotrice *Theme- Human spirit is stronger than steel and death itself.*Trivia/location/goofs- Filmed in Mexico, look for a politically incorrect flannel shirted butch lesbian character as a 'baddie' in the river traveling scenes. Kung Fu, time travel, robots with human parts, and A-Team excessive explosions occur in this predictably laughable film for its triteness and predictability.*Emotion- An enjoyable but rather crazy science-fiction film full of clichéd genres of the 80's. Annette (Denise) Crosby was still an unknown and was pre Star Trek TNG here. She supplies some of the wet t-shirt titillation in this film. I was half expecting a trite mud-wrestling scene with beautiful blond feminine Crosby and the dark butch lesbian to occur in a badly thought out plot pretext.

Without a doubt, this is a movie made by some guys who were sitting around and started going, "You know what would be cool? Androids." "No dude, ninjas. Ninjas fighting cavemen." "Can we do like a Romancing the Stone/Indiana Jones kind of riverboat adventure?" "Wait, wait, wait... I've got it. Androids and ninjas fighting cavemen with a riverboat captain and a pretty female scientist and her pet robot for some extra sweetness." "Sweet! And the villain will be a time traveling robotic Roman!" Basically, that's the movie. You don't have to think hard, you won't have your emotions poked or fondled, instead you'll think, "Well, this is certainly a movie." It's not going to win any awards, but it's fun to watch for sheer noise and pure 80s awesome. The acting isn't terrible, considering how goofy the plot is (you try playing against a ninja, cavemen, tiny robots and time traveling Romans while keeping a straight face) and the whole thing has a very bouncy feel to it.The locations vary just enough and the costumes have juuust enough detail to them to not make it feel like an all out cheese fest, but instead it's a perfect movie to munch down popcorn to. I'm hoping for a DVD release with commentaries, deleted scenes, trailers, etc. Rifftrax, I'm looking at you for commentaries!