Syngenor (1990)

One of my all time favorites.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

The military technology company Norton Cyberdyne is in a crisis. The board is inept, the CEO Carter Brown is rapidly going insane due to repeated injections of a mystery drug into his neck by his own actions & a group of executives & their call girl dates have just accidentally released from its cryogenic chamber the Syngenor (acronym for Synthesised Genetic Organism), a genetic cyborg designed to survive bullets & desert conditions & who can self-replicate every few hours. As the creatures quickly take over the building, Brown initiates a security lockdown, trapping himself & a group of people inside the building. One of the people is Susan Valentine, daughter of the late Dr. Valentine who was killed by a rogue Syngenor, & her boyfriend Nick Cary. Together they attempt to find a way out of the building but with the corporate security team's attempts to fight the Syngenors proving ineffective, they are thrust into a battle for their own survival.SCARED TO DEATH was one of the very first ALIEN templaters, made at a time when Alien had huge success in the box office & inspired a whole heap of filmmakers to make their own homage to the film. Scared to Death was the debut of filmmaker William Malone, a former fan who turned to makeup effects & made the legendary mask for Michael Myers in the original HALLOWEEN before making Scared to Death & creating the minor cult figure of the Syngenor, a reptilian-based genetic cyborg (a being created from synthetic DNA) that fed on human spinal fluid & that could self-replicate within a certain amount of time. The film was not quite the success of Alien but slowly developed a cult following (I saw it on YouTube).Despite the majority of people who call it a sequel, I believe that Syngenor is actually a remake of the original film. Some of the details about the mythology of the monster are changed (mainly the company that made the creature) & there is no mention of the events of the first film, which makes it a remake. I'm basing that on the technical side of things.Anyway, Syngenor is a superior film to Scared to Death in some respects – mainly by turning the focus of the film from cheap horror to dark comedy. In that respect, it manages to entertain considerably, although it is never more than a passable sci-fi horror flick in itself. David Gale, the actor who played the infamous headless zombie Dr. Hill in the RE-ANIMATOR films, clearly has a blast as the insane CEO of the company & effortlessly steals the show. He improvised most of his performance in the film & even made the suggestion that the mysterious glowing green drug he kept injecting into his neck should be kept a mystery (I personally thought that the opposite should be made since it would clear up a few things but I'm willing to go with Gale's idea since it also makes the film share some similarities to Re-Animator & even seems like a nod to that film). This was Gale's last performance, the actor dying shortly after the film came out.Apart from David Gale, the rest of the cast are mediocre. The lead characters are bland & reminded me of the heroines of the old 1930s mystery thrillers who make dumb moves & talk too much. The scheming executives are just a bunch of idiots who get killed in various novel ways (one executive finds himself the target of Gale's latest toy – the Death Rattle (an energy weapon that can liquefy its targets in seconds) & gets blown to bits within moments) & the security guards have the problem of wearing some ridiculous uniforms that look like a child designed them. The Syngenors look frightening but move so slowly that a snail could outrun them.The film does make a better impression than Scared to Death ever did & whilst still a passable monster feature, it gives the Syngenor a better chance to become a cult favourite.

The powerful multi-national corporation Norton Cyberdyne creates a deadly army of mutant soldiers called Syngenors that get loose and go on a murderous rampage inside the building. Director George Elanjian, Jr., working from a hilariously inane script by Brent V. Friedman, treats the silly premise with admirably misguided seriousness, relates the dippy story at a snappy pace, delivers a nice sprinkling of goopy splatter (there's a decent dab of tasty gratuitous bare distaff skin as well courtesy of one token topless blonde bimbo), and handles the action set pieces with a sidesplitting lack of competence (the monsters do these gut-busting herky-jerky robot chicken-style moves when shot!). The reptilian humanoid Syngenor beasts look pretty gnarly. Best of all, the late, great David Gale of "Re-Animator" fame positively galvanizes the proceedings with his fierce, intense, and gloriously loopy portrayal of paranoid and unhinged CEO Carter Brown, who injects glowing gunk in his neck, kills off most of his top executives when he thinks they've betrayed him, and flips his lid with deliciously unrestrained scenery-gnashing hammy panache. While Gale clearly dominates the whole show with his highly entertaining eye-rolling histrionics, the rest of the cast nonetheless acquit themselves well in their roles, with especially stand-out contributions by the ever-appealing Starr Andreeff as the spunky Susan Valentine, Mitchell Laurence as likable journalist Nick Cary, Riva Spier as the ruthlessly ambitious and treacherous Paula Gorski, and Charles Lucia as slimy yuppie Stan Armbrewster. Popping up in nifty bits are Lewis Arquette as amiable scientist Ethan Valentine and Melanie Shatner as cute underage secretary Bonnie Brown. Both James Mathers' slick cinematography and the lively hum'n'shiver score by Thomas Chase and Steve Rucker are up to par. A good deal of kitschy fun.

Not completely a direct sequel to William Malone's 1981 "Scared to Death", but "Syngenor" sees the return of Malone's alien creation (this time there's even more and a new creation to boot as well). As a low-budget, late-night b-grade offering, "Syngenor" is actually very well pulled off. I was expecting it to look much cheaper. It remains trashy fun throughout, namely due to the spontaneously intense and ham-fisted performance of David Gale. You could never tire watching this guy perform! It might be his show, but the rest the performances do shape up rather nicely. A delightful Starr Andreeff and snappy Mitchell Laurance agreeably work off each other. Riva Spier is enticingly manipulative. Also showing up is Melanie Shatner (William's Daughter) and character actor Lewis Arquette. Carter Brown is the CEO of Norton Cyberdyne, a corporation that deals with military defence technology. His latest creation under the project name "Dark Skies" is that of some genetically made super-soldiers known as Syngenor --- Synthesized Genetic Organism. However problems start occurring when one of them is released from its basement enclosure to leave a bloody aftermath, which involves the death of their original creator Dr. Valentine. Growing increasingly paranoid that somebody (within) is trying to knock him from his perch; Brown's sanity soon begins to spin out of control. Also he has to deal with a pesky news reporter and Valentine's daughter. Pulpy hokum, which has many dumb and unintentionally humorous qualities… but in the end that's what makes it. Really it could have been more enjoyable than it was. The plot is nothing new (by starting off rather mild-mannered and then transcending into demented craziness) and the script is sub-standard, but bestowed a conceptual base of satirical barbs and tongue-in-cheek sparks. The tightly knitted execution at times was a bit shoddy (with some cheaply staged action --- like the onslaught in the basement involving an oddly dressed security squad), but the pacing keeps on the move and the optical / special effects (done by Robert and Dennis Skotak) and make-up stand up better than you would think. The Syngenor designs (a man in a suit with an amatronic head) look quite decent, as they're crafted with specific details. Although when they go after their prey, it can be rather laughable with their slow movements as they dawdle around waving their arms. Super-soldiers? Locked away in the basement? The feature was mainly filmed in the Ambassador Hotel, in Los Angeles which has an infamous history. Some moments have an atmospheric edge, while other sequences are truly devoid of it. Composers Steve Rucker and Thomas Chase provide a typically unhinged music score. Slightly enjoyably low-end creature-feature oddity that's brought to life thanks to David Gale.

I could have sworn the box said this was a horror movie. Syngenor is an utterly unimpressive piece of sci-fi trash. It has all the lousy acting, POOR continuity, and cheap special effects you've come to expect from movies like this. According to this movie, people react to fear by having sex. But what I wouldn't give to own a Deathrattle.....