Death Machine (1995)

Absolutely Fantastic

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Stephen Norrington's Death Machine whips up a knowing, near meta grind-house schlocker that harvests names, ideas and actors from other well know horror classics and churns out a wonderful little pastiche that's clearly in love with every project influencing it, as well as the genre. In a giant m, imposing corporate high rise, the collective minds of future tech enterprise brainstorm the next best thing, but all of the are bested by creepy, psychotic designer Jack Dante (Brad Dourif) an antisocial lunatic who has designed an appropriately razor-adorned monster equipped with cunning AI, primed to tear the building, and everyone in it, to shreds. This includes the looney board of directors who all bear names lovingly similar to that of various creative minds in the horror/sci-Fi industry. Scott Ridley (The always maniacal Richard Brake), Sam Raimi (The Machinist's master of everything unsettling, John Sharian) John Carpenter (William Hootkins) and even a pair of characters called Weyland and Yutani, all references are here and they're not subtle whatsoever, part of the film's charm. Dourif's moniker is no doubt based on Gremlin's pioneer Joe Dante, and speaking of Brad, he's a flat out beastly delight as he turns loose a mechanical nightmare of a creation for all to be sloppily slaughtered by at some point. Bureaucracy is lampooned between decapitations and corn syrup gore, the film is never short of dark humour to garnish it's violent pandemonium. The film is displayed a lot like Alien, and the creature itself looks not unlike a bionic xenomorph with the ability to change into all sorts of elaborate shapes, all the better to hunt you down through the tight crawl spaces and narrow ducts that made up most of 1989's cinematic architecture. Director Norrington would go on to make his own horror classic in 1998's Blade, and here he earns his stripes as both a vetted disciple of the genre and a thrifty low budget wizard. Watch out for Rachel Weiss, of all people, as a random board member who's seen briefly. A howlin' good time.

Death Machine is your standard "trapped in a building with some evil $#!+head lurking about trying to kill us" cliche. And although the concept is overused and abused like a dildo, whatever that means, it was well directed and lots of fun. I do suspect the director is heavily influenced by Sam Raimi because it felt that way, at least in the action sequences. But I don't give a $#!+. The cinematography was good with a cyberpunk feeling to it, the monster machine was cool, the acting was nice but what stands out is the action. There are instances of blood and gore, plentiful chase scenes and gun shooting but the fight between the cyborg and the monster was great. The only complaint is at times the pacing is a bit uneven but eh. Good sci fi horror action film.

Death machine is a science fiction film that came out in 1994. The movie takes place in 2023 in a cyberpunk type future that Blade Runner paved the way for.The story follows Hayden Cale, played by Ely Pouget, who is the CEO of Chaank Industries. Chaank Industries is secretly developing a death machine that can track its victims through fear. The creator of the machine is Jack Dante played by Brad Dourif. Hayden finds this out and tries to stop Dante, but he releases the machine to kill her and a group of stragglers. Together, they must destroy the creature and bring the secret to light.Overall I thought the film was okay, but there are a lot of problems with it. Firstly most of the characters I thought were very bland. The lead girl, Hayden, tries to be the Ripley of this film, but I do not think she pulls it off. I found her to be uninteresting as a character. The same with the other main characters. I was not invested in their characters, so I did not care if they lived or died. The one character I thought was a lot of fun is Brad Dourif's character Dante. He is so over-the-top that I just found him very enjoyable to watch.The acting is a mixed bag. The main cast did okay, but the supporting cast was horrible. For example, there was this random cop that appeared periodically in the film. The guy that played the cop is a terrible actor. He did not deliver one line naturally. Brad Dourif was the most over-the-top in the film acting wise. However, again he is so goofy that it is hard not to enjoy him. Dourif is easily one of the best aspects about this film.The effects are meh, in my opinion. The wide shot of the city looked good. The style reminded me a lot of Blade Runner. However, many of the other effects looked off. For example, the effects of the death machine when it is moving are laughable. The design of the machine itself is also very lackluster, in my opinion.Many elements of this film remind me of other Sci-Fi films like Blade Runner, Terminator, Alien, etc. However, those elements just made me think about how much better those movies are and how those elements are handled better in those films.Overall this is an okay film, but there are many better Sci-Fi films out there. If you are a fan of Bred Dourif, then I'd say give this a look.

In a nutshell, skip this movie, it's that bad. In short, this movie is about a weapons factory where secret weapons are being developed. Because they make bad things, they aren't popular so to speak. A new female CEO comes in to clear things up, and make sure the reputation of the company will be improved. She does this by leaking company confidential information to the press... Do you believe this? Furthermore she starts to fire people she has never seen. Incredible uh? A pacifistic group tries to destroy the company's mainframe, because there are the blueprint located of those secret weapons. This mainframe is located in the bottom of the building hidden in a kind of vault. Of course the movie would not be complete without the mad scientist and a robot which is the ultimate killer machine, which resembles like an 'Alien' from the Alien movies. The mad scientist likes the female CEO.The mad scientist instructs the robot to kill everyone, and so protects his job, rise in chain of command, and make the movie interesting. The pacifists team up with the CEO and another person of the board of directors to escape from the robot. Further down the line they agree to blow up this evil computer mainframe, whilst avoiding the robot. They also discover that the factory was developing a part man, part machine soldier. They can erase a persons memory and replace it by a veteran soldier's one. One of the pacifists is transformed in such a soldier and will hunt the killer robot. I guess the mad scientist also wrote the script of this movie. This super soldier looks and acts much the same as Robocop, though not as funny.It boils down to this. People are running, being chased by a killer robot, are hurt by it, but they do not seem to troubled by that, besides limping a bit, and of course the female CEO is the leading character of this movie, and cannot be killed, i.e. survives every attack, explosion, you name it. I won't bother you by the chase, let's skip to the end. They have lots of weapons, yes the pacifist too and they know how to use them. When they're at the roof of the building they empty all there weapons upon the killer robot. They step into an elevator which is used to clean outside windows. And then the female CEO knows some magic as well, at the roof she was complaining about being out of bullets, and like magic the gun is reloaded. This way she can shoot the cables and let the elevator plummet 70 stories or so, and let it stop right above ground surface by pulling the brake. And to top it all off, the police is waiting there for them. The robot jumps after them, and kills the cops. Hilarious no? The robot chases them down the vault where the mainframe is, and when finally the robot is so close to her, that he can touch/kill her, it stops. Because the mad scientist did not want her to be killed. A better name for this guy would be the idiot scientist. Although he is the one who made this movie watchable. At this moment I was already pulling for the killer robot to finish them all of, so the movie would end.I cannot believe that this movie rates this high, and this is why I wrote this comment. Avoid this movie like the plague. It's a monster, and I'm not talking about the Death Machine.