Recently scrolling down through some of my Facebook 'Memories' posts from a few years ago, I was reminded that my main birthday present to myself in December 2021 was a pair of nowadays rare-to-find (in good condition!) big box ex-rental VHS videos that I remember so well from the 1980s. Namely, the sci-fi movies Eliminators (1986) and The Atlantis Interceptors (aka Raiders of Atlantis aka Atlantis Inferno) (1983). Having watched both videos during the past year, now is as good a time as any for me to provide a review of each of these two movies here at Shuker In MovieLand. So today I'm reviewing Eliminators, with my review of The Atlantis Interceptors following tomorrow – don't miss it!
Directed by Peter Manoogian, and released in 1986 by Empire Pictures, Eliminators features a premise initially reminiscent of the much more famous sci fi/thriller movie RoboCop (but which came out a year later than Eliminators). However, there are notable differences too. The central character in Eliminators is a terribly-wounded (but not murdered) man – in this instance a crashed pilot named John – who has been recreated as an android (or Mandroid, as he's referred to here, played by Patrick Reynolds), but to whom additional combat equipment can also be incorporated when needed, converting him into a virtually invincible cybernetic fighting machine, half-human and half-tank, moving around on caterpillar tracks, as seen in the photograph further down in this review.
However, the Mandroid's creator is an evil megalomaniacal scientist (rather than a law-enforcement corporation as in RoboCop), one Abbott Reeves (Roy Dotrice), who has been experimenting with time travel, using the Mandroid as his disposable guinea pig. Reeves's demented plan is to go back to the Roman Empire and rule it, together with the rest of the world too, in Julius Caesar's stead, thereby changing the entire course of human history. To that deranged, potentially devastating end, he sends the Mandroid back in time to retrieve a Roman shield, for if he returns to the present day with it – as he does – Reeves will then know for certain that his time machine is fully functional.
As soon as this momentous event has successfully occurred, however, Reeves shows his callous disregard for the Mandroid, deeming him to be of no further worth, by ordering him to be dismantled, which of course will kill him. Mercifully, though, Reeves's much more honourable assistant, a fellow scientist named Dr Takada (Tadashi Horino), assigned to carry out this heinous task, cannot bring himself to do so. Instead, Takada releases the Mandroid, but inevitably incurs Reeves's wrath, who summarily shoots him.
The Mandroid, conversely, successfully escapes, and, following instructions given to him by Takada before being killed, sets out to find cyber-scientist Colonel Nora Hunter (Denise Crosby), who recognizes some of the Mandroid's components as works created by her, and therefore agrees to assist him in his quest to quell Reeves's terrifying plan for world domination.
After the Mandroid tracks down Hunter in the U.S.A., and is repaired by her (his cybernetic system had sustained damage when he was escaping from Reeves), they travel to Mexico (with Hunter bringing along with them a small anthropomorphic floating robot helper named S.P.O.T. whom she has personally created), where they hire a wisecracking riverboat captain named Harry Fontana (Andrew Prine), to take them via a system of inland waterways to the jungle location in Latin America of the Mandroid's crashed aeroplane, which may still contain vital data to assist them, and is not far from Reeves's secluded headquarters.
Despite several skirmishes with an assortment of rival boat captains, armed pursuers sent by Reeves to eliminate them, and even a tribe of prehistoric cavemen brought into the present day by Reeves during his time travel experiments, the determined trio (plus S.P.O.T.) finally reach the plane, retrieve what they require, and also encounter a youthful but very experienced weapon-wielding Ninja warrior named Kuji (Conan Lee), who turns out to be none other than the son of the late Dr Takada, and has been seeking his father for some time. So when Kuji is informed of his father's violent death at the hands of Reeves, he pledges absolute allegiance to the Mandroid, his team, and their cause.
And so it is that the Mandroid and his motley crew of sidekicks now set forth to Reeves's jungle-shrouded headquarters, to thwart his evil plans once and for all – only to discover to their horror, however, that Reeves has meanwhile converted himself into a cyborg too, but one far more powerful than the Mandroid. This grim fact is swiftly revealed when he effortlessly defeats the Mandroid in battle, and then imprisons the others within a spherical force field that rapidly begins shrinking in size. Nevertheless, with one final, self-sacrificing act the Mandroid touches the force field, shorting it to release his friends but knowingly killing himself in so doing.
Tragically, however, the Mandroid's sacrifice is in vain, because Reeves meanwhile has returned to his lab and entered the time machine before they could reach him and work out how to destroy it. The machine carrying Reeves vanishes, thus beginning its journey back through time; and in frustration at having failed to stop him, Fontana runs his fingers randomly against the keyboard that had controlled the time machine externally.
To their amazement but delight, however, the team discover that Fontana's ostensibly innocuous action has very fortuitously disrupted the machine's temporal trajectory, taking it, with Reeves inside, much, much further back than the period of the Roman Empire – back as far as the Silurian Period, in fact, over 400 million years ago. And as Reeves will all too soon find out at first hand, in this dank primeval world the only higher terrestrial life forms available for him to rule over are arachnids – giant arachnids of unequivocally carnivorous intent!
The plot of Eliminators is very episodic in execution, full of set pieces rather than a more complex, flowing storyline, and is somewhat derivative not only of movies from the 'bionic man'-type genre that were very popular during the 1970s and 1980s but also of adventure-themed flicks from that same time period featuring a dash of love interest along the way, such as Romancing the Stone/The Jewel of the Nile, Kill Slade (reviewed by me here), and the Indiana Jones franchise.
Overall, however, Eliminators works well, is entertaining in a Saturday afternoon rip-roaring, trail-blazing, gung-ho movie pastiche kind of way, with the cast playing their parts efficiently and effectively enough to sustain my interest throughout this movie's 96-minute running time (though as someone who'd previously associated Dotrice most closely with his much more benevolent role as the eponymous literary author in the 1976 TV miniseries Dickens of London, it took me a while to readjust to seeing him portray an archetypal mad scientist!).
If you'd like a glimpse of the thrills, spills, and chills awaiting you in Eliminators, be sure to click here to view an official trailer for it on YouTube. And don't forget to check Shuker In MovieLand here to read my review of The Atlantis Interceptors!
Finally: To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
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