Captain Barrett Coldyron (Richard Gesswein) is the leader of a top secret research project designed to create the perfect android lawman, for use twenty-five years in the future when it is predicted the world will be suffering from an enormous degree of criminality and therefore desperately need those kind of tactics. Texan Coldyron also owns a ranch where he lives, passing the time by feeding coffee to his horse when he's not riding it, or blowing up trees with high tech explosives, but while he thinks the project is going very well, when he is called in to the office that day after a lot of driving to get there he is faced with an unpleasant deadline: get the robot cop ready in four days or else!
Some films take a while to gather their following, and R.O.T.O.R. was one of those, a rip-off of The Terminator that possibly by coincidence, possibly by design wound up released around the same time as the considerably bigger budget RoboCop. It was plagued with the problems a tiny budget can suffer, not least that one of the producers, Gesswein, fancied playing movie star and insisted on taking the heroic lead. As legend has it, his voice was so comically unsuited to the production that he was redubbed with a deeper, butcher voice, though on watching it that appears to have been the case with most of the cast, as few of them sound like they're using their actual tones.
Being as impoverished as it was, this barely saw the inside of cinemas and you were more likely to watch it on home video in the late eighties and nineties, where as with many such efforts it garnered good word of mouth, that feeling of being in an exclusive club when you know there are others who have had the pleasure of watching something of particular quality. Particular low quality in this case, as that reaction where you cannot quite believe the filmmakers thought they had a winner on their hands permeated the whole experience; that camaraderie which stems from knowing you and the person you're speaking with (or communicating with on the internet, at any rate) are both well aware of what it is like to have gone through something like R.O.T.O.R.
Call it survivors' empathy or whatever, it can apply to pitiful movies just as much as it can more serious aspects of life, only this can be a lot more entertaining. As it was, it takes a hell of a long time for the titular robot cop to get his act together as the padding in this was obvious, with most of the first half hour taken up with panning over landscapes and interiors, occasionally with narration to promise there will be something happening soon. Not even the presence of a robot which makes Paulie's birthday present from Rocky IV look like the T-1000 can alleviate the restlessness, for some reason decked out in his own cap and wisecracking like Twiki on an open mic night. But there were quite a few elements which only come about when someone is not there to say "Stop! Wait a minute, this is ridiculous!"
Which is only a more compelling watch for a certain kind of movie fan, so by the time the villain of the piece is truly getting his mayhem on the road, we have already been treated to a bewigged man telling Coldyron that the deadline is up as he pours a glass of cola and almost lights a cigar (mmm... cola and cigars! He's obviously rolling in it) and a racial stereotype called "Shoe Boogie" who sexually harasses a lady scientist while claiming to be an American Indian. But you ain't seen nuthin' until the moustachioed R.O.T.O.R. springs to life in a power surge, walks through chairs he could easily have walked around, puts all his strength into opening two unlocked doors, and promptly rides away on a motorbike that was apparently a museum exhibit, in spite of it being his designated vehicle (for use decades in the future, one assumes). Then the rest of it is taken up with Coldyron and a butch lady scientist with skunk hairdo (Jayne Smith) trying to stop the automaton from killing a woman for speeding on a quiet country road. It's quite something. But in no way good. Music by David Adam Newman.
