Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Abraxas: Guardian of the Universe - 1990

That ol' Sci Fi Invasion boxset is so close to being finished I can taste it.  I think I have about 3-4 movies left.  And I'm going to have to some major site scouring to figure out exactly which ones are even left.  I don't remember from the names of these things, and even IMDb is hard to tell cause some of the names of the movies are different from what it's listed as online.

Abraxas is on the outskirts of well known stupid culty films, and it's no doubt because it stars Jesse Ventura in a dumbed down Terminator clone.  It's kiddy, it's stupid, and it has nothing it brings to the table besides basic movie presence.  I guess the cast is good enough.  Sven Ole-Thorsen as a villain with a giant accent much like Schwarzenegger is fun, and Jim Belushi in a small role.  The girl is a decent actress even if I haven't seen her in anything else and she hasn't acted for over 20 years.

This was at a weird time in Hollywood.  I think that movies and producers were starting to realize they couldn't market R rated movies to kids, and so they were dumbing them down.  Abraxas is really a PG approach to Terminator, but still with some of that leftover 80's mentality.  It had a budget, that's not the problem really, the problem is that it has no real interest factor and brings nothing new to the table, and instead seems content to basically be Terminator-Lite.

An alien comes to Earth and impregnates main girl Sonia.  Soon enough, Abraxas and Secundus (Sven Ole Thorsen) also come to Earth.  Secundus is after the girl because he wants her baby, Abraxas is guarding her from Secundus and his evil plan.  So basically Abraxas is Kyle Reese and Secundus is Arnold's Terminator.  The woman in this is just a weak loser, not a strong character like Linda Hamilton in Terminator.

That's really it.  It has a bit more attempts at "comedy" because in this movie, Abraxas and Secundus are both robots.  Or, not specifically robots, but some sort of artificially enhanced human type things.  They are immortal, they have robotic enhancements, and they have a voice that is built into them that is sort of like Siri for Terminators.  This is their "Answer Box" which interjects at times with things it says that are either "funny" or "smart" but are actually neither.

The movie goes how you'd expect if you saw Terminator.  Abraxas falls in love with Sonia.  Secundus is pure evil and eventually gets beaten.  Lalala, happy day.  There's no real cool effects either.  This film basically slashed all the cool violence and robots that Terminator had in trade for Jesse Ventura sitting around without a shirt on.
Good trade.

Sure, you could riff on it or make a drinking game out of it.  Rifftrax exists for it, and I've seen that also.  It's very forgettable, and honestly I didn't even remember I'd finished it until last night.

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