Circuitry Man

Circuitry Man. USA: IRS Media, (c) 1989, 1990 (release). Steven Lovy, dir. Steven Lovy, Robert Lovy, script. 93 min. Miles A. Copeland III and Paul Colichman, exec. prod. Jim Metzler, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, stars.

Post-ecological disaster, with the air unbreathable, "Mankind moved underground into government controlled environments. There, they continued to ravage the last frontier ... the HUMAN MIND" (introd. titles). Establishing shots—with opening credits—move from surface to the underground in a movement and with shots similar to A Boy and His Dog, except surface world here looks OK. Title for opening proper: "Subterranean Los Angeles | The Near Future" (cf. and contrast Terminator movies and Blade Runner), appropriate parallels for this hard-core (if darkly comic and poorly done) cyberpunk film. Note the following elements: razor-girl analogs; allusions to Cafe Flesh, Mad Max 2, and Akira; an automobile mechanic and dealer literally part of his machinery (whose mind gets figuratively blown and then cybernetically "vacuumed"—with strong imagery of the superimposition of the mechanical upon the human); a featured role for a classic 1964 Ford Galaxy XL; brain-implant chips that act like drugs; and a "Bio-Synthetic" "Pleasure Droid" programmed to love a woman who's only a program. The hero's job is to run the "maze" to New York City with the drug/chips. The villain plugs into the car, and other things: he's a plughead, with multiple inlets. Organic stuff is associated with a punk like the top dwellers in Lucas's THX 1138 and the similar characters in W. Gibson's Burning Chrome story "Johnny Mnemonic" (Omni 1981). Villain (after a particularly gory bit of villainy) reveals to "Romeo" android that his beloved is " nothing but a ghost, circuitry man. You poor, pathetic machine." The villain (who rather literally gets off on the pain of others) turns out also to be a cyborg; final confrontation between hero and villain occurs in the hellish cyberspace of the villain's mind, in a scene of interest to historians of the imaging of surreal hells—and which gets into the similarities and differences between heroic and villainous machines: cf. and contrast confrontation between Luke Skywalker and the evil Emperor in The Empire Strikes Back. (RDE, 10/06/94)