Death Machine (Stephen Norrington, 1994)

After one of their cybernetically enhanced soldiers goes haywire, the Chaank Armaments corporation is in damage control. 

In response to the incident, new CEO Hayden Cale (Ely Pouget) tries to fire tech genius Jack Dante (Brad Dourif).

Enraged, he unleashes his latest mechanical monstrosity on the company’s corporate headquarters, to kill the CEO and anyone else who gets in the way of his ‘death machine’.

Death Machine is not a good movie in the usual sense - the script is a collection of cliches, most of the acting is bad, and one character in particular is so poorly conceived and performed that it grinds the movie to a halt.

And yet, somehow, it works.

The directorial debut of Stephen Norrington, who would go onto direct 1998’s Blade, Death Machine may not be that original, but it is made with style and energy. 

The film got Norrington the Blade gig and it is easy to see why - there is a sense of atmosphere and production design that feels distinctive and elevates what could have been some very silly plot points.

Norrington had worked on visual effects on various productions - a notable credit is 1990’s Hardware. 

Death Machine is a goofy amalgamation of other movies - down to characters named after genre directors Craven, Carpenter and Raimi - but the biggest influence is Hardware.

Even the design of the ‘warbeast’ recalls the antagonist of Richard Stanley’s film, with its elongated limbs and extendable neck. I will give Norrington credit - this machine at least has an identifiable and iconic element - long, shear-like claws.

Accompanied by rapid, metallic scraping on the soundtrack, these claws are often the only thing we see of the film’s antagonist, but they are effective.

Made for a low budget, Death Machine is worth watching as an example of economic ingenuity.

The characters are poorly written and woodenly acted, and there is a lot of running around that feels repetitive, but the movie never dawdles, and there is always some kind of set piece around every corner.

The movie’s biggest failing is its villain, tech genius Jack Dante, played by Brad Dourif. Dourif is a fine actor, but this character is a pile of over-acting cliches.

The film is also odd in that he is not the head of the company, but an employee that everyone is afraid of - including the evil company chairman (Barbarian’s Richard Brake), who ends up being a whiff of irritation. And the hero of the piece is the gullible CEO (Ely Pouget), who instigates the plot by trying to fire Dante.

Once the warbeast is chasing people around the building it does not matter, but the film feels the need to keep bringing Dourif back to monologue. He is a name so it is understandable that they would want as much screen-time as possible with him, but the character is so flat-out annoying he stops the movie dead every time he shows up.

Cheap and cheerful nonsense, Death Machine is an old school b-movie in the lineage of the Italian ripoffs of Jaws, The Exorcist and Mad Max.