Before Albert Band bought "Robot Jox" and made two crappy sequels, before "Nemesis" and its crappy sequels, before Albert Pyun started making movies, before anybody thought they could rip off the industrial hell look of "Blade Runner", Toho (the guys who gave us Godzilla) made this little epic about giant transformable robots, computers running islands, and actors who would never appear in anything other than direct-to-video junk. I agree with everybody that the plot mechanics don't work and that there are too many set-up scenes in the beginning, but that wasn't what this movie was about. It was about showing off the model making techniques and robot concepts that we would later see in crud like the "Power Rangers" TV shows, and a demonstration that you could make a live-action version of the "Robotech" show if you had to.
I caught this one on the SciFi channel at midinight (where it's either show this or old "Dark Shadows" episodes)and from the first minute I knew it was going to be one of those wannabe cyberpunk efforts that still plague S/F movies. The plot is rather simple: there was a war between people and robots centering around the small fictional Pacific island 8JO, and humanity won. However the supercomputer controlling the robots was never shut down, instead it has come up with a plan to turn the entire island into a reactor powered with the miracle substance Texmexium. Texmexium, which has nothing to do with Tejano music, does whatever the plot requires, besides being a more powerful source of nuclear energy. The computer has been doing this for over thirty years, when a band of scavengers fly in on a jet that is half B-17 bomber, half typical anime spacecraft. It seems that the war ruined industry and high tech doodads are worth alot, which is why they're there. Like in "Mission Impossible", most of the salvage team is killed off pretty quickly, leaving only the carrot-munching Japanese guy they call "Brooklyn", and this female Japanese cyborg who is later transformed into a robot under the supercomputer's control. As with most movies of this kind, the hero runs across another character (in this case an American woman) who knows about the computer's plan, and with two pointless children they repair one of the sentient giant transformable robots (the "Gunhed" of the title) and try to stop the computer because it will be able to control the world or blow it up if its plan works. Or something like that. What kills "Ganheddo" is that all these semi-interesing robots and set designs are tied to a creaky plot whose details don't add up. If you can find it, see "Robokill under Discoclub Layla" instead; while totaly implausible, at least that plot worked.
I caught this one on the SciFi channel at midinight (where it's either show this or old "Dark Shadows" episodes)and from the first minute I knew it was going to be one of those wannabe cyberpunk efforts that still plague S/F movies. The plot is rather simple: there was a war between people and robots centering around the small fictional Pacific island 8JO, and humanity won. However the supercomputer controlling the robots was never shut down, instead it has come up with a plan to turn the entire island into a reactor powered with the miracle substance Texmexium. Texmexium, which has nothing to do with Tejano music, does whatever the plot requires, besides being a more powerful source of nuclear energy. The computer has been doing this for over thirty years, when a band of scavengers fly in on a jet that is half B-17 bomber, half typical anime spacecraft. It seems that the war ruined industry and high tech doodads are worth alot, which is why they're there. Like in "Mission Impossible", most of the salvage team is killed off pretty quickly, leaving only the carrot-munching Japanese guy they call "Brooklyn", and this female Japanese cyborg who is later transformed into a robot under the supercomputer's control. As with most movies of this kind, the hero runs across another character (in this case an American woman) who knows about the computer's plan, and with two pointless children they repair one of the sentient giant transformable robots (the "Gunhed" of the title) and try to stop the computer because it will be able to control the world or blow it up if its plan works. Or something like that. What kills "Ganheddo" is that all these semi-interesing robots and set designs are tied to a creaky plot whose details don't add up. If you can find it, see "Robokill under Discoclub Layla" instead; while totaly implausible, at least that plot worked.