After an incident at a research lab, Carl Lehman (David McIlwraith) engineer and scientist is killed. The company in charge of the lab have decided to use his body in a new, experimental suit that will allow him to walk on Mars. Carl activates before he’s supposed to and manages to escape the research lab where he’s been ‘built’. Subject to his programming he can’t get too close to another person otherwise his self preservation system will activate and that will force him to kill whoever the invader is. Needless to say this limits his social life quite drastically, not to mention his marriage. With his wife believing he’s dead, she is shocked to learn that Carl is still alive. Of course wanting find out the truth of what’s going on, she will venture deep into the shadowy depths of where Carl used to work and discover hidden agendas and conspiracies that she would never have dreamt of.
The Vindicator is an 80’s sci-fi movie in the vein of The Terminator. Of course there are drastic differences between The Vindicator and The Terminator but fundamentally it’s a killer human/machine hybrid (cyborg) walking around and being pretty nasty to those on the wrong side of him. To say it’s a total rip-off would be unfair however, even though clearly there’s a lot of it’s influence going on.
The cast are solid enough, Pam Grier puts in probably the best performance of everybody as the brash and deadly bounty hunter named Hunter. The actor playing the main protagonist (the cyborg) David McIlwraith is an actor i’m not too familiar with but nevertheless his performance is decent enough. There’s a few faces that some of you may recognise from many different movies, names such as Richard Cox, Maury Chakin etc, etc.
The suit design is awesome, in fact it may even rank as one of the best looking cyborg, iron man designs i’ve seen. Very cool and very deadly looking. You sure wouldn’t pick a fight with it anyways.
The pacing of The Vindicator can be awkward at times and the storyline in general is a bit thin but ultimately the movie serves as a class piece of sci-fi b-movie film making from the mid 80’s. Topped off with cool special effects this one comes recommended to all cyborg/robot fans out there.
Movie Details
Director: Jean-Claude Lord
Writers: Brian Miller
Actors: David McIlwraith, Teri Austin, Micki Moore, Larry Aubrey
Release Year: 1986
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