Saturday, February 24, 2018

252. Assassin

252. Assassin (1986)
Director: Sandor Stern
Writer: Sandor Stern
From: Sci-Fi Invasion

Ex-CIA agent Henry Stanton is brought back on board to hunt down a killer android that’s turned on its masters.

A CIA agent goes into the agency’s secret regional office in St. Louis and kills everyone there. In LA, Dr. Mary Casallas is picked up by other members of the agency and flown by helicopter to the isolated ranch of former agent Henry Stanton. They tell him that the CIA needs him now, more than ever, because he was the best CIA agent that the CIA ever had, but he told those honkies from the CIA that Henry Stanton was out of the game.

Wait… no… that’s Black Dynamite. I’m thinking of Black Dynamite. Ah, if only there was a Western version of Black Dynamite.

Anyway, this isn’t Black Dynamite, it’s Henry Stanton, aka Beige Powder, and he’s the agency’s best hope for stopping rogue agent Robert Golem. Golem’s memorized the records of every agent from the past six years, but Stanton left eight years ago which gives him the advantage of surprise. They suspect Golem will go after Casallas next so send Stanton to her apartment.

Stanton searches the apartment, finds it abandoned, and invites Casallas in. He, as he says, searched everywhere “except that locked door.”

Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.

Of course Golem pops out, gets shot up, and jumps out the window without being harmed. Turns out he’s an android that was co-designed by Casallas. When she realized he was being used for assassinations, she quit the agency. The other co-designer has since committed suicide leaving no records of who the android is aiming to kill or why.

Turns out the dead designer was a John Bircher-type (a Brightbark alt-reicher in modern parlance) and had programmed the android with a list of “traitors,” ie. Congresscritters and bureaucrats who were less than 110% in favor of empire and colonialism. Stanton learns this when investigating the dead scientist’s house and uncovering his secret journals. Casallas keeps one volume hidden because the movie wants to pretend to have intrigue.

Speaking of foolish ambitions, the movie tries to make Stanton a character, which is a mistake. He has trouble sleeping because he slipped a bomb into the luggage of some foreign baddie and it blew up a passenger plane killing everyone on board. The target was supposed to be on a private plane, but changed plans at the last minute. The guilt over that ended Stanton’s marriage and led to him quitting the agency. Also, I said above that it’s the CIA, but they only ever call it “the agency.”

So Stanton figures out that Golem’s next target is Stanton’s boss and sets up an ambush. There are only three ways to kill the android: shoot him in the stomach (which he covered with metal plating after his first encounter with Stanton), attack him during his 30-minute every 72-hours recharge cycle (which the team botched), or trap him which will initiate his self-destruct sequence to prevent enemy agents from finding him.

Golem wades through the ambush easily, tells Stanton the truth about his boss setting Stanton up to bomb the passenger plane as revealed in the secret journal, and gets the boss alone in a shed. They manage to seal the exits and Golem self-destructs. Stanton hugs Casallas and asks her if there are any other androids. She says Golem was the only one, but we push in for a close-up on her unsure face. THE END.

This was a TV movie that was obviously aiming to become a series. “Robert Conrad is Henry Stanton, on the hunt each week for robotic assassins intent on overthrowing our government from within!” Only it didn’t work out that way. Because this movie is garbage.

The twist at the end is that Golem may not be the only robot running around and I wonder if a good portion of the cast read the script and decided they would be secret robots as well. What if, super-twist, Henry Stanton himself is a robot! That would explain his wooden, deadpan delivery and absolutely inert chemistry with Casallas. He keeps asking her if she was dating the other scientist, then if she’s dating anyone at all, I think he even asks if she’s into men since she never seems to take the opportunity to jump him—the ever charmless Beige Powder. Being romanced by Beige Powder feels like being taken with all the force of a polite clearing of the throat.

The movie itself is bland an inoffensive—it’s an 80’s made-for-TV movie, it only ever aspired to fill some time. For that reason itself, it provides a bit of ironic fun. I mean, Golem is programmed, like Data, to be “fully-functional” and ends up seducing a woman. Golem is being played as a 100% affectless robot the entire time, yet this woman is head-over-heels for him. That he is more charming than our hero is sort of funny in its own right as well.

Because it’s not that inventive, never goes off the rails in an interesting way, and doesn’t achieve any high levels of camp, I’m not recommending it. However, I’m not going to discourage anyone from seeing it either. It’s 95 minutes and passes the time competently enough. It just doesn’t have anything to really grab you during that time either.

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