Future Kick (1991)

In the mid-21st Century, Earth has become a hell-hole teeming with poverty & crime. The rich have fled to the Moon where they established a safe haven. Howard Morgan, a virtual reality game designer, returns to Earth to sell his latest creation. But while enjoying a night out on the town he is brutally murdered. His widow Nancy decides to follow his trail. With the help of Walker, the last of the Cyberons, a race of law enforcement androids built by a corrupt corporation to enforce their laws only to turn on them, now working as a bounty hunter, Nancy discovers that her husband was killed because he had obtained information implicating his employer in an illegal organ theft ring that steals organs from murder victims. As the pair attempt to unravel the conspiracy, the organ theft ring's psychotic assassin & his android sidekick attempt to silence them.Ever since he came to fame in the Bloodfist films, champion kickboxer turned actor Don "The Dragon" Wilson has become a cult star on the B-film action circuit. His quick fists & brutal fighting style has won him a number of fans. Roger Corman, who produced the Bloodfist films, decided to give him a chance to join the sci-fi genre with Future Kick, which was to be Wilson's third film overall & his first genre picture.Future Kick is, when you come down to it, a cheap copy of the Van Damme cult flick CYBORG. Both films have similar plots – a martial arts warrior must protect a woman from maniacal killers. But where Cyborg had Van Damme playing a human warrior fighting to save a cyborg woman from a gang of pirates, Future Kick has Wilson playing an android bounty hunter protecting a human woman from her husband's killer. The milieu employed in each film is different – Cyborg had a post-apocalyptic world teeming with death & destruction, while Future Kick had a slightly more stable world filled with crime & overworked police. Also of note is the fact that the action scenes in Cyborg were legendary amongst martial arts fans for their relentlessness but the ones in Future Kick are cramped by the film's low budget & needed a lot more room to work in (despite this Wilson manages to show off some of his impressive fighting skills).If the action doesn't get you on, then the film's dark humour will. Director Damian Klaus inserts a sardonic sense of humour in the film – Eb Lottimer kills his victims by cutting their hearts out with an implement that looks like a sinister version of those plastic tripods that pizza shops put in their pizza boxes to stop the box from sagging during transportation. Or the medical corporation that advertises everything from organ transplants to genital enhancements. Or the high-tech blood sport called "Laser Blade" where two fighters must control an energy ball that can destroy the opponent's head on contact. Or the police station, which is so overworked that it takes victims of crime a multiple-day wait to report a murder. The film is quite gory but the gore is handled in a decidedly daft manner that makes it funny.Despite the cheap thrills, Future Kick is mostly a disappointment. Wilson's character is supposed to be an android but sleeps, eats & feels pain despite being a robot bounty hunter. Meg Foster tries to play the widow with sincerity, but her inherently creepy demeanor undoes her performance. Eb Lottimer & Christopher Penn have fun in their roles at the show's villains while Wilson himself – still a mediocre actor by this stage – has to contend with a poorly written script & his own pitbull-like personality. The film has plenty of stock footage from other films in order to disguise its cheapness. But the worst part is the ending, which reveals everything to be a virtual reality manifestation that really sinks the film.

I can't imagine Don 'The Dragon' Wilson ever having played in one single decent film. Once again he's starring in a whole heap of inconsistent rubbish with so many ridiculous elements thrown into the plot, that the movie just becomes insane. Main man Don plays a Cyberon - part human, part machine - and he's the last of his kind. Apparently the government wants him eliminated, but that is of no importance to the plot. Because this movie is about Meg Foster - who's very much sleepwalking her way through this flick - who lives on the moon but comes to the earth because her husband scientists got killed there. But there's also an evil corporation which illegally traffics human body parts, so that's also what this movie is about. But actually, the main villain is a serial killer running around ripping people's hearts out, so this film is about him. Also, this film is simply about a series of titty bars, because futuristic cities are a cesspool of depravity, as to be expected. And then we have a (cyber-)game called 'Laserblade', which is also of importance to the plot. Are you still following? Doesn't matter, because it's all a giant bunch of nonsense without any logic to it. And what on earth was Chris Penn doing in this stinker? He's playing a cyborg who gets to kick-box against Don near the end. Some more redeeming qualities this movie has: a decapitation, two head explosions, a full body explosion, a cut-off finger and a lot of naked tits. Since this is a Roger Corman production, Corman took the liberty of splicing in footage from a lot of other movies produced by him; mainly special outer-space effects footage (from "Galaxy Of Terror" & "Forbidden World") and naked tits (from "Stripped To Kill II: Live Girls"). How cheap can you get, Roger? The conclusion of the film is downright stupid, but it does explain why nothing in it for 70 minutes long makes any sense at all. Seeing is believing. And I saw it. Otherwise I could not have imagined how an unbelievable heap of rubbish "Future Kick" is. Now you go watch it. You know you want to.

If you like Don Wilson it is for you. Fight scenes were OK and he does manage to get some charisma across ! Chris Penn was underused.I was more disappointed with the film's overuse of stock footage from other low budget films. We had Nell from "Battle Beyond the Stars" as the virtual reality computer - also space cowboys ship was an escape pod falling to earth(akia) A car chase from "Crime Zone" was pasted in - looked plain stupid given the fact that the cars looked totally different and the chase itself (round and round a warehouse)made no sense as it was brutally edited to ensure the "Crime Zone" characters didn't get a look in. The mad part is when the "crime zone" car chase ends.. the 2 cars involved (one is supposed to be Don's) come to a halt - then we cut back to FutureKick and Dons car is shown still moving, then braking in a location that looks nothing like the one in "Crime Zone".Another for Mystery Science Theatre !!!

decent sets and good choreography of kick boxing scenes. but movie is absolutely ruined by graphic violent murders