Android (1982)

Android likely wants to be one of those “man’s hubris to create artificial life will only doom him” movies, full of moralizing and whining about how misguided it is play God and that we shouldn’t be surprised when our creation rebels as it desperately tries to experience what it is to be human.

But what Android really turns out to be is one of those “don’t create a horny robot and keep it cooped up on a deserted space station” disasters that could be avoided if the chief mad scientist would be smart enough to periodically book passage to the nearest pleasure planet for his randy robot.

But surely a studbot on a sex rampage, leaving his mechanical spunk all over the viewscreens from watching porn and using the onboard surveillance system to peep whatever hot mamas turn up in the docking bay is dirty enough to be entertaining and awesome, right? How can it not be when this sexdroid is single-mindedly abusing whatever knothole he can find in the botanical gardens, wearing out the poor service droids and leaving his creator to wonder why his bionic wrist keeps wearing out every two weeks.

The problem with this wannbe love machine isn’t that he’s too much of a player, it’s that he’s a homely, creepy, douche no woman, lady cyborg or vacuum cleaner is ever going to want to be with!

With his horse face and skinny gawky physical features (you put all this effort into building artificial life so why wouldn’t you package it in something that didn’t look like the slow kids us cool guys used to make fun of in high school), the fact he’s not a real human is the least of his worries when it comes to getting laid.

As soon as the dippy Max appears and is watching sex instruction tapes, listening to his bad music at full blast and playing primitive vector graphics based video games, your first instinct is to put the local school on lockdown and call in the SWAT team to prevent a mass casualty event.

Everything about this douchebot screams “crazed loner” and it’s probably not entirely lost on his creator, the creepy-in-his-own-way Dr. Daniel. This is no doubt why he smartly focuses on building the next iteration of android, the Cassandra model.

Cassandra is an upgrade in every way and by that I mean she is a sexy-as-hell blonde! While you want to give Daniel a congratulatory back slap for finally delivering a hot bot the quadrant can be proud of, you also want to punch him in his weird-looking face (he’s played by Klaus Kinski) when he says out loud that she’s going to replace Max and that Max will be shut down without bothering to turn around and see that the newly petulant Max is listening.

But Daniel’s little love lab has another problem – the company funding it is going to shut it down thus making Daniel even more desperate to finish Cassandra.

And there’s one final little problem. The arrival of three murderous fugitives, including a woman who catches Max’s eye. We know immediately that Daniel is an irrationally obsessed scientist as soon as he doesn’t launch himself away from this mess in an escape pod.

The arrival of the fugitives has the expected impact on the station. Max falls in love with the woman, gets tips on being a player from watching old movies like It’s a Wonderful Life (he starts wearing an old hat), and packs for a trip back to Earth with her. (Try not to giggle when he packs a spare eye, extra fingers and especially a third hand!)

The three fugitives fight amongst themselves until the inevitable tragic fate plays out for all involved. There is a twist at the end involving one of the characters that makes almost no sense in the context of the story, but probably felt mandatory since this was made in the wake of Alien.

Android isn’t as terrible as it likely sounds. With its 80 minute run time, it never feels slow despite not having much in the way action sequences. Everyone on the station has their own disastrous situation to deal with before they all collide so there’s really no wasted scenes. Kinski is strangely mesmerizing in his usual way and the rest of the actors handle their parts without being more off putting than their characters force them to be.

And therein lies the film’s biggest shortcoming. All the characters are icky jerks, even Max who presumably we are supposed to sympathize with. He comes off like a spoiled brat and when he murders the police searching for the fugitives, you realize that Daniel is right to shut him down for fear that Max is turning into a killer robot like the ones that previously plagued Earth.

But Daniel is a slime in his own right as he repeatedly tried to grope Cassandra once she is brought to life! And the fugitives are killers right from the start!

The only character who isn’t completely repulsive is the barely seen Cassandra. Once she’s alive, she demonstrates intelligence and quick thinking. And she has a sexy deep voice to with cyber centerfold looks! The whole movie should have been about her! (Even worse, this is all you will get of actress Kendra Kirchner since it was her only known acting role.)

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