MovieChat Forums > Ganheddo (1996) Discussion > Don't mind the haters - if you love 80s ...

Don't mind the haters - if you love 80s b-movie SciFi, you'll like it

posted 10 years ago by Alfabeta
8 replies | jump to latest

It's a poorly scripted, but quite fun 80s SF/action b-movie with great cyberpunk-ish grungy high-tech production design, good camera work, simple but fun 80s electronic soundtrack, hectic direction, decent enough actors (and wonderful actresses!), great computer voicework. over-the-top (if underused) characters and adorable dialogue. Once you see this, you'll totally get why Cameron likes this movie, since it's exactly the type of B-movie he began his special effects (and later directorial) career with. In fact, the movie's structure has some resemblance to Aliens'.

Yes, Front Line Assembly's Mindphaser music video is better in almost every way, but so what?

It's really odd that they never made an anime out of this, just early-90s games.

[–] torstn 10 years ago

how exactly is the mindphaser musicvideo better than the film? since its scenes from the movie cut together like in a trailer

[–] Alfabeta 10 years ago

Pacing of the movie is off too often. That's it.

[–] omega2064 9 years ago

It is actually fairly well scripted. Its just not telling the standard substandard hollywood drivel we get now.

It is in no way a B movie as quite a bit was spent on the full scale robot and some of the setwork.

The music video is sub par really. But makes good use of what little they used.

Simmilar anime came out around the time, just different themes. Who knows. Some day it might get an anime.

[–] cyguration 8 years ago

That's not to mention Brenda Bakke in this was super HOT. I've always thought she was hot, especially in Hot Shots, but what a sultry badass performance she turned in here. If more Air Rangers were like that I would say "sign me up!"

But one thing you mentioned really stood out. You mention the full scale robot? Do they have some sort of behind-the-scenes thing for this flick? Because some of the effects really stumped me. At times it looked like a toy but then at other points it looked like Gunhed was life-sized. This movie was WAAAAAY more impressive than I thought it would be, and for like 25 years I've always wanted to see it but never got around to it until now (used to see it a lot in Blockbuster Video next to movies like Robocop and Robot Jox).

I thought the first 15 minutes were some of the tightest and fastest paced horror/action elements for a movie like this, but it really slowed down in the middle. They could have spaced out the deaths a bit more to lessen the slow parts.

Anyway, I do think this was a much smarter film than what it deserved to be, but it also had some wonky elements in there, too, which prevented it from being a grade above most B-movies.

[–] Badlands1 9 years ago

I like 80's B movie sci-fi but didn't like this, the trailer looked great, but the movie felt like a long drawn out music video filmed all in the same warehouse with cheap small model robot effects...
It's a terminator rip-off, it lacked the drama and acting of Hardware, and didn't have the great action editing of Nemesis.

[–] SickSpazmoid (877) 8 years ago

The narration is so lame. The movie has super cool set design and special effects, but the action is boring and nonsensical. I still would recommended it to b movie sci fans, but put it in the bottom half of the list.

[–] MikeCable (1918) 8 years ago

I discovered and watched this for the first time a few days ago after seeing it pop up on this site's trending list. I was about a third into it and wanted to switch it off, but appreciated some of its elements and stayed until the end. I think if I was 20 years younger then I would have liked this film more, but to me it was a very strange film and a bit of a mess that was hard to follow.

The opening flying scenes were very well-intentioned, reminded me a lot of Blade Runner and Aliens. The special effects of the missiles going through the complex were very well done also, reminded me a lot of V'ger's balls of energy from the opening scenes from Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

[–] Starman (412) 5 years ago

It connectes in mood and vision with other films of that period of time, which also were quite popular in the late 80's, that is Roboforce (I Love Maria), They Live and Robot Jox. As a child and still almost 30 years later I always prefered this group of films over Robocop, Blade Runner or Aliens. Gunhed had an indelible impression on me back then, and still speaks to me on a very subconscious level. What makes films like this stand out, is the uniqueness, whether it comes to film stock or narrative.