Death Machine

A 1994 low budget sci-fi by the director of Blade and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Stephen Norrington, who also worked on special effects for Aliens and Split Second.

The films concerns a near-future mega-corp CHAANK Industries that in the vein of any cyberpunk mega-corp is powerful and amoral, dealing primarily with weapons.

At the center of the story is a conflict between the new Chief executive Hayden Cale (played by Ely Pouget) and the resident genius mad scientist Jack Dante (Brad Dourif), with a group of pacifist humanitarian eco-warriors and other executives thrown into the mix. Then there is the titular death machine which closely resembles what a terminator based on Alien queen anatomy would look like. There are also child experiments, brain-wiped combat vets and combat exoskeletons all for good measure. Finally, the story itself plays out in the office of the corporation - a 50-something story skyscraper, providing a fittingly claustrophobic backdrop. In a nutshell, what you would get if you take Die Hard, add some RoboCop and Terminator, a dash of Alien and mix it with some Raimi-style humor on a low budget but with an eye for style.


 * Action Girl: Cale
 * Action Survivor: Cale, again.
 * Awesomeness By Analysis: In a comedic fashion. When death machine confronts two heavily armed protagonists ready to open fire on it, from its POV it assesses their threat level as being "00:000%" Once they start firing it promptly begins to reassess.
 * Beyond the Impossible: Raimi getting into a fist-fight with Warbeast... and actually winning.
 * BFG: And how! Huge machine guns designed for the Hardman project, carrying an obscene amount of ammunition, but with no apparent way to reload so they have to be discarded as they run dry.
 * Big Labyrinthine Building
 * Bottomless Magazines: The guns seemingly go on shooting for minutes at a time.
 * Character Development: Hayden Cale, but only in the UK DVD cut.
 * Cluster F-Bomb: Pretty much everyone swears at one point or another, but Scott Ridley loves this trope.
 * Cool but Inefficient: Titular Death Machine, aka Frontline Morale Destroyer aka Warbeast - scary looking bipedal robot with alien-escque spin-capable head and huge claws, designed to track by fear pheromones. Supposedly would be helpful in scaring the bejesus out of the troops on the front line. Either by way of being a prototype or simply bad design it has exposed hydraulic lines all over it, and can only track you if you are scared in the first place.
 * Corrupt Corporate Executive: Everyone at CHAANK. Except for Hayden Cale, obviously.
 * Cyberpunk
 * Deadly Closing Credits
 * Death From Above: A minor character gets crushed when death machine decided to jump down from the top of the building.
 * Determinator: Yutani. Getting impaled through the leg and shot in the shoulder hardly slows him down though he is clearly in pain.
 * Double Entendre: Jack Dante loves of these: "I showed him my thing... and it killed him." John Carpenter also uses one while talking to Hayden at one point. Her answer? A punch to the face.
 * Evil Tower of Ominousness: CHAANK headquarters building.
 * Dramatic Thunder: The weather during film's main events.
 * Elevator Action Sequence
 * Everything's Better with Samurai: Yutani, the stoic who has a Japanese flag motif tattooed into his face and carved into his hair, quotes one of the founders of Buddhism, and generally has Asian-influenced mannerisms.
 * Extended Disarming: Dante wears a black leather trench coat, that conceals at least 5 handguns, a few knifes, brass knuckles, nunchaku, throwing stars... and a rubber chicken for good measure.
 * Five Second Foreshadowing: An executive that Cayle replaces has met a grizzly death from a Great white shark attack, according to the autopsy... inside the corporate headquarters. And his body had synthetic lubricant on it.
 * Good Is Boring: Dante's outlook on things. "Entropy. You know? Order into chaos. Certainty into instability, growth into decay. Sometimes I just like to pile up my bricks so that I can just knock 'em down again, and that's the good bit." (picks up a pencil) "Look, this is order. Straight, true." (snaps pencil in half) "Wouldn't you think that's more interesting?"
 * Hand Cannon: One of the Hardman guns that fires explosive rounds. It is even painted in black and yellow OSHA stripe!
 * Hell Is That Noise: Death machine's clanging footsteps.
 * Mad Scientist: Jack Dante. A sex-obsessed stalker with a creepy crush on his company's (female) executive, tasked with creating war robots in his "vault", walls of which are plastered with pornography, action toys and monitors playing violent cartoons.
 * Mega Corp: CHAANK
 * Mechanical Monster: Death Machine. Skeletal alien-esque abomination with huge teeth in permanent chomping mode, equally huge arms with Freddy Kruger-style claws, ludicrous durability, fear tracking and comically small feet.
 * More Dakka: Protagonists really let loose with that one when they get their hands on some weaponry not loaded with blanks.
 * Narm Charm: Seemingly the point of the whole movie.
 * Our Weapons Will Be Boxy in the Future: Hardman project guns.
 * Police Are Useless
 * Powered Armor: A surprisingly realistic depiction, with an exoskeleton very similar looking to current prototypes such as HULC, although with addition of vision system that doubles as Cool Shades.
 * Psycho Prototype: Films opens with a roadside diner that looks like it's in a middle of a warzone, with everybody around and inside of it killed killed by a runaway Hardman. Comments by the recovery team indicate that it is a rather common occurrence with this project.
 * Robo Cam: Death Machine's POV, that also uses arcade game sound effects, directional arrows and big flashing messages for currently performed actions.
 * Robo Speak: A subversion. One of the eco-warriors donning a powered exoskeleton after a complimentary combat brain-wipe starts violently yelling out every word in a rigid drill sergeant-like tone, but coupled with Robocop-like manner to move.
 * Sealed Evil in a Can: Dante's deadly invention becomes temporarily out of his reach when Cale terminates his employment and seals the "vault" housing the Mechanical Monster.
 * Shaky POV Cam
 * Shout-Out: Numerous and obvious, such as character names (Jack Dante, Scott Ridley, John Carpenter, Weyland, Yutani) and direct quotes such as Raimi's "I'll be back" complete with Austrian accent, that leaves the other characters baffled.
 * Stoic Woobie: After nearly escaping death and being impaled through his thigh, a character needs a bandage, but none is readily available. He reaches down his trousers and with a few martial-artist grunts rips his underwear out to use as an improvised bandage.
 * Super-Persistent Missile: Seeking missile, that found its target through a virtual rat maze of a utility hallway, having to make 90-degree turns along the way, all in Raimi Vision.
 * Super Soldier: Hardman project.
 * Techno Babble: "a quad matrix of googol-plactic memory co-processors"
 * The Juggernaut: Death machine
 * There Is No Kill Like Overkill: In attempt to slow down the impending doom protagonists decide to trigger the fire alarm and close the blast doors all over the building. Anybody got a light? "Not me... But I do have a thermic detonator".
 * Uncomfortable Elevator Moment
 * Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Yutani