If Stephen Norrington had only ever been a special effects guy he still would’ve made a mark. He worked under Dick Smith, Rick Baker, Stan Winston and Jim Henson. He did the Grand High Witch makeup in THE WITCHES, and designed creatures for Jim Henson’s The Storyteller. He played the Gump in RETURN TO OZ. He helped make the aliens in ALIENS and ALIEN 3, the robot in HARDWARE, the creature in SPLIT SECOND. I only know about him, though, because he later directed four movies, one of which was motherfuckin BLADE.

But the first one was DEATH MACHINE (1994), a low budget killer robot movie I watched once about a quarter of a century ago when I found out it was by the guy who did BLADE. I think I thought it was okay, but I retained no details in my memory, so now I have returned to it via the fancy-ass special edition blu-ray from Kino Lorber. I watched the director’s cut (which is 106 minutes, as opposed to the 100 minute U.S. version or 122 minute foreign version), which may or may not have been why it went over a little better this time. I don’t think it’s a great movie, but it’s an interesting one with a cool robot puppet, a cyberpunk world and a hell of a look for a ‘90s b-movie that went straight to video. Cinematographer John de Borman is the guy who did THE PASSION OF DARKLY NOON and THE FULL MONTY, but from the look of it I’d have assumed he was a music video guy, somebody that would’ve worked with the Scott Brothers or Russell Mulcahy or even David Fincher.

The opening reminds me of NEMESIS and the UNIVERSAL SOLDIER movies. Cop-types in armor marked “A.R.P.” arrive at a diner out in the dusty desert somewhere. There are bodies piled up, everybody’s dead except for “the ultimate soldier” in cybernetic armor malfunctioning and unable to stop punching holes in a restroom wall while a woman cowers, crying, next to the urinal. They recover the soldier and cover up the incident, but it’s yet another scandal for Chaank Armaments Corporation, whose motto is “Hard technology for a hard world.” Their skyscraper headquarters downtown is already mobbed with protesters and reporters. If it was now nobody would be able to do or say shit to these guys and the media would fawn over them and regurgitate every word of their press releases without an eyelash of verification or skepticism. It’s kind of sad when a near-future dystopia seems naively optimistic next to today’s actual reality.

I guess we weren’t as cynical as we thought we were in the ’90s. DEATH MACHINE gets that corporations are evil, but allows for the possibility that a good guy would somehow become joint-CEO and try to do the right thing. That’s Hayden Cale (Ely Pouget, L.A. TAKEDOWN, LAWNMOWER MAN 2), who’s brought in as a P.R. move to balance out the other top guy, who can be spotted as a slimy yuppie scumbag from outer space, without a telescope. I thought I recognized him from playing characters like this but holy shit, that’s Richard Brake, who I know in his later, more weathered form in horror movies including but not limited to MANDY, 3 FROM HELL and BARBARIAN. Also he was Joe Chill, he killed Thomas and Martha Wayne in BATMAN BEGINS. The guy that begun Batman.

Here his character is named Scott Ridley, so… yep, this is one of those movies that I always complain about where a bunch of characters are named after the same (mostly horror) directors we all like. This one has major characters named John Carpenter and Sam Raimi, which I guess back then qualified as an obscure reference. There’s not one named after the director the movie seems most indebted to – James Cameron – but instead they have a Weyland and a Yutani, which is arguably worse. Also there’s a Jack Dante but I don’t know if that one’s necessarily named after Joe Dante. Everybody knows Dante is a cool last name to use regardless.

Dante is played by Brad Dourif (SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION) and he’s the mad scientist behind all the dangerous programs that Cale wants to cancel. He seems to live in the building, in a cluttered chamber decorated with graffiti, Playboy centerfolds, Thundercats and Masters of the Universe action figures, weird drawings and TV screens showing security feeds, porn and cartoons, including one of those fictional ones that’s just violence and sound effects and seemingly drawn quickly by some friend of the production. He doesn’t call this his lab, he calls it “my room,” and he dresses like he’s trying to be in the movie HACKERS, with long hair, ripped jeans, leather duster, and (why not?) metal claws.

When Cale tries to eject him from the building he says, “But I’m having so much fun here, you know? There’s loads of… stuff.” The stuff includes the titular machine of death that he calls “The Warbeast” or “Frontline Morale Destroyer,” a rampaging mechanical monster we sometimes see in full, sometimes just through its POV shots, or as snapping jaws and slashing claws.

Meanwhile, the building is being infiltrated by militants who would fit in either on Max Headroom or as creeps in DEATH WISH 3. Weyland (Andreas Wisniewski, who was in THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS, DIE HARD and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – not bad!) stays in the truck, while Yutani (Martin McDougall, JUDGE DREDD, BELLY OF THE BEAST) and Raimi (John Sharian, THE FIFTH ELEMENT, LOST IN SPACE) go in with machine guns. Both are kinda punk; Raimi has sort of a Valley dude or surfer type of lilt, while Yutani wears face paint, has a weirdly shaved head and does samurai moves with his knife.

They plan to kidnap both CEOs and force them to unlock the containment unit to erase their files and bankrupt the company. When they get there the Warbeast has already shredded Ridley, so they settle for asshole executive John Carpenter (William Hootkins – Porkins from STAR WARS!). He causes trouble but then the machine reaches through the floor of the elevator they’re in and munches him.

So it becomes a fight for survival with these guys who originally seemed like stock bad guys teaming with Cale to not only escape but stop the thing before it kills others. One problem: they’re not actually there to kill people. Their guns are full of blanks. They do have some explosives, though.

There are some horrific sci-fi concepts I enjoyed. As an employee Cale has a life sign transmitter implanted in her wrist that Dante uses to follow her, so she cuts it out with a knife. Nasty! She figures out that the company is keeping tanks full of injured war vets whose memories they erase and then they use them as super soldiers. Awfully close to UNIVERSAL SOLDIER, but that’s okay.

Cale heroically plans to risk wearing one of the Project Hardman suits to fight the Warbeast, but Raimi insists on doing it, so his mind has to get downloaded onto a disc and he becomes an automaton. There are many opportunities for him to get his brain fried, but she sticks with him and makes sure he gets out of there safely. Somebody’s gotta do it – they try calling the police for help but the officer (who for some reason answers the phone himself?) first calls him a liar on the video phone, then shows up but thinks he’s the bad guy and shoots him. I’m unclear why Cale doesn’t try to intervene and use her CEO privilege, but it’s okay – the Warbeast jumps from the roof of the building onto the cop and squooshes him like a bug. Good scene.

I think there’s a miscalculation in the portrayal of Raimi. When he becomes the cyborg he’s supposed to be a little scary but he sounds goofy like he’s kinda making fun of the whole situation. Maybe they shoulda added some distortion to his voice to make him less human. I also have trouble believing in the character of the heroic CEO, and the only background we get on her is a weird reveal that she used to be a nude model (recognized by Dante because he’s a porn fiend). Fortunately Pouget has a strong presence and they give her Ripley moments not in the usual ways movies try to copy Ripley (after all she doesn’t even get to use her version of the Power Loader) but in just being knowledgeable and serious and making persuasive arguments of what to do in a harrowing situation.

The Warbeast is kind of the star of the movie. In one of the featurettes I watched they say that Norrington actually built it and brought it to Cannes (or one of those film markets) to get funding. It’s kind of silly looking at times, especially in one of the walking shots, but for the most part it’s so cool to see this huge mechanical xenomorph thing gnashing and wailing and chomping.

But it was the whole look and feel of this world that most drew me in this time. There are so many movies about a whatever loose in a building where it’s just a generic interior like any other. This is more of that MTV school of filmmaking where the lighting is always exquisite and the design is always a little off-kilter ‘cause it’s the near future.

This is what the board room looks like, for example:

Never too bright. Even in the middle of a meeting it kind of looks like it’s after hours and they’ve turned off some of the lights.

Then the higher they get in the building and the deeper they get into battle with the Warbeast the more it looks like a James Cameron movie. These are frames overflowing with concrete and steel surfaces, flickering fluorescent lights, girders, hatches, sparks, welding torches, cigarette smoke, flames, wireframe animations, light beams, grainy video screens, heat vision, pouring rain. The fight against the machine is extensive and well executed, there’s an excellent plummeting platform elevator sequence, some nice model work, a little bit of stop motion I think, and it’s all made more intense by an outstanding score by Crispin Merrell (Space Precinct).

It really is rare for a non James Cameron movie to feel this James Camerony. Norrington must’ve been taking notes on the set of ALIENS. Both were filmed at Pinewood Studios, too.

This was a debut for more than just Norrington. First time art director Susan Whitaker went on to do BATMAN BEGINS, X-MEN FIRST CLASS, and FURIOUS 6. And Rachel Weisz made her big screen debut here playing “Junior Executive.” (She must be in the board room scene, but I couldn’t tell which one was her.)

I wonder if they ever considered Norrington for directing an ALIEN movie. Or did this just make the choice too on the nose? It definitely seems like the kind of first film that might get you recruited for a big studio sequel. Luckily he did BLADE instead, and that was what got him attached to movies including GHOST RIDER, THE HANDS OF SHANG-CHI: MASTER OF KUNG FU produced by Ang Lee, live action AKIRA, the CLASH OF THE TITANS remake, the THE CROW remake (which he said was going to be done with quasi-documentary realism), a WWII monster movie called LOST PATROL. But none of those happened, at least not with him, some say he’s retired, and that would explain why I haven’t read about him since the aughts. But hey man – Shane Black disappeared for nine years between THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT and KISS KISS BANG BANG. Comebacks are possible.

I have now reviewed all of Norrington’s movies: DEATH MACHINE, BLADE, THE LAST MINUTE and THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN. On that last one I went from hating it at the time to being surprised how much I enjoyed it years later. I need time to change. So Norrington has an “I’ll be interested to see what this guy does next” debut, a flat out all timer perfect masterpiece upon which our very culture is built sophomore film, a small personal one I thought was kinda interesting but didn’t really get, and a would-be franchise-starter fiasco that in retrospect is kind of awesome. I can’t wait to see where he goes from there. Actually I can, I’ve been doing it for more than 20 years. Where’d he go? Anybody have eyes on him?

Since he only has four movies as a director I’m prepared to consider him still officially and up and coming talent. Stephen Norrington, you are requested to make another movie. Hollywood, I’m gonna need you to give the man a bunch of money and then go sit in the corner facing the other way wearing headphones. Thank you.