All Rise...

Judge Patrick Naugle is a rare trash collector.

Editor's Note

Our reviews of Millennium: The Complete First Season (published June 1st, 2005), Millennium: The Complete Second Season (published October 12th, 2005), and Millennium: The Complete Third Season (published March 1st, 2006) are also available.

The Charge

They take sci-fi to the next level…of terror!

The Case

Millennium
When a Boeing 747 airliners clips another plane during midflight, the 747 lands in a fiery crash. Bill Smith (Kris Kristofferson, Blade II), a National Transportation Safety Board investigator, is brought in to piece together what happened. As Bill and his crew shift through the wreckage they realize that things don't add up—while many of the bodies were burned before impact, there was no evidence of a fire before the crash. A theoretical scientist (Daniel J. Travanti, Hill Street Blues) has another idea: that visitors from the future have something to do with the mysteries surrounding the crash. As Bill digs deeper into the accident, he comes across a futuristic time traveling society whose secrets will be unraveled in the span of a Millennium!

R.O.T.O.R.
The Terminator, Robocop…they've got nothing on R.O.T.O.R.! A corrupt Police Commander has ordered the construction of a new kind of peace officer: R.O.T.O.R. (Robotic Officer of the Tactical Operations Research/Reserve). This mechanical law enforcement unit (which looks like a live human) isn't operational yet, but a series of events leads to a premature introduction into the public…with deadly consequences! Now it's up to Dr. Barrett Coldyron (Richard Gesswien) to put a stop to the department's rampaging mechanical nightmare before it's too late!

Millennium (1989) always seemed like a movie that really wanted to be a classic science fiction time travel thriller but just couldn't muster the audience. As a kid I can remember seeing the film's posters and video boxes all over the place, but try as I might I could never get past the first twenty minutes of the film. I think that over twenty five years I must have tried to watch Millennium at least three times, and all three times I either fell asleep or lost interest.

There's a reason I've never been able to get through Millennium until now: it's a pretty terrible movie. As science fiction, Millennium is a pile of malarkey that gives viewers a lot of complicated plot details about futuristic societies and time travel that never amount to anything more than banal gobbledygook. This is the kind of movie that uses the terms "paradox" and "timequake" so often that you'd think they were brands the filmmakers were trying to sell. The make-up effects are steeped in 80's cheese; the robots look like something you'd see in an animatronic band at Chuck E. Cheese and the women of the future appear to have gathered their costumes from Joan Jett's closet. If you're looking for special effects, look elsewhere: every action set piece looks like it was created on a soundstage that was constructed by whichever company came in with the lowest bid.

Millennium's main actor is Kris Kirstofferson, a guy whose range is limited to sounding like he's been drinking whiskey sours since the day he popped out of his mother's womb. Kristofferson tries to give screenwriter John Varley's stilted dialogue a bit of a tilt but can't seem to make any lines sound like he cares much about being in a movie as ridiculously terrible as Millennium. Other actors seem to be slumming it for the paycheckâ€" Cheryl Ladd seems bored and Daniel J. Travanti seems to understand that this movie was going nowhere, fast. English director Michael Anderson gave us such semi-classics as Logan's Run and Around the World in 80 Days, but he also gave us the laughable Jaws rip-off Orca: The Killer Whale, so let's just consider Millennium a wash.

There's a sad truth to face with Millennium: it's not a good movie. It's not a fun movie. It's not even a "so bad, it's good" movie. It's just a lump of festering science fiction that never gets off the ground (even when the characters are soaring 35,000 feet in the air). Between the tepid love story, futuristic fashions, and shoddily constufcated plane crashes, Millennium feels like it takes that long to complete.

Whereas Millennium can't rise to the level of "so bad, it's good", R.O.T.O.R. hits that level, surpasses it, and keeps going into the cinematic stratosphere. Everything about R.O.T.O.R. is awesomely bad, from exaggerated acting to the laughably ridiculous 80's police robot that seems to have overdosed on valium to a mechanic skeleton that dances like it's starring in a Herbie Hancock music video. I can't even begin to tell you how bafflingly great this movie is.

As R.O.T.O.R.'s run time clicked away I had the sneaking suspicion that the filmmakers knew what they were doing, contrary to the end results. There's so much self-referencing (one character notes, "I get the feeling this is how the Terminator got started") and utter ridiculousness that it's hard to imagine the writer Budd Lewis (Dragonfight) and director Cullen Blaine (whose work is mostly in Saturday morning cartoons) weren't intentionally winking at the audience.

R.O.T.O.R. is the kind of movie that features a laughably overdubbed track for the lead actor and character names like "Shoeboogie".and "Mookie". There's terrible editing (one character is violently shot from about 30 feet away but seconds later falls into the murderer's chest) and a music score sounds like it was the afterbirth of a mating ritual between Harold Faltermeyer and the band Split Enz. The effects work is so bad that it's almost endearing.

To give you an idea of how great / horrendouss R.O.T.O.R. is, here is a selection of actual, unedited dialogue from the film:

"What do you think this is? Some low budget sci-fi flick?"

"You're so crooked you screw your hat on!"

"You just try it and I'll make more noise than two skeletons making love in a tin coffin, brother!"

"He was 39 when he realized gravy wasn't a beverage."

"Hey baby, I got my bad self all up in yo face and yo lookin' everywhere but here."

"I do that for the same reason a dog licks himself: because he can!"

"What's the matter with you, buddy? Get your pecker caught in the plumbing this morning?

"Look at these cheek bones, baby! Either I'm an Indian or a sissy!"

Watching R.O.T.O.R. I was reminded of the legendary Pauline Kael's great quote: "Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have little reason to be interested in them." To that end, R.O.T.O.R. is truly great trash and one of the best "bad" movies I've ever had the pleasure to sit through.

Note: your waiter recommends pairing R.O.T.O.R. with a vintage 1992 Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and a finely aged Kraft processed cheese slice.

Millennium (Blu-ray) is presented in 1.85:1 widescreeen while R.O.T.O.R. (Blu-ray) is presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, both in 1080p high definition. While neither of these films looks fantastic, I was surprised at how good they generally looked (budget ant age considered). Millennium features a pretty good transfer with a few minor defects in the image. R.O.T.O.R. is in even better shape; the image is very clear without any major imperfections (aside of a slight amount of DNR). The soundtrack for Millennium is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio in 2.0 Stereo while R.O.T.O.R. is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 Mono, both in English. Millennium's audio mix is more dynamic than R.O.T.O.R.'s, though both are generally front heavy mixes without much dynamic range. Also included on this disc are English subtitles for both films.

Extra features are rather slim: both films include a theatrical trailer, and Millennium includes an alternate ending (that isn't all that interesting).

Scream Factory's double feature of Millennium and R.O.T.O.R. is a mixed bag: while both films fall under the category of "bad", Millennium is just "bad bad" while R.O.T.O.R. is "awesomely bad". While supplements are sorely lacking, the audio and video components are a lot better than either film deserves.

The Verdict

One out of two ain't bad.

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