Movie of the Month: Cyborg

It’s been a while since we’ve done a commentary on a straight up old school action movie so this month we’re going to be watching the JCVD “classic”, Cyborg.

Cyborg is like an onion of disaster the more you read about it.  Originally the schlock masters at Cannon wanted to do both a sequel to the Dolph Lundgren Masters of the Universe film and a live action Spider-Man movie but their rights to both franchises had to be cancelled due to Cannon’s financial troubles and so, for less than $500,000, they shot Cyborg on the sets of the first Masters of the Universe.  Chuck Norris was actually the first choice before Van Damme signed on, who had worked for Cannon previously on Bloodsport and Kickboxer (which came out the same year as Cyborg, 1989).  During filming, Van Damme put someone’s eye out with a prop knife and was sued by the actor involved for $485,000.  The film originally got an X rating for it’s violence and had to be edited down to get an R rating.  It has two sequels, with Cyborg 2 starring Casey Jones himself, Elias Koteas, and Angelina Jolie and the director, Albert Pyun directed two other, unrelated, cyborg based movies, Knights and Omega Doom that form a loose “Cyborg Trilogy”

Another unusual thing about Cyborg is that all the characters have guitar or music based names.  Van Damme is Rickenbacker and there’s characters with names based on Les Paul, Gibson, Fender, Strat, Pearl, Simmons and more.

We’ll be watching Cyborg at the end of the month and recording a commentary but you can check it out now on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/413122?trkid=13752289