The Vindicator (film)
| The Vindicator | |
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VHS cover
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| Directed by | Jean-Claude Lord |
| Produced by | Don Carmody John Dunning |
| Written by | Edith Rey David Preston |
| Starring |
David McIlwraith Teri Austin Richard Cox Pam Grier Maury Chaykin |
| Music by | Paul Zaza |
| Cinematography | René Verzier |
| Edited by | Michaël Karen |
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Production
company |
Michael Levy Enterprises
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| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
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Release date
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Running time
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93 min |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
The Vindicator (also known as Frankenstein '88 and known in Brazil as Roboman) is a 1986 Canadian science fiction film directed by Jean-Claude Lord. The film is a modern-day retelling of the classic Frankenstein story set in the 1980s. It involves a man who was killed in an accident in a laboratory, but revived as part of an experiment as a cyborg. The film was released by 20th Century Fox and released on video by Key Video (a division of CBS/FOX Video), and is now out of print. The special effects were by Stan Winston. Despite numerous plot similarities, and most notably some nearly verbatim key scenes to the film RoboCop, The Vindicator was written and filmed several years prior to either's release.
As of 2012, the only known DVD release is in Brazil, where it is known as "Roboman".
Carl Lehman (David McIlwraith) is a scientist working on a next-generation space suit for the ARC corporation, run by the sinister Alex Whyte (Richard Cox), where all kinds of high-tech research is being conducted. One of these projects is developing "rage program" software that can sense when a user is provoked/endangered and take over its brain to destroy the attacker and then return to normal once the threat has been eliminated. The software is shown to be tested on monkeys, one of which dies after Whyte who, out of curiosity, has the rage factor turned up beyond safe levels.
After Carl confronts Whyte about some suspicious funding cuts, Whyte sends his employee Massey to rig an explosion in Carl's lab to kill him and disguise the death as a lab accident.
ARC informs Carl's pregnant wife Lauren (Teri Austin) and daughter Catherine (Catherine Disher) that Carl has died. In reality, Whyte is keeping Carl's charred body in a suspension of oxygenating fluid which keeps his brain functioning. Using Carl's space suit and ARC's cutting-edge prosthetics technology, they build Carl a cyborg body and dub him "Project Frankenstein". The rage program is also installed, with a remote control unit acting as a safeguard. The reanimation initially fails, so researcher Gail Vernon (Lynda Mason Green) disassembles the suit. After the remote control unit is removed, a short circuit causes Carl to suddenly revive. When she tries to reinstall his control unit, he pushes Gail away. She falls onto a control panel, which releases all of the lab monkeys. They attack Gail in a rage and kill her.
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Wikipedia