Cosmic Cinema: Inhumanoid (AKA Circuit Breaker)

Here's a review I did a while ago. It's classic B-movie Corman schlock. Enjoy!

Review by C. Demetrius Morgan

Country: U.S.

Year: 1996

Cast: Richard Grieco, Lara Harris, Corbin Bernsen, Brittany Ashton Holmes, Robin Gammell, Ilia Volokh, Renato Powell, Conrad Goode, Grant Mathias, Cole Nelson, Jeff Dixon.

Director: Victoria Muspratt.

MPAA Rating: R

AKA: Circuit Breaker

Inhumanoid is a strange little flick. It's like the first ten or so minutes were based on a really great sounding idea for a quickie space opera adventure film that got tacked onto someone's really bad elementary school script. We're talking a script that had been mouldering in a old sock drawer since the author was thirteen yet, amazingly, this doesn't seem to have bothered anyone. Which perhaps explains why nothing in this heinous waste of a movie makes the least bit of sense.

If you can imagine a movie whose basic plot was lifted from Dead Calm but takes place in a low budget and totally uninspired Event Horizon style setting with a classic Lost in Space (the series) gone wrong feel that's basically this movie.

Inhumanoid is a experience best shared with friends who like to verbally annihilate bad movies after the end credits roll. Of course I totally recommend this bewildering piece of trash cinema as grade-A viewing for bad movie night. You really never know what's coming next, which is always a plus. Sure it could have been better but that's the point. You watch this and come away wondering how it was ever made and wishing you could somehow magically re-edit it. If this movie doesn't inspire you to grab your folks old camcorder and turn your garage into a movie studio nothing will.

The Movie

This movie is an insufferably tedious Corman produced knock-off of Dead Calm set in space that has only one thing going for it, Corbin Bernsen. Alas even this esteemed actor realized half way through shooting what a steaming pile of crap he'd been conned into starring in and gave up. That the villain of the piece is played by a bloated and dazed Richard Grieco, who plays one of the least convincing Cyborgs in cinematic history, does little to alleviate the torture which audience members must endure. The supporting cast, which includes Edie McClurg (Elvira, Mistress of the Dark) and Brittany Ashton Holmes (The Little Rascals), whose presence is wasted, put forth a noble and valiant effort that sadly does little to save this tasteless hasty pudding.

Compared to Future War, which was an incoherent mess shot on a bubblegum budget, Inhumanoid is an incoherent mess shot on a super sized McDonald's lunch menu budget. The downside is you have to suffer through not only Richard Grieco's cringe-worthy performance but also a sex scene with him too. It's soul shuddering cinema!

And what, exactly, is going on here?

Good question!

Synopsis

A husband, wife, and their daughter encounter an hostile entity while traveling through the depths of interstellar space.

The Setting: Space, primarily aboard a small commercial grade private space vessel.

The Characters: The main characters are a married couple, Katrina (Lara Harris) and Foster Carver (Corbin Bernsen), and their daughter Amy (Brittany Ashton Holmes). We also encounter one Dr. Marianne Snow of the EMMC (Emergency Mobile Medical Center) who is actually a secondary character that's more interesting than the villain. The villain being one 'Adam' (Richard Grieco) who is supposed to be a cyborg.

The Story: While traveling through space aboard their personal little craft space family Robinson encounter problems, get into trouble, and then things really fall apart. There's a few twists, like the wife apparently having a shady past. It's a bit of a unintentional mystery involving her being an addict. It's all very strange, witness the fact the wife, at one point, wanders into the corridors, strips naked, then hallucinates being raped by this space-beast-werewolf thing. . .

From here on the movie really becomes a disjointed mess. The wife stumbles back into bed without saying much of anything about her psychotic episode but, before you can blink, they are talking to some doctor woman via view screen then discovering a derelict vessel. The husband decides to investigate, the derelict vessel not the female doctor, thus leaving his wife and child alone on their pleasure craft.

What? I thought people only did stupid things like this in twilight zone episodes!

The Inhumanity: Inhumanoid is a mind boggling mess of a movie. For instance Inhumanoid has a Cyborg in it, but it isn't really a Cyborg movie. There's a woman who, apparently, is a drug addict experiencing a psychotic episode. Yet the movie never even tries to explore the psychological aspects that could have made it a provocative horror thriller. Worst of all it's set aboard a spaceship traveling in space, yet it's not a proper space opera.

Availability: This one may be hard to track down as it's video title is "Circuit Breaker". Alas it has been released only to VHS and Laserdisc (from Image Entertainment) so far. Which is odd considering this played as part of the "Roger Corman Presents" Showtime lineup. I believe most of those titles have made it to DVD but are OOP. Perhaps that's the case here, alas I have been unable to confirm this as having recieved a DVD release under either title.

Moral: One shouldn't expect much of movies released straight to cable TV.