Cyborg 2087 (1966)

Wonderful character development!

Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

*Spoiler/plot- Cyborg 2087, 1966. In th distant future of 2087, two scientists develop a time traveling device with a cyborg. The cyborg is supposed to go back in time and prevent a scientist from perfecting his new 'telepathy'. In the future time, a dictatorship government uses this telepathy to control it's citizenry and abuse their rights.*Special Stars- Michael Rennie, Karen Steele, Wendell Cory, Warren, Stevens, Eduard Franz, Harry Carey Jr.*Theme- Justice in any time is important enough to preserve.*Trivia/location/goofs- One of the last film appearance of Michael Rennie. Supposedly the idea for many later sci-fi films: Terminator, Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, Time Cop, and etc.*Emotion- I wanted to like this film for it's premise. Even though it's a time travel and cyborg film, this one is very crudely done with little production values. It suffers from total unbelievability and bad screen elements. The necessary sci-fi 'suspension of believability' never occurs and screen things are unintentionally laughable. The plot is essentially a 'chase' film' between the future bad guys police robots chasing the good guy cyborg in 1966. This film had high hopes but is essentially a waste of good film plot ideas and your time. And you can't go back in a time machine to get it again...A waste of your time & attention.

Yesterday, I saw the last of the three "Rings" movies. Ho-hum. CGI is great. So is a good book. CGI of a good book is, however, just eye-candy. "Cyborg" is movie that, lacking money and computer graphics, was forced to tell a story. Michael Rennie (you know him as "Klaatu") is a man/machine from the future, come back to correct a few mistakes. His "high" tech looks a bit like your grand-dad's ham radio did about the same time this movie was made, but so what? Garth (Rennie) isn't here to show us ray guns or cell phones. (Who knows? Maybe his gizmos are all camouflaged to resemble '60s-era devices.) What he is here for is to undo the damage of some bad decisions (many of which will remind you of "The Terminator's" SkyNet, but you decide yourself if there's a connection).Alas for Garth, if he succeeds, it may have dire consequences for him personally. That fact gives him a poignant nobility that many films, then and now, could use, but lack. Time-travel stories often rely on that kind of wrinkle for their drama, and I think that's an inherent weakness of the time-travel sub-genre: they all tend to ask the same question. Still, this one asks it well and Rennie's skillful performance leaves you exquisitely uncertain of just what the Right Thing to Do would be, in such a situation as his character finds himself.Yeah, "Rings" was great. But so was this, and they don't make 'em like this one anymore

The term, cyborg, meaning cybernetic organism, relates to a human enhanced with mechanical parts, often robotic in nature.Thus gave us the first glimpse into this genre. Albeit low budget (I mean, instrumentation from the future labeled with Dymo Label Maker Tapes?) and featuring actors who were at their peak not just a few short years before, including Michael Rennie, Klaatu from "The Day The Earth Stood Still" or "The Keeper" from "Lost In Space", or Warren Stevens, Doc Ostrow from "Forbidden Planet ("Monsters! Monsters from the ID!") and throwing the tem-oral twist of alternative time lines, this cyborg pre-dated "The Six Million Dollar Man" (and Martin Cadin's novel it was based on, "Cyborg"), the Jean Claude Van Damme dystopic future wasteland adventure, even Star Trek: The Next Generation's most relentless enemies, the Borg (sounds Swedish!...sorry. I couldn't resist).Add to that the obvious Terminator references (and people still forget about Harlan Ellison's own legal action against Cameron due to similarities in his Outer Limits scripts "Demon With the Glass Hand" and "Soldier") and you have a low-budget oddity that hasn't made the rounds in the post-midnight TV info-mercial circuit in years, being swept aside by other B-Movie kings like the Band Brothers' Full Moon Productions or Bert I. Gordon's & Brian Yuzna's Lovecraft micro-epics.

Let's see... Michael Rennie plays a cyborg. He is sent back in time by rebels to prevent a scientist from inventing a device that will have an impact upon the future by enslaving mankind. In turn, Rennie is being chased by agents from the future who are intent that he does not complete his mission. A woman in the present day begins to fall for Rennie. Sounds awful familiar to me. The music, as noted by the other comment, will have you rolling, it's from Saturday morning cartoons, you're almost expecting that Hanna-Barbera sound effect when someone starts running. Still, the movie has an above average cast for its low-budget, Michael Rennie, Karen Steele, Eduard Franz (the Jonathan Drake of "Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake"), Harry Carey, Jr., Warren Stevens (Forbidden Planet), Wendell Corey, and even future M*A*S*H star and Mrs. Chuck Woolery, Jo Ann Pflug can be glimpsed.