Barrett Coldyron (Richard Gesswein) is a scientist and a police officer. He is working on developing a prototype animatronic robot that is to be used as a robotic police officer to keep the peace in an anticipated chaotic future. Coldyron understands that it will be years before the prototype is ready. Coldyron’s boss, Earl Buglar (Michael Hunter) is corrupt and is getting some heat from his superiors, who are also corrupt. Not satisfied with the speed of the project, Buglar begins pushing Coldyron to show some positive results. Coldyron pushes back but ends up getting fired.
Buglar then assigns Coldyon’s assistant, Houghtaling (Stan Moore) the project and demands that he produce results. Houghtaling is rather inept and screws things up. This results in R.O.T.O.R. becoming activated. R.O.T.O.R.’s directive is to find and stop crime. Since the robot is not complete yet, his programming malfunctions and he becomes judge, jury and executioner when he finds anyone committing any kind of crime.
While out on patrol R.O.T.O.R. sees a speeder drive by. In the car are Greg Hutchins (James Cole) and Sony Garren (Margaret Trigg). R.O.T.O.R. becomes activated and pursues the car. Greg and Sony had been having a fight, so Greg pulls over and gets out and opens her door trying to kick Sony, his fiancé, out of the car. R.O.T.O.R. pulls up and shoots Greg. Sony takes off in the car and is relentlessly pursued by the robot.
Coldyron finds out that R.O.T.O.R. is now activated and will kill anyone who gets in his way of pursuing Sony. Coldyron must call for help in stopping the renegade robot. He contacts Dr. Corrine Steele (Jayne Smith), one of the designers of the robot, for help in stopping the mayhem.
“R.O.T.O.R.” AKA “Blue Steel” AKA “R.O.T.O.R.: Police Force” was released in 1987 and was written directed and produced by Cullen Blaine. It is an American low budget science fiction action movie.
R.O.T.O.R. stands for Robotic Officer Tactical Operation Research. Two people played the robotic cop, Carroll Brandon Baker and Clark Moore. The character Shoeboogie was played by producer and composer David Adam Newman.
Director Cullen Blaine had problems finding the funds needed to finish the post-production of the film. By the time he secured funding, it was two years later and many of the actors were no longer available. Blaine had to hire other actors to dub all the dialogue.
Rotor is one of those movies that could have been good but isn’t. Horrible acting combined with bad dubbing make the film sort of boring. It’s reminiscent of “The Terminator” 1984 and “RoboCop” 1987 but with less than special, special effects and slow-moving action sequences. There are also some plot points that don’t blend in with the rest of the film, plus a sort of twist toward the end didn’t make a lot of sense.
The movie was one of the films in the German "SchleFaZ" series. SchleFaZ stands for “worst film ever”. Similar to MST3K and RiffTrax the SchleFaZ films were lampooned by a couple hosts that would show the film and make comments about it as they watched.