Steel Justice (1992)

Director: Christopher Crowe

Screenplay: Christopher Crowe and John Hill

Cast: Robert Taylor as Detective Lt. David Nash; J.A. Preston as Jeremiah J. Jones; Roy Brocksmith as Col. Edward Rollin Duggins; John Finn as Lt. Bill Somes; Neil Giuntoli as Jerrod; Geoffrey Rivas as Sgt. Julio Melendes; John Toles-Bey as Detective Steve Totten; Season Hubley as Gina Morelli; Joan Chen as Nicole Loa

If you want evidence of how strange television could be, NBC financed a dystopian sci-fi drama in which a grizzled police officer, who lost his son tragically, encounters an ageless wizard who teaches him how to grow a toy dinosaur robot possessed with his dead son's soul into a giant fire breathing, car crushing one to deal with an illegal arms dealer whose cover is an ice merchant. This was a TV pilot, left as a TV movie which managed to get a release in the Oceanic territories on video, and clearly costing a lot of money.

I will be upfront that the film is bizarre but not abstract. The show shrouds itself as a neo noir tale with atmosphere, but director-writer Christopher Crowe and the film still shots the production with a pedestrian, static style. Crowe and his co-writer John Hill at this point were veterans of television, though with the fascinating caveat that Crowe himself did write Michael Mann's The Last of the Mohicans (1992). That does not however stop the TV film from being what it is, nothing structurally experimental or unconventional like the material itself, so the work can only be seen as a curious oddity.

That does not belay however that this is as mad as a box of frogs in terms of a premise. How this would have followed the feature length pilot, in a series that was cancelled and never seen, adds a lot of the aura with the experience of watching the production, attempting to meld a high profile superhero premise to a gritty sci-fi dystopia. The sense that this was not even deliberately trying to be surreal, merely part of an era of television where many high profile premises like this never succeeded to get off the ground, adds a greater context. This is of course the same era of Poochinski (1990), a failed thirty minute pilot about Peter Boyle as a cop being killed and resurrected in the body of an English bulldog.

The world itself is strange already without the magical aspects. A post-Blade Runner (1982) work, this is a dystopian world of severe ozone layer damage, surprising relevant to the modern day if by different means about the potential calamity that could behalf the environment. Here the ozone layer been destroyed so badly the climate is permanently warm, and that ice is now a commodity, both with legal ice bars and also the hint that it is also illegally shipped. A multi-ethnic community (mainly Asian) lives in this American metropolis due to severe global conflicts as well, and there are slums everywhere alongside rampant crime. Sounding like a cyberpunk world, this is also the world where drive-by shootings now use rocket and missile launchers even in crowded streets, which is arguably as strange as veteran actor J.A. Preston as an ageless wizard, born from the Macedonian era and who helped grow a wooden horse into a Trojan Horse, now in a world where no one considers the aftershock of using explosives in such tight streets.

Now, I' am game for game for peculiar genre bending, which this is a delight for, whilst also admitting the pilot does comes off as merely a prologue, only taking until the end for our lead Detective Lt. David Nash (Roger Taylor) to finally grow a giant toy robot into a fire breathing dinosaur. The juxtaposition is perplexing. Clearly Robosaurus was the get, a real life creation built in 1989 by inventor Douglas Malewicki, a prolific figure in aerospace engineering and game design as well, able to link in his career both co-designing the Skycycle X-2, a rocket Evel Knievel had to jump the Snake River Canyon in Idaho in 1974, and table top card games like Nuclear Escalation that clearly follow an obsession with the idea we would blow each other to kingdom come in the eighties with nukes, as the games all follow a similar nuclear theme. Robosaurus, who exists to this day, was hired clearly with the idea of being a pre-existing piece of spectacular production that would be big even in a theatrical Hollywood film, an impressively ridiculous creation that inspired the Truckasaurus parody in The Simpsons as a fire breathing car crushing set piece for public shows.

How we got to this breakout role for the vehicle is the question requiring some mental gymnastics, especially as for the most part Steel Justice is a bleak tale, part gritty cop drama and part grounded dystopian drama, with some exaggerated and kitsch futurism but still grounded in the cesspool of crime. This is a tale about a police officer who can only come to his power by channelling his grief, with the unexplained issue that the toy Robosaurus is clearly possessed, likely by the soul of his dead son. Further complications arise as, whilst a bullet proof tank-like monstrosity, you have the concern that the emotions might be in there especially as there is at least one confirmed kill it is responsible for. Even in terms of a television series, this premise raises questions due to what the big production get is. Robosaurus is a very big creation to stalk the streets of this world, which would make him easy to spot, and it would requiring a bigger antagonist each time to be able to make up one full season of television, let alone if this every became a success.

The aesthetic, which I found the most rewarding in spite of the conventional composition of the series, is also dank. Many fog machines were used alongside neon lighting, TV budget sci-fi where even the immortal wizard has a part time job playing a saxophone in a night club to make sure he does not stick out like a sore thumb aesthetically. Quite a bit was clearly spent as you also have big names even in the tiniest of roles. Alongside character actor Roy Brocksmith as the villain, a weapons merchant who likes blowing up the competition so he can show his customers the worth of his products, you have a post-Twin Peaks Joan Chen as Nash's neighbour and potential love interest, a woman who may be a sex worker in the little we see of her life but would have likely grown in role if this had continued. R. Lee Ermey is also in the film, but in a cameo only consisting of two scenes, which is surprising as this is some time after the impact of his role in Full Metal Jacket (1987).

Most of this failed pilot is predictable in terms of structure, but it is amazingly lavish, an expansive production full of large crowds of extras, large metropolis sets and a big explosions budget which yet, in spite of its illegal weapons/revenge plot, has a lead hero from a superhero story or an episode of The Tick parody franchise. The result is not helped by how generically it is presented, but the combination is still peculiar. The question earlier worth repeating is trying to figure out how this premise came to be. The other is where would have it all gone in Episode 2. The show is not as talked about as other infamous failed TV pilots like Poochinski, but they exist in the area of conventional mainstream television when someone spiked the coffees, were so desperate to try something different regardless of logic, or were so exhausted in production idea meetings that accidental surrealism like this happens. Or all the above for all we know.

Even in terms of what we get, many questions are left unanswered. Our wizard character, who is following Nash to unlock his abilities, suggests that eventually a wider level of magic would appear in this city if the production had gone on. The issue mentioned earlier of what to do with Robosaurus also springs to mind as, having to juggle a weekly schedule and smaller budgets than films, this series if it had succeeds would have to cut costs or would still be cancelled for being too expensive, something which has happened a lot even with successful work but did not get big enough numbers into the modern day, the type of numbers Game of Thrones gets.

Thinking about it, I would like to see a cleaned up version and a proper release of this, even if it is pure cheese, considering how much trashy theatrical cinema is dug up and given 2k and 4k restorations since the mid-2010s. In an alternative world, we could have had this bizarre premise have a series and even a big blockbuster reboot, where you could imagine Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson channelling the ghost of his dead son from a tiny robot into a giant CGI one. Admittedly this is not that dimension, so we just have this TV oddity in a fuzzy rip out there on the internet. It is not a great work, just from how stilted director Christopher Crowe does shoot it. That is a shame as, bad premise or not, the TV budget sci-fi noir look is a style the production team should have been appreciated for. Even if lead Robert Taylor is very generic, an Australian actor whose career has lasted into the modern day in television and cinema both in his homeland and outside it, it is only because he is stuck with a generic grizzled cop role. There is the advantage of J.A. Preston as the secondary character, even in the generic exposition and magical helper role getting to be playful as a man who views everything as a lark, even in someone as interesting as Joan Chen in her little role who is tragically underused. Definitely, as someone who believes that everything including material I hate should be preserved and made available, Steel Justice should be available, but just in knowledge of such a curiosity even existing, it would get a bit of interest if you brought up its entire premise. Sounding like the premise concocted from a child's imagination on one hand, the other trying to be serious and sombre at the other, it's a contradictory mess but never boring.

Abstract Spectrum: Psychotronic/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None