THE DEMOLITIONIST (1995)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

THE DEMOLITIONIST was the debut of Robert Kurtzman as both writer and director on a film after his many years of providing special effects and makeup to other movies. Kurtzman didn't go on to great fame either as writer or director, though he did launch the WISHMASTER franchise. DEMOLITIONIST, though, deserves its obscurity as a one-shot crapfest.

DEMOLITONIST is said to have appeared as a straight-to-video item about three months before the theatrical debut of Joel Schumacher's BATMAN FOREVER. Robert Kurtzman had no duties on any of the Batman movies, but I can't help imagining that maybe he peeked in on the filming of Schumacher's first Bat-flick, since Kurtzman, like Schumacher, thinks that "camp" consists of having every character in the story overact wildly. The plot of DEMOLITIONIST is clearly derivative of 1987's ROBOCOP. But that film's script was clever in its creation of a dystopian future-world. So Kurtzman, whether he ever saw BATMAN FOREVER or not, compensated for being unable to compete in that department by having his characters yell and gesticulate a lot.

The futuristic Metro City is overrun by organized crime thanks to its  incompetent mayor (Susan Tyrrell), who outlawed guns (sort of a futuristic Beto O'Rourke). Master criminal Mad Dog (Richard Grieco) dominates the gangs with his ability to shout louder than anyone else. The mayor decides that it's easier to create a new super-cop rather than to empower the police, but the project requires a dead cop to make into an undead crusader. As it happens, policewoman Alyssa Lloyd (Nicole Eggert) loses her life defending the mayor from Mad Dog's thugs-- and Alyssa just happens to have signed an "organ donor" contract, but for her whole body. 

Alyssa awakens to a new reality courtesy of her personal Doctor Frankenstein, Jack Crowley (Bruce Abbott). She has to receive regular treatments to keep her body from decaying, but unlike Robocop she doesn't seem to have any particular resistance to armed weapon fire, and must wear a kevlar outfit and a curious gas-mask. In her eventual action scenes Demolitionist doesn't seem to possess super-strength either, so-- why is she better than a regular cop with the same weapons and armor? Oh, yeah, she does have a moment where a bunch of thugs hit her with tasers, and she somehow reverses the electrical flow to zap her enemies. But in any case Kurtzman's script does not really work out what the Demolitionist can do, or even why her creators want her to have a name that sounds like a person who razes buildings.

The personal interactions are no better articulated. Crowley makes ruthless demands on Alyssa, treating her like she's city property. Is a nice guy who's become ruthless in his desire to prove his scientific theories, or is he a dick all the way through? One never knows. Alyssa weeps and wails about her lost humanity a lot, but apparently in writing the script Kurtzman only saw that Robocop got away with giving Alex Murphy a minimal backstory. Thus Alyssa has a minimal backstory too. But the writers for ROBOCOP knew how to focus on just a few details to make Murphy seem interesting, and Kurtzman did not possess that acumen.

Anyway, there's a lot of gunfire and a little bit of hand-to-hand fighting, but whatever her other abilities, Eggert never conveys the sense of her being a formidable super-female. After she conquers the bad guys, she's given a vague happy ending. This is at least better than the trope in which the script promises viewers a return of the character, which becomes lame when said return never happens. So in the annals of science fiction heroines, The Demolitionist isn't the worst, but she's far from the best.