What Not To Watch: Sci-Fighters

I really hate to come on here and give a less than stellar review to a Roddy Piper movie. The man was one of the key ingredients that made me a wrestling fan way back when… I suppose it is a testament to how great he was in the wrestling world that I have not completely erased those fond memories after watching the movie, Sci-Fighters.

I feel like Piper came on the set of Sci-Fighters and said, “I came here to chew bubble gum and make a bad movie and I’m all out of bubble gum.”

• What’s in a Name?: First things first, the movie is entitled Sci-Fighters. Which made me think it was along the lines of the Paul Satterfield “classic” Arena, where a human is fighting space monsters or even the Hugh Jackman movie, Real Steal…  some sort of futuristic world of combat sport. But that’s not the case, Roddy Piper plays Detective Cameron Grayson and Billy Drago plays convict Adrian Dunn. I understand that cops and convicts “fight” but it feels like they slapped a generic name on it. I was hoping that IMDB trivia would tell me that the name was changed after it was filmed (Like that not really an American Ninja movie, American Ninja 5) but all I learned was that director Peter Svatek in his infinite wisdom decided to dub out all the “F-Bombs” in the movie so they could avoid an R rating, you know so a larger range of ages could experience this crap, but what he forgot is the movie still was full of violence so it go the R rating anyway.

• Dunn Isn’t Done: Adrian Dunn escapes from a lunar prison in a most unique fashion. After a prison fight involving buzz saws, he dies… but in the process is infected by some alien virus. So they send the corpse back to Earth where the parasite virus uses Dunn’s body as a host and basically brings Dunn back to life. Well it was either the virus or Dunn’s love of cigarettes, since his body does seem to come back to life right after a guard lights up a cigarette.

• A Lot of Bad Blood: We eventually find out that there is a lot of history between Dunn and Grayson. They were friends in the Police Academy, but Grayson ended up marrying the woman that Dunn was infatuated with and that eventually led to Dunn murdering Grayson’s wife, which is what got him shot up to the lunar prison to begin with. In a convenient twist of movie fate, Jayne Heitmeyer’s character in the film, Dr. Kirbie Younger, bears a resemblance to the woman that came between BFF’s Grayson and Dunn. What are the odds of that happening? As you might imagine if you have ever seen an action movie in your life, it all leads to a showdown between Grayson and Dunn and Dr. Kirbie is there too to mind eff Dunn.

I caught this one streaming on PopcornFlix a few months back (at least it was free)… If you ever come across it move on to another selection. I’m all for bad movies, just check out my reviews of 9 Deaths of the Ninja and Laser Mission… but Sci-Fighters is just bad with no redeeming qualities.

So unless you are Rowdy Roddy Piper’s biggest fan DO NOT WATCH IT… and if you are Piper’s biggest fan you probably have already seen it and this movie is sitting on your DVD shelf right now, I applaud your dedication.

Personally this movie made me wish Piper would have stopped after They Live.