Cyborg Cop III aka Terminal Impact (1995)

This came as a part of a one disc two-pack with Cyborg Cop II, also known as Cyborg Soldier. It's funny, because on the cover, neither film is listed by it's namesake, but instead as its aka; not only that, but they have Terminal Impact above Cyborg Soldier both on the cover, and in the DVD menu, where they go back to the Cyborg Cop titles, thus listing Cyborg Cop III above Cyborg Cop II. I guess it doesn't matter that much, considering neither film has anything to do with one another.

Cyborg Cop III-- aka Terminal Impact-- takes place in Iowa-- I guess the one similarity with part II-- where a local university is being funded by a local multi-national corporation to do experiments on students. What are these experiments? Turning dudes into deadly cyborgs, of course. Anyway, the shark expert from Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, playing a TV news reporter here, has been snooping, and she found out about this, and she's less than stoked, stealing some piece of hardware from a computer that makes the cyborgs go. Now the corporation wants it back, so they hire crack marshals/bounty hunters Bryan Genesse and Frank Zagarino to track her down. They put two-and-two together quick, and that's it, time to take down that evil corporation-- The Expendables dock style. (Though I guess that dock scene in The Expendables would've been Terminal Impact style, because it predated it.)



I don't know where to go with this one. The first 35-40 minutes are a total snoozefest, but the final 50-55 are pretty sweet, with Zagarino and Genesse really bringing it, the action fully up to par, and me forgetting those first 35-40. But I didn't forget them that much, at least not enough to not mention it here. Here's my real take on this one, though: it comes on the same disc as Cyborg Cop II-- aka Cyborg Soldier-- and that one is definitely worth it, so all you're sacrificing with part III is time. I think if you're only paying a bad 35-40 minutes to get to a pretty solid final 50-55, then it's not such a bad investment. Oh yeah, no fanny packs.

I want to start with Bryan Genesse, because, surprisingly enough, this is his first film up here that features him as a good guy. That's hard for me to believe, just because my initial look at him was as as good of a guy as you can get on Street Justice. His martial arts are pretty solid, but underused here in favor of more gunplay, which was a little disappointing, considering what he brings to the table. Also, he had a horrible Southern accent. Seriously? You're going to make a guy from Ontario affect a Southern accent? Not a good look.



This is only our third Frank Zagarino flick, which sounds surprising as well, considering his very robust bio on imdb. I think the reason for that is, a lot of his films fall in that third or fourth tier of DTV movies, and we just haven't gotten that far down yet, except for some classics featuring Hall of Famers like Lorenzo Lamas, Wings Hauser, and Miles O'Keefe [O'Keeffe]. At this point, we've been including more and more of those films, though, because, at nearly 600 posts in, we've almost exhausted those top two tiers. Expect Zagarino to get more play then-- especially since I have a few of his in my instant queue. Also, one of my favorites is another where he co-stars with Bryan Genesse, Project Shadowchaser II, which I last saw over ten years ago on TNT.

This is Jenny McShane (actually, when she made Cyborg Cop III, she was Jenny Miller). You may remember her as the shark expert in Shark Attack 3 whom John Barrowman tells "why don't you let me take you home and eat your pussy?" Before Google added the stats feature to our blogs, I was under the impression that it was my action films that had the most views, but it's actually Titanic II-- by a wide margin-- that's first all time, and after that, Shark Attack 3. In fact, 9 times out of 10, it's either a bad sci-fi monster film, or a TapOut punchfighting film that gets more overall views than the Dolph Lundgren or Steven Seagal actioner, even though it's the latter that gets more attention on the site in the form of comments.



This movie, and the one before it I guess, takes place in Iowa, a state I've never had occasion to visit. It wasn't filmed there, of course, it was filmed in South Africa. Unfortunately, the stats function I was just discussing in the above paragraph, doesn't allow me to see who is visiting the site by state, so I don't know if anyone is checking us out from Iowa. I wonder what goes on in Iowa. We all know Des Moines, or rather, of it, and I'm also familiar with their two Div-IA football programs, Iowa and Iowa State. Is there an Iowa tourism bureau? What, do you fly into O'Hare and rent a car, or can you fly into Des Moines? The whole concept is intriguing-- maybe that will be my next vacation.

See what happens when the movie has roughly 40 minutes of dead space? That's right, I go off on a tangent about Iowa. Anyway, the final verdict is as I mentioned above, that Cyborg Cop II is worth renting, and this comes on the same disc, so all you're investing here is your time, and in that sense, it's not a bad deal. Don't get it separately though.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112766/