Neil Stryker and the Tyrant of time
W
e love movies that had double barrelled titles; you know exactly what you are going to get from the film. Take Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone? Actually take it far away and remove it from the Harry Potter franchise if you please. Probably the worst of the Harry Potter films but it defined a franchise that definitely got better as the films progressed. You knew what you were getting from the moment the title came up on the screen or DVD cover. Now Neil Stryker and Tyrant of Time is the second in a franchise that stretches back to originally 2003 and a film called Evil Cult (Now on our Plopcorn radar after watching the Tyrant of Time).
Anyway, back to the review in hand; the hero of our film is Neil Stryker, a special agent/assassin for the Elite Special Forces who became famous for catching his former Mentor turned villainous time traveler “the Mad Scientist”. Unfortunately whilst on his latest mission (during the title sequence) he ‘accidentally’ kills his target and ends up getting suspended – oops. When the Mad Scientist manages to escape from his prison and kidnaps Neil Stryker’s son, all is forgiven and he has to come back from his suspension to save his son and the world. Neil puts his team together in double quick time as you would expect including a stow away who sneaked onto the team (Cool Vagina!). All normal trope stuff so far from the film and with some particularly ham-acting, ham-sound and ham-special effects from literally everyone and everything , it is all we could hope for in a Plopcorn film in fact.
Now, we’re not prone to over exaggeration here at Plopcorn Towers when it comes to scenes in movies, but we have to say the scene where Clark, Neil’s trusty lieutenant, has organised the recruits in the hangar and needs to motivate them into getting on the plane had us laughing so much that we had to stop the film for 10 minutes whilst we calmed down. Never again will we look at the Lurpack butter man in the same way. #rustytrombone
The next act follows the usual route as the hero with is cadre of red-shirts head off to track down and capture the Mad Scientist. What you don’t expect however is a whole load of puppet goblins to turn up straight out of Labyrinth. They even get the now immortal line “They’re not fucking vampires!”
Now I don’t know if they’ve been sold off cheaply as part of David Bowie’s estate. I mean… it’s not like he needs them anymore? But really? Half a dozen puppet goblins trying to beat the shit out of Chekov for 10 minutes seems a bit much – “Yes Ciptan!”. And yes we did say Chekov! Walter Koenig turns up as one of the two amazing cameos in this film in this slightly surreal, funny sequence. He really throws himself into the roll, fighting the goblins with much zeal. The other cameo is no less impressive with David Ogden Stiers appearing as The Admiral. You may remember him as Major Charles Winchester from the hugely popular M*A*S*H.
A special mention at this point must be made of Darrel Freeway, the Mad Scientist’s own lieutenant. He comes to the fore in the third act as the Mad Scientist jumps through time to thwart his capture and has his own 9 year plan to take over the world. His robot army try and capture our hero are bloody fantastic. It’s almost like they want to hump everyone to death.
When our hero gets away from the humping robots he chases the Mad Scientist through several historical era’s and in some respects we wish they’d done a bit more of this. When they bust in on Hitler having tea, there’s endless gags they could have done and perhaps this is why the film doesn’t get a perfect score. There seems to be lots of parts that are set up for gag, only for the gag not to drop. Maybe the gag is on us for expecting one?
The film then finishes in usual style with the hero saving the day, saving his son and the bad guy dead… or is he? Hopefully we will find out if they make another. Overall this is a fantastic plopcorn movie made on a shoe-string budget (apparently $155k) with some brilliant cameos and a large helping of cheese. It really, really deserves to do well as it shows what can be done if you want to make a film yourself. The sets were all designed and built by the stars and would put some of the dross we’ve watched in the past to shame.
We’ve rated this 
Get out there and watch it. Cool Vagina!
