CYBORG 2087 (1966)
Article 2343 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-25-2007
Posting Date: 1-11-2008
Directed by Franklin Adreon
Featuring Michael Rennie, Karen Steele, Wendell Corey

A cyborg from 2087 is sent to the past (1966) to prevent a professor from revealing the secrets to radio telepathy, his invention of which brought about an oppressive military dictatorship. However, two other cyborgs (known as tracers) are also sent into the past to prevent his mission.

When I saw this movie many years ago in the waning days of my local Creature Feature, I was mostly struck by the cheesiness of the movie and the silliness of some of the scenes; the tracers trotting along while looking at their wristbands struck me as more funny than threatening. I considered it quite awful back then. It looks better to me today; the cheesiness and the silliness are still there, of course, and I also notice that the dialogue is fairly weak and the music is repetitive (especially the tracers’ theme music), but the acting is mostly decent; Michael Rennie is appropriately cast and does a nice job, and Wendell Corey is a lot of fun as the sheriff. It also maintains a decent pace, and I found it quite watchable. I don’t know if it’s the first movie to deal with cyborgs or with people from the future coming into the past to change things (the comparisons that are often made between this movie and THE TERMINATOR are interesting), but they were rare enough subjects in the movies at the time that this adds to the novelty value of the movie. It’s certainly one of the more interesting scripts from Arthur C. Pierce that I’ve encountered. In short, I liked this movie more than I expected I would.