1990’s Syngenor presents us with, something of an oddity within the film world. Y’see, usually if a film is popular, makes a lot of money or a studio has SO much faith in the idea up front. It’ll be granted a sequel. Or maybe even some kind of extended life as a TV show (See: Ash Vs The Evil Dead or the recent “Chucky” Tv series) But when “Scared to Death” was released in 1980, it made money, but it didnt make ENOUGH money to get studios interested, it garnered SOMETHING in the way of public interest, but only about enough to render it a bit of a cult classic, and while studios DID have some interest in the idea of a “Scared to Death” sequel, non of them were willing to put the money up for it, or in the one instance where it actually COULD have happened in 1985. Creator of the first film William Malone was unfortunately tied to another project.
As such, because distribution for the film was handled by a relatively small company, they wernt able to really penetrate the home video market (itself awash with similar low budget features) and as such, the film kind of fell into relative obscurity. That is until the late 80’s when producer Jack F. Murphy managed to catch “Scared to Death” and pretty much instantly fell in love with the idea of the “Syngenor” (Synthetic Genetic Organism to you and me.) He really felt like the creatures could be used in so many more different and interesting ways and so he set up a meeting with William Malone to explore the possibility of producing a sequel and getting William on board to direct. Unfortunately William once again had his hands tied and couldnt free himself up to take the project on, but he gave Jack his full blessing to produce his own movie with the Syngenor and even offered to help reconstruct several costumes (And variants) as part of the process.
As time went on, Jack slowly began to get a little nervous about the project. He was concerned that the original movie was so low budget (compared to more modern features) and so obscure given its limited release, that they’d be shooting themselves in the foot in making a direct sequel to “Scared to death” because audiences probably wouldnt have seen the first one, probably COULDNT see the first one, and would be put off at the thought of jumping in on a 2nd entry in a potential franchise. SO! Jack decided to instead completely distance his film from the original, cutting ALL references to “Scared to Death” and making a completely NEW movie that just so happened to feature the Syngenor, more or less EXACTLY as they were in “Scared to Death”. How did it work out? Well…
The film follows Suzie. The Niece of an acclaimed scientific genius named Ethan who, up until recently was working for a big tech and weapons manufacturer called Norton Dynamics, Norton have a bit of a dirty secret. On there books is a project called “Operation Dark Skies” Which was an experiment to create the ultimate super soldier who was indestructible, needed minimal food and water, was super strong and agile, can reproduce Asexually every 24 hours, and could survive in extreme weather conditions. This creature, was the Syngenor. And as the film opens we see two swaggering blokey dickhead sorts leading some ladies of the night down into the basement of Norton Dynamics to show off all the cool weaponry and weird shit thats out of the public view in the hope of getting the ladies excited and possibly score themselves some *bouncy bouncy* in the process.
Unfortunately; while down in the basement one of the women spots a giant tankard and on looking inside she spots a Syngenor in Stasis, she’s terrified, but the guys try to settle her down…that is until the Syngenor breaks free of stasis and kills both the women AND one of the blokey cocks, before heading out of the building to presumably go on a bit of a ‘spree’. The only survivor being a business exec called “Dan” who promptly flees the scene.
We’re then formally introduced to Suzie, who’s caught a lift back to her uncles house with a guy who’s quite keen to be invited into the house for a coffee and a chance at something more than coffee. Suzies not keen however and politely declines before heading inside.
Out back in the garage, Ethan is working on a new chemical that…seemingly makes oranges explode…anyway; thats not important really because within moments of us being introduced to him, a Syngenor appears murders Ethan and lays an egg in the corner. Meanwhile, back in the house, Suzie gets in, realises that the powers been cut, wanders outside, finds her dying uncle who says something about “Watering the pod” before carking it. She then gets jumped by the Syngenor. Theres an extended chase scene through the house, but suzie manages to get away and heads over to the nearest police station.
Suzie stays at the station overnight, and in the morning she’s greeted by Leo, one of the lead officers, and a good friend of the family. Suzie explains that her uncle was seemingly murdered by something inhuman and Leo tries to dissuade her, before attempting to get her back to her house.
Meanwhile, back at Norton Dynamics a plucky upcoming journalist by the name of Nick has just wandered in, hoping to grab an interview with the companies CEO as part of a wider piece he’s doing on the company. The secretary there is a sucker for brown nosing and lets slip that a murder has happened on site in the last 24 hours, but just before Nick can get his scoop, Dan appears and escorts Nick off the property. Before leaving though, he manages to get one piece of information, that the day before the murder, our top scientist ‘Ethan’ handed in his notice and left the company under slightly mysterious circumstances.
Nick leaves, and it’s here that we’re introduced to our core baddies for the film, as a stakeholder meeting takes place at Norton Dynamics to discuss what had happened the night before. Obviously we’ve already met Dan, but joining him is a lady Dan has been in constant communication with up to this point called Paula, the pair are trying desperately to climb the corporate ladder and they think they’re about to sweet talk their way into a cushy ‘top of the tree’ role working under the CEO Carter. Carters a bit odd. Not in any way thats specific, just in an unsettling eccentric way…he also self injects himself chronically with what looks like “Reanimator fluid” so…theres that.
Anyway, Carter leads the meeting explaining the circumstances of whats gone on, establishing the Syngenor and explaining how Ethan was a key part of their creation, they talk about last nights murders, AND Carter explains that he’s been in touch with the authorities and told them to downplay or dismiss anyone coming forward claiming they’ve seen a Syngenor as they’re classified for the time being, a specialised security team have checked through the facility, located any eggs that may have been created and stored them away in stasis. Once the meetings complete, Dan and Paula head outside and Paula suggests that, since ones gotten out and still hasnt been recovered, it might not hurt to release ALL the Syngenor and either create a scandal or have them inadvertently murder all the top stakeholders.
Meanwhile back in the suburbs, Leo manages to get Suzie back to her house, and tells her to head in and get some rest. She does but, shes curious about seeing the garage for herself one more time, so she heads out back and immediately spots someone, or something hiding under a blanket. She grabs a knife, approaches with caution and reveals Nick!? Who for SOME reason, thats…only barely explained. Found out Ethans home address, headed over, broke into his garage and started reading his private journals. Then when he heard Suzie coming, he hid under a blanket in plain site like a literal 3 year old.
Suzies not playing around and pretty much threatens to gut Nick, but after some brief backing and forthing tensions cool down a bit. The pair bring each other up to speed with their separate stories, and after Nick explains about his article, Suzie decides to grant Nick FULL access to ALL of Ethans work, on one condition. That he include in his article a section at the end telling the world EXACTLY how Ethan died and about the Syngenor. Nick agrees and is subsiquently informed that hes been granted an interview with the CEO the next day,
While this is going on, back at Norton Dynamics, Dan asks the Secretary on the main desk to head down to the basement to run some checks, inevitably while down there, shes attacked and murdered By Syngenors. Dan heads down a short time after and almost immediately finds her dead body (which apparently surprised him for some reason) followed by him narrowly escaping being attacked by Syngenor himself.
11am, the next day, Nick and Suzie arrive at Norton for their interview, they’re greeted by Dan who offers an initial pre-interview with Nick during witch, Dan explains what “Project Dark Skies” is, while Suzie sneaks off to go and explore the facility while trying to find any clues about the Syngenor. As luck would have it, she manages to find a room set up for, presumably potential buyers into the Syngenor project. Which gives her a full breakdown of everything Including a lifesize one, in stasis, right next to her.
While this is going on Paula reveals to Carter that Dan has caused the death of the secretary, Carter’s niece. He doesnt seem massively bothered though, he seems almost totally out of it. While this is going on Suzie gets spotted by security who pick her up with the intention of taking her to the CEO. But not before stopping infront of a display for the “Death Rattle” a sonic cannon weapon that packs a seriously powerful blast.
The meeting with Carter is incredibly brief. In fact, he literally HANDS Nick a prewritten article that puts the murders and weird goings on down to a disgruntled employee and tells him he has little to no choice but to publish that, and that he wont get anymore information out of himself or any of the other employees here. AND that if he DOES push on with trying to ‘expose’ anyone or anything about the company, the cops will be paying him a visit. Suzie is then brought into the meeting and both of them are escorted out of the office while Carter calls an emergency stakeholder meeting.
And this really leads us into our final act, as Nick and Suzie swap stories and decide to sneak back into the promotional room to get some photographs and Carter decides to announce an end to project “Dark Skies” and the eradication of the Syngenors, it’s a race against time for Nick and Suzie to solve her uncles murder, safely destroy the Syngenor AND take down Carter and the demented members of Norton Dynamics…In a game of thrills and spills, WILL Nick and Suzie beat Carter!? Will the Syngenor escape the facility and take over the world! And…why make it a point that the Syngenor survives off drinking spinal fluid if you arnt actually going to SHOW or even vaguely demonstrate that? What a waste of a cool gimmick…I dunno, all this and more will be answered if you check out. Syngenor.
And honestly? Though it pains me to say it, I just didnt really get on with this one. It was initially requested to me by a viewer, but I just found too many problems with it to really truely ever get into it.
For a starters, the script is a kind of mash up of 23% references and ideas lifted from “Scared to Death”, 66% references and ideas lifted from “Robocop” and 11% actual original ideas. Norton Dynamics as a company IS basically the OCP complete with tense and sometimes gory boardroom meetings, pissing contests amongst the employees and even ‘feel’ alike characters with Carter largely mirroring the old man from Robocops 1 and 2, Dan and Paula essentially sharing the duty of being a mashup of Dick Jones and Bob Morton and Suzie and Nick kind of filling in for the roles of Murphy and Lewis.
The Syngenor are basically ED209 or the rebel robocops from robocop 2. And given that robocop 2 came out in the same year this film did, the fact it ties itself SO closely to those movies isnt exactly surprising…but it did MASSIVELY disappoint me, as I was hoping to actually have something resembling an original story here…not just something that felt knocked out over a long weekend, a 6 pack of beers and a trip to blockbuster. Given the intention of the film was to give the Syngenor a decent platform to possibly launch a franchise from, it was beyond disheartening to see that they’d basically just retooled elements of the plot of an existing film and slapped a Syngenor sticker on it.
The pacing is a bit all over the place with a hearty amount of padding helping to just about push this film into feature runtime territory. Theres a hell of a lot of repetition or just, moments where our characters will sneak into somewhere, get caught, get removed from the place, only to sneak back in a few minutes later. Theres a LOT of pretty pointless conversations between Dan, Paula and Carter that don’t really add anything to the plot.
The padding doesnt ruin the film perse, though, the 3rd act does end up at a bit of a crawl for a while until the gang finally figure out what needs to be done to resolve things. And because it’s basically stole its story from Robocop and Scared to Death, it means that tonally it’s kind of left without a voice. There are moments where it’s incredibly melodramatic, times when it’s very overly serious and times where even IT seems a bit lost as to where it wants our characters to go. And because its constantly swapping in and out of these styles it creates a very lumpy and tonally uneven presentation.
I was never quite sure exactly what the film wanted me to think or feel about it. If it had leant even a smidge more into the self aware, dark humour ‘Robocop’ style shenanigans, it’d have had a significantly cleaner cut voice. I’d have basically considered it a full blown knock off, rather than a film HEAVILY lifting from another movie. But at least it would have been clear. Had they toned down the humour and decided to go for a more horror driven edge. Again, I’d have probably had an easier time breaking this thing down. But, as it stands, BECAUSE it’s kind of just…doing whatever it thinks will keep the audience watching. It never really defines itself beyond it’s ties to other movies.
This issue was only compounded by the fact that the producers, writers and director have gone ALL IN on the Syngenor, like they’re supposed to be the next ‘Cabbage Patch Kids’ or ‘Pogz’ or something. Don’t get me wrong the Syngenor are a pretty cool and fun little idea of a wee beastie. A creature thats almost entirely indestructible, that lives on spinal fluid and can reproduce asexually every 24 hours that looks like a sleeker more agile version of the creature from the black lagoon is a pretty neat concept. But theres a way to play these things, and here. They are TOTALLY not cool about it, EVERY character who can talk about or refer to the Syngenor does so AT LEAST half a dozen times each.
There’s barely a scene that goes by without someone mentioning how powerful, or unstoppable, or scary the Syngenor are. Its almost like they wanted to establish some kind of brand identity for the Syngenor, without actually having any kind of branding or merch opportunities FOR the Syngenor. I cant imagine a world of Syngenor plushies, baseball caps, trainers, lunchboxes…but this was clearly a world the producers thought was viable. It’s incredibly annoying from a writing standpoint and it did make me lower my expectations for the picture quite a bit because of it.
On that subject, the dialogue isnt too great either, its all very stilted, awkward, it doenst flow naturally or feel particularly realistic. It’s very melodramatic, and im struggling to figure out if thats just because the writing itself is crap (in my opinion) or whether they were TRYING to do that melodramatic dark humour style of dialogue thats present in Robocop, but because they arnt Edward Neumeier or Michael Miner, that quick witted, sarcastic and charismatic lampooning of 80s culture tone and intelligence just isnt there with this. In either case the end results feel like a script thats almost a parody. and exactly half as endearing as one.
The script was written by Brent V. Friedman he has 33 writing credits covering a pretty decent range of genres, including video game credits for “Halo 4” and “Tales from the borderlands” and work on some full moon properties such as “Petshop” or probably most infamousley, he wrote ‘Foodfight’ …I hope that helps establish a tone with this one. On directing duties we have George Elanjian Jr. he has 15 directing credits largely for Tv series and ‘Adult’ features, including the Playboy Video Magazine specials, Candid Camera and How’d they do that!?
And on the direction front, well…it just about does the job, I would say George seems to have worked with the teams to produce an end product thats good enough to cut the mustard in the low budget film arena, but thats about the highest praise I can give it. There’s a certain cheapness to some of the designs, looks and feels in this production that just kind of took me out of the experience, moments where it felt like they’d done ‘enough’ but hadnt quite gone above and beyond. Stylistically, this thing looks and feels pretty flat, dark and drab. I appreciate that 1990 was hardly the most colourful year on record. But a lot of this film lacks anything in the way of vibrance, or a directors zeal. Its all pretty much shot for function, with heavy emphasis on coverage with a muted colour pallet pretty much strangling the film before it even had a chance to walk. When the fact the Syngenor eggs glow a reddy orangy colour is the ONLY thing I can comment on in terms of your stylistic vision for the picture. You KNOW somethings gone a bit amiss.
Same goes for the cast too, I dunno, for the most part they seem to have understood the brief (it wouldnt have surprised me if they just made the cast watch Robocop in prep for this thing) everyone seems relaxed in their spaces and they work with the dialogue as best they can. But theres a lot of moments where the cast seem a bit unsure of what to do in their set space, or are maybe in a place where they’re unsure of how much experimentation they can or cant get away with.
Like…there are some moments where they really go to town with props, and full movement, where it feels like maybe the director had had the time to really work out a plan with the cast in order to get the best out of them. But then, in that same breath there are moments where a cast of 3-5 people will be bolted onto the spot with a “Deer in the headlights” look about them, with the implication being that, if they don’t get the scene nailed here and now, it’ll be the last scene they ever shoot…I dunno, it just feels like a bit of a mixed bag, that was likely caused by a tight schedule, low budget and high tensions.
The cine doesnt fair much better, on the one hand, for the most part it looks filmic. Shots *largely* utilise appropriate blocking and compositional choices, I didnt spot any instances of the line being crossed and it looks like they’ve really aimed to make this production look as studio grade as possible, on the other hand, a lot of the shots here look incredibly flat profile, theres almost no depth of field present and, because of the aforementioned muted colour range, it means that scenes that were already struggling with lackluster scripting and spotty direction, had to also deal with a near total lack of an eye for compositional flare. While it does have a few moments that genuinely surprised me in terms of nice shots. And I ABSOLUTELY wont go as far as to say this films ‘Dead behind the eyes’ from a cine standpoint? It does rather feel a bit like a film running on auto pilot.
I dunno, had the lighting and editing maybe been a bit more solid, this might have turned out differently, but as it stands the lighting, much like the cine is pretty flat profile, theres little to no use of coloured lighting gels, and when they are used I personally don’t feel they’re used all that effectively, instead largely being used to create a sense of artificial atmosphere (which it fails to do) or to just try and make the shot look cool (which it also fails to do) the editings a bit choppy as well, I mean, i’d go as far as to say it’s passable, but because they didnt really bother to experiment with the cine, its left the edit a bit high and dry in terms of what it can cut to and from. As such its a bit basic, and in some cases there just isnt really enough there to play around with to create an engaging narrative, which does rather kill both the pacing and the engagement for me as a viewer.
Performance wise; On the whole?, it’s a fairly muted range, Starr Andreeff and Mitchell Laurance as Suzie and Nick are basically trying to play a hybrid of Lewis and Murphy (pre transformation) from Robocop and Ted and Jenniffer from ‘Scared to Death’ charismatic but with a slightly harder edge. And thats fine…but because I don’t feel like they were given much of a decent well to draw from on the script front, and given their characters arnt really all that well defined. It feels like they essentially just had to crack on with what they were given. Which means I don’t really feel these guys got the chance to grow into their characters. I don’t really see it as a good sign when im watching someone play a role and I think to myself “Realistically, I could envision almost ANYONE being able to play these roles and it not being dreadful”. Thats a problem, because if your characters are ‘One size fits all’ it means they’re not going to stand out against any of the other cast members.
Which unfortunately is the case, as the vast majority of the supporting cast here are basically all in the same boat, all playing hybrids of characters in the style of either “Robocop” or “Scared to Death” with no variation, no development and poorer dialogue than either of the movies they’re sourcing from. Which really doesnt do this film any favours.
Honestly? The one SHINING reason to check this film out, the thing that pretty much made the 98(ish) minutes somewhat worthwhile, was David Gales performance as the CEO Carter. At first, he DOES play this thing a bit like the old man from Robocop, but as the film goes on, the characters mental health slowly starts to deteriorate, until, by the 3rd act, he’s full on loony toons, jumping around like a mad man, rambling inanely and cutting through scenes like scissors through wrapping paper. I don’t know how much Gale was paid for his appearance in this film, but it DEFINITELY needed a couple of extra zeros added to the end of it for just how MUCH energy he put into playing this absolute maverick. He’s the clear standout in this for me by a country mile.
And finally; The Soundtrack. Its honestly pretty unremarkable. A generic mishmash of late 80’s synth stings for tense moments and very early 90s muzak style lighter pieces for the more mundane parts of the picture. Its lacking any real kind of solid impact and basically is only here because playing the whole film out in total silence would be somehow worse. But little to no thought was put into how this thing sounds and it really shows.
Syngenor seemingly didnt get a VHS release in the UK when it first came out in 1990. In fact, the first release I can find on UK shores is a DVD release from 2002 by Prism Leisure, By this point the picture quality for this release isnt too great, I noticed a TON of artifacting and, for some reason, on my setup the picture looked overly sharpened. If I had to hazard a guess, it looks like they basically jsut went back to the master they used to dub the original US VHS release, pulled that, cropped out any picture issues and shoved a sharpen filter on it before kicking it out the door. To add insult to injury, there are no special features either. Just the film and a “scene select” which is a bit of a bummer…
Syngenor was an interesting idea in principle, take a monster from one movie and transfer it wholesale into a completely different movie, but with non of the original continuity to back it up. Outside of the monsters from novels (Frankenstein, Dracula, etc) its something that just, isnt really done in the contemporary film ecosystem. Unfortunately, because of the fact the script is so hamstrung, combined with fairly ‘by the numbers’ direction and cine the only thing I can take away from this thing is a feeling that they kind of WANTED to do a sequel all along, couldnt logistically make it work, and then lost interest but still had to make A movie regardless of the circumstances (in my opinion anyway…)
As a result this thing feels rushed, lifeless and largely cribbed. Of the two? I’d personally say stick with ‘Scared to Death’. But if you watched that one and really liked it, you may get a kick out of this film. The only reason to check this otherwise would be if your curious about David Gales performance…but…honestly if your not that bothered about that, i’d say give this one a swerve.
TYTD Reviews 