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THE VINDICATOR
aka
FRANKENSTEIN ‘88
Rating: 
Canada. 1986.
Director – Jean-Claude Lord, Screenplay – David Preston & Edith Rey, Producers – Don Carmody & John Dunning, Photography – Rene Verzier, Music – Paul Zaza, Special Effects – George Erschbamer & Bill Orr, Frankenstein Designed and Created by Stan Winston Studios, Production Design – Douglas Higgins. Production Company – Frank and Stein Productions.
Cast:
David McIlwraith (Carl Lehman), Teri Austin (Lauren Lehman), Richard Cox (Alex Whyte), Pam Grier (Hunter), Maury Chaykin (Burt Arthurs), Stephen Mendel (Ian Massey), Catherine Disher (Catherine), Larry Aubrey (Kurt Kessler), Denis Simpson (Simpson)
Plot: Scientist Carl Lehman protests at the appropriation of his research budget by his superior Alex Whyte. But then he is caught in an ‘accidental’ laboratory explosion and killed. But Whyte keeps Carl alive and rebuilds his body as a cyborg intended for use in Mars exploration. Carl makes an escape from the lab. But he leaves without the remote control that keeps his anger response in check, something that makes him regard anybody who touches him as a threat and respond with lethal force.
The Vindicator was one of the first films coming out seeking to exploit the success of The Terminator (1984). Vindicator however had been announced at least a couple of years before The Terminator came out under the title Frankenstein ‘88. Clearly it was made before or at least around the same time as The Terminator and then renamed with a Terminator-like title after The Terminator’s success. From the original title you realize that the film was originally designed as a hi-tech reworking of the Frankenstein story – a potentially intriguing idea. The important thing is that Vindicator was made as a horror film not as an sf film – quite simply because at the time it was made the notion of the killer android action film created by The Terminator was not really embedded in the public consciousness.
The original idea of doing a version of Frankenstein where the monster becomes an alienated cyborg in modern society is intriguing. [The film could almost be a B movie version of Frederik Pohl’s excellent novel Man Plus (1976) about a cyborg created to explore Mars]. It was a Canadian production, made by Jean-Claude Lord, a Quebecois director who had previously made the rather nastily misogynistic slasher film Visiting Hours (1982). But the film is unimaginative and crudely made. In comparison to The Terminator and its ilk, Lord’s emphasis is on human mutilation, not action – and Lord takes some unpleasant delight in an extended rape sequence and a scene where a victim is crushed inside a car. And the plot is just stupid at times – one simply fails to believe that a designer would incorporate such a dumb feature in a cyborg as having any human touch cause it to go uncontrollably into a killing mode with the only off-switch being the other person’s death. Stan Winston creates a good cyborg suit. A major plus of the piece is cult action queen Pam Grier who adds some tough class muchly lacking anywhere else in the film.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1999-2012
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