Annihilator (1986) Online

This movie was a series pilot that was not picked up by the network.

It was not bad, but parts of it were a bit corny as some have pointed out.

As for the Ashes to Ashes segment with the music, this was in the era of MTV back in the days when they actually aired music videos 24/7. This scene was sort of a music video within a movie. Since I liked the song, I didn't mind it.

The basic concept had and still has alot of potential. Considering most sci-fi today is largely rip offs of Star Trek, something like this would be a nice change of pace. There was a kind of creepiness to it that the androids were so lifelike that most people would never know who was real along with the mystery of who or what was really behind the replacement of humans.

I would have to rate it an 9/10 for concept, but 7/10 for execution. This might be an idea for the Sci-Fi channel to pick up now since they did not exist 15 years ago.

I caught this on HBO back in 1989, and this was definitely meant to launch a television series. Mark Lindsay Chapman plays a reporter who discovers a plot by aliens/androids to begin a conquest of Earth. Unfortunately, he's branded a fugitive when he is caught killing one of the cyborgs who replaced his girlfriend. His trip takes him through California and Oregon, where he learned that while his girlfriend was replaced by an android, others that vanished with her on an airplane flight she was on are still human. The end had him on the run with a list containing the names of all people that were on the flight that his girlfriend was on in an effort to see just who from the flight could remember just what happened. Great premise, though a bit underbudgeted (what could one expect when it came to sci-fi on network tv back in 1986?), and there were many questions that were never resolved. Definitely should have been followed up, since we never learned if Chapman's girlfriend was alive (played by Catharine Mary Stuart) or how he would manage to convince the human race of the threats posed by the aliens. With today's budget, it'd be great to see 'Annihilator' retried. Nice mix of 'The Fugitive' and 'War Of The Worlds'.

This was a second series attempt from musician Roderick Taylor a year after Otherworld for CBS. Strangely, the very title, "Annihilator" is never explained. The unsold pilot tells the story of a newspaper publisher whose girlfriend has been apparently replaced by an android during the return flight from a vacation. A trip he missed due to business. After discovering the switch, he begins a quiet investigation of her fellow travelers, leading only to several attempts on his life and finally being framed by some unknown party for murder, sending him on the run with only a list of the passengers aboard the unfortunate flight as a starting point for his search for the masterminds behind the androids and their ultimate goal. The film maintains the Taylor trademark of an altered reality with the use of surrealistic imagery and music. Many story elements that would define the X-Files years later are on display here. It should also be noted that leading man Mark Lindsay Chapman, then going under the name Mark Lindsay, was given this role as compensation after being cast as John Lennon in a TV biopic, only to be removed when his real name was discovered to be the same as Lennon's killer.

I watched "Annihilator" a few months ago and although its strange and unpredictable, enough happened to make me continue watching it till the end. Its quite a good movie and a clever idea although where they got the idea from is clear to see with the dinamatard robots having red eyes just like in the classic movie "The Terminator".

Overall, I would recommend this movie to anyone.

Enjoyable, rating 7/10.

A great sci-fi film and a good cast and music from David Bowie excellent special effects make this film a must to view and have myself seen over 50 times at least surely this must be released on DVD likewise night of the comet also starring catherine mary stewart and is equally a great film.it seems that the best cult classics are always the last to appear on DVD. An excellent soundtrack also help this movie along even though its not needed. At around 90 minutes this is one sci-fi film to look out for.... The David bowie song ashes to ashes is heard at two pivitol moments in the movie and indeed makes the movie that much more enjoyable.

I first saw this TV movie on late-night British TV in the late eighties and was thrilled with it's simple, yet effective sci-fi edge; obviously, the film was made for a prospective television series that never happened - Which is a shame as the end result was far better than many of the series' that were approved and syndicated at the time.

Synopsis: Mark Lyndsay Chapman plays Richard Armour, a likable reporter whose life changes after his girlfriend, Angela (Catherine Mary Stewart) returns from a holiday in Hawaii with a female friend (Lisa Blount). Their return sees them change into emotionless cyborgs (like that of Terminator, complete with robotic red eyes under their lifelike human skin masks! In fact, so close is the analogy to "Terminator", that the "Annihilator" also stars Earl Boen (whom played Dr Silberman in both movies!) in a supporting role as fellow reporter, Sid!)).

These cyborgs (or Dynamitards as they are later revealed to be known as) exhibit calculated and unsympathetic views of animals, at one point referring to a dog as being 'One of these lesser animals', before disposing of the poor canine in a dumpster! Angela's lack of 'humanity', soon gives Richard just cause to think that something is up and is easily convinced that a dirty weekend away to a remote log cabin would be the ideal solution to rekindle and reconnect! It is here that Angela reveals her deadly intentions and Richard gets more than he bargained for as he barely escapes with his life and is forced to go on the run...

Richard soon discovers that the Hawaii passenger manifest is something of a Dynamitard 'hit list' and tries to find other passengers in hope of finding answers - And possibly the whereabouts of the real Angela - Before running into more deadly Dynamitards! The film is punctuated with Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes" soundtrack, using this now classic song to great effect as our hero staggers around, disillusioned and helpless; armed with a pump action shotgun, an English accent and some attitude, Richard's quest for the truth is soon accompanied by female friend and convert, Layla (Susan Blakely) as she convinces him to seek additional help and advice from Professor Alan Jeffries (Geoffrey Lewis), with disastrous consequences of betrayal...

Truly could have been a great TV series ( Personal Rating 8 / 10 )

I think this aired in 1986, on the old NBC Monday Night Movie, in the summer when it was usual to see lost TV pilots aired as movie-of-the-weeks. Told the tale of a newspaper reporter(Chapman) who has to miss a vacation(having won a "contest")with his girlfriend Angela, a scenario which, in the style it was filmed starts off very prosaic and normal until, as he narrates the entire film as a flashback, he finds her return plane had "gone off the radar" for 90 minutes, and returns, but delayed. He gets unnerved watching Angela speaking to a mysterious man in sunglasses,who seems to be watching the passengers leave the plane, asks who it was- and she denies having spoken to anyone. She is also unaware the plane was "delayed and missing". She begins acting strangely and having odd meetings with unknown people, and as the reporter begins to investigate things and ask more questions, she tries to kill him and he finds she's now a terminator-like robot(complete with the same kind of eye-tracking visuals from that film). Truly panicked he finds himself a wanted man, framed, and on the run with nothing more than the passenger list he got after dispatching the Angela robot. The only hint or clue we're ever given is one passenger who appears to be normal who claims "nothing went wrong on the flight, I slept, then felt a bump..and I had that awful nightmare.." . The reporter asks "What kind of nightmare?" and before she can say more, she's killed by another one of these robots. He finds out a little more, from another,older passenger who seems to be in charge of a localized group of these beings-he manages after a fight,to damage the mechanical brain and he begins talking incoherently about "Dynamitards...are the collective of Dymogeny" and how they intend to fully take over. We learn nothing else, other than he sets off,alone, in Fugtive-like fashion to find other normal passengers from the list-who were apparently checked off for termination-before the robots do. Obviously it was intended to be a series along the lines of Nowhere Man or The Fugitive, finding more clues along the way.

The film had some interesting "rock video" sequences,very much of the time-dissolves and used a perpetual "Los Angeles Sunset/Sunrise" for lighting. The use of Bowie's Ashes to Ashes and visual references to religious buildings and at one point, the hero seems to be standing in front of painted angel's wings, lead one to think these were possibly not aliens but something darker or even homegrown on earth.

Annihilator originally was aired on NBC back in the mid eighties, and it was a series pilot, a series pilot that never went any further, which is a shame. The show had a lot of promise, the lead actor had a lengthy and decent TV show resume, and I imagine they'd have somehow brought back Catherine Mary Stewart since she had a following back then due to Night of the Comet and the Last Starfighter. I always assumed NBC had a change of heart due to V. V and V: The Final Battle did rather well ratings wise for NBC, which lead them to start a TV series the same year Annihilator originally aired but the TV series just failed to gain the same ratings as the two mini's and NBC canned after a season, and probably assumed Annihilator would fail as well ratings wise, which it probably would have and that's a shame. It had cyborgs like Terminator, which I was obsessed with back then, the fate of the passengers kept me super curious and I imagine I would have remained curious if the show had run 2-3 seasons, and it borrowed a page from Michael Mann's book by doing the whole music video within a TV series thing that helped put Miami Vice on the map, and made Phil Collins a huge chunk of change.

Yes, parts of Annihilator are corny, especially the scenes featuring Nicole Eggert (Charle's in Charge, Baywatch) but it was the 80's and in the 80's, shows like Miami Vice which were supposed to be uber serious had cheese, and that was fine because the 80's were all about having fun.

In short, NBC dropped the ball on this one and instead just spoon fed the masses a few more seasons of bad shows like the Cosby Show.

Just seen this film on tv......and well the plot had promise but never delivered on it-we never found out why all this was happening and how.The way the film ends you think there may be a sequel-leaves a lot of unanswered questions.......

to whom this may concern ; i've seen the annihilator movie many time since it's release in 1986 . my favorite parts of this movie are when the lead android was first seen behind that log cabin home when she tried to attack the male actor's role managed to turn the tables on her and he terminated her by nearly running her over with the jeep that he drove. he also terminated the other android by shooting her in the face with a shotgun and knocking some 10 feet to the floor and in the process knocking one of her red eyes right out of her head. well that's all for now and later in the movie a female cyborg was crushed on a wall by another cyborg that malfunctioned .

but can you answer this one question for me . i'd like to know what special visual and makeup effects were used in this made for t.v.movie that gave it the realism. i'd really like to know your insights on this.

In watching this film, I never got the sense they were aliens. The constant shots of churches and crosses made me think of something else. They called themselves Dynamitards. (This was an actual 1800s secret society in Europe.) I would have loved a sequel. Or maybe a look at the original script. I did wonder why the Dynamitards would leave an assault rifle and ammo laying around at their camp. Especially since they'd already bent the barrel on his handgun while he was away from his room. The film isn't available on DVD, which would be great. I think "Otherworld" is available in a boxed set (another fantasy series from the same producer).

Dated 1980's shlock, except for one brilliant throwaway scene near the end.

I wouldn't recommend buying the VHS, and pretty sure this never made it to DVD or Blu Ray, but with a little digging you can probably find it on YouTube. Be ready to skip forward to this scene (a little less than an hour and a half into the movie) if you don't find the movie watchable.

A momentary nice touch, completely unnecessary to the story or plot.

A malfunctioning android. The WAY it malfunctions is nothing short of genius!

It's only a couple of minutes, midway into the climax. I don't want to spoil with any more detail. All I can say is that 30-odd years later, it's every bit as good as I remember.

Pretty much a silly rip-off of THE TERMINATOR, made on a lower budget, this has the further disadvantage of being a failed television pilot for a series that never got made. This means that there is absolutely no background story to the film, no explanation as to where the killer robots came from or what they plan to do (apart from take over the world, obviously), no explanation as to how they hijacked a plane in midair and turned only SOME of the passengers into robots and no victory/defeat at the end of the movie. Instead, the lead character just ups and leaves to perhaps warn others of the impending danger. This ending smacks of that '60s television series, THE INVADERS, although I can't see how they thought they'd carry on the same stale formula week after week! There isn't even any intelligence or depth to the script, it just consists of the lead character discovering and fighting robots one after the other.

Once again I was attracted to the movie through the cheesy box art which made it look unmissable. For fans looking for cheesy special effects, well then this film won't disappoint. All of the bad robots have cool glowing red eyes which end up being overused by the end of the film, and some of them get their faces ripped off too displaying fake-looking robotics underneath. They really try to emulate THE TERMINATOR with this look but it's not half as frightening - in fact it's pretty laughable. Hell, even the music rips off Cameron's classic movie, I'm surprised a lawsuit wasn't filed against the makers of this.

It turns out that the director, Michael Chapman, is a camera operator on big budget movies these days (for example EVOLUTION). Well, on the strength of his direction in this film, I don't know how that can be! The editing is occasionally dire and the film is packed with silly flashbacks which are only there to pad it out. It starts off with a car chase (pretty silly, as you don't know who it is the police are chasing and are therefore unable to root for him - he could be a murderous paedophile for all we know) which ends up being repeated another THREE times by the film's end! It only ends up running at eighty-five minutes or so as well, so you can tell they were really desperate. How about some background story or explanation as to what the hell is actually going on? That would have helped! Instead we get lots of boring dialogue interspersed with cheesy, over-the-top action scenes which invariably show people jumping through closed windows (obviously an '80s thing) and things being smashed up. Sadly the film resorts to crappy slow-motion in some parts and looks extremely silly as a result. Also check out the radar robo-vision which can't look any more '80s in style. The ending resorts to gratuitous all-out action in which a killer kid goes on the rampage and ends up being bulldozed to death by her robot brother (?). Our hero escapes and the film just ends. That's it. No triumph, no victory, just an open ending. I hate films like this.

The acting is generally poor for the film which wastes the talents of some B-movie veterans. However, I did like Mark Lindsay Chapman (THE LANGOLIERS) in the leading role, and thought he made a charismatic and capable hero. However, Lisa Blount is poor as the robot girlfriend and Susan Blakely is just... well... too '80s looking and unmemorable. At the other end of the spectrum we have the quirky Geoffrey Lewis popping up in a cameo, and in a hilarious scene he accidentally sets fire to his own arm when attempting to light a pipe (his circuits have been damaged)! This is definitely a unique moment and nearly makes the movie worthwhile. Also appearing are Brion James (sadly in a five-second cameo as a biker), and (just to nail home the similarities a bit more) THE TERMINATOR's Dr Silberman, Earl Boen, as the office boss who doesn't do much.

It's difficult to describe how much this film fails so badly. It's kind of sad in a way. It's hopelessly dated and some of the pop music used in the flashbacks is excruciating. When you realise that the entire first half is just a flashback you realise the film has major problems. It does manage one too, unintentionally funny scene though, in which a female robot gets her arm torn off and proceeds to flog the hero with it with all her might! An unforgettable sight which had me rolling on the floor. It's a shame the film can't carry the momentum of cheesiness, though, as then it may have been a so-bad-it's-good movie. Instead it's just a so-bad-it's-bad type of film, although this one moment of pure cheese stops it from being a total failure.

Well, in Finland this movie is oddly called Executor, though that isn't a Finnish word. So, this tv-movie is very bad. The scenes are made very poorly and some scenes are so funny, especially when one female robot takes her hand and starts to beat with it. The scene where David Bowie's "Ashes to ashes" plays, the angel wings come on the the lead character, that scene is so stupid! I would give this * star out of **** (1 out of 10).