Hands of Steel (1986) | Vendetta dal Futuro | Atomic Cyborg | Fists of Steel | Return of the Terminator

Hands of Steel is an Italian-produced film obviously influenced by James Cameron’s The Terminator, if combined with the basic plot of First Blood. Set in the near future (the marketing lists the year as 1997, about a decade after the film’s release), we find a beefy thug has been brainwashed by the evil head of a pollution-spewing corporation called the Turner Foundation, headed by John Saxon’s Francis Turner, we soon learn, to assassinate a popular ecological guru leading an environmental movement that is set to make major radical changes to the drastically worsening country.

But he’s no ordinary thug; Paco Queruak is a war veteran that was left for dead before getting his body used for a radical cyborg assassin experiment, rendering him with an electronic mind and a body of hardened steel, underneath his very human-like exterior. However, at the last second, his human side begins to question what he’s doing, leaving him on the run from the organization that made him in order to hide their tracks. Paco goes on the lam to his old stomping grounds in Arizona, where he meets a lovely motel and bar owner named Linda who offers him room and board in exchange for doing some chores around the property.  Meanwhile, he engages the locals in arm wrestling contests he can easily best them in. Meanwhile, he’s being pursued by a world-class hitman, and also the FBI,

Italian director Sergio Martino is a prolific b-movie maestro known more for riding trends in giallo-style action, science fiction, western, and horror flicks and spinning them into low-budget knock-offs that capitalize on a ravenous public’s thirst for more. He would directed several such features every year throughout the 1970s into the early 1980s, some under a pseudonym, slowing down his output to try to concentrate more on better quality as he would get into Hands of Steel, which probably ranks among the most well-known of the films he directed.

Hands of Steel would star the hunky, muscle-bound Daniel Greene in the lead role, an a former Florida State defensive back-turned-actor who had been having some success on television as a recurring truck-drivin’ character named Dwayne Cooley in the popular night-time soap called “Falcon Crest”. The film would give him one of the rare leading roles in his career, with more people likely recognizing him for small appearances in cult favorite comedies from the Farrelly Brothers like Kingpin and Me Myself and Irene. Truth be told, what Greene has in physical presence he lacks in charisma, which makes him somewhat of a perfect person to cast as this cybernetic entity who struggles with showing, or perhaps having, emotions to share.  He does labor to stay credible when it’s written for his character to have romantic feelings toward the motel owner who helps him out, which, in terms of Terminator comparisons, would be like Arnold Schwarzenegger trying to take on playing the Kyle Reese role for a while halfway through the movie.

Though an Italian film, Hands of Steel benefits from locale work that includes Arizona, and some shots of the Grand Canyon.  Tragedy would strike the production when supporting actor Claudio Cassellini would lose his life when the helicopter’s rotor blades would strike into the underside of the Navajo Bridge in northern Arizona, resulting in it crashing into the canyon below.  John Saxon would have been spared that ill fate, as Cassellini’s role was created because Jon Saxon a SAG member, would not shoot in the United States for a non-union film like Hands of Steel for fear of being kicked out of the guild. While a tragedy for Cassellini, it also leaves open a logic loophole within the movie that this world-class assassin could have been hired from the get-go to take out the environmental leader rather than waste a lot of time and money on a risky brainwashed cyborg scheme.

On the down side, the acting is very stiff, with no help coming from the obvious overdub for nearly every character, with only John Saxon appearing to look like the words are actually coming out of his mouth at the time he says them.  Special effects fare little better, including some sort of thermal computer device that looks like it was created for the Atari 2600, and, in one of the film’s more audacious of surprises that will delight those who love its weirdness, a bazooka-caliber gun that shoots lasers with ultra-destructive powers.  We even learn that Paco’s not the only cyborg in town, and that not all of them come as beefy as he’s made up, including ones who look identical to Daryl Hannah’s Pris from Blade Runner, with see-through plastic skirts and metal claws on their fingers.  The ending also leaves this film with a whimper instead of a bang, with a freeze-frame of the words, “IT WAS A DAY IN OUR NEAR FUTURE THE ERA OF THE CYBORG HAD BEGUN” (Huh?), causing those who might be on the fence about how to feel overall about Hands of Steel (like me) left deflated that there was much of a game plan for the film prior to the day they started to roll film.

All in all, fans of action oriented b-movies may get some mileage out of this gloriously odd premise, but it’s slim pickings for mainstream audiences or those who don’t regularly feast on drive-in cinema. Nevertheless, for those who want to get some mileage describing to their co-workers about that “crazy movie I watched last night”, there’s more than enough insanity (and inanity) within Hands of Steel to make for an amusing anecdotal film discussion.

Qwipster’s rating: C

MPAA rated: R for strong violence, some nudity, and language
Running time: 94 min.

Cast: Daniel Greene, Janet Agren, John Saxon, Claudio Cassellini, George Eastman, Roberto Bisacco, Amy Werba, Donald O’Brien
Director: Sergio Martino
Screenplay: Elisa Briganti, Sergio Martino, Saul Sasha, John Crowther