"The Retaliator" / "Programmed To Kill" would probably have been better if it had focused more on Sandahl Bergman's nearly unstoppable robot / killing machine and less on Robert Ginty's CIA agent / mercenary. In the pantheon of 1980's action stars, Ginty ranks pretty low. He just doesn't have much charisma. His family troubles in this movie are dull, and his reckless character is not very likable (at one point, he even blows up a jeep full of American security guards just doing their job - trying to protect the government facility that he had just infiltrated!). Bergman is a good pick for the part of a female killing machine, but the script barely even gives her any speaking lines, and the budget doesn't allow for much in the way of special effects and extra powers. Some fine stunts, but too many of the action scenes are filmed in near-darkness. Pretty forgettable, all in all. *1/2 out of 4.
11 Reviews
You can't control women, let alone cyborg women
Coventry1 February 2015
Some five years ago, around the time of his untimely and unfortunate death, my movie buddy and I watched quite a lot of trashy Robert Ginty B-movies such as "Warrior of the Lost World", "White Fire" and – of course – "The Exterminator". We watched them as a tribute to Ginty, but obviously also because they always guarantee low-brained and ultra-violent entertainment. It's too bad that we couldn't get our filthy little hands on "Programmed to Kill" back then, because this also would have made a great installment for a Robert Ginty theme night. Although, in all fairness, it isn't Robert Ginty who steals the show here, but cult wench Sandahl Bergman. Also known as "The Retaliator", the plot is highly derivative of "The Terminator" (and arguably also of "Robocop", but it looks as if this film got released slightly earlier the same year) but correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think anyone is looking for originality or groundbreaking new story lines in an '80s actioner like this! Although a rather blatant rip- off, the script is nonetheless engaging and fast-paced, with plenty of gratuitous violence and cheesy dialogs. Bergman stars as Samira, a terrorist from the Middle East most wanted by the CIA because she herself is dangerous and because she's engaged to the brain of the terrorist organization. Together with her posse, Samira kills a bunch of tourists in Lebanon and takes two young American children hostage, but the CIA recruits mercenary Eric Mathews to set things right. The heavily wounded Samira is brought back to the States, but there she's secretly transformed into a cyborg and programmed to serve as a weapon against her former friends. This all goes well at first, but Samira's new circuits quickly go haywire and she turns against her masters. Once again, the reluctant Eric Mathews is brought in to save the day. "The Retaliator" – I actually prefer that title – is definitely a lot of fun while it lasts and features a couple of reasonably impressive and well-staged action sequences/stunts. In my personal favorite scene, Samira calls a CIA boss and kills him through shouting in the horn until his ears bleed. The climax is also quite exciting with a massive amount of explosions, machinery action and POV executions through cyborg-vision! Admittedly the film also won't make an everlasting impression and suffers from a few dull and pointless sub plots, like Mathews' troubled family situation. By the way, Ginty's teenage son Jason is played by Paul Walker – who also sadly passed away already – in one of his very first roles.
There... sure... is... something... going... haywire... here!
lastliberal4 July 2010
OK, you have seen Universal Soldier with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren. A real macho film.
This film came out five years earlier, and feature a female in the lead role - Golden Globe winner Sandahl Bergman (Conan the Barbarian, Red Sonja).
It's a mostly forgettable movie, but it is interesting in the fact that it is really timely right now. Bergman plays a Middle Eastern terrorist who is captured and turn against her friends after some nifty programming like the Universal Soldiers. But, as you may suspect, something goes wrong and she goes after those that cyborg-ed her.
I really only tuned into it because the initial action took place in Crete, and I couldn't resist that. Heck, I might have been there playing in a softball tournament when they were filming.
This film came out five years earlier, and feature a female in the lead role - Golden Globe winner Sandahl Bergman (Conan the Barbarian, Red Sonja).
It's a mostly forgettable movie, but it is interesting in the fact that it is really timely right now. Bergman plays a Middle Eastern terrorist who is captured and turn against her friends after some nifty programming like the Universal Soldiers. But, as you may suspect, something goes wrong and she goes after those that cyborg-ed her.
I really only tuned into it because the initial action took place in Crete, and I couldn't resist that. Heck, I might have been there playing in a softball tournament when they were filming.
Standard fare for the cyborg women sub-genre
udar5519 April 2022
A female terrorist (Sandahl Bergman) is captured during a raid in Greece and used as a guinea pig by the CIA in a secret experiment to turn her into a cyborg killing machine. Naturally, she goes haywire on her first mission and then sets out to kill anyone involved in the project, including the special agent (Robert Ginty) who captured her but soon turned on "the company." Watching this, I soon realized my whole life was a lie: I always felt Lady Terminator (1989), Eve of Destruction (1990) and Steel and Lace (1991) were the first in the "killer female cyborg" but this Allan Holzman & Robert Short film had them scooped. It works best when there is bloody action going on and whoever decided to cast Bergman as a mostly non-speaking, emotionless robot was a genius. James Booth has a rather thankless role as a bad guy in a suit and look for a young Paul Walker as Ginty's son.
Enjoyable TERMINATOR Rip-Off
geminiredblue15 February 2012
Warning: Spoilers
Cyborg movies were all the rage in the mid-80s after the release of THE TERMINATOR. That movie worked so well because it depicted a nightmarish vision of the future dominated by rampaging, killer machines. And while it had plenty of nifty sci-fi and cyborg effects, the human story was equally strong. Several years later, this movie came out. The version I saw called it THE RETALIATOR, but it's sometimes referred to as PROGRAMMED TO KILL. Personally, I like the shorter title better. But you can definitely see where the filmmakers wanted to cash in on the Terminator craze. Now then, the story: The movie opens in Crete where a group of terrorists open fire on innocent civilians and kidnap two children. The terrorists flee to Beirut with their hostages. So the CIA contacts a team of mercenaries led by the wooden Robert Ginty (from WARRIOR OF THE LOST WORLD, uh, fame?) to go in, kill the terrorists and rescue the children. In the course of the operation, they manage to rescue the kids and take a female terrorist as a prisoner. The terrorist, played expertly by Sandahl Bergman, is then subjected to a top-secret government project (aren't they all!) whereby they replace parts of her with machines, reprogram and transform her into a killer cyborg. The CIA then sends her back into Beirut to kill a top priority terrorist. As you probably suspect, not even two minutes after she completes her mission, the cyborg goes haywire and starts a rampage against her creators. So Ginty takes it upon himself to stop her. The kills are impressive, my personal favorite is the moment where she kills a guy using a car phone. But Ginty doesn't have much of a screen presence. Granted, he's mildly better in this one than in WOTLW, but that's not saying much. The biggest problem with this film is that it has a cheap feel to it. While it may not be all-that-cheap, afterall it was filmed in several countries, the movie looks and feels cheap. If you're just looking for some mild entertainment, then look no further. But if you want to really see the cyborg movie shine, go out and watch any or all of the following: THE TERMINATOR, TERMINATOR SALVATION, BLADE RUNNER, and ROBOCOP.
B-movie sci fi lacks the basic elements for enjoyable cinema
Leofwine_draca30 October 2016
Warning: Spoilers
THE RETALIATOR is a fairly middling entry in the field of low-budget TERMINATOR rip-offs which were all the rage back in the late '80s. There's an abundance of action, some of it done well, some of it done not so well, and a plot which also manages to drag in elements of ROBOCOP (the cyborg recovers her memory, which causes her to go berserk), but it's the low budget which ends up flooring this otherwise interesting epic-wannabe. Lots of the film takes place at night, which makes half of the action sequences hard to see and lessens their impact. The daytime scenes look and feel cheap and the film resorts to disorientating flashing lights at the climax in a vain attempt to be frightening.
Location filming was done in Israel, to give the movie an impressive international feel, but even that's not entirely successful (yeah, so it's been filmed in a foreign country - it still ends up looking cheap!). The only people I can think would want to watch this movie are those who are fans of the two leads. Robert Ginty (a dependable B-movie hero since THE EXTERMINATOR) is on hand as a tough mercenary who gets injured a lot and runs around looking hard with a big gun, giving one of his customary stony-faced performances. Sandahl Bergman (CONAN THE BARBARIAN) is the female robot, and scarily looks like James Woods in this movie. Although she's saddled with really cheesy '80s big hair at around halfway through the movie, she still manages to create quite a scary persona by looking very alien-like. Bergman is given a good, tough role and gets to do lots of amusing things like talk to a computer over the telephone!
There are a fair amount of car chases, cool car crashes, and plenty of explosions to keep things moving, along with lots of stunts (my favourite is when Ginty slides down the roof of a building to make his escape). The death scenes are frequent and often filmed so that they are powerful, with maximum impact (my favourite comes when the Retaliator squeals down a phone, bursting a guy's ear drum!), and there's a high body count for action lovers to enjoy. The violence level is high, with loads of shootings and people getting burned to a crisp, but the gore is low and limited to a severed hand and foot and there are no robotic special effects like the box would have you believe.
Instead we must make do with some cheap rip-off robo-cam work which, whilst colourful, is hardly in the same league as the one used in THE TERMINATOR, or even the alien-vision in PREDATOR. Bergman finally gets cut in half by a bulldozer of all things, and the best effect they can muster is to have the old trick of burying her body in the ground with a gruesome body (severed at the waist) above. But the end result is that this has all been done before, on a higher budget, and with the style, suspense, and excitement that this movie lacks, despite the best efforts of a genre cast. My advice is to give it a miss.
Location filming was done in Israel, to give the movie an impressive international feel, but even that's not entirely successful (yeah, so it's been filmed in a foreign country - it still ends up looking cheap!). The only people I can think would want to watch this movie are those who are fans of the two leads. Robert Ginty (a dependable B-movie hero since THE EXTERMINATOR) is on hand as a tough mercenary who gets injured a lot and runs around looking hard with a big gun, giving one of his customary stony-faced performances. Sandahl Bergman (CONAN THE BARBARIAN) is the female robot, and scarily looks like James Woods in this movie. Although she's saddled with really cheesy '80s big hair at around halfway through the movie, she still manages to create quite a scary persona by looking very alien-like. Bergman is given a good, tough role and gets to do lots of amusing things like talk to a computer over the telephone!
There are a fair amount of car chases, cool car crashes, and plenty of explosions to keep things moving, along with lots of stunts (my favourite is when Ginty slides down the roof of a building to make his escape). The death scenes are frequent and often filmed so that they are powerful, with maximum impact (my favourite comes when the Retaliator squeals down a phone, bursting a guy's ear drum!), and there's a high body count for action lovers to enjoy. The violence level is high, with loads of shootings and people getting burned to a crisp, but the gore is low and limited to a severed hand and foot and there are no robotic special effects like the box would have you believe.
Instead we must make do with some cheap rip-off robo-cam work which, whilst colourful, is hardly in the same league as the one used in THE TERMINATOR, or even the alien-vision in PREDATOR. Bergman finally gets cut in half by a bulldozer of all things, and the best effect they can muster is to have the old trick of burying her body in the ground with a gruesome body (severed at the waist) above. But the end result is that this has all been done before, on a higher budget, and with the style, suspense, and excitement that this movie lacks, despite the best efforts of a genre cast. My advice is to give it a miss.
ALTERNATE TITLE: The Retaliator
transgenic-2111923 February 2018
Just a note for convenience that this movie is alternately titled, "The Retaliator" on several online databases...just apparently not IMDB. Nor did it show up under searches on "retaliator" on IMDB as of the date of this "review".
I'm all for more robotic Sandahl
BandSAboutMovies3 February 2023
Warning: Spoilers
International terrorist leader Fatima (Sandahl Bergman, She, Hell Comes to Frogtown) tries to hijack a plane and runs right into a secret task force called the Retaliators and their leader Eric Matthews (Robert Ginty, Exterminator 2) and finds herself critically wounded. For some reason, the U. S. government takes her and turns her into a cyborg killing machine - I mean, she already was a killing machine - and sends her after her former friends. Sounds like a great plan said no one ever, as the moment she's hit in the head, she remembers that she's a bad girl and now has the robot powers to dispense even more death and destruction than ever before.
Director Allan Holzman also made Forbidden World, Grunt! The Wrestling Movie and Out of Control, so he knows how to make a good rental movie. Writer Robert Short also wrote Scared to Death and Rage of Honor, so yeah, he also knows how to make an entertaining film.
Keep in mind this is a Trans World Entertainment movie and not Cannon, because if Cannon made it, it would somehow even be even crazier and yes, this is also a movie that has Sandahl Bergman machine gun a school bus full of children. Things would be better if this movie inverted the screen time that Ginty and Bergman have, as she's the best thing in this.
Bonus: Paul Walker's third acting job after appearing on Highway to Heaven and in Monster In the Closet.
Director Allan Holzman also made Forbidden World, Grunt! The Wrestling Movie and Out of Control, so he knows how to make a good rental movie. Writer Robert Short also wrote Scared to Death and Rage of Honor, so yeah, he also knows how to make an entertaining film.
Keep in mind this is a Trans World Entertainment movie and not Cannon, because if Cannon made it, it would somehow even be even crazier and yes, this is also a movie that has Sandahl Bergman machine gun a school bus full of children. Things would be better if this movie inverted the screen time that Ginty and Bergman have, as she's the best thing in this.
Bonus: Paul Walker's third acting job after appearing on Highway to Heaven and in Monster In the Closet.
Mother of female action films
poustinik25 May 2006
Still-timely plot involving a female Middle Eastern terrorist who is caught and re-programmed to go after her former comrades ... all well and good, until the programming goes awry. Straightforward, simple plotting, the action is never allowed to lapse, AND ... this will never happen again ... NO political grandstanding on who is right and wrong in the Middle East situation. Suitably unpretentious production and very workmanlike acting all around, and Sandahl Bergman turns in a rather unnerving performance as Samira, the death machine; the only other actress this good in such a role at the time was Claire Wren in "Steel and Lace," another movie which will appeal to those who like this one. This movie cries out for a remake, maybe with Michelle Rodriguez, though it won't happen; a DVD release of this one would be better.
Great action film and one Hot Babe!
mobuc11 October 2002
I believe this to have something for everyone. 1) The female lead 'kicks ass'! So advocates of females in action-dominant roles is well portrayed. Though this is common today this movie was made in the 1980's! 2)This is a great 'Sci-fi'/Action story! Complete with plots & counter plots! It's cerebral- not just 'T & A'. Think of it as the 'Original Universal Soldier' before Van Damnn. 3) Though it involves U.S. intelligence and foreign terrorist, it takes a passive position of the 'right & wrong' of the parties involved. So, government cynics (e.g. X-File types, etc.) will love the U.S. being a 'dark' good guy and does get their ass kicked along with the foreign guys! <LOL> 4) This movie really deserves to be re-done using modern methods and upgrade the story line to include current events. It's a great idea! 5) Lastly, did I mention the actress portraying our cyborg is a 'piece of a--' ... Well you get the idea! <VBEG>
Baltimore, Md
Baltimore, Md
I remember this film from the 80's.
JoeB13126 February 2012
Warning: Spoilers
But the only line I remembered was the joke about "an E-ticket in Khadafy-land".
This could have been an okay movie, if it had people who could act in it. Robert Ginty looks like he wasn't even trying. I don't think Sandahl Bergman could ever act, so I give her a pass.
The plot is that a hot female terrorist is rebuilt as a killer cyborg so she can re-infiltrate her terror cell and kill all the terrorists. But instead, he programming snaps and she goes after anyone involved in either capturing her or turning her into a robot.
The movie has some interesting scenes, and some dumb ones. I think it could have been an interesting film with better dialog, better actors. It also looks like they ran out of money at the end, with the final scene being shot at a private airport. The scenes in Beruit (or wherever) looked really good. The scene where he's infiltrating an office building, not so much.
This could have been an okay movie, if it had people who could act in it. Robert Ginty looks like he wasn't even trying. I don't think Sandahl Bergman could ever act, so I give her a pass.
The plot is that a hot female terrorist is rebuilt as a killer cyborg so she can re-infiltrate her terror cell and kill all the terrorists. But instead, he programming snaps and she goes after anyone involved in either capturing her or turning her into a robot.
The movie has some interesting scenes, and some dumb ones. I think it could have been an interesting film with better dialog, better actors. It also looks like they ran out of money at the end, with the final scene being shot at a private airport. The scenes in Beruit (or wherever) looked really good. The scene where he's infiltrating an office building, not so much.
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