I need to start off by formally absolving my parents of any guilt the following may cause them. It was the 80s. This is what passed for children's entertainment. And more importantly, I turned out just fine.
Well, mostly fine.
A strong 70% fine. Give me that at least...
The 1980s were a simpler time for movie piracy. If you had two VHS players, a blank tape, and a video store you were in business.
Our local video rental store was called East Coast Video and it was basically a trailer home with video tapes stacked high on each wall. You browsed the titles, then pulled out the tape just enough to see if the cover art lived up to the promise of the title. The only thing that trumped swords and guns was half-naked ladies. The only thing that trumped that was half-naked ladies with swords and guns.
We were not serial pirates, but we did maintain a modest collection. My father stuck white labels to the spine of of black slipcovers. Movie titles were printed in blue ink in his wobbly, but legible handwriting. Those tapes lived in stuffed rows at the bottom of our movie cabinet. The real tapes lived on the open shelves up top.
One of those black-cased movies with a handwritten label was called Starchaser: The Legend of Orin and it may have been the movie I watched the most. It's an animated feature that rips off Star Wars in an almost perversely thorough way. I recommend that everyone watch it. Not because it's any good, but because it's deeply, deeply horrifying.
I may someday provide a complete plot synopsis for Starchaser, but for now all you really need to know is that it concerns a young man living in "Mine World" - an underground society enslaved and forced to dig for crystals. The young man finds a magical sword, receives instructions from an ethereal bearded man, and sets off on a quest to free his people.
What you should also know is that within the first 15 minutes of this movie, the young man (named Orin) witnesses an elderly slave LASER-WHIPPED IN TO THE EYES TO DEATH and HIS GIRLFRIEND STRANGLED TO DEATH IN FRONT OF HIM. This sets the tone for the rest of the movie, which is full to the brim with brutality, slavery, racism, and whatever the hell you call it when a guy reprograms a kidnapped, sentient, female robot to fall in love with her kidnapper.
All of that, however, is NOTHING compared to the forever nightmare known as the Mandroids.
You see, when Orin escape the mines, he finds himself in a strange swamp. This is the first living being he comes across.
This is Snuffleupagus. He wants Orin's body parts.
This is Grampa Russ. He also wants Orin's body parts.
If you've got any Mandroid anatomy questions, Grampa Russ rather helpfully has an open chest cavity. Look at all that science!
Oh, don't look now - it's Aunt Cribby! Up from Florida, she must be out on parole again. Good for you, Aunt Cribby.
So, to take a step back and break this down for you, we have a collective of so-called "Mandroids". They are, to the best of my reckoning, sentient robots who have decided that they like to wear human flesh and integrate human body parts wherever possible.
So, again, to clarify - these are LIVING ROBOTS who do not need organic parts, but ENJOY MURDERING HUMANS and STEALING THEIR LIMBS, ORGANS, AND SKIN TO WEAR.
Right. Okay. Onward.
So the Mandroids take Orin back to their cave, where Grampa Russ is happily sharpening his HUMAN SHEARS. Meanwhile, Snuffleupagus and Aunt Cribby are arguing over who gets Orin's right arm, because, as sharp-eyed readers may have noticed, they're both in the market for a good right arm.
Grampa Russ is a master of conflict resolution, so he ends the argument by stabbing Snuffleupagus in the back to make him shut up. Then he makes these faces at Orin:
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.
Anyway, Snuffleupagus notices the magical sword hilt in Orin's belt (which I'm not going to explain, because...just...lightsaber. It's a lightsaber.) This causes a new argument over the shiny sword hilt. Which leads to this:
Yeah. Snuffleupagus just cut Cribby in half.
Like most vivisections, this one takes a minute to set in. But anyway, Cribby's dead. Snuffleupagus tosses the hilt in fear. Grampa Russ tries to pick it up and...
He impales himself on the lightsaber. I'd feel bad about this, but again THEY MURDER PEOPLE AND WEAR THEIR SKIN.
Snuffleupagus is tweaking out, so Orin tricks him into letting the boy escape. On the way out, Orin blows past these two Texas Chainsaw-lookin' motherfuckers:
I feel like these are the Mandroids the other Mandroids make fun of. Anyway, Snuffleupagus tells them to go after Orin. Then, the denouement.
The Mandroid circle of life. Snuffleupagus raises the limb cutters and gazes triumphantly upon Grampa Russ' mostly fresh right arm. Hey, waste not, want not, amirite? Huh? HUH?
I still sort of love this movie, flaming, flesh-draped garbage heap that it is. It's all on YouTube (UPDATE: not anymore, apparently. Boo legitimate copyright claims), by the way. Here's the Mandroid scene, which ends when Fake Luke Skywalker gets saved by Fake Han Solo. You should watch it so you can hear the voices. The voices make it worse, somehow.
God, what am I doing? BURN YOUR COMPUTER. GO TO THE WOODS. THEY CAN'T GET YOU IN THE WOODS.