#716 – Brain 17 (1984)

Brain 17 (1984)

Film review #715

Director: Michael Part

SYNOPSIS: The world’s most powerful supercomputer, Brain, decides to rebel its creators, and the military group known as The Defenders are tasked to find it. Brain has developed an army of deadly giant robots to inflict terror on the populace, and when one of them kills Stevie’s family, he finds he can communicate it, as it rebels against Brain to help out Stevie and the Defenders…

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Brain 17 is a 1982 TV movie that is an edited version of Brain 17, a TV series originally from Japan and dubbed in the U.S. The plot concerns the development of the world’s most powerful supercomputer, Brain, that goes rogue and develops an army of deadly robots. One such robot, named “one-seven” goes on a rampage and kills multiple people, including young man Stevie’s family. One -seven rebels against Brain, and allows itself to communicate with Stevie, coming to help him when he is in danger and even allowing Stevie to pilot it. The original TV series is your standard giant mecha series of giant robots fighting each other in a monster-of-the-week format. This TV movie throws together a few of the episodes and focuses on the fights between the robots, and skips over any character development. As such, it at least holds your attention over the course of seventy minutes; well, if you’re a younger person anyway.

The robot designs are pretty neat: 17 looks very similar to the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers Megazord, although he predates that series by about ten years. The dubbing is about the quality you would expect from dubbing in the 1980s, in that it is quite poor. There’s not much else to say about this film; it delivers what you would expect it to: doesn’t make much sense and has little depth being heavily edited a few TV episodes into a single film, but some fun, over-the-top giant mecha fights and creative designs that are at least mildly interesting.