Country: U.S.

Year: 1996

Cast: Richard Grieco, Lara Harris, Corbin Bernsen, Brittany Ashton Holmes, Robin Gammell, Ilia Volokh, Renato Powell, Conrad Goode, Grant Mathias, Cole Nelson, Jeff Dixon.

Director: Victoria Muspratt.

MPAA Rating: R

AKA: Circuit Breaker

This movie is an insufferably tedious Corman produced knock-off of Dead Calm set in space that has only one thing going for it, Corbin Bernsen. Alas even this esteemed actor realized half way through shooting what a steaming pile of crap he'd been conned into starring in and gave up. That the villain of the piece is played by a bloated and dazed Richard Grieco, who plays one of the least convincing Cyborgs in cinematic history, does little to alleviate the torture which audience members must endure. The supporting cast, which includes Edie McClurg (Elvira, Mistress of the Dark) and Brittany Ashton Holmes (The Little Rascals), whose presence is wasted, put forth a noble and valiant effort that sadly does little to save this tasteless hasty pudding.

Compared to Future War, which was an incoherent mess shot on a bubblegum budget, Inhumanoid is an incoherent mess shot on a super sized McDonald's lunch menu budget. The downside is you have to suffer through not only Richard Grieco's cringe-worthy performance but also a sex scene with him too. It's soul shuddering cinema!

And what, exactly, is going on here?

Good question!

A husband, wife, and their daughter encounter an hostile entity while traveling through the depths of interstellar space.

The Setting: Space, primarily aboard a small commercial grade private space vessel.

The Characters: The main characters are a married couple, Katrina (Lara Harris) and Foster Carver (Corbin Bernsen), and their daughter Amy (Brittany Ashton Holmes). We also encounter one Dr. Marianne Snow of the EMMC (Emergency Mobile Medical Center) who is actually a secondary character that's more interesting than the villain. The villain being one 'Adam' (Richard Grieco) who is supposed to be a cyborg.

The Story: While traveling through space aboard their personal little craft space family Robinson encounter problems, get into trouble, and then things really fall apart. There's a few twists, like the wife apparently having a shady past. It's a bit of a unintentional mystery involving her being an addict. It's all very strange, witness the fact the wife, at one point, wanders into the corridors, strips naked, then hallucinates being raped by this space-beast-werewolf thing. . .

From here on the movie really becomes a disjointed mess. The wife stumbles back into bed without saying much of anything about her psychotic episode but, before you can blink, they are talking to some doctor woman via view screen then discovering a derelict vessel. The husband decides to investigate, the derelict vessel not the female doctor, thus leaving his wife and child alone on their pleasure craft.

What? I thought people only did stupid things like this in twilight zone episodes!

The Inhumanity: Inhumanoid is a mind boggling mess of a movie. For instance Inhumanoid has a Cyborg in it, but it isn't really a Cyborg movie. There's a woman who, apparently, is a drug addict experiencing a psychotic episode. Yet the movie never even tries to explore the psychological aspects that could have made it a provocative horror thriller. Worst of all it's set aboard a spaceship traveling in space, yet it's not a proper space opera.

Availability: This one may be hard to track down as it's video title is "Circuit Breaker". Alas it has been released on VHS and Laserdisc (from Image Entertainment) but apparently not DVD. Which is odd considering this played as part of the "Roger Corman Presents" Showtime lineup. I believe most of those titles have made it to DVD but are OOP. Perhaps that's the case here, alas I have been unable to confirm this.

Moral: One shouldn't expect much of movies released straight to cable TV.

The plot of Inhumanoid plays like a random encounter campaign from Hell. What's worse the GM's using all the optional encounter keys, including the one's for disease, shipboard malfunctions, and mental health! No sooner have the characters encountered one problem and almost dealt with it than they are right back into the thick of it with a new encounter/problem. While that makes this movie one holy heck of a mess for the average movie watcher it's actually something else altogether for us gamers.

Game Masters should watch this movie very carefully to see how to balance (or not) the problems of internal (personal) and external (the totally random craziness) issues. What makes this movie so fascinating to watch as a GM is those moments when you see the characters heading toward trouble and just know that's when the notes would start getting passed around the table.

That the family is obviously dysfunctional and are trying to cope is a great metaphor for the gaming group. After all every GM knows there are "issues" within every group that can be exploited when required. Not that we ever would. Just saying. However there was one redeeming moment in the movie. That's when this appeared. . .

This ship appears at the very beginning of the movie. To the average couch spectator the ship's appearance, which literally occurs during the title sequence, and disappearance as the movie plays out as a flashback of events that led up to the vessel's arrival may seem insignificant. But watching the movie through the eyes of a GM this is golden! It's throwaway scenes like this where we get some of our best ideas from.

In short the vessel, which is never properly developed, is a sort of M*A*S*H unit in space; complete with commandos dressed in medical white! No, really, see for yourself. . .

What may seem absurd to everyone else becomes campaign fodder for us GMs. Just imagine the possibilities of a mobile medical base! A quick Google image search and a bit of photo-shopping later and we have the beginning of a adventure starter:

Now all we need to do is flesh out the what's, why's, and how's. For that we will need a rule system. But which to choose?

Character Creation: There are a number of possibilities for adapting such movies for use within role-playing settings. Generally you want to pick a set of rules that are suited to the setting. Luckily Inhumanoid is not a complex movie with a lot of high tech gadgets or bizarre aliens to convert, so that means you can probably get by with a good generic universal system. However as character creation is an organic outgrowth of the rule system always be sure that your RPG can handle the genre for which it will be used. In this case the genre is light space opera with undertones of horror.

Mechanics: There are a megaton of systems on the market today that could easily be used to adapt Inhumanoid as the basis of a role-playing adventure. For instance a lot of supplementary material exists for the D20 product line- ranging from d20 versions of Star Wars and Traveller to totally original, sometimes generic, rule templates. However D20 is not for everyone nor is it the only established multi-genre generic rule set worth considering. For instance there is GURPS and Fuzion; both of which have supplementary rules material that could provide stage dressing and backdrop to flesh out Inhumanoid's threadbare setting. There are also genre specific generic rules available, such as Hardnova, and a number of older out of print games available.

While it may be more difficult to find material for certain older systems the benefit of using them is you don't have to wait to see if further supplements ever get published. Too, in many cases, these older games can be purchased for half the price of a new RPG. Pressed for money? Try out the demo/free versions of systems like: Adventures in Space, Future Shadows, or the classic Star Frontiers rule set. There are also lite fast play rule versions of games freely available for download; games like Light Speed and Transhuman Space.

Other systems that appear promising include: Core Command, Nebuleon, Spacemaster, StarCluster, or perhaps the Tri-Stat Core System.

Don't just grab the first "science fiction" system that you find. There are more than enough game systems out there so shop around, read the rules, and be sure the system is capable of doing what you want it to do before purchasing it.

Inhumanoid is a strange little flick. It's like the first ten or so minutes were based on a really great sounding idea for a quickie space opera adventure film that got tacked onto someone's really bad elementary school script. We're talking a script that had obviously been sitting in a moldy old sock drawer since the author was thirteen yet, amazingly, this doesn't seem to have bothered anyone. Which perhaps explains why nothing in this heinous waste of a movie makes the least bit of sense.

If you can imagine a movie whose basic plot was lifted from Dead Calm but takes place in a low budget and totally uninspired Event Horizon style setting with a classic Lost in Space (the series) gone wrong feel that's basically this movie.

Inhumanoid is a experience best shared with friends who like to verbally annihilate bad movies after the end credits roll. Of course I totally recommend this bewildering piece of trash cinema as grade-A viewing for bad movie night. You really never know what's coming next, which is always a plus. Sure it could have been better but that's the point. You watch this and come away wondering how it was ever made and wishing you could somehow magically re-edit it.

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Copyright © C. Demetrius Morgan