| Circuitry Man | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Steven Lovy |
| Written by |
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| Produced by |
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| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Jamie Thompson |
| Edited by |
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| Music by | Deborah Holland |
Production companies | |
| Distributed by | Skouras Pictures [1] |
Release dates |
October 31, 1990 |
Running time | 93 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Circuitry Man is a 1990 American post apocalyptic science fiction film directed by Steven Lovy and starring Jim Metzler, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson and Vernon Wells. It was followed by a sequel, Plughead Rewired: Circuitry Man II , in 1994.
In post-apocalyptic 2020, pollution has killed off the natural world and the population is forced to live underground. A woman attempts to smuggle a suitcase of contraband drug/chips from Los Angeles to the underground remnants of New York City, while eluding both police and gangsters. Along the way, she is aided by a romantic bio-mechanical pony-tailed android and pursued by Plughead, a villain with the ability to tap into people's minds.
Circuitry Man was adapted from a student film Steven Lovy made while attending UCLA. Shooting began in July 1989 and took place in Los Angeles and Antelope Valley, California. [1]
Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called it "nothing if not derivative" but "consistently distinctive and funny". [2] In The Psychotronic Video Guide , Michael Weldon described it as "a clever, sometimes funny, well-made science fiction adventure" that is more fun than Hardware or Total Recall , two science fiction films that were also released in 1990. [3] Tech Noir author Paul Meehan, discussing film noir in science fiction, wrote that the film attempts to overcome its low budget with gratuitous violence but called Wells "memorably nasty". [4]