Astron-6, the Canadian filmmaking group responsible for some of the craziest and goriest homages to exploitation cinema of the 70’s and 80’s in recent memory, never fail to impress me. Except for that time they made Manborg, a high-spirited but annoyingly brief pastiche of indie sci-fi schlock classics like Eliminators and 1990: The Bronx Warriors among many others. Though I was amazed that they made that flick for less than the price of a sensible used car originally purchased in 1992 it failed to be anything close to the sum of its parts. I still recommend it as a decent slice of self-aware genre cheese.
The best part of Manborg came once the end credits concluded rolling and it’s a fake trailer for a much better feature that remains frustratingly unmade: Bio-Cop. In the span of six glorious minutes we get a brilliant short film that mashes together every awesome action, sci-fi, and horror classic of the VHS era’s better days but with the kind of diabolical twist Astron-6 is known for springing on their unprepared audiences.
What has really endured Astron-6’s creative aesthetic to me is their devotion to recreating the experience of watching one of their movies like Manborg or the insanely fun Father’s Day on home video or on cable late at night. As much as I love 2007’s Grindhouse I always thought that Astron-6’s movies and Jason Eisener’s fantastic Hobo with a Shotgun were more faithful in treating audiences to an authentic night at the local drive-in theater. Their movies are true exploitation flicks because they’re made with extremely tight budgets, grand imaginations, and an honest and infallible love for the art of creating memorable celluloid sleaze.
Bio-Cop will be familiar to anyone who ever took a trip to their neighborhood Mom & Pop video shop on a slow Friday evening and took home a stack of the movies that had the bloodiest and most lurid box art (which is how a lot of seriously awful flicks got noticed in the first place), then hit the 7-11 on the way home for a few cases of cheap beer and a few bags of Combos. It’s like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup but only if it was a Maniac Cop cup with a rich filling of Street Trash and The Incredible Melting Man. To talk about what this trailer contains would be to spoil the riches that await you once you click the play button.
Finding a good quality copy of the Bio-Cop trailer online has been a pain in the ass that not even marriage could equate, but recently I found one on YouTube….in Hungarian.
I’ve also included the trailer in English if you must absolutely insist on understanding the dialogue. The quality of this video is a few step downs visually from the Hungarian language version due to the uploader recording it straight off of the television screen.
UPDATED! Here’s a much better version of the trailer in English.
The Renegade Version 