American Cyborg: Steel Warrior is a 1993 American post-apocalyptic science fiction action film best known as the final feature by The Cannon Group.
After nuclear war decimates civilization, the vast majority of humanity is sterile and the remnants of civilization are controlled by brutal AI's. The last mother on Earth takes her artificially-inseminated child through a Wretched Hive city to escape the nightmare, but is chased by a cyborg assassin. A warrior shows up to save the two, but he has a secret of his own...
The film was distributed on VHS by Warner Home Video.
This film contains examples of:
- A World Half Full: A nuclear war has rendered everybody infertile, and everybody is stuck in settlements controlled by AI's. Humanity is slowly circling the drain till extinction, and cyborgs working for the robot overlords enforce their totalitarian will. Also there's cannibal raiders. However, a resistance is burgeoning in Europe, and scientists have perfected artificial insemination.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The remnants of humanity are controlled by AI's in walled cities content to let their predecessors die out.
- And the Adventure Continues: Austin gets Mary and the fetus to safety, but elects to stay behind and fight the System.
- Big Bad: The System, an AI trying to destroy the last fetus on Earth.
- Captured by Cannibals: Mary gets captured by the Leeches, a gang of cannibal mutants who want to eat her and the fetus. Austin saves them both.
- Childless Dystopia: There have been no births in 17 years, and humanity is just waiting for extinction. However, there is hope, as a group of scientists have managed to make a test tube baby.
- Creepy Crossdresser: Mary is accosted by a gang of crossdressing raiders before being rescued by Austin.
- Cyborg: The System uses cyborgs bound to its will as enforcers. It turns out Austin is one too, with Fake Memories that made him think he was human.
- Eats Babies: The Leeches want to eat the fetus alongside its mother.
- Food Pills: Mary takes RZB to get all her nutrition. Austin considers it an inferior substitute to real food.
- Generic Doomsday Villain: The cyborg exists entirely to be an Implacable Man pursuing our heroes, with absolutely no characterization beyond such. He doesn't even get a name.
- Living MacGuffin: The heroes are seeking to bring an artificially-inseminated fetus to a boat where an incubation chamber awaits. The villains are seeking to eliminate said fetus.
- No Name Given: The cyborg is just called "the cyborg." Given that it's part of a new line of presumably-identical killing machines, he might not even have a name.
- Orcus on His Throne: The System doesn't do anything on its own, only even appearing as a voice giving the cyborg orders. Justified in that it's an AI and likely doesn't even have a body.
- Race Against the Clock: The test tube baby can only survive 36 hours outside an artificial womb.
- Super-Toughness: The cyborg is so tough it can survive stab wounds, great heights, impalement and explosive cave-ins.
- Terminator Impersonator: The main antagonist is a ruthless cyborg dressed in black, under the control of an AI attempting to kill a mother to prevent her son from ending its dystopian rule.
- Tomato in the Mirror: Turns out Austin was a cyborg this whole time and didn't know it.
- Uterine Replicator: Our heroes are taking a test tube fetus to an artificial womb so it can grow into the first child born in 17 years.
