Gimme Some HANDS OF STEEL

Good buddy David Zuzelo has been treating faithful readers with his Casual (Un)Dress Fridays for several months now, serving up a heaping helping of such luscious Eurotrash lovelies as Uschi Digard, Edwige Fenech, Lina Romay and Christina Lindberg. Today's bevy of Janet Agren pix reminded me that I've never mentioned the awesomeness that is HANDS OF STEEL here.

Consider that oversight rectified.

Straight out of the "Box of How’d I Miss THIS?!", HANDS OF STEEL (aka ATOMIC CYBORG) is a perhaps the single most mind-blowing post-environmental-apocalypse, killer cyborg, arm-wrestling movie.

You heard me right.

Daniel Green stars as Paco Querak (seriously, that's the character's never-explained name), a half-man, half-machine assassin sent to kill a pro-ecology revolutionary in a pollution-riddled "near future". At the last minute, Querak's human side takes over and he's unable to complete the mission, sending him on the run from both the Feds and his handlers, a mysterious corporation headed by the ever-scowling John Saxon.

After driving through acid rain and hiking across the barren desert Querak ends up at an Arizona motel/bar owned by the lovely Linda (Janet Agren who fails to get nuded up), which also happens to be the hangout for a rag-tag band of rowdy, beer-drinking, truck-driving arm wrestlers including the great George Eastman as Raoul Morales.

To describe much more of what happens during HANDS OF STEEL’s near-perfect 94-minute running time would spoil the fun, but I will say that it shamelessly lifts from THE TERMINATOR and BLADE RUNNER, not to mention countless "lone wolf arrives in town and has to deal with homicidal locals" revenge flicks.

Despite a sad postscript – Italian character actor Claudio Cassinelli who played hitman Peter Hallo died in a helicopter crash during filming – HANDS OF STEEL is a startling mish-mash of genres that makes for an experience akin to watching an afternoon of 80s Cannon flicks on acid.

In other words, don’t miss it.