UNIVERBAL SOLDIER

UNIVERSAL SOLDIER (1992)
dir: Roland Emmerich

MAD Australia #316, January 1993
w & a: Steve Lopes

Luc Deveraux (Jean-Claude Van Damme) was a soldier in Vietnam in 1969 who disobeyed the orders of his commanding officer Andrew Scott (Dolph Lundgren), who became psychotic and demanded Luc shoot an innocent couple. During the scuffle, they kill each other, and in the current time of 1992 are re-animated into the perfect soldiers ala Robocop, under the supervision of Col Perry (Ed O'Ross). They have been deployed to handle a hostage situation, which is being covered by TV reporter Victoria Roberts (Ally Walker).

Luc has a clue about who he was and Victoria knows too much, so she's run away to escape the robo-soldiers who are now after her, with Luc also being chased and not far behind. Luc is capable of running the speed of any car and lifting it as well. They check into a hotel room for safety where Luc has overheated and takes off his clothes, recharges h9mself, and packs himself in ice. The soldiers are not far behind and shoot up the hotel.

Victoria's crew has been killed, and she and Luc have been framed for their murder. While they are arrested and put on a prison transfer bus with police escorts, Andrew's memory as a psychotic Vietnam sergeant is re-triggered, he breaks loose, and runs the bus off the road. Luc returns to his parents, who assume he was dead. Andrew finds him and this leads to a climactic fight scene.

Jacko was the Energizer spokesperson during the brief US obsession with Australia in the late eighties. Ivan Drago was Dolph Lundgren's character in Rocky III.

There are a couple of other scenes covered in this next one...

Cracked #277, December 1992
w: Rich Kreigel (Lou Silverstone)
a: Walter Brogan

The hotel here is run by Norman Bates and his dead mother from Psycho. That's what you get when you have a hotel run by a guy and his mother in a movie.

An earlier fight scene ensues when they go to a diner and Luc keeps eating, but doesn't realize it costs money and confronts him, so he beats everyone up and trashes the place. They meet the doctor who developed the universal soldiers (Jerry Orbach) who figure out how he can be deprogrammed.