Manborg
This movie made for $1000 is endearingly lo-fi DIY entertainment
Can you really make a movie for $1000? Director/writer/editor/actor Steven Kostanski certainly gives it his best shot with the ultra low budget Manborg. Made with a lot of love and sticky back plastic over three years it’s purposefully ridiculous – this is the kind of bizarre future distopia where the half man/half machine Manborg (Matthew Kennedy) and his companions are forced to fight in the Terror-Octogon for the amusement of Draculon (Adam Brooks) and his evil hell hordes.
The effects (also by Kostanski) are an amalgam of stop motion, models, plasticine, prosthetic masks and computer graphics giving the entire film a weird superimposed look. It’s a strange and unique movie, frequently funny but never boring, it plays on the clichés amping them to absurd levels of insanity. Manborg isn’t supposed to be convincing but creates its own hyper world cobbled together from elements of Mortal Kombat, Robocop, Evil Dead and Power Rangers all served up with a dash of trashy 80s cheese. The colour scheme is garish and nausea-inducing but somehow Manborg is endearingly lo-fi DIY entertainment and Kostanski should be applauded for what he’s achieved on this minimal budget.