METAL SHIFTERS is another low budget Canadian sci-fi oddity, this one happy enough to copy the likes of THE TERMINATOR and ROBOCOP. Some alien space bacteria comes to earth on a crashed satellite - courtesy of those pesky Russians and in a scene similar to THE BLOB - and has the ability to 'control' metal, shortly animating a random giant robot that just so happens to be hanging around in a scrapyard. What follows is a rampage of destruction.

The problem with this film is that it's all very family friendly and therefore not at all menacing. I was pleasantly surprised by the calibre of the CGI effects work, which is not to be sniffed at, but otherwise the film is largely dull. Too much of it consists of people running around and the robot getting blown up before joining back together again, and I could do without the family dynamics of the plot. Plus there's the usual curse of badly-written characters acted by below-par TV stars, which makes this a less-than-entertaining experience.

The plot revolves around a bacteria from space which eats metal and has the power to animate said metal objects. The bacteria came from a satellite that crashed to earth and was sold for scrap by the central character, Jake, and his brother, Ethan. I know the summary written by IMDb editors says it was a meteorite, but it is identified early on that it's a satellite as Jake points out to his brother that parts of the wreckage have Russian writing on them (I guess the eds missed that).

Anyway, the bacteria spreads to an 18 foot tall scrap metal 'Golem' figure which was built by the scrap yard owner as a display for some local event. The scrap metal giant then comes to life and proceeds to wander about the town (very slowly, mind you. Scrap metal can't walk very fast),killing everyone it comes into contact with.

As said, it wasn't as bad as I expected. The sets were authentic looking and the acting passable. The main problem I had was with the camera work. In the scene where Jake meets his old love interest in a parking lot, it appears as if the cameraman has developed a sudden case of advanced Parkinson's disease. The camera shakes around so much, I was almost left feeling dizzy.

I won't reveal the ending but let's just say that the movie's final message seemed to be that almost any problem can be overcome by applying copious amounts of alcohol. I give it 3/10.

A vast majority of the time, I intensely dislike SyFy's output, but there have also been some surprisingly tolerable if not great projects. Fortunately for Iron Invader, it falls into the latter category. The acting while not great is decent, likewise with the special effects with the Golem creature actually quite good, and the film with a somewhat intriguing concept starts off quite well. Sadly, the film loses it at the halfway mark, with the camera work becoming increasingly dizzying, the limited production values becoming more obvious and the pace becoming sluggish. While intriguing and starting off fine, the story is too thin to sustain the running time, the characters are rather shallow and the script is laughable in places. In conclusion, not good, not awful, just alright. 4/10 Bethany Cox