In 1988, Mystery Science Theater 3000 debuted on a local television station in Minneapolis. Although it goes through many different iterations and channels over the years, the premise has always been the same: to make fun of bad movies with a loving smirk.

Yes, the movies are terrible. Sometimes they are horrible beyond the pallor. Corn Mystery Science Theater movies generally aren’t the kind that actively try to be a cult classic. Maybe no one was paying attention to the development of the film, maybe the budgets were cut halfway, maybe everyone just needed a paycheck. Independently, MST3K movies can look like rubbish from movie history. No one knows how or why they exist, but to derive joy from them in any way possible is a gift.

So it is in the best possible way that the 1996 Albert Pyun film Omega’s fate is a Mystery Science Theater movie. If the name Pyun is familiar to you, you are probably a MST3K veteran; they riffed on his Alien in LA, in which the protagonist learns that his father has fatally fallen into a bottomless hole.

Things are just as dark in Omega’s fate. There was a conflict between humans and robots, and the robots won. But, as audiences learn in an opening monologue quoting Dylan Thomas, delivered by star Rutger Hauer (most famous for Blade runner), a human soldier was able to fire one last shot after a nuclear bomb sent the world back to the Dark Ages.

Their ultimate attack went straight into the lineup of the assassin robot Omega Doom (Hauer). Its programming has been rewritten for not make the destruction of all mankind his goal, though at this point it doesn’t matter much. Humanity is screwed up. Only the robots and rumors of scattered human encampments remain.

But despite what other robot apocalypse movies like The Terminator I would tell you that these robots are not part of a hive mind. They break into gangs called Roms and Droids, for reasons the movie doesn’t explain. Roma are more advanced which you can tell because they wear black, have the same hairstyle and wear wrap-around sunglasses, like on a low budget Matrix precursors.

As a roaming robot, Omega Doom roams a city of droids and warring Roma. A droid, Marko (Jahi Zuri) plays football with the head of another robot, now known as Head (Norbert Weisser, who played a Norwegian in the original The thing). Omega Doom saves him and is rewarded with knowledge of a secret stash of guns, a weapon that could tip the robot gang conflict for either side.

Omega’s fate then becomes a Yojimbo– movie style, which means it’s a film influenced by Dashiell Hammett’s 1929 detective story Red harvest. In Red harvest, an anonymous detective arrives in a crime-ridden city and plays the city’s gangs against each other, forcing them to save the city by eliminating each other.

Hammett’s novel is pure hard excitement, and Akira Kurosawa’s novel Yojimbo is a masterpiece. Omega’s fate is neither. The costumes are cheap, the script isn’t as smart as he thinks it is, and everyone has awkward robot steps. Surrounding it all is Hauer, in his typical nonchalant pose.

Pyum told Gizmodo in 2012 that Hauer is “methodical in the way he works, and he has a kind of naturalness – it’s not arrogance, but it does make sense, and it travels with him and it does. part of it. And I wanted to make him stand out, but it can’t really come out when he’s playing an ordinary person. This is what made him so effective in Blade runner, and he plays the role of a stoic alien in Omega Doom good enough.

But the script is terrible, the sets are terrible and everyone is rushing. This is very fun. Omega’s fate passes the biggest test of any movie in hopes of going from “bad” to “so bad it’s good” – at 83 minutes it doesn’t go past its welcome. So if you and your buddies want to make yours MST3K night, get started before them.

Omega’s fate is streaming on Amazon Prime.