Short Circuit | 1986 | Final | US One Sheet

Short Circuit is a 1986 film directed by John Badham. It was produced by David Foster and Lawrence Turman with the screenplay being co-written by S. S. Wilson and Brent Maddock. The films stars Ally Sheedy, Steve Guttenberg, Fisher Stevens, Austin Pendleton and G. W. Bailey.

The storyline of Short Circuit is based on Number 5. A robot built by NOVA Laboratories and is part of a series of prototypes for the US military under the S.A.I.N.T. (Strategic Artificially Intelligent Nuclear Transport) project. Unfortunately for Number 5 he is hit by lightning which causes a power surge, scrambling his programming and giving him a sense of free will. He flees the facility and following his need for ‘input’ he meets Stephanie Speck, who realises he is a military project and contacts NOVA. When NOVA arrive to capture Number 5 it doesn’t go according to plan and he escapes capture, instead going on an adventure to convince his creator he ‘is alive’.

Apparently the relative cost to produce the film was low and the most expensive part of the film was Number 5. Due to the different sequences, several different versions were made. Number 5 was designed by Syd Mead, the “visual futurist” famous for his work on Blade Runner and Tron.

Short Circuit received mixed reviews upon its release. Variety magazine wrote, “Short Circuit is a hip, sexless sci-fi sendup” and praised the writers “for some terrific dialogue that would have been a lot less disarming if not for the winsome robot and Sheedy’s affection for it. Guttenberg plays his best goofy self”. However, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times rated as one and a half stars out of four and called it “too cute for its own good”.

Produced on an estimated budget of $9m the film was a commercial success and grossed $40,697,761 in box office receipts in the US alone. Due to its commercial success a sequel called Short Circuit 2 was released in 1988. There was a script for a possible third film written in 1989 and rewritten in 1990, but it was found unsatisfactory by the producers, and the project was subsequently scrapped.

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