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Abe is a simple little flick by London filmmaker Rob McLellan, taking just the few intense minutes out of Silence of the Lambs where Buffalo Bill is addressing the girl in the well, but recasting the sexually infuriated psychopathic transvestite with a Robot Butler. If you're not sold on that blurb alone, then you need to pack up your Spock ears and get the fuck out of nerd town before the Asimov posse -- the Asimosse -- gets wind of it.

We don't cotton to your ilk around here.

Good sci-fi is all about pushing boundaries, and while "the murderous robot" certainly isn't a new trope, it hasn't been pulled off in this fashion, or this well, in any mainstream movie I've seen. Maybe it's the lack of greater context that makes Abe so effectively creepy, or maybe it's the design -- the hunched posture, the unerring immediacy with which he slices that moth in half, the wide, unblinking eyes -- or maybe it's just the British accent.

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Seriously, Brits, do you not see what we Americans did to you? It was a subtle revenge: For a few decades there we had an inarguable stranglehold on pop culture, and we used it to cast every single British person as a disturbing sociopath masquerading as an esteemed gentleman. The Hollywood blockade is breaking apart now, but the damage is done: Even the evil robots in your own films are posh now. Don't you see what we've done? You're starting to consider yourselves the villains!

Don't believe me? Fine. Re-dub Abe with a hillbilly drawl and see what the effect is:

"Well, I tell you whut: I ain't got no lovin' from y'all, so I reckon I'ma cut you in the face till I get some."

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Still a bit disturbing, but it's less "brilliant, psychotic machine warped by love" and more "somebody built a fuck-bot and accidentally gave it a knife."