ROBOT MONSTER (1953)

DIRECTED by Phil Tucker

SCREENPLAY by Wyott Ordung

STARRING - George Nader as Roy

Claudia Barrett as Alice

Selena Royle as Mother

John Mylong as The Professor

Gregory Moffett as Johnny

Pamela Paulson as Carla

George Barrows as Ro-Man/Great Guidance

John Brown as Ro-Man/Great Guidance (voices)

PLOT - Earth. The future.

The entire population of Planet Earth has been wiped out by a visitor from the stars - the alien Ro-Man.

Using his fearsome Calcination ray, Ro-Man destroyed the human race...

But.

Somebody survived.

A scientist and his family tested a healing serum on themselves which rendered them immune to the effects of the Calculation ray. Now they are the last survivors of the human race. It is Ro-Man's new mission to wipe out these last few pitiful humans, even if he has to use his bare hands to do it...

PERFORMANCES - Robot Monster is frequently cited as one of the "worst movies ever made" or at the very least falling into the "so bad it's good" category, but is it REALLY as terrible as some people make out ? Let's see...

The acting is... pretty standard fare for a 50's Drive-in B-movie. Sure - it's wooden and the dialogue is clunky but that's to be expected from movies from this era really.

Our main characters are all pretty much walking cliches (once again as you'd expect).

We've got John Mylong as The Professor (no first name given, he's just "Professor", even to his wife and kids. Talk about scientific detachment). He's basically your typical 50's scientist complete with unconvincing "German accent".

Then there's his wife - Mother (Christ, they really busted the imagination coming up with these names didn't they...), she's played by Selena Royle in pretty much exactly the same manner as every good faithful wife/mother figure was at the time - i.e. she's confined to the kitchen for most of the movie.

Then we get the two kids - Johnny (Gregory Moffatt) and Carla (Pamela Paulson) - two of the worst child actors I've ever seen - Moffatt delivers entire scenes of dialogue where he doesn't even blink and Paulson just looks bored. Unsurprisingly they didn't grow up to be Hollywood A-listers...

Then we get our two "star crossed young lovers" - Alice (Claudia Barret) - the Prof's oldest daughter and Roy (George Nader) - the Prof's assistant who gets to be the traditional square jawed manly hero of the film. 

To be fair Barret and Nader probably give the best performances of the entire film - they've at least got on-screen chemistry together and Barret does succeed in making Alice both likeable and plucky, although she does appear to be trying not to laugh in the scene where Ro-Man abducts her. To be fair - who could blame her...

Which brings us to Ro-Man himself - probably one of the most maligned monsters in cinema history. Our titular Robot Monster is played by George Barrow and voiced by John Brown (presumably you wouldn't have been able to hear Barrow's voice underneath that diving helmet he's saddled with wearing). Basically Barrow just struts around like he's having a really shit day, waving his fist angrily at those pesky " Hu-mans" every few minutes, whilst Brown seems to have perfected a booming voice which almost sounds like a proto Darth Vader.

Anyway, it's a joint performance which whilst being fairly basic also manages to be spectacularly unhinged at the same time. A lot of fun.

SFX - Ro-Man is basically a bloke in a monkey costume with a diving helmet on his head. It's every bit as ridiculous (and funny) as it sounds. He honestly looks like can hardly navigate the dusty footpaths of Bronson Cave and it's environs, let alone be capable of wiping out all of mankind.

At one point Ro-Man's commanding officer steps in to finish off Ro-Man's botched attempt at killing the last survivors of Earth by unleashing a ray which BRINGS THE DINOSAURS BACK TO LIFE ! Quite what this is supposed to achieve I have no idea, but it happens. Cue lots of stock footage of dinosaurs fighting each other that's been ripped off from other (bigger budgeted) sci-fi movies. Some of the dinos are stop motion, others are real lizards superimposed onto a backdrop. Jurassic Park it isn't...

There's also some halfway decent model shots of decimated post apocalyptic city scapes - but don't worry as these are also ripped off shots from other films.

COMING AT YA - Another part of this movie's dubious charm is the fact that it's an early 3-D film. They've not quite mastered the art of the "gimmick shot" just yet, so there's very little stand out moments where a character points a gun/stick/frisbee directly into the camera to give the audience a "3-D thrill". The best moment comes right at the end of the film where Ro-Man strides purposefully towards the camera and fires electricity out of his hands straight into the laps of the (possibly) non-plussed 1950's audience.

SEX & VIOLENCE - Surprisingly for such conservative times as the 50's there's an undeniable undercurrent of sex in this film. From the romance between Roy and Alice (which improbably escalates from not liking each other to snogging each others' faces off to outright marriage -all in the space of about 45 minutes) to Ro-Man suddenly getting the hots for Alice (it must have been all that squirming around and giggling she was doing in his big manly monkey arms when he kidnaps her) there's more than a little S.E.X. implied here.

This is most noticeable in the choice of outfit that the wardrobe department chose to dress the character of Alice in - it's VERY noticeable that Claudia Barrett isn't wearing a bra underneath her near skin tight futuristic one piece suit - in fact I think the term you're looking for is "smuggling peanuts". Moving quickly on...

There's also a surprising amount of violence for a film of this era. At one point Roy gets thrown down a ravine by Ro-Man and dies from his injuries, but even worse is to come...

Get this - Ro-Man literally STRANGLES A LITTLE GIRL TO DEATH WITH HIS BARE HANDS !!!!! What's worse he even GLOATS about it - saying his favourite method of killings humans is strangulation (or "stran-gu-lation" as he pronounces it). Now, this would be unusual in a modern day film but in a 50's B-movie it's utterly unthinkable.

So, you've got an extreme (for the time) level of death and violence but then comes the twist at the end...the entire film turns out to be just a dream. The dreamer in question being little Johnny. What a bloody cop out, they probably thought they where homaging the ending of the Wizard Of Oz or something but honestly it is what it is - an utter waste of a concept.

RATING - Disappointing cop out ending aside this is actually a fun little movie. Does it deserve it's shoddy reputation ?....Well...yes and no.

It's shonky and cheesy as hell and it's definitely a product of it's time but it's run time flies by at a rate of knots. The key thing to take from this is that it's never dull and ALWAYS entertaining and that alone makes it well worth a watch.

4 tatty old monkey suits out of 5.

Oh, and the version I saw also included the short picture that accompanied Robot Monster on it's original release - Stardust In Your Eyes - which sees nightclub "entertainer" Slick Slavin doing impersonations of various 40's and 50's movie stars - it's...not very good (unsurprisingly).

ART -