A couple of weeks ago we had to endure a boring Genghis Khan movie which dragged on for nearly 2 hours. This was swiftly followed by an agonisingly long, tooth pullingly painful film about the battle of Inchon, which came in at 2 hours 20 minutes. I was all but ready to check myself into a nice padded room with a white jacket and straps. Then I saw the next movie was only 66 minutes long and my spirits lifted. When I then found out it was a 1950's Sci-Fi movie I was starting to get a bit excited. When I then saw the alien was a gorilla with a divers helmet, well, I had to change my underpants.
Finally, another movie on our list that looks so bad, it's going to be good. It instantly reminded me of another movie on our list, the wonderful Plan 9, which has become one of my most favourite movies of all time. So after weeks of complete dross, did we have another 'B' movie piece of gold on our hands?
Yes we had.....
#79 Robot Monster (1953)
An alien which looks not unlike a fat bloke in a gorilla costume wearing a diver's helmet called Ro-Man, (played by George Barrows and voiced by John Brown), has landed on earth, killing all of it's occupants except for 8 survivors. The alien's weapon of choice is the dreaded 'Calcinator Death Ray', which to me sounds a bit like a tablet you put in with your wash to prevent limescale build up. Regardless, the 8 survivors have all taken a serum which blocks the effects of the ray. I can only assume that the serum is tap water from my area as it seems to laugh in the face of Calcinator.
Among the survivors are a family which the film focuses on. They are a scientist, (John Mylong) who doesn't seem to have a name in the movie but is known as The Professor in the titles and whose voice appears to be played by Bela Lugosi. Unfortunately Mylong's acting is more Lugosi in his Ed Wood collaborations rather than his earlier Dracula era.
He is joined by his wife, (Selena Royle), which is a bit confusing as he had not even met her at the start of the movie. Their son, Johnny, (Gregory Moffet), daughter Alice, (Claudia Barrett), who has thing for the professor's young assistant, Roy, (George Nader). And finally their younger sister Carla, (Pamela Paulson).
There are 2 more survivors who are on board a rocket on the way to a space platform where some other Hu-Mans, (as Ro-Man calls us) are located. These survivors are never on screen and are killed when their rocket is destroyed. The space platform that they were trying to reach is also blown up mid movie. As you can tell this is a real feel good film.
Realising that Ro-Man has forgotten to carry the 1 in his calculations, his boss, the Great Guidance politely informs him he has cocked up and orders him to kill the remaining humans. As mentioned, the rocket men meet their maker first and then Carla also has her chips. When he goes to kill Alice he realises for absolutely no logical reason that he loves her and can not do it. The Professor seizes on this and offers Alice to Ro-Man in return for their lives. This is where it's a bit tricky though, as The Professor then performs a marriage ceremony for Alice and Roy. This is a massive mistake by The Professor, as in hindsight, I think Alice will feel that she should have given the sweaty bloke in a gorilla suit a chance.
Anyway, Ro-Man finds out, throws Roy over a cliff and kidnaps Alice. We all
The Great Guidance, upon seeing Ro-Man bringing a rather alive looking Alice back to the cave in which Ro-Man resides, is a little bit miffed to say the least. When it comes to killing humans, The Great Guidance realises that you don't send a tubby bloke in an unconvincing gorilla suit and fishbowl to do a more senior ranking tubby bloke in an unconvincing gorilla suit and fish bowl's job. He kills Ro-Man and then unleashes some stop motion dinosaurs onto the earth and it looks like our plucky family is doomed.
*Cop Out Alert* Johnny then wakes up and realises it was all a dream! Although just to keep the audience wondering, as Johnny walks off, The Great Guidance emerges from the cave again. Well actually 3 times for some reason. The End!
Now I must say from the off, this movie was right up my street! If any of you have read my Plan 9 review or other reviews in which I admit MST3K is one of my all time favourite shows, then this probably has come as no surprise. However, this is probably a 'Marmite' movie. If you love bad sci-fi, wobbly effects and absurd story lines you'll love this, if you don't, you won't.
Costing $16,000 to make, this was not a lot of money, even in the 50's. Just to put that into context, the 1953 movie The Beast from 20,000 fathoms had a budget of around $210,000 and the 1956 film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers had a budget of around $417,000, (source IMDb). So they really did pay peanuts to make this film and when you watch the movie, it does feel like it has been made on the cheap.
You can tell not a lot of money was spent on creating the aliens Ro-Man and The Great Guidance. In fact, as you can guess from the title of the movie, they were originally supposed to be Robots, but they could not get a costume. George Barrows then got the role as he had a gorilla suit and for some reason the film makers thought, 'oh well, that'll do'.
The rocket in which 2 unseen survivors go to the space platform is just stock footage of a rocket launching, followed by a bad model. The actual space platform itself looks is an Airfix model of a jet fighter with a sparkler up it's arse and the hand holding this is clearly visible! I was not expecting big budget CGI off course, but even by 'B' movie standards, the effects are poor.
The 'dinosaurs' in the movie are footage 'borrowed' from One Million BC and Lost Continent. In fact there is a lot of stock footage, scenes from other movies and stills from other's artwork which pad this film out. Not only do the effects look Tesco's blue stripe, but Phil Tucker, (the director of the movie) makes it even cheaper by pinching other's work!
The set is very cheap as there isn't one. Nearly the whole movie was filmed on location in Bronson Canyon and consists of a cave and the remains of the family's home, which seems to be 3 walls and a small front yard. You can see that Tucker saved every dime he could in the making of the movie, giving it a real '99p Store' feel.
The cast itself are average in their performances, but to be honest they don't have a lot to work with. Trying to look scared as a bloke on his way to a fancy dress party attacks you, would test the most hardened thespian. Claudia Barrett, (Alice), stands out for me as particularly bad as she tries to pull off an intelligent engineer who complains that she is not taken seriously, but ends up playing someone who can't be taken seriously. One scene stands out for me when she is being kidnapped by Ro-Man. Ro-Man lifts and carries her in his arms and Alice seems to perform some weird leg kicking thing as if she is trying to swim away from her captor. On dry land this just looks a little silly.
Ro-Man himself permanently looks silly. Barrows obviously could not see a thing out of the diver's helmet and fumbles and staggers his way around the movie. In fact Ro-Man does a lot of staggering in the movie and seems to spend the first half of the movie just going in and out of his cave and the second half up and down a dirt track! The family obviously never thought of running or even doing a fast mince as they could easily have left Ro-Man for dust.
Ro-Man's lack of athleticism is not helped in one scene when as he walks a tuba is playing. This, off course, is the instrument of choice for a fat bloke walking in any cartoon! It may come as a surprise that the music was actually done by Elmer Bernstein, who is probably more famous for his work on The Great Escape or Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'. Bernstein obviously had a bad day at the office with this movie as even Steve McQueen would had suffered if on jumping the barbed wire, he had been accompanied by a slide whistle.
At the end of the day though, despite all of this bargain basement filming, this is a very enjoyable movie. It is one of those movies where you like it but for the wrong reasons or at least differing reasons than Tucker intended. I loved the shoddy effects and in particular the poor costume of Ro-Man. The story is confused and ludicrous, I still can't work out why dinosaurs are used to mop up the remaining survivors when Ro-Man said they could re-calibrate the Calcinator Death Ray to counteract the serum that The Professor developed. Maybe it was more fun or maybe there was a special prize for the most unnecessary way to kill the last Hu-Mans. All in all it does not matter, because all of this daftness just makes me smile.
And that is why I love this movie, it just makes me smile. All the plot holes, bad acting, bad costumes and effects are just endearing and add to my enjoyment. I may be going over the top as the last 2 movies, The Conqueror and Inchon, were just long and painfully boring. I dare say an episode of 'Last Of The Summer Wine', may have been welcomed at this point, but I think had this appeared further up the list, I still would have enjoyed it.
Therefore, if you like movies like Plan 9, then this is a film you will enjoy and which I highly recommend. So dig out your gorilla suit, plop a fishbowl on your head, (remove goldfish and water first), search YouTube for Robot Monster and enjoy 66 minutes of 'B' movie heaven.
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