#79 Robot Monster (Wes)

Robot Monster

After the past few movies (The Conqueror and Inchon) being incredibly long and boring having to watch a B-movie that only lasts for just over and hour came as something of a relief. If it really is worse than those two, then at least it would be only a short torture. So was Robot Monster really that bad?

Robot Monster follows the story of the last eight humans left on earth after the alien being Ro-Man (played by George Barrows, voiced by John Brown) has destroyed everybody else with a death ray. These humans all survived due to the fact that they received an antibiotic serum from The Professor (John Mylong), which immunised them. They try to negotiate with Ro-Man, before he eventually blows up two of them who’re trying to reach an orbiting space platform. As Ro-Man kills the remaining humans off one by one, he decides he wants to date the eldest daughter of the professor, Alice (Claudia Barrett). Will this date work out? Will they have lots of little Ro-Babies? The questions are never-ending…

I think the biggest question I asked myself when watching this movie was: What the hell is going on? I’ve seen a lot of strange movies in my time, but in none of them did I ever expect to see a gorilla with a deep-sea divers helmet (or perhaps a fishbowl) on it’s head decide it wants to date somebody that it’s supposed to be killing. That is one seriously messed up situation there. I don’t think even Channel Four would have tried that one on The Undateables.

The date itself could really be a described as a typical Essex romance. A massive gorilla picks up a girl in his arms. Her legs kick helplessly as he carries her along. Then they reach the local Nando’s, only to find that Ro-Man himself had killed all the staff (and chickens) the year before. They laugh, and decide to go for a drink instead, but when they reach their local Wetherspoons, the same problem crops up. Alice eventually gets annoyed and stands there shouting abuse at Ro-Man in the street, until no police-men come to break up the fight, since Ro-Man killed them all.

 

Ok, so that was mostly a lie, but it’s no more ridiculous than the actual plot of this movie. I would love to say that this movie doesn’t get anymore ridiculous, but then I’d love to say a lot of things and never get the chance to. You see when Ro-Man decides he can’t complete his mission as he doesn’t want to kill Alice, The Great Guidance decides he has to finish the job for him. Of course the best
way to kill off humanity in the 20^th century, as any alien worth his salt knew, was to use man’s natural enemy – dinosaurs.

Yes, that’s right, dinosaurs. Where they came from, I honestly don’t know. Well, I do. They came from the One Million B.C. and Lost Continent. Like Ed Wood, director Phil Tucker seems to be a fan of putting random stock footage into a movie just to pad it out. It doesn’t matter that it really doesn’t make any sense, audiences like dinosaurs, so what better to destroy the earth with?

The strange thing is, for a film that gleefully puts in random dinosaurs and has a gorilla wearing a fishbowl that falls for one of he humans he’s supposed to be killing, this is actually quite a bleak film. Sure Ro-Man decides he doesn’t want to kill Alice, but he’s already killed 2,681,994,382 people by this point (according to census.gov) by this point, so you can hardly call him a humanitarian. The humans all live in fear for their lives so much, that at one point they bargain to give themselves up in return for a painless death.

They hardly dare to leave their shielded compound, which for convenience sake is located only a few hundred yards from Ro-Mans cave, instead of in say The Himalayas, or maybe Hawaii (if I was facing certain death from a gorilla wearing a fishbowl, I think that’s where I’d spend my last days). Except of course for young Johnny (Gregory Moffett), who has a reckless attitude towards Ro-Man and his own personal safety. He constantly hangs around Ro-Mans cave, possibly because Ro-Mans death dealing machinery also features a really cool bubble-blowing machine. I can only imagine that this was fitted to lure any stoned hippies to Ro-Mans cave that the dinosaurs may have missed.

 

Even though Ro-Man seems to have machinery that can track any life form on the planet (hence the need for the shield around the family compound), he constantly misses the fact that a young boy is hiding behind some rocks only a few feet away from him. I’m not sure who developed this magnificent machine, but they seem to have decided that the final calibration for detecting large life-forms could just be left up to whoever was passing by and had a bit of spare time on their hands. Even the scientist, Roy (George Nader) avoids detection whilst hiding behind the same rocks. Perhaps if Ro-Man occasionally looked around for these surviving humans, rather than skulking back into his cave after every intergalactic phone call, then he may have had more luck.

Perhaps most baffling thing of this “Directional Beam” is the fact that Ro-Man and The Great Guidance have missed the fact that there is supposedly an entire garrison of humans left on the orbiting space platform. If they wanted to kill off all of humanity, before they became a threat to the Ro-Men, then why would they leave an orbiting space platform full of people? According to Ro-Man, The Great Guidance spared it because it would have been a convenience for the Ro-Men when they arrived on Earth. I can only imagine he meant this in the literal sense, and that after travelling millions of light years, the Ro-Men would be REALLY busting for a pee before they landed. So they planned to use the space platform as an intergalactic motorway service station. Perhaps the remaining humans on there were to be used to man the disappointing shop, or the various fast food outlets that the Ro-Men require.

Have I convinced you that you need to see this film yet? Have you grasped at how poor the storytelling actually is? Are you desperate to see how laughable a gorilla wearing a fishbowl really is? Can you guess at how bad the special effects are? If the answer to any of these questions isn’t yes, then I think you may need to reread the whole review until you change your mind.

Yes this film is absolutely awful and it really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it’s definitely in the so bad it’s good category. If you like Ed Wood movies for their sheer ineptness, if you love movies like The Horror of Party Beach because they have the most laughable monsters, if you love a good Elmer Bernstein soundtrack (shockingly true), then you’ll love this movie.

If you need anymore convincing, then the fact that Mystery Science Theatre 3000 had this as one of their movies is clearly recommendation enough. I strangely enjoyed this film, especially after the past few movies. I now also know what The Conqueror and Inchon were really missing. Random dinosaurs.