Robot Monster [70th Anniversary] [Blu-ray]

Director: Phil Tucker Phil Tucker

Overview

A young boy named Johnny (Gregory Moffett) is on a picnic with his widowed mother (Selena Royle) and sister (Claudia Barrett), when he meets a pair of archeologists (John Mylong, George Nader) exploring a nearby cave. Later, while napping, he has a dream -- that the Earth has been attacked by an alien named Ro-Man (played by George Barrows in a gorilla suit with a diving helmet), using the "calcinator death ray," and that he and his family (with Mylong and his mother now married) and scientist Nader are the only survivors. They try to elude capture by Ro-Man, who turns out to have some very human failings despite his mechanized mentality, including a desire to experience human emotions, which greatly complicates his efforts to destroy the family.

Product Details

Release Date:	07/25/2023
UPC:	0012233538939
Original Release:	1953
Rating:	TV-PG
Source:	Bayview Films
Language:	English
Time:	1:10:00
Sales rank:	401

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

George Nader	Roy
Claudia Barrett	Alice
John Mylong	The Professor
Selena Royle	Mother
Gregory Moffett	Johnny
Pamela Paulson	Carla
George Barrows	Ro-Man the Monster / Great Guidance
John Brown	Voices
Elmer Bernstein	Composer

Technical Credits

Wyott Ordung

David Commons	Special Effects
Jack Rabin	Special Effects
Phil Tucker	Producer,Director
Wyott Ordung	Screenwriter
Alan Winston	Producer
Jack R. Rabin	Special Effects
Al Zimbalist	Executive Producer

Editorial Reviews

Phil Tucker's Robot Monster has a reputation as an unmitigated cinematic mess, a train-wreck of a movie that was so severely maligned in its own time that it supposedly sent its director into confinement for a time in a hospital. And in the main, that reputation is deserved -- the dreadful acting, the continuity problems, and the amateurish editing and special effects do, to a large degree, speak for themselves. And yet this reviewer, across the decades, has found a basis for looking at Robot Monster in a slightly more favorable light -- an angle of approach that makes it, if nowhere near good, then at least not quite the incomprehensible mess that it is usually dismissed as being; and a way of looking at the movie that even gives it a certain internal consistency, a "logic" (though that is an extreme term to use with this script) that works and explains a great deal about a few of its seeming "flaws." Essential in appreciating what director/producer Phil Tucker was trying to do with Robot Monster -- and trying to do with a total budget of $16,000 and four days of shooting time -- is to keep in mind that the main body of the movie consists of an eight-year-old boy's nightmare. Indeed, Robot Monster is the most impoverished member a small group of fantasy movies (which also includes The Wizard of Oz, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, Curse of the Cat People, The Boy With Green Hair, Invaders From Mars and Godzilla's Revenge) that deal with childhood dreams, fantasies, and nightmares. It lacks some finesse, any polish, and even some basic competency in its execution, but it does -- in its editing, pacing, and structure -- capture the irrational, uncontrolled nature of dreams and nightmares better than any of those more respected movies (with the possible exception of The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, which is a glorious and unique film). Indeed, Robot Monster closely parallels aspects of the plot of William Cameron Menzies' Invaders From Mars, and those parallels are sufficient to raise suspicions about the precise origins of Tucker's movie -- Invaders From Mars was released just a few weeks before Robot Monster; both movies promised 3-D that wasn't delivered; both are about boy heroes battling aliens from outer space, both include parents and surrogate parents for the boy, and both feature young girls who are killed by the aliens. One does wonder if the producers, having gotten wind of Menzies' film either in pre-production or through previews, rushed their movie into production and into theaters. Both films are very disquieting in their depiction of dreams, though -- surprisingly -- the budgetarily emaciated Robot Monster comes closer to the mark. The way that the action unfolds, suddenly and with huge leaps in logic and thought, are seen the way a child sees the world. The threadbare sets, which are missing what we know to be vital pieces, also resemble the settings of dreams. The serious yet cavalier manner in which the marriage of Roy (George Nader) and Alice (Claudia Barrett) is depicted mixes the boy's love of his older sister and respect for the young scientist with his abhorrence of what would have been called "gooey love stuff" in movies. The whole notion of a brave young boy facing down a space invader hangs together beautifully once one accepts the setting as a dream (or nightmare). And if one can get that far, then Robot Monster actually begins to take on the characteristics of a somewhat enchanting film, for all of its mistakes and holes.

All Movie Guide - Bruce Eder