Robot Monster
Reviewed by Edward Larsen Terkelsen

USA, NR, 66 m, 1953
Directed by Phil Tucker. Stars George Nader, Claudia Barrett, Selena Royale, et al. 

Robot Monster takes place in a post-apocalyptic world (Bronson Canyon, actually) where the last vestige of humankind—a family headed by a professor who sounds like Bela Lugosi—struggles to keep their species from going the way of the passenger pigeon. But when the warmongering whatsits from somewhere Up There discover that their death ray wasn’t entirely successful, they send down a gorilla-suited heavy, Ro-Man, to ferret out the survivors (who, thanks to an antidote courtesy of the prof, are resistant to the space invaders’ noxious blasts) and do them up old school. But Ro-Man, whose melon is concealed by a diving helmet with antennae on top, loses sight of his mission when he develops an unnatural crush on the family’s eldest daughter, Alice. Needless to say, his feelings aren’t reciprocated; genocidal extra-terrestrials have never had an easy time making it with Earth girls. Besides, Alice has a thing for her pop’s assistant, Roy, whom she marries (in a riotously stripped-down ceremony) halfway through the picture. Unfortunately, the honeymoon (which amounts to our newlyweds consummating their vows behind a bush) is cut short when Ro-Man throws Roy off a cliff and takes Alice for his own. This doesn’t go over well with Ro-Man’s look-alike leader, Great Guidance, who tears Ro-Man a new one via a videophone. “You wish to be a human?” his highness roars. “Good! You can die a human!” And he ain’t funnin’: lightning shoots from his fingertips (the movie’s one halfway impressive special effect), causing the ground to rock and the sky to roll. But the climax of this mother of all shit storms is actually made up of footage from other genre flicks, chiefly One Million B.C. The giant lizards and armadillos are meant to be GG’s cleanup crew, disposing of “whatever remains of life.” I’m not the slightest bit ashamed to tell you that calamitous endings like this tend to leave me bluer than Susan Lucci at the Daytime Emmy Awards (the final shot in Beneath the Planet of the Apes still keeps me up at night), so I was mighty relieved when the whole rigmarole turned out to be nothing more than a dream manufactured by Alice’s kid bother, Johnny. (Has the kid brother in these things ever not been named “Johnny”?)

Written by Wyott Ordung and directed by Phil Tucker, Robot Monster has been an object of ridicule since it premiered in 1953. Though Father Time normally relegates this kind of cheapjack curio to everlasting obscurity, the fact that it’s still front and center in the minds of bad movie aficionados can be attributed, at least in part, to Harry Medved’s 1978 book, The Fifty Worst Films of All Time, as well as Malcolm Leo’s and Andrew Solt’s 1982 documentary (which some might see as the That’s Entertainment! of schlock cinema), It Came From Hollywood. (Due to copyright entanglements, a DVD release has yet to see the light of day.) Robot Monster also received a good paddling from Joel and the ‘bots during the 1989-90 season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (a show that was rarely as much fun as listening to Hawkeye and Trapper poke fun at 16mm refuse on “M*A*S*H”), and its less-than-stellar reputation has followed it to IMDb, where it currently holds a (ludicrously) low rating of 2.9. So, is Robot Monster as awful as everybody says it is? Or is it just misunderstood? To the latter question, I must answer in the affirmative—not because I’m a Slate-style contrarian, but because I have yet to read a single piece that takes the trouble to look beneath the film’s economical surface. (The less virulent notices tend to be of the “so bad it’s good” variety.) IMHO, Robot Monster, despite its amateurishness, is thrilling surrealism—a one-of-a-kind experience that horses around in your head far longer than a lot of Oscar bait. Of course, that doesn’t mean it belongs anywhere near the pantheon of great science fiction fantasies (which ought to include Steven Spielberg’s transcendent trilogy of Close Encounters, E.T., and A.I.), but it is without doubt one of the most fascinating (and sheerly pleasurable) grade-Z quickies this side of The Brain That Wouldn’t Die.

Shot exclusively outdoors in four days for $16,000, Robot Monster may look primitive, but there’s an innocence to it that’s weirdly touching. In any case, I’m not fond of the gleam for which Hollywood is world-famous, and Robot Monster, God bless it, eschews the “professionalism” that often sucks the life out of common fare. (That its bumpiness may have been thrust upon it hardly matters.) I fear Robot Monster would’ve turned into something routine and forgettable had a high roller backed it; the dearth of financial support helped it to maintain a certain purity. It didn’t hurt either that one of the least ego-driven directors since Ed Wood was at its helm: When Tucker couldn’t come up with the scratch to fashion the Ro-Man of his dreams (or nightmares), he put in a call to “gorilla performer” George Barrows (Gorilla at Large, Hillbillys in a Haunted House), who owned his own ape costume, and the rest, as they say, is history. And while it’s true that Ro-Man has been subjected to more cracks over the years than the giant Venusian vegetable in It Conquered the World, he has become iconic enough to land a cameo in Joe Dante’s Looney Tunes: Back in Action and inspire the design of Minion in DreamWorks’ hysterical Megamind. Impressive feats those, but I’d do the Hully Gully if Bif Bang Pow! or McFarlane Toys put out a Ro-Man action figure (preferably a 12”). It’d look right at home amongst my Galens and Chewies. 

But what in tarnation is the Robot Monster supposed to be? He’s certainly monstrous (watching him come into frame from behind a hill is downright terrifying), but it’s not clear as to what constitutes his robotic side. (Most will take his helmet to be some kind of communication device and/or Darth Vader-ish breathing system.) Ultimately, it doesn’t matter one lick because Ro-Man is just the product of a little boy’s imagination—an imagination that’s been overfed with Buck Rogers chapter plays and comic books like “Strange Stories from Another World” and “Terror Tales.” (Several covers for each can be spotted in the opening titles.) The computer that Ro-Man tinkers around with in his cave is a funny amalgamation of things you’d find at a Radio Shack circa nineteen-fifty-whatever, but this makes perfect sense, too, because the makeup of the aliens’ gadgetry would naturally be derived from stuff Johnny knows about. The soap bubbles constantly floating around Ro-Man and Great Guidance (both played by Barrows) are there simply for atmosphere (and to get more mileage out of the “Tru-Stereo Three Dimension Process”), but the fact that Johnny was blowing them at his sister just before naptime explains why they would figure so prominently into his dreamscape. Hollywood Reporter chastised Robot Monster for being “on the comic book level” and “loaded with inconsistencies.” Well, it is those things, but to its credit. If you ask this reviewer, each and every dissonant note in Robot Monster (which is accompanied by an Elmer Bernstein score that hits all the right notes) can be defended artistically. Its twist ending compels you to go back and reexamine everything that seemed a little off the first time around—and Robot Monster plays even better in memory.

April 28, 2011

© Copyright 2011 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.