Sci-fi of the 1950's Week: Robot Monster

Hello everyone and yes I know this week has been an odd one but my sinuses are playing merry merry hell with me and it has been a bit difficult to focus.  That in mind I reviewed a brilliant film that captured the mind and soul…two days ago.  This movie however is no cinematic opus but rather it was rated, reviewed and reviled as one of the subject matter for the 1978 book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (And How They Got That Way).  Granted most of their reasons of such were due to poor film quality, lack of restoration, poor audio and well yes it is also a stinkburger.   Those in mind, take on some emergency rations, prep the charcoal filters for the water and don’t pick a fight with a gorilla like being.  This is Robot Monster.

Dear God, I can barely breathe in this helmet!

Great One: Earth Ro-man, you violate the laws of plans.  To think for yourself is to be like the hu-man.

Ro-man: Yes! To be like the spoiler! To laugh! Feel! Want! Why are these things not in the plan?

Our vivid visual opens with the alien known as Ro-man Extension XJ-2 looking down Bronson Canyon via Griffith Park as he observes he has wiped out all humanity with his Calcinator Death Ray to his Supreme commander known as Great One.  Yeah typical B-movie with no budget response is to give greater description to your nonsensical.   It would appear his calculations were off as 8 humans are alive and well. 

An overtly complicated exposition about developing an immunity to the ray, a scientist, his wife, two daughters, his 8 year old son and 2 pilots are kept safe by this energy curtain developed by  The Professor…I kid you not that is the character’s name in credits but is played by none other than character actor John Mylong (The Devil Pays Off, For Whom the Bell Tolls, His Kind of Woman, Magnificent Obsession and Never Say Goodbye) and this is also Roy (George Nader’s first exposure to film to  later TV and Film gems like: Nowhere to Go, The Man and the Challenge, The Loretta Young Show, Shannon, A Walk by the Sea, The Human Duplicators and Espionage in Lisbon) shows some decent chops versus Ro-Man, slayer of the world.  

Post Apocalyptic Family Robinson.

Okay a quick few comments on this momentous movie.  Once again, projects large and small, Bronson Canyon is made to suffer.  As a spot for caverns and quarries for TV and Film for decades from anything of Bert I. Gordon’s The Magic Sword, Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes and Star Trek episodes to the crazy bunch of the Tremors creators of Stampede Entertainment, this entire movie was filmed in this rather large expanse of geography. 

Now while they were saving money on locations, maybe a continuity director would have been nice.  The wee lad Johnny clearly seen wearing jeans and he enters the cave gets knocked out and over only to awake wearing a pair of shorts.   The Professor is proud to perform a marriage ceremony for Roy and his daughter Alice holding onto a book in his hand one shot and then the next, poof it is gone.

The amusing thing about this terribly done film is that it is beloved by many a bad movie lover and has actually made over a million dollars for the span of its existence.  Given it had only $1000 on the books for production that even a flop can get some love.

Another Craigslist hookup begins with shame.