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2.0 out of 5 stars
Behold the awesome calcinator death ray!, Jul 11 2004
In the pantheon of bad movies, few ever achieve the notoriety of Robot Monster (1953), except maybe for Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), as being among the worst of the worst. Written by Wyott Ordung (Target Earth) and directed by Phil Tucker, Robot Monster, intended to be a allegory of the post modern world of World War II, instead has become a cult classic of cosmic proportions in its' complete and utter badness...So what's the movie about? Well, apparently us Earthlings have become too smart for our own good, incurring the worrisome wraith of the Ro-Men, aliens with gorilla bodies and diving suit helmets for heads, as their fear is we will someday become powerful enough to destroy them...or they just want our planet (their motivation seemed to flip-flop between these two ideas). Their plan? Send a deadly emissary (only one) armed with a death ray and bubble machine to annihilate the population of Earth, allowing for others to follow...to which they find great success...almost. Yes, the entire population of our planet, about two billion at the time, are destroyed, except for 5 people. Seems these five people share some sort of immunity to the death ray, and now find themselves huddled for survival in bombed out ruins, trying to hide their existence from the alien fiend, who just happens to reside in a cave not to far from their hiding place. Can these lone survivors, these last remnants of humankind, find a way to destroy or make peace with this menace before they find themselves extinct? Man, this movie, which was shot on location in Bronson Canyon in California, probably one of the most used locations for Hollywood films, was a painfest...cheap effects I can usually take, as I've seen hundreds of B movies, but everything in this film seems like it was scraped from the bottom of some barrel. I guess the most obvious element to start out with is the aliens' extremely cumbersome costume, limiting its' mobility to the point where anytime it would chase someone, for it to actually catch them, the prey would have to either run very slow and awkward, or conveniently trip and fall to the ground. A gorilla suit with a diver's helmet? That's pretty sad, even for a film like this...I especially loved the fact that the person wearing this getup was also wearing a mask within the diving helmet, and so we were unable to see his face, so whenever he spoke, he would usually make all kinds of exaggerated gestures with his hands much like your stereotypical Italian, as if to compensate for lack of facial expressions. And really, what is the deal with the bubble machine? I suspect they got a really good deal (possible free use of it) or something on it, as the company who supplied is listed within the credits, but if I was making a film with the intention of providing chills or scares to my audience, a bubble machine only serves to counteract any terror as bubbles just can help but emote a sense of happiness. I also got really tired of that cheesy view screen the monster kept using to contact his homeworld, where he would then get messages from his leader, known as The Great Guidance, on how to proceed in his task of eliminating these last five surviving members of the human race, which proves entirely too difficult given the ease and speed of which he wiped out the other two billion humans on Earth. The acting was about as bad as you'd expect, and I found myself actually hoping for the alien to eliminate this persistent band of less then plucky survivors. The dialog...once you got past the gorilla suit/diving helmet alien element, the viewer is bombarded by round after round of some really awful dialog. The direction, while not great, is serviceable, but given the mish mash plot, it hardly makes a difference. One bright spot throughout the film was the musical score, presented by legendary Academy Award winning composer Elmer Bernstein, who later working on such films as The Ten Commandments (1956), The Magnificent Seven (1960), To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), and The Great Escape (1963), to name a very few. The film, which I believe was originally presented in 3-D (in fabulous 2-D here), looks surprising good. The source material used for the transfer has obviously suffered some deterioration over time, but not as much as I would have thought, as the picture, while having many flaws visually, all seem minor at best. The audio was pretty soft here, as I had crank the volume up high to fully catch every bit of riveting dialogue as it was spoken. As far as special features, there is a theatrical trailer present, along with some other trailers, most all for Ed Wood films I believe, and that's it...not much, considering the cult status level of the film, in my opinion. As I said, cheap effects don't necessarily make for a bad movie, but in conjunction with extremely lame dialogue, incredibly poor acting, passable direction, and a completely incoherent plot equal a cinematic hurting few others have ever achieved. I read that the director, Phil Tucker, took this movie so seriously that when released and the extremely critical reviews began coming in, he was so distraught he attempted suicide, but was unsuccessful, and actually went on to direct about six more films, certainly none as memorable as this, his first. I can't help but wonder when a director makes a film as bad as this, how they can't see just how awful it is prior to releasing it. How deluded would you have to be to think this was actually going to be a good movie? I guess the most important thing to have if you are going to watch this film is a sense of humor, as that is where the main gist of the entertainment lies, unintentional as it may be... Cookieman108
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