“I cannot – yet I must. How do you calculate that? At what point on the graph do “must” and “cannot” meet? Yet I must – but I cannot!”
Often it seems some films were made to collect a mantle-full of awards. For some it’s the Oscars they covet. For others it might be a Golden Globe award or even a People’s Choice Award. As a member of two critics’ guilds, I have to make these assessments every year. I know how important these accolades can be for a film and the people who created it. But there’s one award that films (almost) never set out to obtain. Still it can provide endurance for a film and help new audiences to embrace it. I’m talking about those Golden Turkey awards, and few films ever made deserve the Golden Turkey than 1953’s Robot Monster. When you hear folks talk about how monstrous that movie is … they’re not talking about the creature itself. They’re talking about the film. The movie has recently been restored and is looking better than it ever did in a theater. Now that restoration is available on Blu-ray both in a standard format and its original 3-D presentation. They even included a pair of those old red and blue glasses so you can experience the film just like they did back in the 1950’s. It’s pure schlock, and it’s never looked better. William Castle was the king of the gimmick horror/sci-fi film, but in 1953 Robot Monster would have given him a run for his money. For just a minute or two, Robot Monster was the best of the worst and the worst of the best. Now it’s your turn to check it out.
The film opens with a family having a picnic in the wonderful “forest” of L.A.’s famous Bronson Canyon. It’s an idealist location for an afternoon family picnic. It’s a barren wasteland with no flowers, trees, or grass to speak of. Instead you spread your blanket on the wonderful stones and hard ground of a desert. What view can be more exciting than the hills completely void of vegetation. There’s no rambling brook or serene lake to distract you from your enjoyable discomfort. It’s dry, and you’ll swelter marvelously under the punishing summer sun. Boy, oh boy, does this scene just get you right where it counts. Two children are playing. Johnny (Moffett) is wearing a spaceman outfit and shooting his toy laser gun at all sorts of imagined monsters while his little sister Carla (Paulson) carries her doll and wants to know when they can switch from spaceman to house as the preferred game of the picnic. They stumble on a couple of scientists working at the entrance to a large cave. Suddenly there’s a bit of negative film flashes and children’s soap bubbles that herald the arrival of prehistoric creatures that escaped from an Irwin Allen film, and all of the family members fall to the ground asleep. When they awaken, we understand the sheer genius (or insanity) of having a family picnic in what is basically a lifeless quarry. You see, all life on Earth was obliterated while they slept, and when they wake up, you would never know the difference. Now that’s taking advantage of a budget item.
Enter Ro-Man. He’s really the body of George Barrows and the voice of John Brown. What he really is looks more like a guy literally in a gorilla costume and wearing a goldfish-bowl kind of helmet on his head that pretty much obscures any facial features. There’s that old budget hawk idea again. He’s lumbering around the rocks for a while until he adjusts a few knobs on his stuff and checks in with his demanding boss, the Great Guidance, who mysteriously looks and sounds exactly like Ro-Man. You don’t suppose they are really the same body actor and voice, do you? I’m loving these budget hawks more and more. It turns out that the master plan to destroy all life on Earth missed it by that much, as old Max Smart would say. There are eight humans remaining. Not a bad batting average out of two or three billion, yeah? Wrong. The Great Guidance is royally ticked off, and if Ro-Man doesn’t get that score to 100%, he will be severely punished. You can probably guess who some of these survivors happen to be. It’s Johnny and his sister Carla. There’s older sister Alice, mother (Royle) and father George (Mylong), one of those scientists we met at the cave, so we’ll just call him Professor from here on out. If he survives this, there might be a three-hour tour boat he might look into later. Then there’s Roy, played by George Nader, who is the Professor’s assistant, a young shirtless man who has eyes for Alice. There are a couple of others, but they get zapped by Ro-Man as they try to escape in a rocket.
Ro-Man contacts the family on his TV setup and offers them a deal. They can turn themselves in and he’ll kill them quickly, or he can hunt them down and really make them suffer. He isn’t going to kill them any slower, of course. The suffering comes from getting to be in this movie a lot longer. So the rest of the film has the family narrowly escaping the wandering space ape, while the space ape keeps getting bawled out by the Great Guidance. In the meantime they decide to have a wedding between Roy and Alice, because those honeymoon destinations are going to fill up fast if the planet ever gets populated again, so let’s beat the rush. Of course, Roy isn’t the only one who has eyes for Alice. Ro-Man captures her and wants to know why she can’t care about him like a hu-Man (Yes, Ro-Man’s people are likely to evolve into a race called the Ferengi and switch from destroying planet populations to doing things like running bars and making money off the planet populations. But that’s going to take 40 years or so. Right now they have to beat Ro-Man, and his weakness is going to make the Great Guidance pile on, so you can kiss Ro-Man goodbye…until the sequel.)
A sequel never happened, although the character makes a couple of cameos over the years including a loving tribute by Joe Dante in Looney Tunes: Back In Action. The film was also later re-released under the title Monster From Mars.
Both John Carpenter and Stephen King acknowledge the film as one they loved as kids. And that stupid little costume has now become an iconic part of film history. The actual prop is owned by Bob Burns, who takes part in these extras. I got to hang with Bob a few times when I was the security chief for a horror convention many years ago. Burns has a genuine affection for this stuff, and it shows. If you ever have a chance to meet him at a convention, tell him Gino says hello.
Robot Monster was made in four days in one location with a budget of about $16,000. It wasn’t a box office success by any means, but its endurance as one of those films that are so bad they’re good has led to this very significant restoration and release. You will get a look at all of that with about two hours of extras that include some present-day skits with Ro-Man and Bob Burns. There are some 3-D shorts including an appearance of Bela Lugosi on the television show You Asked For It. There’s a pretty good history of the 1950’s 3-D craze and a talk with Gregory Moffett, who played young Johnny. We get to return to Bronson Cave, which still looks pretty much the same. You can see it in 2-D or both anaglyphic 3-D or BD-3D. There’s a lot of effort here for a movie this bad. Hollywood should take notice. Sometimes bad is very good. “Do you question the plan?”
The rating is not for the film itself but this release.
