Customer Reviews

Robot Monster

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2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Though some fans of "bad" cinema often put 1953's ROBOT MONSTER on the same tier with PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1959), it honestly doesn't even come close to reaching the heights of inspired ineptitude attained by Ed Wood's magnum opus. Still, ROBOT MONSTER is an entertaining so-bad-it's-good flick in its own right.

The last six remaining humans on Earth resist attacks by Ro-man, an extraterrestrial who looks something like a gorilla wearing a cheap diving helmet. Receiving orders from his superior via 1950s consumer electronics that emit, of all things, soap bubbles, Ro-man's job is to clear out all intelligent life on Earth so that his "people" can come inhabit the planet themselves. Unfortunately for Ro-man, he finds it impossible to carry out his orders after he falls in love with an Earth girl, and it's all downhill for him from there.

This ludicrous tissue-thin plot is full of gaping holes, and the badly executed scene transitions and various stock-footage inserts of fighting reptiles and animated dinosaurs are humorously befuddling. But when it is revealed at the end of the film that all was simply the dream of a science-fiction-crazed young boy, the whole dish seems a little more palatable.

Some critics have read the film as an allegory of life in occupied Europe during World War II. Ro-man, it is claimed, represents a Nazi soldier simply carrying out the orders of his Hitler-like commander, and the surviving humans can be viewed as living an Anne Frank-like existence in their energy-encompassed hideout. But the obvious weaknesses of the plot, the glaringly technical mistakes, and the bargain-basement production values make it hard to believe that the filmmakers were astute enough to attempt allegorical storytelling. Any similarity to real situations or to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Believe it or not, the music for ROBOT MONSTER is actually pretty good (that is, "good" good, not "bad" good). It was composed by the late Elmer Bernstein, who went on to score cinematic greats like THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960), TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1962), GHOST BUSTERS (1984), and MY LEFT FOOT (1989), to name but a few. Perhaps it is the efforts of the talented Mr. Bernstein that prevents ROBOT MONSTER from reaching the same level of achievement as Wood's PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE?

ROBOT MONSTER may not be the best "bad" film ever made, but for aficionados of the awful and connoisseurs of the crass, it's not to be missed.

While it's not in the original 3-D--yes, ROBOT MONSTER was filmed in old-school 3-D--the DVD from Image Entertainment offers the highest-quality consumer copy of the film to date, and the price that amazon charges for it is hard to beat.

I must agree with those who say this could be the BEST "worst movie ever made." I have seen nearly every Ed Wood movie and although his "Plan 9 From Outer Space" has a special place in the heart of any fan of bad sci-fi movies, "Robot Monster" certainly gives it a run for the money. (Ed Wood had nothing to do with "Robot Monster" but it's similar to his type of movies.) This movie is so gloriously bad and yet entertaining on many levels. I love the stock footage of fighting lizards, interjected for no apparent reason. The tender moments like the impromptu wedding scene. The bubbles that float up around Ro-Man's junky-looking equipment. The fact that the heroine manages to get tied up in rope TWICE, once by her friends & family and later by the monster. The terminology (like the "calcinator death ray"). The pointless scenes showing the Ro-Man schlepping up and those barren hills and plains. Dialogue that is so stilted, it would make Ed Wood proud. I could go on and on. What could you possibly be doing in your life that is so important you can't spend the 62 minutes it takes to watch this incredible paean to human incompetence?

There's a moment in "Robot Monster" where every first-time viewer is kin: a lizard with a fin glued to its back jumps onto another lizard, in what is meant to represent the titanic struggle of two dinosaurs. Since this has nothing to do with anything that happened before, the novice can only watch in slack-jawed wonder, asking "What the...?"
"Robot Monster" is awash with stunning moment likes this, which may be why the trailer boasts it is "baffling." But there is the glimmer of a story.
Earth has been devastated by aliens using the calcinator death ray. The handful of survivors (and the planet's only hope) so far are immune to the ray, but are available through a viewscreen for regular taunting by the solitary Earthbound "Ro-Man" (his nom de guerre). He in turn is regularly berated by "the leader of all Ro-Men," the "Great One," sort of a psychotic nanny type who blurts his orders from across the void of space. We know it's space because of the dog food we see -- or are those asteroids?
We know they're aliens because they sport gorilla-suit bodies, and
diving helmets topped with antennae. They speak always while flailing their bulky simian arms, and in booming, stentorian threats, virtually every utterance a quotable gem. This lends a vaguely Shakespearian tone to the proceedings.
The Great One harps on the Earth Ro-Man to finish the job, while waving a violin bow. Ro-Man is willing to kill everyone in the protected compound, but something new and mysterious stirs in him when he views the professor's daughter, Al-Ice (as Ro-Man says it). This becomes one of the dramatic conflicts, and inspires the invader's touching, burbled soliloquy:
"Yes! To be like the Hu-Man! To laugh, to feel, to want. Why is this not in the Plan?...Where on the graph do 'must' and 'cannot' meet? I must, yet I cannot."
There's something compelling in all this; even my young, impressionable kids have enjoyed it several times. Every actor has something dazzlingly silly to say in all seriousness. How many movies offer a monster that entertains just by ambling up and down scrub-covered hills? "Robot Monster" is one film that will reward you just as much on the twentieth viewing as on the first.
Oh, and what about the lizards? All is revealed in the end.

Of all the "SO BAD IT'S GOOD" films, this, I believe, is the best...er, uh...is that worst? I don't know, but its pretty bad and pretty funny.

The Earth is invaded by a race of helmet wearing gorillas called "Ro-Men", who are out to destroy the last remaining "Hu-Mans" alive. The acting, story and less-than special effects are laughable, but it is the dialog that is really so atrocious its priceless.

When the Ro-Man kidnaps the lovely heroine Alice (the almost lifelike Claudia Barrett) with the intention to, ahem, get to know her, he is chastised by the "Great Guidance" (the Ro-Man's fearless leader). Ro-Man wants to know why he and Alice can't be friends and asks: "To be like the Hu-Man. To laugh, feel, want. Why are these things not in the plan?" Good question. His brainless leader tells him he must kill Alice, and here comes the films best lines of dialogue: "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!" I feel for ya big guy. But I can't tell you where on the graph must and cannot meet because...I have no idea what the heck you are talking about you!

Anywho, its a short, funny, dumb black & white SF disaster from the 50's that I think you'll love if you have a taste for the idiotic.

Picture and sound are both quite good on this disc (far better than this turkey deserves). Included is the original theatrical trailer for this film, several Ed Wood oddities ("PLAN 9", "BRIDE OF THE MONSTER", "JAILBAIT") and "ROCKETSHIP X-M" and the George Pal flick "DESTINATION MOON".

Funnier than most comedies, this is one disc everyone needs in their collection. It will certainly make you smile when you're down. So pick up a copy today, Hu-Man. -George Bauch.

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

This film is mostly notorious for the...appearance of its villian (a man in a very bad gorilla suit wearing a diving helmet). However, it has so much more going for it.

Basically, the Robot Monster (or Ro-Man) has been sent to earth on a mission to wipe out all human life. There are now only 8 humans left (only 6 are seen and it is not clear what happened to the other 2). The rest of humanity was tricked into wiping itself out through a nuclear holocaust (the serious message of the film). However, instead of performing his mission to wipe out the few remaining unarmed and much weaker humans, the Ro-Man spends most of his time either contacting the few remaining humans via a video screen to continuously announce to them that they are going to die, making excuses to his commander about why he is just standing around doing nothing, or walking up and down a hill. Meanwhile, the Ro-Man's communicator for some weird reason is always blowing bubbles all over the place (I kept expecting Lawrence Welk to show up).

The whole film has a very surreal and trippy atmosphere to it, partly thanks to the bubble machine and the constant use of film negatives and the often emotionless acting. For an all-ages film from that period, it is also surpisingly sadistic (you should see what happens to the two annoying kids!). There is a wedding scene that outdoes anything Ed Wood ever did, the Ro-Man falls in love with the young human female and becomes conflicted (he cannot understand his strange attraction), and there is footage of really bad animated dinosaurs and actual lizards fighting each other with fins pasted on their backs, all taken from other films, which are completely out of place. And, oh yeah, there is a completely cheat ending that is repeated 3 or 4 times!

This is must viewing. It is just too bad it hasn't been released in 3D.

One of the most unintentionally funny films ever made, Robot Monster is a Golden Turkey award winner and a serious rival for the coveted title of "Worst Movie Ever Made". The storyline: a invading robot from the planet "Ro-Man" eradicates all life on Earth except for a family of six people, whom the robot monster (conveniently named "Ro-Man" as well) must locate and destroy upon the orders of his leader, The Great Guidance. Ro-Man spends much of the movie lumbering around a canyon searching for the humans, who have this habit of just standing there as he approaches. One wonders where the film's $20,000 budget went, as there are no sets (the whole film takes place outside) and almost no special effects (all effects are stock footage from other movies, except for the infamous Space Platform--watch closely and you can see the hand of the effects guy holding it up). The dialogue is astonishingly bad, enough to give the infamous "Plan 9 From Outer Space" a serious run for its money ("I'm bossy? You're so bossy you ought to be milked before you come home at night!"), and some of the acting just has to be seen to be believed. For those who enjoy movies that are so bad they're good, Robot Monster ranks along with the films of Ed Wood as one of the all time best.

OK, it's every bit as terrible as you've heard. Perhaps worse. Even so, "Robot Monster" must be seen in all it's wretched glory! From the imbecilic dialogue to the moronic costumes, this is a classic sub-schlock masterpiece! Ro-Man is a cultural icon. He represents all that is wrong with the world. We Hu-Mans have much to fear from his calcinator death ray! Not to mention the hideously ridiculous "Great Guidance". I shudder to think of such a possible future! A future with a defeated planet earth and a decimated population. Imagine six numbskulls remaining as our only hope! It's too horrible to fathom! This movie must be seen again and again. Watch for the hand holding the plastic rocket / jet, during the infamous space station scene! If this is indeed our future, let us weep...

Where on the graph does must and cannot meet? I must write a bad review, but cannot!

Robot Monster is the funniest sci-fi movie ever made. Anything Ed Wood directed doesn't come close to this wonderful turkey. The costume is ridiculous (gorilla suit & diving helmet), the dialogue is poorly written, the acting is horrible and you have to sit through long footage of the "Ro-Man" walking to nowhere in particular. It's wonderful. A movie to be laughed at again and again.

After watching this movie to the point where we see the Robot Monster stride about a desert-like landscape, I backed up to the beginning to see if Ed Wood had somehow had a hand in this film; he does not. After seeing this movie, I wonder why anyone would still want their name associated with it.

We see young Johnny (Gregory Moffett) scampering about the landscape, playing with his toy ray gun. He wanders into a cave where two scientists are supposedly searching for human artifacts. Shortly, mommy (Selena Royle, who appeared in "The Fighting Sullivans," "30 Seconds Over Tokyo," "The Harvey Girls," and the tv soap "As the World Turns"), hot sister Alice (Claudia Barrett) and little sister Carla (Pamela Paulson) come to tell Johnny that it is time for his nap.

Johnny soon wakes from his nap and goes back to the cave, where he discovers the scientists are gone and something strange is happening. Shortly, accompanied by special effects, a fearsome Ro-Man appears. We soon learn that the Ro-Men are either afraid of us becoming strong enough to attack them or they want our planet as a fun place to destroy; the movie seems to struggle as to their motivation. Somewhere along the line the Ro-Man destroyed the entire population of the earth except for eight people, all of whom had a vaccine that turns out to protect them from the Ro-Man's death ray (a convenient side effect!). There are also men on the space platform, which looks a lot like a model rocket on strings, until the Ro-Men decide it needs destruction too.

One thing I struggled to understand was how Ro-Man was able to destroy the two or so billion people on earth at that time, and yet was unable to find the few remaining people. Ah, it turns out that the vaccine also makes the people invisible to Ro-Man's detecting devices (I think). How convenient.

This movie is funnier than it is scary. The Ro-Men, both played by George Barrows and voiced by John Brown, are gorilla suits topped off with a fishbowl helmet. The fishbowl helmet seems to be adorned by old television rabbit ears. Of course robots are logical creatures, so we find Ro-Man and his boss Great Guidance gesturing wildly to emphasize their point. The director probably considered such gestures important since Ro-men have no apparent mouths. Our earthly Ro-Man soon behaves more strangely as he succumbs to the charms of hot sister Alice to the point where he takes a stab at removing her clothing.

Because there is insufficient plot to fill an hour (my DVD player claims the movie ended about 62 minutes or so after it began, but imdb states the movie is 66 minutes long), we see a lot of scenes of Ro-Man walking about the landscape, which is about as thrilling as watching clouds move. My mind started wandering and I wondered how George Barrows could handle stumbling about the hills of California in that hot suit. The actions scenes are similarly well staged. Because Ro-Man seems unable to manage more than a fast walk, his victims pretty much have to fall or walk into his grasp.

An interesting side note. Elmer Bernstein, who composed the music for more than 250 movies and television shows, did the excellent music for this film. After seeing Bernstein's name in the opening credits I found myself fascinated by the music more frequently than the plot. I initially wondered how Bernstein became involved in this movie until reviewing his career. This movie was one of his first and well in advance of credits that would firmly establish his capabilities.

This movie has an interesting ending. I am reluctant to say surprise because I noticed something early in the movie that, if you are watching with even minimal care, will give you a significant clue as to the end. The only thing about the end that surprised me was the cheesy double exposure of the Ro-Man walking out of the cave several times. I am clueless as to the purpose of that part of the ending. The Ro-Man ending may have been intended to be scary, but the repetition became tedious and then funny.

Movies such as this are rarely made these days. When they are made they usually go direct to cable or direct to video. As cheesy as this movie is, it is still a fun movie to watch in a group because it provides great material for extemporaneous jokes. You will want this movie if you are collecting the films of any of the actors, cheesy science fiction movies that likely were drive-in theater fodder, or cheesy science fiction films of the 50s. This movie is not quite as bad as Ed Wood's "Plan 9 from Outer Space," but it is very close, and consequently is nearly a cult classic.