Robot Monster - A Great 'Bad' Movie

By Steve D. Stones

Just how bad is Robot Monster (aka Monster From Mars - 1953)? If you consider that the entire story of the film is mostly from the point of view of a child's dream, it's really not that bad of a movie. Reviews of the film were so bad that director Phil Tucker is said to have attempted suicide. The Elmer Bernstein score eventually gets as annoying and redundant as the score by Hoyt Curtain for Ed Wood's "Jail Bait (1953)" - another great "bad movie."

Little Johnny enters a cave to play spaceman with his younger sister when he encounters two archaeologists looking for evidence of a past civilization. The two archaeologists are invited to a picnic by Johnny's mother and sister.

After waking from a short sleep during the picnic, Johnny discovers that one of the archaeologists is now his father - a man old enough to be his great-grandfather, and that the world has been wiped out by a Ro-Man - an alien in a silly gorilla suit with a diver's helmet and TV antenna on top.  Ro-Man hides in the same cave where the two archaeologists were conducting their search at the beginning of the film. He keeps communication with his leader from another planet on a cheap looking television transmission set.

It turns out that Johnny and his family are the only survivors of Ro-man's annihilation - which is a total of six people. Ro-man's leader orders him to destroy the remaining six with a "calcinator ray," but he can't seem to get it right. He constantly fiddles with his communication device in the cave as he threatens the family. He even watches stock footage of dinosaurs fighting - a scene likely appropriated from the 1925 silent film - The Lost World.

The family discovers a serum that protects them from Ro-man's death ray. Little Johnny is the first to survive with the serum after he encounters Ro-man and calls him a "pooped out pin wheel." This has to be one of the funniest scenes in the film, next to Ro-man trying to make a date with Johnny's older sister - Alice.

Rhino Video issued a VHS 3-D print of Robot Monster with two 3-D glasses in the early 1990s. This print is difficult to watch because the 3-D treatment of the film actually does not work.  A 3-D print of Cat Women of The Moon (1953) was also issued by Rhino Video with just as poor results.

Wearing the 3-D glasses for either film simply does not work. However, for the serious collector of B-movies, like myself, it is still fun to have the VHS copy of both Robot Monster and Cat Women of The Moon with the glasses.  The artwork on the box of both videos is worth the price of admission. Happy viewing!

Robot Monster: Attack of RO-MAN!!!

Robot Monster, 1953, Astor Films, most prints run about an hour. Directed by Phil Tucker. Starring George Nader, Claudia Barrett, John Mylong, George Barrows. Schlock-Meter rating: 7 stars out of 10.

See Robot Monster! The plot: A gorilla with a diving mask (or it may be a goldfish bowl?) calls himself Ro-Man, from a planet that may be the moon. He's hanging out in a cave in Bronson Canyon near Los Angeles with a bubble machine and a TV communicator where he talks to The Great One. Apparently Ro-Man has killed everyone on earth except a scientist, his family, and the scientist's assistant (Nader). He did this with a calcinator death ray. We are shown badly edited stop-animation of small-scale dinosaurs fighting (over and over) to explain the earth's demise.

Try as it might, Robot Monster can't kill the plucky six humans left in the earth that are camped a few hundred yards away. Finally, Ro-Man gets the hots for the scientist's attractive daughter, who just married Nader! The Great One kills Ro-Man as punishment for his lust and destroys the world. More stock footage. It turns out to have all been a dream of a little boy. Or was it? Ro-Man is seen lumbering toward the camera three times in a row. The film was first shot in 3-D.

Robot Monster is so bad that it is funny. This film is tagged as a horror, but it's so non-scary that I wonder if director Tucker may have been making a kiddie matinee film. The acting is atrocious. The German professor's (Mylong) accent is bogus. Ro-Man looks ridiculous waddling through the countryside (HE DESTROYED THE WORLD?). The stock footage doesn't match and often makes no sense. But, it's funny, and that makes it worth a rental.

Here's some dialogue, the scene where Ro-Man, consumed with a lust for the daughter, bellows out his emotions: "Yes, to be like the hu-man. To laugh. Feel. Want. Why are these things not in the plan?" Sheer idiocy. But this cult film is fun, and goes well with a party after midnight. I also like the part where Nader complain that his girlfriend (Barrett) is so bossy she should be milked!

The late director Tucker was a fixture among Grade Z films. Besides Robot Monster, he also directed Dance Hall Racket (with Lenny Bruce!) and Cape Canaveral Monsters. Rumor has it Tucker worked a lot with Edward D. Wood, Jr., but he was always mum when asked about that part of his life.

-- Doug Gibson