Robot Monster is a 1953 science fiction B-movie. Like the more famous Plan 9 from Outer Space, it is known in bad-film fandom for being "so bad, it's good", and has become a cult film.

Plot

The plot centers on a group of six humans who are among the only eight survivors of a disaster that wipes out all other humans. These six humans include five members of a family and a scientist who is not related to the family members. The other two survivors, for a total of eight, are not shown, but are mentioned as being in a spacecraft. An evil, indestructible alien called "Ro-Man", whose costume: a gorilla suit with a sea-diving helmet, has become legendary in itself, used his "Calcinator" death ray to destroy humanity. Eight humans have survived because they have immunity to the death ray due to an unexpected benefit of the antibiotic serum developed by two of the survivors, who are scientists. Because eight humans have survived, Ro-Man's invasion of the world is not successful. He spends the entire movie wandering around the wilderness trying to find the last surviving humans, but he finds himself developing an attraction towards the nubile young woman, the eldest child of the family.

The film is bookended by two sequences that suggest the bulk of the film may, or may not, be a dream sequence. In the opening, a small boy wearing a space helmet is playing with his sister when they come across two geologists studying a cave. They introduce the scientists to their mother and sister. After the boy returns to the cave, there is a lightning flash, and the movie begins, with the same actors playing the family members and the young scientist who is not related to them. At the conclusion of the film, the boy awakens, but as he leaves the cave, there is another lightning strike, and Ro-Man appears in the cave; this final sequence is repeated several times in the film, especially at the end.

Production

The film's poor special effects include stock footage from the silent movie One Million B.C. spliced into the film. The famous "Billion Bubble Machine", used in the film as part of Ro-Man's communication device for reporting to his superior, is given prominent notice in the film's opening credits.

Filmed on a low budget (estimated at $50,000), the film takes place in famous Bronson Canyon, the site of innumerable motion pictures and TV settings. The soundtrack was composed by Elmer Bernstein.

The poor quality of the movie gave rise to a long-lived rumor within the film industry that the poor reception from audiences caused director Phil Tucker to attempt suicide. According to Keep Watching The Skies! by Bill Warren, his attempted suicide was actually due to depression and a dispute with the film's distributor, who had allegedly refused to pay Tucker his contracted percentage of the film's profits.

Despite the shortcomings of the script and budget, the film was shot and projected in dual-strip, polaroid 3-D. The stereoscopic photography in the film is considered by many critics to be of a high quality, and is an extra honor in favor to the crew, who had no experience with the previously unused camera rig.

When premiered, the film originally went out with the 3 Dimensional Pictures short, Stardust in Your Eyes with nightclub comedian, Slick Slaven.

Dissenting opinions

A small but vocal minority of film buffs and movie critics have suggested that rather than scorn and ridicule, films like Robot Monster are deserving of respect and sympathy. They note that in the case of this film, the director and producer honestly believed they were creating a terrifying tale of science fiction to entertain their audiences. At the time of the film's release, science fiction films had not yet been relegated to the status of "kiddie entertainment" (as was the case a decade later when Santa Claus Conquers the Martians was produced), and the production crew of Robot Monster did not abandon their project, even though they had to work with ultra-low budget props and effects. One sympathetic review of the film notes:

"Ro-man's agonizing identity crisis is of course hilarious. 'I cannot, but I must' he wails. But it's also fairly unique among movie monsters. When he cries out to heaven, searching for the justice in his existence, he's not simply one modest monster expressing his angst. He represents all misunderstood movie monsters, the hated, hunted, and unreasonably feared. Ro-man is pretty much Monsterus Basicus, as basicus as they get — he fights the hero, carries off the girl, and packs a death ray. We viewers tend to project all kinds of motivations and attitudes onto our favorite uncommunicative monsters — the best, like Christopher Lee's Mummy reward us with expressive behavior we understand. When Ro-man moans his lot in life, he's pretty symbolic of his other monster brethren throughout the genre. If Antonioni can express the essences of human existence through minimalist anti-dramas, why can't Phil Tucker? Robot Monster is about as minimal as you can get. Perhaps this is why ol' Ro-man is such a beloved character." — Glenn Erickson, DVD Savant (Web-based magazine) article on Robot Monster

However, these minority opinions are not widely shared among the majority of movie audiences who seek simple thrills and entertainment, and who leap at the chance to laugh at a hilariously bad movie. As a tribute to this more common opinion of the movie, Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) featured it as one of its early movie-mocking episodes. In this aspect, Robot Monster is likely to remain one of the cornerstones of the standard by which "bad movies" are measured.

References in popular culture

In addition to its use as MST3K fodder, Robot Monster has been featured in other media:

• Ro-Man makes a brief appearance in the movie Back in Action.

• A clip of the movie also appeared in the music video for The Cars' 1984 single, "You Might Think".

• The character of "Ro-man" is mentioned in the 1994 Church of the Subgenius book called Revelation X: The "Bob" Apocryphon as a third gender created by JHVH-1 to populate Earth, but failing so due to "impossibility of living without its helmet". There has been several Ro-man appearances at Subgenius' devivals, as seen in the movie Arise!.

• A brief clip from the movie can be seen on a television screen in John Carpenter's 1995 film In the Mouth of Madness.

• George Barrows, who played Ro-Man, because he owned his own gorilla suit, also was a gorilla in an episode of "The Beverly Hillbillies".

See also

• Films considered the worst ever

External links

• Review at BadMovies.Org
• Review at everything2.com, which also disputes the suicide attempt
• Review at Jabootu's Bad Movie Dimension

1953 films | MST3K movies | Cult science fiction films | Dystopian films | Post-apocalyptic science fiction films | Films directed by Phil Tucker

Robot Monster | Robot Monster