In 1953, at the height of the original 3-D craze, there were two sci-fi movies that were released within a month of each other. They had as their main plot device, a young boy’s dream of an alien invasion. One of them, INVADERS FROM MARS, which was successful, has become a cult classic. The other, ROBOT MONSTER, was even more successful and it too became a cult classic but as one of the worst movies ever made. While I cannot disagree with that assessment, I am here to cut ROBOT MONSTER a lot of slack especially in this brand new restoration that allows you to see it in the original anaglyphic (blue & red glasses) 3-D.
According to production notes and interviews with the surviving cast members, the film was made in 4 days at a cost of $17,000. Even Ed Wood (PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE) had more time and bigger budgets than that to work with. When put into that perspective, ROBOT MONSTER emerges as quite a remarkable achievement especially when you consider that the crew was also dealing with a 3-D camera for the first time. The movie is supposed to be from a child’s point of view which helps to explain the simple minded dialogue and the somewhat bewildered performances but that aspect will only go so far.
At the movie’s beginning we see a young boy wearing a space helmet, carrying a toy ray gun, and blowing bubbles. When the alien first appears, he is wearing a gorilla suit topped off with a diving helmet that has antennas. He has a bubble machine and equipment taken straight from a 1950s pre-Radio Shack electronics store complete with TV rabbit ears. Just the sort of things that a kid from 1953 would recognize. The alien’s name is Ro-Man and he has already destroyed all life on Earth except for the boy’s family. We view this in flashback with several clips from older big budget sci-fi movies.
Ro-Man then tries to wipe out the remaining hu-mans (as he calls them) with his calcinator death ray aided by his boss from space “The Great Eminence”. But before he can do this, he falls in love with the kid’s older sister after killing his younger sister (whom the boy had “shot” earlier in the film). The Great Eminence is displeased at this human weakness and sends down a massive death ray which destroys the Earth (more stock footage). The boy awakes and, of course, it was all a dream brought on by a bump on the head in a scene which was cut from the movie. The last shot though, as in RAIDERS FROM MARS, is of the alien arriving.
Although lambasted by critics, audiences flocked to it because of the new 3+D technology and the film grossed over a million dollars (over 60 times its original cost) launching the career of leading man George Nader who did movie and TV work for the next 30 years. Nobody else in it ever went anywhere although composer Elmer Bernstein (who had been been gray-listed during the McCarthy era hence his work on ROBOT MONSTER) would go on to do such late 1950s blockbusters as THE TEN COMMANDMENTS and THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN before winding up his career with National Lampoon’s ANIMAL HOUSE in 1978.
For years ROBOT MONSTER existed in ever decreasing quality prints. First on TV in the 1960s and 70s and then on home video since the 1980s. A decent version finally appeared on DVD in the early 2000s but it was in 2-D only. Now a group called Bayview Films in conjunction with the 3-D Archive has released a beautifully restored version for the film’s 70th anniversary. THIS IS THE ONLY VERSION TO GET as it has both the 3-D and 2-D versions, comes in DVD and Blu-Ray, and has tons of extras in both formats. A great movie? Hardly but it’s still a remarkable achievement that has more to offer than you might think.
The Capsule Critic 