 | Robot Monster or when bad monkeys happen to good people |
"You're so bossy you oughta be milked before you come home at night."
Click for Robot Monster audio clip
There are few films that strike a chord as resonant as Phil Tucker's 3-D film, Robot Monster. The opening credits feature a backdrop of pulp sci-fi and horror comics, as if to get the viewer in the mood for what's to come. What follows is simply bizarre. Young Johnny is playing space man with his little sister. This involves walking around with a toy space helmet on his head and sparkler gun making 'reeer reeer' sounds as he fires at his sister, staring dully back at him. Nearby his mom and older sister are picnic-ing in a slag pit.
What fun.
Also nearby is an aged Professor and his young virile assistant performing archeological research. Through some hastily conveyed exposition, it is established that Johnny's father has passed on and he is looking for a new dad... and the Professor fits the bill of this starry eyed kid who obviously reads way too much science fiction. Roy obviously has eyes for Alice (and who wouldn't?), while Johnny is far more interested in science stuff and getting into trouble. He wanders into the cave where the Professor and Roy are working on deciphering some prehistoric markings and falls unconscious.
A very weird sequence of gators dressed up as dinosaurs along with stop motion triceratops fighting follows. I once had the same experience from drinking Mad Dog and Kool Aid.
Flash forward to a wild fever dream in which Johnny's family is amongst the last survivors of an attack from beyond the stars... oh and the Professor is his dad. The mad invader Ro-Man (from the planet Ro-Man) stalks the slag pit and nearby valleys searching for them, but they are protected by an electro-barrier cast around what appears to be the remains of a house or the foundation of a new one that was never built. Ro-Man starts each scene by wandering out of a cave (the same one that the Professor and Roy were investigating) with an explosion of bubbles, negative flashes and thunder bolts. Never has a villain been introduced this way before or since.
Ro-Man, a giant gorilla wearing a stocking and diving helmet, engages in regular confabs with his superior who looks almost exactly the same as him. The conversations go on forever but boil down to same thing each time, KILL THE HUMANS. Possibly hindered by the ineffectual bubble gun and gorilla costume, Ro-Man makes a shambles of his mission even though his prey is about ten feet away.
The Professor provides lots of back information that establishes the wild futuristic world that Johnny's dream resides in, complete with disease-killing serums, space platforms and disintegrator guns, and such.
Ro-Man is further stymied by the Professor's serum that somehow negates his death ray. Also, he develops the hots for Alice who smokily leads him on through a video phone. I think that you can actually see the diving helmet steam up when he talks to her. Seized by a passion he has never felt before, Ro-Man goes on a kill-crazy rampage and murders everyone in sight to get at Alice.
Despite the somewhat action-packed ideas, this all happens verrrrry sloooowly. Much of Robot Monster is filled with sequences of a guy in a gorilla costume wandering around the valley. Honestly, you could make a sandwich and get some housework done while this played on your TV and not miss a thing.
1953 Trailer
watch?v=cq9IKsH9BXg
The story goes that the director lacked any budget at all to realize what is a rather ambitious story (on paper) and luckily the actor playing Ro-Man happened to own a gorilla costume. A quick addition and a space invader was born.
Much like other 50's films and serials, Robot Monster greatly influenced several young lads who went on to become storytellers and filmmakers themselves, such as Stephen King and John Carpenter. You can see what kind of impact the movie had on those two.
Robot Monster is available for purchase, but can also be viewed on late night TV (including Wolfman Mac's Chiller Drive-In).
It was also screened by MST3K back in its second season on Comedy Central (when Josh Weinstein assisted Dr. Forrester), but is currently not available on DVD... but you watch it for free here.
Buy 'Plan 9 From Outer Space/Robot Monster' on DVD
SciFi Classics 50 Movie Pack Collection
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