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The Movie: There are some mov…

Posted on 22. Jan, 2010 by kiyoyukimatsumotosblog in Uncategorized

The Movie:

There are some movies whose fame comes not from the awards and accolades
they have received, but from the scornand distain heaped upon them.
Plan
9 From Outer Space, Battlefield Earth, and Gigli all fall into
that category.    While people will stay up arguing which
is the absolute worst, one movie that is definitely in the running is Robot
Monster.  This movie is so mind bogglingly bad, that it is enjoyable
to watch.

The plot doesn’t make any sense.  It starts out with a boy, Johnny,
and his sister Carla playing in what is described as a “forest.” 
Only there aren’t any trees.  Or shrubs.  Or grass.  It’s
really just dirt and rocks.  In any case, the two siblings run into
a pair of archeologists excavating in a cave.  They talk for a moment
until the children’s widowed mother, Martha, and older sister, Alice, arrive
and take them back to their picnic site so that they can have a nap.

Okay, it’s a tad bizarre that the family is picnicking in a quarry,
but I can live with that.  From here on out, the movie decides that
plot is a really overrated aspect of fiction, and just sort of meanders
where it will.  Everyone takes a nap, and Little Johnny is the first
to wake up.  He goes exploring among the rocks and hits his head. 
When he comes to, he sees a gorilla with a steel diver’s helmet and antenna. 
It is Ro-man from the planet Ro-man.  Johnny overhears how Ro-Man
has exterminated all the people on earth, except for eight that he can’t
seem to find.  Johnny runs home unnoticed.  His ‘house’ consists
of the intersection of two cement walls with no roof and rubble on the
floor.  His father George, (who was the archeologist professor in
the a few minutes ago) explains how he has invented a serum that will inoculate
people against every disease.  A side effect of the drug is that it
also makes people immune to Ro-man’s weapons.  The professor has given
the drug only to his family and a few assistants, and these are the eight
people Ro-man is hunting down.

Now Roy enters, who was the archeologist’s assistant, but is now Alice’s
suitor.  She’s not too interested in him at first, even though he
is the last eligible man on earth.  (That’s got to be a blow to a
guy’s ego.)  But she soon comes around.

The group decides that their only hope of survival is to talk to Ro-man
and hope they can reason with him.  George contacts him with a video
phone that they happen to have, and proclaims that they want to live in
peace.   Ro-man refuses to listen until he gets a glimpse of
Alice, and falls madly in love.   He offers to discuss a peace
treaty, but only with Alice.  After breaking the connection, George
and Roy refuse to let Alice go to the meeting, because it’s much too dangerous. 
(Obviously, this is years before Sigourney Weaver was in Alien.)

SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT.  Just
skip to the next paragraph if you’d like to avoid them. 
Their only chance for peace thrown away, Roy and Alice get married and
go on a honeymoon. (What??)  Soon after they are leave, Clara runs
after the happy couple and gives some flowers to her sister.  On her
way back she runs into Ro-man.  Not in the least scared of this creature
that has killed two billion people, she stand in front of him while he
lumbers up and kills her.  Then Ro-man shuffles off (he can’t walk
very fast) and finds Roy and Alice.  He kills Roy and carries the
girl to his cave.   With his dying breath, Roy manages to tell
the remaining people that Ro-man has captured Alice.  George, Martha,
and Johnny come up with a witty plan:  Johnny will surrender to Ro-man
and hope for a painless death, while the two adults rescue Alice. 
(Yes, that is really their plan.)  While they are coming up with this
scheme, Ro-man’s superior, the “Great Guidance” orders Ro-man to kill Alice. 
He can’t do it.  Hearing Johnny yelling that he is surrendering, Ro-man
leaves the cave and kills the boy.  The parents resuce Alice, for
all the good it will do.  The Great Guidance, angry that Alice has
gotten away, uses his powers to kill Ro-man for disobeying him, and then
releases his “cosmic tube rays” that “resurrect prehistoric life.” 
We are then treated to some scenes of dinosaurs fighting lifted from One
Million B.C.  The earth starts to crack open and disintegrate
when…….Johnny wakes up!  It was all a dream.  The main characters
gather in the cave and chat about how glad they are that Johnny wasn’t
hurt and then leave.  Just as they are out of sight, an army of Ro-mans
(or is it Ro-men?  What is the plural of Ro-man?) walk out of the
cave.  So end one of the greatest stinkers of all time.

End Spoilers

Granted this is a very low budget movie.  Made for $16,000 and
shot in four days in 1953, you can’t expect high production values. 
But there is so much wrong with this movie, it’s hard to know where to
start.  The acting is bad, but the dialog is worse.  This film
contains some of the most unappealing lines ever read in a movie.  
Most of Ro-man’s dialog just doesn’t make any sense what so ever. 
“My pulse has been reduced to plus zero zero.”  Or my favorite speech
in the film:  “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!”

The others characters have wretched dialog too.  In one scene Roy
says to Alice “You’re so bossy, you should be milked before you come home
at night.”

The direction is horrid.  The composition is ghastly, and the camera
hardly ever moves.  Many of the shots last much too long.  There
are scenes that have no reason at all for being in the movie, a lot of
them.  There are shots of Ro-Man just walking around.  And more
shots of Ro-Man walking around.   And there are errors that would
have been easily fixed with a retake, that were left in.  There is
one instance where someone bumps the camera, and they didn’t bother do
it over.

There are many, many internal errors too.  While watching this,
my seven year old son was pointing out the mistakes and continuity errors. 
When the movie was done, he asked why the movie was titled Robot Monster. 
I couldn’t answer him.  It’s not clear if Ro-man is a robot with a
fur covered body or an alien with breathing apparatus on.  They just
never bothered to explain it.

The only quality aspect of the movie is the musical score.  Written
by Elmer Bernstein, who went on to do such notable films as To Kill
a Mockingbird, and True Grit, the music was very good and appropriate. 
It would have been improved greatly by a larger orchestra, but even with
the small group they used, it’s a good sound track.

The thing that makes this film though, is that everyone acting in it
is very earnest.  They are taking this very seriously.  It was
almost as if they had no idea how horrible the lines they were reciting
sounded.  And that is what pushes this movie from just “really bad”
to “so bad it’s good.”   And this film is very fun to watch. 
The incomprehensible plot, and the myriad of errors and mistakes puts this
film right up there with Plan 9 From Outer Space.

This film was originally released in 3D and 2D versions.  Don’t
let the fact that this in not in 3D deter you from purchasing it. 
There is some question whether the 3D version of the movie really was three
dimensional.  Rumor has it Robot Monster was shot with only
one camera, and that they sent two copies of the same print to the theaters
equipped to show 3D films.  (3D films at the time had two slightly
different prints that were projected through two projectors at the same
time to create the 3D effect.)  I am not sure if a 3D print of the
film still exists that would give a definitive answer.

Update:  There is a full 3-D
print of Robot monster still in existance!  It was shown at the World
3-D Film Expo which was held September 12-21 2003 in Hollywood.  Apparently
the director DID do a good job with the 3-D effects.  To quote from
the 3-D Film Expo’s promotional material “remarkably the B&W 3-D is
generally pretty good.”  (Many thanks to Steve Phillips for bringing
this to my attention.)    

The DVD:

Audio:

This DVD has a mono audio track.  There are no subtitles. 
The movie was originally advertised as having a stereo audio track, but
that doesn’t mean that it had one.  I find it hard to believe the
such a low budget movie went to the expense of having a stereo mix. 
In any case, the sound is passable.  There is some hiss but it is
minimal.  The dialog is clear and easy to understand.  There
isn’t a lot of impact, even when the earth cracks open, but it probably
didn’t have a lot in 1953 either.

Video:

Presented in full frame, as it was shot, the video on this disc is acceptable. 
It’s not great, but they did find a good print of the film, and it’s very
watchable.  The picture is a little dark.  There are not any
details in the shadows, and when the professor is sitting in the cave at
the beginning of the movie, his dark shirt disappears into the background
creating a floating head effect.  Due to the lack of quality in other
aspects of this film, it could have been filmed that way.

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There are many flecks and dirt specs on the print.  Not overwhelming,
but a good amount.  There is some other instances of print damage;
a line down one side of the picture for the first minute or so, a couple
of missing frames in one spot.  It never lets you forget that you
are watching something that was on film at one time.

There are some digital artifacts visible too.  The strips on Alice’s
dress disappear when she moves for example, but these instances are minor
and they are not distracting.

On the positive side, the print that they used is much cleaner than
any I’ve seen for this movie up to this time.  For the most part the
print is clean, and though a little dark, hasn’t lost too much contrast. 
It is not hard on the eyes, despite my criticism.  The sad fact is
that the picture quality of this movie is about as good as it is going
to get.  Yes, it could be restored, but who is going to spend the
incredible sums that would entail?

Extras:

There is a trailer for the movie featured on the disc, something that
I think should be included on all DVDs.  The trailer is rather entertaining,
and is better than the movie itself in a lot of ways.  It is of lower
video quality than the feature, with the picture being softer and more
blurry, but it’s still watchable.  There are also trailers for several
other movies from the same time period:  Bride of the Monster,
Jail Bait, Rocketship X-M, and Destination Moon.

One other item of note:  This DVD was originally released in a
snapper case.  The newest copies are showing up in keep cases.

Final Thoughts:

Bad dialog, bad acting, and bad direction.  A convoluted script
that makes no sense.  Cheap special effects, and no sense of continuity. 
Top it off with a horrible monster, and you’ve got a film that is actually
fun to watch.  Especially if you watch it with a group of friends,
so you can all laugh together.  This would make a good party movie. 
Highly recommended for fans of early 50’s science fiction movies and people
who can appreciate truly awful film making.  Recommended for those
of you out there who could use a good laugh.