Robot Monster
Phil Tucker
Initial release: June 25, 1953 (USA)
Alternate title: Monsters from the Moon (working title), Monster from Mars (working title)
Sometimes you just want something stupid.
The 1950s were a golden age for B-movies. While the term "B-movie" derives from studio practices prior to the 1940s, when studios would release double "A" and "B" features with "A movies" being the primary feature with bigger budgets and better production values, as the studio system began to collapse in the post-war era "B movie" began to refer more to cheaply-produced genre film. There could be a lot of advantages of making your picture a "B movie," though more often than not they were just Poverty Row cheapies, made slapdash and in a hurry to turn a quick buck. Anybody who knows something about film knows about Ed Wood, but before there was Ed Wood, there was Phil Tucker's Robot Monster, also known as that movie the kids were watching in It Follows.
Robot Monster is built on a simple premise: what if a cyborg alien (basically a guy in a gorilla suit with a space helmet on) killed everyone on Earth with a "Calcinator ray" except for eight people in post-World War III California? As Ro-Man (from the planet Ro-Man) hunts down the surviving family, conveniently living in the ruins not far from his cave hideout, he soon grows enamored of Alice, the beautiful young woman who insists on negotiating with him. The Great Guidance (who also looks like Ro-Man) berates him for not finishing the job, but just as Ro-Man's rebellion seems complete, the Great Guidance destroys the whole planet. In a twist ending that Tucker added onto the script, the boy wakes up to find that it was all a dream... or was it?
It's a stupid movie, poorly made and poorly acted, shot in four days for $16,000 (in 1953 dollars — that'd be closer to $190,000 today) mostly in classic Hollywood shooting location Bronson Canyon, the go-to spot for many a western or sci-fi production. The special effects are mostly recycled stock footage from other B-movies like One Million B.C. and a bubble machine, which apparently Ro-Man needs for his communication equipment to function. The Calcinator ray doesn't seem to exist as anything except in the form of the film repeatedly flashing color inversion in such a way that gives you a headache. And most of the acting is as wooden as a log cabin.
And yet there's something charming about it. It makes more sense if you see it as the child's nightmare that it is; the title sequence is over a spread of pulp magazines that more than anything else really emphasizes the film's intended tone. With better production values, this could almost be a cheeky, knowing little love letter to pulp fiction and Golden Age comic books, and it was certainly intended to be one.
As it is, it's just a bad movie, but it's entertainingly bad, the kind of thing you watch while stoned to the gills. There's an earnestness to it that's refreshing. There's a kind of honesty in making a movie so bad it's considered a contender for worst movie ever made; the truth is, even bad art is still art. It's still something that was created by human hands. And while it arguably has little value as serious film, it's entertained generations of bored stoners and college kids, particularly through its featuring on Mystery Science Theater 3000. That's one way to build a legacy.
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