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Robot Monster

Robot Monster

List Price: $14.99
Your Price: $13.49
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Cinematic sci-fi achievement that rivals The Matrix
Review: Talk about undiscovered talent, sheer cunning and mindmazing questions of existence. How much further into the depths of the imagination and science fiction can one propel than an overweight Gorilla in a diving helmet? It cannot be done my friends, it boggles the mind how such an international treasure has gone unrecognized for so long. The 3d glasses make the Matrix seem like child's play on a lazy afternoon. This movie is much more than a cinematic achievement, it provokes the thought crushing paradox of "I must, yet i cannot. How do you calculate that?". It pains my mind to even take a brief glimpse into the colossal depth of that question. The only movie that can be compared to the legendary Plan 9 from Outer Space! Don't let me get started on the landscape, breathtaking. The hills..the endless ever rolling hills and shrubs. The most technologically advanced movie of the century, if you saw that bubble machine you know exactly what i'm talking about. And look at the heroine, major babe! A real woman for the next millenium, get this today. You will NOT be disappointed!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I must, but I cannot. How do you calculate that ?
Review: The last time I saw Phil Tucker's masterpiece, 'Robot Monster', was over 10 years ago. Having seen it 17 times at the cinema, I was delighted to discover that on video it is just as excruciatingly bad as ever. What a hysterical, crazy film this is ! Surely the most obese monster ever, and it must have been hot in that gorilla suit. Rib-tickling dialogue, and memorable performances from Claudia Barrett, and George Nader, who used to be intimate with Rock Hudson, apparently. What I did not like were the comments inserted by the Rhino distributors during the film. The film is funny enough without additions. This video will command a proud place in my library.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Hilarious and great for Midnight Viewing.
Review: I bought this video when I was about 11, and I was appalled! But now, at age 15, I am getting into bad sci-fi and I dragged it out of my attic. When I watched it though, I found myself enjoying it! This movie is great fun, and excellent com- panion pieces include "Cat Women on the Moon" and "The Mask" (not Jim Carrey!). BUY THIS VIDEO!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Little Johnny was adorable.
Review: As the wife of the now grown up "Johnny" and the mother of his children, I consider it an honor to be associated with such a talented young actor. The "monster" was a little hard to deal with and what woman wears a white dress and heals to climb up in the hills? But I guess anything goes when you are a little boy dreaming.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A "must have" for the serious B-movie science fiction fan!
Review: From the overgrown chimp costume (complete with diver-style helmet) to the seriously bad acting, this movie truely has it all! Forget the plot, it just get's in the way. Instead, watch for the dazzling special effects (what's with that bubble machine?), the clever dialogue, and the tight editing. Watta movie! As a bonus, see if you can spot the hand holding the model space ship, and was that nudity actually planned? By the look on the actress's face, I am guessing not. After seeing this movie, the only question remains: Just what the hell are those lizards doing in this movie!?! A must have for any science fiction fan. I am ordering plenty this year for stocking stuffers.......

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: ROBOT MONSTERS AT 3AM FREAKED OUT
Review: I rember I saw RM late one night on tv.about 3 or 4 am.and good gawd ,it scard the bejeezus outta me!!watching big bear-type-bodys w/ tv's as heads.and also the ending.just thinking about if evernlate at night makes my flesh crawl.if you never hear or seen the movie,oder it ,when recieved watch it LATE AT NIGHT !!! IT'S MORE FUN .IF YOU DARE!!!!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: one of the most interestinting sci-fi classics
Review: This films is actually about a young boy's nightmare and so there's a lot of interpretations that we can find about what happens in the movie. Anyway Ro-man, the robot monster, is one of the most interesting aliens in all movie history because with his astronaut helmet and his hairy gorilla body combines in an astonishing way the thrilling aspects of technics and animal forces. Ro-man is a robot sent to destroy humanity, but he fails and starts aiming to become human and so his sender destroyes him. For half of the film we can see a young man half naked showing his beautiful torso. But it's all just a child's dream!!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of the true cinema masterpieces!
Review: An overweight gorilla with a diving helmet (and rabbit ears antenna) on hishead invades earth to wipe out lastremaining people left alive. (He's already killed everyone else.) His hightech equipment includes war surplus shortwave radio, a bubble blowing machine (!) and TV transmitter/receiverto talk to his boss "the Great One" (wholooks just like him) on another planet.Includes dinosaur footage from "OneMillion Years B.C." Superb acting byGeorge Nader, Gregory Moffett and Claudia Barrett. Masterful direction bythe legendary Phil Tucker ("Cape Canaveral Monsters", "Tijuana After Midnight"). You can have "Citizen Kane"and "Grand Illusion"; for me it doesn'tget any better than "Robot Monster"!Originally shown in 3-D but the 3-D video from Rhino looks terrible, get theflat 2-D version.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Gives PLAN 9 a run for its money!
Review: PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE is universally considered the worst movie ever because it really is DREADFUL, but also because this sort of "Ed Wood cult" has sprung up. Ed Wood is a fascinating character, and aside from the movie about him (an excellent film) seeing PLAN 9 is the best way to get into this guys head. Also, there are large parts of PLAN 9 that are truly hilarious...laugh out loud funny.

ROBOT MONSTER, I believe, may be even worse. The problem is, the movie isn't quite so hysterically funny. It doesn't have quite so many quotable bad lines. It's just patently ridiculous in its conception. I mean, when Phil Tucker realized he couldn't do any better than a gorilla suit and a diving helmet, the plug should have been pulled on the whole darn thing!!! But no, lesser minds prevailed, and this junk was actually filmed. It is wretchedly acted, with a plot that makes absolutely no sense, and special effects a five year old could improve upon!

By all means, if you're a bad movie buff, you must own this film! Let there be no question. But in terms of sitting around with a bunch of friends to show them just how fun a bad movie can be, PLAN 9 still wins. Some movies are so bad they're funny...others are just bad. ROBOT MONSTER stradles that line.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Behold the awesome calcinator death ray!
Review: In the pantheon of bad movies, few ever achieve the notoriety of Robot Monster (1953), except maybe for Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), as being among the worst of the worst. Written by Wyott Ordung (Target Earth) and directed by Phil Tucker, Robot Monster, intended to be a allegory of the post modern world of World War II, instead has become a cult classic of cosmic proportions in its' complete and utter badness...

So what's the movie about? Well, apparently us Earthlings have become too smart for our own good, incurring the worrisome wraith of the Ro-Men, aliens with gorilla bodies and diving suit helmets for heads, as their fear is we will someday become powerful enough to destroy them...or they just want our planet (their motivation seemed to flip-flop between these two ideas). Their plan? Send a deadly emissary (only one) armed with a death ray and bubble machine to annihilate the population of Earth, allowing for others to follow...to which they find great success...almost. Yes, the entire population of our planet, about two billion at the time, are destroyed, except for 5 people. Seems these five people share some sort of immunity to the death ray, and now find themselves huddled for survival in bombed out ruins, trying to hide their existence from the alien fiend, who just happens to reside in a cave not to far from their hiding place. Can these lone survivors, these last remnants of humankind, find a way to destroy or make peace with this menace before they find themselves extinct?

Man, this movie, which was shot on location in Bronson Canyon in California, probably one of the most used locations for Hollywood films, was a painfest...cheap effects I can usually take, as I've seen hundreds of B movies, but everything in this film seems like it was scraped from the bottom of some barrel. I guess the most obvious element to start out with is the aliens' extremely cumbersome costume, limiting its' mobility to the point where anytime it would chase someone, for it to actually catch them, the prey would have to either run very slow and awkward, or conveniently trip and fall to the ground. A gorilla suit with a diver's helmet? That's pretty sad, even for a film like this...I especially loved the fact that the person wearing this getup was also wearing a mask within the diving helmet, and so we were unable to see his face, so whenever he spoke, he would usually make all kinds of exaggerated gestures with his hands much like your stereotypical Italian, as if to compensate for lack of facial expressions. And really, what is the deal with the bubble machine? I suspect they got a really good deal (possible free use of it) or something on it, as the company who supplied is listed within the credits, but if I was making a film with the intention of providing chills or scares to my audience, a bubble machine only serves to counteract any terror as bubbles just can help but emote a sense of happiness. I also got really tired of that cheesy view screen the monster kept using to contact his homeworld, where he would then get messages from his leader, known as The Great Guidance, on how to proceed in his task of eliminating these last five surviving members of the human race, which proves entirely too difficult given the ease and speed of which he wiped out the other two billion humans on Earth. The acting was about as bad as you'd expect, and I found myself actually hoping for the alien to eliminate this persistent band of less then plucky survivors. The dialog...once you got past the gorilla suit/diving helmet alien element, the viewer is bombarded by round after round of some really awful dialog. The direction, while not great, is serviceable, but given the mish mash plot, it hardly makes a difference. One bright spot throughout the film was the musical score, presented by legendary Academy Award winning composer Elmer Bernstein, who later working on such films as The Ten Commandments (1956), The Magnificent Seven (1960), To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), and The Great Escape (1963), to name a very few.

The film, which I believe was originally presented in 3-D (in fabulous 2-D here), looks surprising good. The source material used for the transfer has obviously suffered some deterioration over time, but not as much as I would have thought, as the picture, while having many flaws visually, all seem minor at best. The audio was pretty soft here, as I had crank the volume up high to fully catch every bit of riveting dialogue as it was spoken. As far as special features, there is a theatrical trailer present, along with some other trailers, most all for Ed Wood films I believe, and that's it...not much, considering the cult status level of the film, in my opinion.

As I said, cheap effects don't necessarily make for a bad movie, but in conjunction with extremely lame dialogue, incredibly poor acting, passable direction, and a completely incoherent plot equal a cinematic hurting few others have ever achieved. I read that the director, Phil Tucker, took this movie so seriously that when released and the extremely critical reviews began coming in, he was so distraught he attempted suicide, but was unsuccessful, and actually went on to direct about six more films, certainly none as memorable as this, his first. I can't help but wonder when a director makes a film as bad as this, how they can't see just how awful it is prior to releasing it. How deluded would you have to be to think this was actually going to be a good movie? I guess the most important thing to have if you are going to watch this film is a sense of humor, as that is where the main gist of the entertainment lies, unintentional as it may be...

Cookieman108


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