Rating: 
Summary: ROBOT MONSTER Review!
Review: While Ed Wood's "Plan 9 From Outer Space" is often regarded as the worst film in cinema history, anyone who has sat down to watch Phil Tucker's "Robot Monster" will tell you it makes anything Wood has done look like brilliant filmmaking. This one is so entertainingly stupid that it should make for ideal viewing for any group of drunk teenagers looking to do their own MST3K. Easily the finest apocalyptic sci-fi film to ever feature a giant monkey in a diving helmet, "Robot Monster" could not be any worse if it was penned by a grade schooler who just learned how to write. Fifteen minutes into it, you will literally wonder where half of the movie went as it jumps from the opening to what should be the halfway point of it without so much as an explanation, though the use of unexplained dinosaur stock footage could have been an elaborate distraction to make us forget there was a plot in the first place. When we finally are brought up to speed, we learn that the monkey-suited invaders are the evil "Ro-Mans" who have wiped out the entire planet with an awful-looking light show. Well, everyone except for a family of five, who live in a ditch for some unknown reason, and the heroic "Shirtless" Roy who isn't afraid to show off his amazing torso for no reason at all. In one of the film's most defining moments, Roy is thrown off a cliff, but not before letting out one of the greatest death shreeks in cinematic history. It's all wrapped up nicely with an ending, that in the tradition of the whole film, defies any logic what so ever but is filled with even more stock footage from old dinosaur movies. "Robot Monster" is just an absolute mess from start to finish but it's all part of the fun. While this was supposedly intended to be a serious message about the fears of the atomic age, it never came across as such in the production. If you have a few extra bucks and you're looking for some absolute barget basement entertainment then you should pick this one up. I recommend looking for the DVD two-pack with "Plan 9 From Outer Space" included.
Rating: 
Summary: Fall Of The Ro-Man Empire!
Review: "Robot Monster" boasts one of the scariest movie monsters of all time. Ro-Man resembles an overweight gorilla wearing a diving helmet! He has managed to wipe out all of the earth's population with a death ray, except for 6 survivors. The leader of the survivors has created a serum which makes them impervious to the alien's death ray. Ro-Man discovers that when he tries to kill the young boy of the group and fails. The kid taunts him with the immortal line, "You look like a pooped-out pinwheel!" Ro-Man reports this development to the Great Guidance by means of a combination short-wave radio/video screen contraption that emits bubbles! The Great Guidance instructs him to kill the survivors by hand. Inexplicably, Ro-Man falls in love with the movie's leading lady and cannot kill her. The Great Guidance learns of his treachery and kills Ro-Man with an interplanetary death ray. The earth is saved! It's too bad they didn't release the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of "Robot Monster" along with the regular version.
Rating:
Summary: An All-time Classic For B-movie Connoisseurs!
Review: One of the most unintentionally funny films ever made, Robot Monster is a Golden Turkey award winner and a serious rival for the coveted title of "Worst Movie Ever Made". The storyline: a invading robot from the planet "Ro-Man" eradicates all life on Earth except for a family of six people, whom the robot monster (conveniently named "Ro-Man" as well) must locate and destroy upon the orders of his leader, The Great Guidance. Ro-Man spends much of the movie lumbering around a canyon searching for the humans, who have this habit of just standing there as he approaches. One wonders where the film's $20,000 budget went, as there are no sets (the whole film takes place outside) and almost no special effects (all effects are stock footage from other movies, except for the infamous Space Platform--watch closely and you can see the hand of the effects guy holding it up). The dialogue is astonishingly bad, enough to give the infamous "Plan 9 From Outer Space" a serious run for its money ("I'm bossy? You're so bossy you ought to be milked before you come home at night!"), and some of the acting just has to be seen to be believed. For those who enjoy movies that are so bad they're good, Robot Monster ranks along with the films of Ed Wood as one of the all time best.
Rating: 
Summary: This could be the best of the worst!
Review: I must agree with those who say this could be the BEST "worst movie ever made." I have seen nearly every Ed Wood movie and although his "Plan 9 From Outer Space" has a special place in the heart of any fan of bad sci-fi movies, "Robot Monster" certainly gives it a run for the money. (Ed Wood had nothing to do with "Robot Monster" but it's similar to his type of movies.) This movie is so gloriously bad and yet entertaining on many levels. I love the stock footage of fighting lizards, interjected for no apparent reason. The tender moments like the impromptu wedding scene. The bubbles that float up around Ro-Man's junky-looking equipment. The fact that the heroine manages to get tied up in rope TWICE, once by her friends & family and later by the monster. The terminology (like the "calcinator death ray"). The pointless scenes showing the Ro-Man schlepping up and those barren hills and plains. Dialogue that is so stilted, it would make Ed Wood proud. I could go on and on. What could you possibly be doing in your life that is so important you can't spend the 62 minutes it takes to watch this incredible paean to human incompetence?
Rating:
Summary: The Great One
Review: There's a moment in "Robot Monster" where every first-time viewer is kin: a lizard with a fin glued to its back jumps onto another lizard, in what is meant to represent the titanic struggle of two dinosaurs. Since this has nothing to do with anything that happened before, the novice can only watch in slack-jawed wonder, asking "What the...?"
"Robot Monster" is awash with stunning moment likes this, which may be why the trailer boasts it is "baffling." But there is the glimmer of a story.
Earth has been devastated by aliens using the calcinator death ray. The handful of survivors (and the planet's only hope) so far are immune to the ray, but are available through a viewscreen for regular taunting by the solitary Earthbound "Ro-Man" (his nom de guerre). He in turn is regularly berated by "the leader of all Ro-Men," the "Great One," sort of a psychotic nanny type who blurts his orders from across the void of space. We know it's space because of the dog food we see -- or are those asteroids?
We know they're aliens because they sport gorilla-suit bodies, and
diving helmets topped with antennae. They speak always while flailing their bulky simian arms, and in booming, stentorian threats, virtually every utterance a quotable gem. This lends a vaguely Shakesperian tone to the proceedings.
The Great One harps on the Earth Ro-Man to finish the job, while waving a violin bow. Ro-Man is willing to kill everyone in the protected compound, but something new and mysterious stirs in him when he views the professor's daughter, Al-Ice (as Ro-Man says it). This becomes one of the dramatic conflicts, and inspires the invader's touching, burbled soliloquy:
"Yes! To be like the Hu-Man! To laugh, to feel, to want. Why is this not in the Plan?...Where on the graph do 'must' and 'cannot' meet? I cannot, yet I must."
There's something compelling in all this; even my young, impressionable kids have enjoyed it several times. Every actor has something dazzlingly silly to say in all seriousness. How many movies offer a monster that entertains just by ambling up and down scrub-covered hills? "Robot Monster" is one film that will reward you just as much on the twentieth viewing as on the first.
Oh, and what about the lizards? All is revealed in the end.
Rating:
Summary: Ro-Man Makes Big Laughs!
Review: Classic example of a movie that's soooo bad it's good. I dare say, as much as I howled at "Plan Nine From Outer Space", this was even funnier! Between the cliched family cast, the oh so state-of-the art special effects (like when the orbiting platform gets blown up, the hand moving it thankfully was unharmed, and of course, that infernal bubble machine), the Ro-Man's dialogue has got to be the most hilariously classic textbook example you'll ever find of "I will destroy all of you and rule the world" silliness. The late great Elmer Bernstein provided an appropriately hokey sci-fi musical score just adding to its hilariousness. And of course, the completely arbitrary and bizarre cutting in of fighting dinosaur footage, WHAT WAS UP WITH THAT??
Great fun if you need some popcorn and a good laugh!
Rating: 
Summary: Everyone who says this is
Review: firmly in Ed Wood territory is 1000% correct. But only in his territory; not in his front yard. Yes, the film is laughable, makes no sense (the "creature" scenes are incomprehensible in terms of the plot, and are used several times), and has some of the worst acting ever seen on screen. The WW2 surplus gear on the card table is even funnier, and the creature, of course, is just ridiculous. No, it'll never be Plan 9 or Bride of the Monster, but it's still worth adding to your bad movie collection.
Rating:
Summary: Dream a little dream of me
Review: Looks like the family is having a picnic in the most unlikely spot, the ravine of Bronson Canyon, California (just rocks, dirt, and more rocks.) It is nap time. When Johnny wakes up he finds that the earth has been destroyed. The advanced force invader is a creature that looks like an ape in a diving helmet. He must be related to Laurence Welk because there are bubbles everywhere. Soon it is clear that the invader (Ro-man) has the hots for Alice (Claudia Barrett). Hope she likes hairy, bald men. Talk about ménage à Trios. Roy said to Alice "You're so bossy that you have to be milked before you come home at night" so they get married.
Will humans survive?
Does Ro-Man get to see Alice strapless? (Will we?)
Will Johnny ever play house with Carla?
Be prepared for the shocking conclusion of "The Robot Monster."
Rating: 
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
Rating:
Summary: ROBOT MONSTER Review!
Review: While Ed Wood's "Plan 9 From Outer Space" is often regarded as the worst film in cinema history, anyone who has sat down to watch Phil Tucker's "Robot Monster" will tell you it makes anything Wood has done look like brilliant filmmaking. This one is so entertainingly stupid that it should make for ideal viewing for any group of drunk teenagers looking to do their own MST3K. Easily the finest apocalyptic sci-fi film to ever feature a giant monkey in a diving helmet, "Robot Monster" could not be any worse if it was penned by a grade schooler who just learned how to write. Fifteen minutes into it, you will literally wonder where half of the movie went as it jumps from the opening to what should be the halfway point of it without so much as an explanation, though the use of unexplained dinosaur stock footage could have been an elaborate distraction to make us forget there was a plot in the first place. When we finally are brought up to speed, we learn that the monkey-suited invaders are the evil "Ro-Mans" who have wiped out the entire planet with an awful-looking light show. Well, everyone except for a family of five, who live in a ditch for some unknown reason, and the heroic "Shirtless" Roy who isn't afraid to show off his amazing torso for no reason at all. In one of the film's most defining moments, Roy is thrown off a cliff, but not before letting out one of the greatest death shreeks in cinematic history. It's all wrapped up nicely with an ending, that in the tradition of the whole film, defies any logic what so ever but is filled with even more stock footage from old dinosaur movies. "Robot Monster" is just an absolute mess from start to finish but it's all part of the fun. While this was supposedly intended to be a serious message about the fears of the atomic age, it never came across as such in the production. If you have a few extra bucks and you're looking for some absolute barget basement entertainment then you should pick this one up. I recommend looking for the DVD two-pack with "Plan 9 From Outer Space" included.
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