You Can

Sean wrote:

Well Jon, I told my dad about your site and he said the worst movie

ever is Robot Monster by Phil Tucker. I looked it up and it seems

 to have a cult following as one of the worst movies ever made,

it’ll be right up your ally.

Robot Monster- Dir. Phil Tucker 1953

As most people who read this site with any regularity already know, I’ve been staying with my family in Pennsylvania for the past few weeks (due in large part to my long time girlfriend giving me the boot). As the saying goes, when it rains, it pours. Not only do I have to deal with the idea that I could end up ALONE FOREVER, a few days ago I had to watch Robot Monster…

The Plot: Ro-man, a guy in a gorilla suit and a diver’s helmet (topped, of course, with a TV antenna), comes to Earth and kills just about everybody. The 5 survivors, having all taken an experimental serum that makes them immune to Ro-man’s weaponry, must save the day, defeat the foe, and repopulate the planet. Due to Ro-man’s incredible incompetence, they make some pretty good headway. Story wise, the film’s a bit thin–the real meat and potatoes of Robot Monster are in the subtle details.

What Makes it Watch-able: Like I’ve said before, there’s a special place in my heart for terrible sci-fi. This totally falls into that category. As an added bonus, I got to view this movie with the majority of my immediate family, who, like me, are highly adept at making a film of this caliber one hundred percent viewable.

Ro-man, himself, is a bit of an iconic figure in film history. There are few people who wouldn’t recognize his costume, though the number of folks who actually watch the film is probably far fewer. I’d seen his image for years, and was quite happy to see where it came from.

Robot Monster delivers like Dominoes when it comes to extra cheese. The humans are ultra dumb, Ro-man and his off-planet boss are ridiculous, and the editing (complete with stock footage of stop motion dinosaurs and a lizard fighting an alligator) is awful. Very few things about the film have any quality that begins to approach “good”, but, for all of its flaws, Robot Monster may just well be one of the most watch-able dares I’ve had thus far.

Those of you who have already seen this movie and enjoyed it might also want to check out “Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla” (1952). This is a film that my Dad and younger brother introduced me to a few weeks ago. It’s terrible, and its message is muddled, at best, but in its utter folly, the movie truly approaches greatness in many ways. Both Brooklyn Gorilla and Robot Monster are considered tarnish on the silver spoon of film history. In my opinion, a mountain of laurels for both is far from out of order.

Times I had to avert my eyes: 0

Breaks needed to complete viewing: 0

Overall rating from 1 to 10: 7.5

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