Old Movie Review: Robot Monster (1953)

^{Note: this is my last movie review for the time being, but I plan to do more with these soon. Thanks for your support!}

^{“Go take your nap, ya dang brat!”}

In the south-western desert, a rambunctious brat with astronaut delusions (Johnny) — and his dullard little sister (Carla) wander over to the mouth of a cave and start pestering a few archaeologists — Roy and the professor. Reunited with his mom and older sister, they go take an afternoon nap.

^{Rubber dinos locked in a life‑and‑death struggle!}

Johnny wakes up and returns to the cave, but falls to the ground when a comet causes a bright flash. A few out-of-place scenes occur, featuring battling rubber dinosaurs — Siliconosaurus and Polyethylopterix and the mighty Perflouroelastomerodon. I swear, the same dino gets thrown off the same cliff three times in a row... and that takes talent!

^{15% robot, 85% gorilla, it's Ro‑man!}

Johnny awakes (again) to find some alien communication equipment. A portly, ape-like monster with a spherical metallic helmet waddles out to the view-screen and starts to jibber-jabber with his boss. The two shaggy chimp droids yap about how earthlings were there only competition in the cosmos and how their “calcinator deathray” has sizzled everyone off... except for eight survivors, two at a space station and six still on the planet. Ro-man, the robot monster, gets orders to go on a seek and destroy mission.

^{The TV around here sucks, but there's only one channel!}

Johnny’s family survived the deathray because they made a gadget that reflected the beams — and immunized themselves from the rays(?) Ro-man hits them up on face-time and tells them if they surrender, he’ll kill them softly, but due to their hesitation, he issues a grave threat. His boss then bitches at him... Roy, an unexpected survivor, has been listening in - he reunites with the others. Alice and Roy set aside their differences to get an encrypted message to some astronauts - but fail. Donkey Kong gives them a backwards counting lesson before he destroys the rocket mid-flight. The six remaining survivors are given one more warning, but are still defiant.

^{Johnny is taunting Ro-man, but he gives away the secret to their survival}

The face-time back and forth goes on and on... Ro-man develops the hots for Alice, but Pops doesn’t approve of intergalactic dating. Alice insists on meeting Ro-man for a dream date, but they hog-tie her and little Johnny darts off to taunt the cybernetic care bear. Impervious to the death ray, the crumb-cruncher boasts that they have been immunized against the deathray. Ape-face plans to tweak the weapon to finally do them all in.

^{When being stalked by a robot, best option is to do pantomime & make out}

Roy unties Alice on the promise of good behavior and they set out to deal with Fuzzy Wuzzy... but instead of actually confronting him, they duck down in a ditch, communicate with pantomime and fire up the snogging engines! Stood-up by Alice, Fozzy truckles back to his crib while the survivors conduct a wedding ceremony. Ro-man receives orders to destroy the survivors with physical force, but that son-of-a-monkey can’t destroy love. Carla runs and picks some post-wedding flowers for the newly weds — and gets mercked by Ro-man.

^{Love does not compute, but Ro-man's getting all feelzy}

Honeymoon’s over when Go‑go‑gorilla beats up hubby and nabs Alice. He starts gettin’ fresh back at the cave, ties her up and bonks her on the head. The others finally request a quick death, but Ro‑man decides to make some moves on Alice first. Then, a perturbed boss‑man phones him and warns him to stick with the mission — or else. Ro-man gets feelsy before getting a verbal slapping, but he still can’t make up his mind. Johnny makes a diversion while Mom & Pops rescue Alice and smash the communication unit. Ro‑man strangles him, but at this point, the CEO of Ro‑man Inc. has had enough of his indecision. Ro‑man himself is destroyed with his own deathray!

^{Hyper-realistic lightning — Wow!}

The “fun” isn’t over yet. Boss-man unleashes hokey stop-motion thunder lizards and a killer earthquake on the planet to eliminate the four survivors. The scene fades out to reveal that this whole nightmare was a head-injury induced imagination of Johnny. We suspect it’d take a sequence of head injuries to dream this awful mess up. At least Roy scores a heavily-chaperoned 50’s style dinner-date with Alice.

They all take off, but the viewer is left approached by a phantom Ro-man three times, causing uncertainty and sheer terror at the prospect of being eradicated by a maniacal furry-convention reject.

Old Movie Review: Robot Monster (1953)

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for video versions of these posts!