Customer Reviews
Drek from the Fifties 
2006-01-01
After watching this movie to the point where we see the Robot Monster stride about a desert-like landscape, I backed up to the beginning to see if Ed Wood had somehow had a hand in this film; he does not. After seeing this movie, I wonder why anyone would still want their name associated with it.
We see young Johnny (Gregory Moffett) scampering about the landscape, playing with his toy ray gun. He wanders into a cave where two scientists are supposedly searching for human artifacts. Shortly, mommy (Selena Royle, who appeared in "The Fighting Sullivans," "30 Seconds Over Tokyo," "The Harvey Girls," and the tv soap "As the World Turns"), hot sister Alice (Claudia Barrett) and little sister Carla (Pamela Paulson) come to tell Johnny that it is time for his nap.
Johnny soon wakes from his nap and goes back to the cave, where he discovers the scientists are gone and something strange is happening. Shortly, accompanied by special effects, a fearsome Ro-Man appears. We soon learn that the Ro-Men are either afraid of us becoming strong enough to attack them or they want our planet as a fun place to destroy; the movie seems to struggle as to their motivation. Somewhere along the line the Ro-Man destroyed the entire population of the earth except for eight people, all of whom had a vaccine that turns out to protect them from the Ro-Man's death ray (a convenient side effect!). There are also men on the space platform, which looks a lot like a model rocket on strings, until the Ro-Men decide it needs destruction too.
One thing I struggled to understand was how Ro-Man was able to destroy the two or so billion people on earth at that time, and yet was unable to find the few remaining people. Ah, it turns out that the vaccine also makes the people invisible to Ro-Man's detecting devices (I think). How convenient.
This movie is funnier than it is scary. The Ro-Men, both played by George Barrows and voiced by John Brown, are gorilla suits topped off with a fishbowl helmet. The fishbowl helmet seems to be adorned by old television rabbit ears. Of course robots are logical creatures, so we find Ro-Man and his boss Great Guidance gesturing wildly to emphasize their point. The director probably considered such gestures important since Ro-men have no apparent mouths. Our earthly Ro-Man soon behaves more strangely as he succumbs to the charms of hot sister Alice to the point where he takes a stab at removing her clothing.
Because there is insufficient plot to fill an hour (my DVD player claims the movie ended about 62 minutes or so after it began, but imdb states the movie is 66 minutes long), we see a lot of scenes of Ro-Man walking about the landscape, which is about as thrilling as watching clouds move. My mind started wandering and I wondered how George Barrows could handle stumbling about the hills of California in that hot suit. The actions scenes are similarly well staged. Because Ro-Man seems unable to manage more than a fast walk, his victims pretty much have to fall or walk into his grasp.
An interesting side note. Elmer Bernstein, who composed the music for more than 250 movies and television shows, did the excellent music for this film. After seeing Bernstein's name in the opening credits I found myself fascinated by the music more frequently than the plot. I initially wondered how Bernstein became involved in this movie until reviewing his career. This movie was one of his first and well in advance of credits that would firmly establish his capabilities.
This movie has an interesting ending. I am reluctant to say surprise because I noticed something early in the movie that, if you are watching with even minimal care, will give you a significant clue as to the end. The only thing about the end that surprised me was the cheesy double exposure of the Ro-Man walking out of the cave several times. I am clueless as to the purpose of that part of the ending. The Ro-Man ending may have been intended to be scary, but the repetition became tedious and then funny.
Movies such as this are rarely made these days. When they are made they usually go direct to cable or direct to video. As cheesy as this movie is, it is still a fun movie to watch in a group because it provides great material for extemporaneous jokes. You will want this movie if you are collecting the films of any of the actors, cheesy science fiction movies that likely were drive-in theater fodder, or cheesy science fiction films of the 50s. This movie is not quite as bad as Ed Wood's "Plan 9 from Outer Space," but it is very close, and consequently is nearly a cult classic.
Wanna Sleep? Watch Robot Monster by Phil Tucker! 
2005-10-27
My wife complains about falling asleep mid-way through
my favorite TV Series 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea'.
Either it was carb overload from 4 hotdogs for dinner, but
Robot Monster by Phil Tucker had me stumbling and writhing in more pain in my couch than my 2 herniated discs
just to stay awake and at least get my money's worth
since it was a NetFlix rental.
Its all true; the dialog was corny and special effects as valuable as the U.S. dollar after depreciation since 2000.
The highlights were 'Does Ro-Man want a date with Alice?' and
the camera focusing on how to solder a radio set to communicate
with the leader of Ro-Man.
But don't take my word. Be like me and see for yourself just
how really bad this movie is. You wonder if this movie was made
by idiots trying to pass for amateurs.
Five stars for the greatest non comedic sci-fi comedy ever made 
2005-10-08
Mystery Science Theater geeks rejoice! This is the Titanic of Bad B Movies. It features increadible special effects of a bubble machine, a Geeky larry king looking man running around operating a rocket on a stick,and the greatest Gorilla/Aquanaut suit technology man could create. Also you will be held at the edge of your seat with random dinasaur claymation fights and chilled by the greatest cliche twist at the end. Trust me this is a realy funny B movie you have to see to believe, or disbelieve.
I am the Great Guidance!!! 2005-08-08
You puny Hu-Mans! Listen to me! Watch this movie! You will! It is in the plan! You cannot escape!
"You Are Acting Like Hu-Man Not Ro-Man!" 2005-06-16
ROBOT MONSTER is one of "those" classic Five Star One Star '50s horror movies. The problem with "C" movies is that they can't be rated by the usual standards. By its own standards its a gem.
But for the fact that this gobbler wasn't touched by Ed Wood it has all the guaranteed elements of bad moviemaking. Actually, ROBOT MONSTER was panned so severely upon release that director Phil Tucker attempted suicide afterward.
ROBOT MONSTER concerns the depredations of a fat gorilla-suited space alien in a diving helmet (Ro-Man from the planet Ro-Man which is populated by the race of Ro-Mans) who comes to earth and destroys virtually all of human life with the aid of a vacuum tube radio and a Lawrence Welk bubble machine.
Ro-Man is a grouchy, slow moving space visitor who talks with his hands and grumbles a lot. He lives in one of the more familiar Hollywood caves of Bronson Canyon, California.
The few surviving humans (a family of five) protect themselves by stringing aluminum foil around their house so that Ro-Man cannot use his death ray machine against them. Instead, he must dispose of them one at a time "by the process of strang-u-laaa-tion" if they are so foolish as to step outside of their Reynolds Wrap safety zone.
Given their current world political situation, the humans, Richard Nixon-like, are seeking "Peace---But peace with honor!" from Ro-Man. Hmmm. Seems reasonable. After all, Ro-Man has really shown restraint up until this point. Why shouldn't they trust him?
But wait! Even after atomizing everybody else (apparently including the film's scriptwriter) Ro-Man has developed a penchant for Alice, the eldest daughter of the survivors. Fortunately for us, Alice seems to have a corresponding yen for excessively hirsute and overweight men wearing fishbowls on their heads. So while Ro-Man is distracted picking a bouquet for his new girlfriend, the family figures out a way to finally finish him off.
Exactly how humanity is going to repopulate the earth with only the Father Knows Best kids around escapes me, but clearly someone involved with this film escaped from somewhere.
It's as bad and as much fun as it sounds.
How Can Something So Bad Feel So Good? 2008-02-02
This movie's tag as one of the worst ever made is worth paying attention to, but it's a bit misleading, too. As with those other worst movies - most notably Ed Wood's "Plan Nine" - such a grandiose insult tells you there must be something going on to make the thing worth talking about at all.
Yes, its monster, the Ro-Man, is put together from a bad ape costume and a deep sea diving helmet. Yes, it looks like it was shot on some empty hillside in the San Fernando Valley, its only set being the partial concrete foundation left over from some building removed years before. And yes, the inserted sequences of stop-motion clay dinosaurs and real lizards make for a baffling kind of narrative non-sequitur. But, despite how cheaply it's done, there's a certain . . . care . . . put into this movie's production.
First of all, its cast features George Nader. He didn't have much of a career yet, but he was easily as good as any of the era's other matinee idols. It also features Selena Royale, a perfectly respectable contract player who's probably best remembered for her role in the MGM musical, "The Harvey Girls." And the movie boasts a musical score by Elmer Bernstein who'd later receive Oscar nominations for his work on 11 movies, winning for "Thoroughly Modern Millie." Certainly it would have been easier to persuade lesser talents to sign on to the job, no matter how badly these needed the work.*
And then there's the story: not great by any measure, but it suggests a little more thought and effort than the project required. The Ro-Man has been sent to earth to hunt down our planet's last survivors after some sort of death ray has wiped out the rest of the population. There are the requisite references you'd expect from any Cold War monster movie: the Ro-Man's blind obedience to his planet's collective goals and his resistance to individual thought. But then he starts to fall for the movie's heroine and to second-guess the wisdom of his leader's orders. OK: it doesn't exactly give the story depth, but it does make the movie a little bit easier to watch.
There's lots of really good gratuitous sexual titillation, too. At one point, the Ro-Man rips the bodice off our heroine's dress and it comes dangerously close to making the movie feel more adult than was probably the original intent. But, best of all, George Nader spends most of the movie stripped to the waist (with no explanation for why he needs to lose his shirt, except that his torso is pretty amazing, even by today's standards). While this kind of exploitation isn't unusual in low-grade fodder for the drive-in crowd, here it feels oddly organic to the story; it's weird and cheap and somehow perfect. It's as if the man behind the movie (Producer-Director Phil Tucker) was teasing his own interests, rather than forcing into his feature something he expected only to wow his audience (like that weird dinosaur footage).
Robot Monster is never going to be remembered as a great movie. But there's something at its core that makes it worth remembering, all the same. It's a strange and wonderful example of how the right kind of bad work can create something (kind of) horribly good.
*Bernstein's career was still young. Royale's career had come to a screeching halt when she refused to appear before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. And Nader's career wasn't going anywhere at this point. Ironically, it was the commercial success of this movie that made Universal sit up and take notice of the man's gifts (before they allegedly sold him out to Confidential Magazine to protect their bigger investment in another gay property, Rock Hudson, who was more than willing to lie about his sexual orientation, a crime Nader apparently never committed).
THIS ONE WILL HAVE YOU SCRATCHING YOUR HEAD!? FUNNY STUFF 2007-04-27
This movie falls into the "so bad it's good" category. The filmmakers didn't even have the money for an entire Gorilla suit so.......lets use a deep sea diving helmet for it's head!? This is still a pretty funny watch.
Saturday Matinee 1953 2007-04-26
"Robot Monster" (1953) is certainly horrible when compared to a high budget SiFi film like "Forbidden Planet" (1956). The plot is silly and the special effects laughable. I almost turned it off the first time I watched it. I'm glad I didn't as this film is really an endearing bit of American nostalgia. It's a 1950s Saturday afternoon matinee film meant for kids. So just picture riding your bicycle down to your local cinema on a sunny summer afternoon. You and your friends plop down some quarters for tickets to Robot Monster, buy some popcorn, and make your way into the darken theater. A kid with an imagination can transform a campy actor in a monkey suit into Ro-Man the monster from outer space! Watched in this context the film is a blast. Director Phil Tucker really deserves more credit than he was given in his day.
Bad Movies Don't Get Any Better Than This! 2006-09-19
Phil Tucker's magnum opus, "Robot Monster", ranks among the best bad movies ever made.
The plot is incoherent, the acting ranges from bad to awful and the eponymous "Robot Monster" is a guy in a gorilla suit with a tin foil covered diving helmet who communicates with his home planet using a bubble machine.
Originally released in 3-D, this DVD uses a good 2-D print and the transfer is pretty good.
This is a "must have" for fans of bad movies.
Ro-man Hollandaise -- Yummy! 
2006-08-08
Though some fans of "bad" cinema often put 1953's ROBOT MONSTER on the same tier with PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1959), it honestly doesn't even come close to reaching the heights of inspired ineptitude attained by Ed Wood's magnum opus. Still, ROBOT MONSTER is an entertaining so-bad-it's-good flick in its own right.
The last six remaining humans on Earth resist attacks by Ro-man, an extraterrestrial who looks something like a gorilla wearing a cheap diving helmet. Receiving orders from his superior via 1950s consumer electronics that emit, of all things, soap bubbles, Ro-man's job is to clear out all intelligent life on Earth so that his "people" can come inhabit the planet themselves. Unfortunately for Ro-man, he finds it impossible to carry out his orders after he falls in love with an Earth girl, and it's all downhill for him from there.
This ludicrous tissue-thin plot is full of gaping holes, and the badly executed scene transitions and various stock-footage inserts of fighting reptiles and animated dinosaurs are humorously befuddling. But when it is revealed at the end of the film that all was simply the dream of a science-fiction-crazed young boy, the whole dish seems a little more palatable.
Some critics have read the film as an allegory of life in occupied Europe during World War II. Ro-man, it is claimed, represents a Nazi soldier simply carrying out the orders of his Hitler-like commander, and the surviving humans can be viewed as living an Anne Frank-like existence in their energy-encompassed hideout. But the obvious weaknesses of the plot, the glaringly technical mistakes, and the bargain-basement production values make it hard to believe that the filmmakers were astute enough to attempt allegorical storytelling. Any similarity to real situations or to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Believe it or not, the music for ROBOT MONSTER is actually pretty good (that is, "good" good, not "bad" good). It was composed by the late Elmer Bernstein, who went on to score cinematic greats like THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960), TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1962), GHOST BUSTERS (1984), and MY LEFT FOOT (1989), to name but a few. Perhaps it is the efforts of the talented Mr. Bernstein that prevents ROBOT MONSTER from reaching the same level of achievement as Wood's PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE?
ROBOT MONSTER may not be the best "bad" film ever made, but for aficionados of the awful and connoisseurs of the crass, it's not to be missed.
While it's not in the original 3-D--yes, ROBOT MONSTER was filmed in old-school 3-D--the DVD from Image Entertainment offers the highest-quality consumer copy of the film to date, and the price that amazon charges for it is hard to beat.
