Is this a cheesy movie? Of course it is. But is it bad? I have to say... NO.
Just for a moment, try to lose yourself in the reality the film creates.
Suspend your belief for a moment. Disregard the non-existent production values (which, after all, are merely a vehicle to deliver the story), the bubbles, the TV antenna, the wooden radio, and really consider the idea of a terrible invader that has destroyed everyone on the planet except for the last few people, struggling futilely to survive against an undefeatable foe (and don't laugh, remember, we are suspending the idea that a slowly lumbering man in a gorilla suit with a fake diving helmet could not possibly be scary). I find the bleakness, the isolation, the desperation, the futility of an unwinnable fight to be deeply affecting.
Now if you throw into the mix that everything is as would be imagined by a young child, a child whose imagination has been fueled by the huge spread of comic books that bookend the movie, you can realize this film is not the laughable failure everyone makes it out to be. Well, I guess it is, but there's at least, in part, a legitimate reason for it. The horrible plot holes and cheesy acting all fall into place. The unbelievable yet somehow Freudian almost-romance of Alice and Ro-Man.
Even the "Neener-neener-neener" melody from the very beginning and very ending of Elmer Bernstein's surprisingly powerful, mood-setting score fits perfectly into a story set inside the mind of an eight-year-old.
Let's face it, most so-called-good SF movies have the same kind of overly-narrow tunnel vision where an enormous story is microscoped down to focus unrealistically on a very few number of characters. Most big-name SF movies don't have any fewer scientific or technical absurdities. I don't know about you, but to me, a lot of big budget "block-buster" SF/action films these days don't have any better acting, or plot. Take "The Core", which in my opinion is effectively an inferior remake of the silly yet fascinating "Unknown World". And let's be honest, the awkward romantic scenes in this movie were nowhere near as bad as the laboured, wooden and completely unbelievable romance "Star Wars Episode II". Ro-Man's sililoquy about the conflict of duty and desire would stand side by side with many of the best quotes from "Star Trek".
It's easy to shoot this obscure little film down for its lack of any real sets and props which were probably dug out of someone's garage, the (mostly) bad acting and silly plot, but I'd watch this movie a dozen times before sitting through one of the many high-budget, low-brow, effects-driven stink-burgers that are inevitably disgorged from Hollywood every summer, despite them having had 50 years to supposedly know better. Is this movie really any worse than the aforementioned "The Core"? "Spawn"? "Event Horizon"? "Independence Day"?, "Armageddon"? How are any of these any better, minus, perhaps, the special effects? My conclusion is that they really aren't.
Is it really fair to criticize the cheap "twist" at the end that it was all a dream? This same plot device that has since fueled countless comic books and TV shows, and more amazingly, a whole season of "Dallas" or in the case of "St. Elsewhere" and "Newhart" an entire TV show. Doesn't that really make you want to go back and reconsider what you have seen in a new light?
In comparison, I think Robot Monster comes across more like a episode of Twilight Zone... if you really look at the world the movie tries to create, you can't help but think at least a little. All I could think about after those other movies was how bad they were.
Maybe it's just me. Maybe my vision and taste has been warped by being a long-time junkie of Mystery Science Theater 3000, whose skewering of awful movies (including this one) has given me a taste for inept, preachy and/or shoddily-produced cinema, a taste that has further encouraged by the easy availability of bargain-bin collections of old B-movies that are coming out as fast as they can laser images of scratched and dusty cellulose onto Taiwanese silvered-plastic.
Or maybe this movie somehow transcends its absurd cheapness, its wince-inducing stereotypes, its heavy-handed and forced drama, to give us a brief peek into the deep-seated hopes, desires and fears that might have inhabited the fragile psyche of a child growing up in Cold War America.
OK, it's probably me.
Just for a moment, try to lose yourself in the reality the film creates.
Suspend your belief for a moment. Disregard the non-existent production values (which, after all, are merely a vehicle to deliver the story), the bubbles, the TV antenna, the wooden radio, and really consider the idea of a terrible invader that has destroyed everyone on the planet except for the last few people, struggling futilely to survive against an undefeatable foe (and don't laugh, remember, we are suspending the idea that a slowly lumbering man in a gorilla suit with a fake diving helmet could not possibly be scary). I find the bleakness, the isolation, the desperation, the futility of an unwinnable fight to be deeply affecting.
Now if you throw into the mix that everything is as would be imagined by a young child, a child whose imagination has been fueled by the huge spread of comic books that bookend the movie, you can realize this film is not the laughable failure everyone makes it out to be. Well, I guess it is, but there's at least, in part, a legitimate reason for it. The horrible plot holes and cheesy acting all fall into place. The unbelievable yet somehow Freudian almost-romance of Alice and Ro-Man.
Even the "Neener-neener-neener" melody from the very beginning and very ending of Elmer Bernstein's surprisingly powerful, mood-setting score fits perfectly into a story set inside the mind of an eight-year-old.
Let's face it, most so-called-good SF movies have the same kind of overly-narrow tunnel vision where an enormous story is microscoped down to focus unrealistically on a very few number of characters. Most big-name SF movies don't have any fewer scientific or technical absurdities. I don't know about you, but to me, a lot of big budget "block-buster" SF/action films these days don't have any better acting, or plot. Take "The Core", which in my opinion is effectively an inferior remake of the silly yet fascinating "Unknown World". And let's be honest, the awkward romantic scenes in this movie were nowhere near as bad as the laboured, wooden and completely unbelievable romance "Star Wars Episode II". Ro-Man's sililoquy about the conflict of duty and desire would stand side by side with many of the best quotes from "Star Trek".
It's easy to shoot this obscure little film down for its lack of any real sets and props which were probably dug out of someone's garage, the (mostly) bad acting and silly plot, but I'd watch this movie a dozen times before sitting through one of the many high-budget, low-brow, effects-driven stink-burgers that are inevitably disgorged from Hollywood every summer, despite them having had 50 years to supposedly know better. Is this movie really any worse than the aforementioned "The Core"? "Spawn"? "Event Horizon"? "Independence Day"?, "Armageddon"? How are any of these any better, minus, perhaps, the special effects? My conclusion is that they really aren't.
Is it really fair to criticize the cheap "twist" at the end that it was all a dream? This same plot device that has since fueled countless comic books and TV shows, and more amazingly, a whole season of "Dallas" or in the case of "St. Elsewhere" and "Newhart" an entire TV show. Doesn't that really make you want to go back and reconsider what you have seen in a new light?
In comparison, I think Robot Monster comes across more like a episode of Twilight Zone... if you really look at the world the movie tries to create, you can't help but think at least a little. All I could think about after those other movies was how bad they were.
Maybe it's just me. Maybe my vision and taste has been warped by being a long-time junkie of Mystery Science Theater 3000, whose skewering of awful movies (including this one) has given me a taste for inept, preachy and/or shoddily-produced cinema, a taste that has further encouraged by the easy availability of bargain-bin collections of old B-movies that are coming out as fast as they can laser images of scratched and dusty cellulose onto Taiwanese silvered-plastic.
Or maybe this movie somehow transcends its absurd cheapness, its wince-inducing stereotypes, its heavy-handed and forced drama, to give us a brief peek into the deep-seated hopes, desires and fears that might have inhabited the fragile psyche of a child growing up in Cold War America.
OK, it's probably me.