Robot Monster (1953) on Netflix
Ro-Man, an ape-like alien in a helmet, has wiped out nearly all of humanity. A few survivors hold out, and he must kill them, though he is drawn to Alice.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb3.0/105,876 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes33%
Trailer
Plot summary
Sent to Earth to keep humanity from ever challenging his kind, the robot Ro-Man Extension XJ-2 has already swept the planet with a Calcinator death ray. Eight people remain in a protected facility: a professor, his wife, their daughters Alice and Carla, their son Johnny, the professor's assistant Roy, and the pilots Jason and McCloud. An experimental serum the professor developed leaves them immune to the ray, so Ro-Man's mission is not complete until he kills each of them by hand. When the professor uses his equipment to plead with him, Ro-Man asks to speak to Alice alone, and she agrees despite her family's protests. His master, the Great Guidance, wants the work finished.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Robot Monster (1953)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The very low budget did not allow for the robot costume first intended, so Tucker hired his friend George Barrows, who had made his own gorilla suit, to play Ro-Man. Tucker then added a space helmet similar to those used in Republic serials such as Radar Men from the Moon.
- Elmer Bernstein scored the film during a period when he was "greylisted" because of his left-wing politics and only offered minor films, though he said he enjoyed the challenge of trying to help such a low-budget picture. He also composed Cat Women of the Moon that same year.
SPOILER
The twist ending, revealing that the story had been a boy's dream that is about to come true, was not in the original screenplay. Barrett recalled in an interview that the script was designed as reality until director Tucker changed his mind and shot the new ending.- Film journals from the time reported that Robot Monster cost $50,000, although the 25-year-old writer-director Tucker actually made it in four days for an estimated $16,000.
- Selena Royle was a longtime MGM stock player whose durable film career began in 1941 but ended in 1951 when she was branded a Communist sympathizer. She refused to appear before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and eventually cleared her name, but by then the damage was done: she made only two more films, Robot Monster being her second-to-last.
- Stephen King writes in his memoir On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft that Robot Monster was the first thing he ever saw on television.
- In December of that year, following the film's release, Tucker attempted suicide over his lack of compensation for his work on the film. He survived after detectives responded to a suicide note he had posted in a newspaper beforehand.
