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Robot Monster | 
| Director: Phil Tucker
Actors: George Nader, Claudia Barrett, Selena Royle, John Mylong, Gregory Moffett
Studio: Image Entertainment
Category: DVD
List Price: CDN$ 12.99
Buy New: CDN$ 4.80
You Save: CDN$ 8.19 (63%)
New (13) Used (3) from CDN$ 4.80
Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 18004
Format: Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: Unrated
Region: 0
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Picture Format: Pan Scan
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: 8703
UPC: 014381870329
EAN: 0014381870329
ASIN: B00004Y7GR
Theatrical Release Date: June 25, 1953
Release Date: November 4, 2003
Availability: Usually ships within 1 - 2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new Item, factory Sealed. Buy direct from the U.S. and save! We only ship airmail to Canada (7-15 days).Caiman, les prix qu'on aime! Tous nos produits sont neufs. Envoi par avion des Etats-Unis
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| Editorial Reviews:
From Amazon.com
Phil Tucker's IRobot Monster/I has rightfully earned a place in the pantheon of bad movies over the years, and for good reason--it makes anything done by Ed Wood look like an Orson Welles masterpiece. Picture, if you will, a gorilla in a diving helmet (the Ro-Man) who wipes out all of the Earth's population except for one family (the Hu-Mans), whom he terrorizes through the rest of the film. From his headquarters in a Bronson Canyon cave, he communicates with his superiors via World War II surplus radio gear and a Lawrence Welk-style bubble machine, then shambles around the woods looking for his quarry. The plot of this post-holocaust sci-fi nonsense is hardly worth going into past that point, except to say that it's stupendously, staggeringly awful filmmaking. It's even more incredible when you consider that the writers and director undoubtedly believed that they were making a deep, serious, grave statement about the horrors of nuclear war... and wound up with several reels of celluloid flotsam. Any self-respecting fan of bad cinema who hasn't seen this notorious wreck of a movie isn't worth his or her salt. Poor Phil Tucker--when IRobot Monster/I was released, it received such a thorough shellacking that he tried to commit suicide. Tucker failed, though, and went on to make the even less comprehensible IBroadway Jungle/I and the marginally better ICape Canaveral Monsters/I. I--Jerry Renshaw/I
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| Customer Reviews: Read 21 more reviews...
 Truly bad...really bad... but a must-see! April 19, 2007
el_realisator (Montreal, Canada)
Wow! I really really don't know what to say to this movie. I thought it was going to be a "Plan 9" type of bad, but it was just bad because it was plainly bad. It's only 62 minutes-long but it looks like 3 hours! Even Lord of the Rings seems shorter! The story is slow, the acting is bad, the direction is bad. I could use any other words to say bad... but bad is the only one that truly means what I'm trying to say. Don't buy unless you are a student in moviemaking or a really... REALLY big fan B-Horror movies because you WILL be disappointed! The DVD features however interesting trailers. Robot Monster deserves his place in the "worst movie ever" list. At least Ed Wood's movies showed heart and passion! Phil Tucker's Robot monster is just heartless and god-awful! Even for 9$, this worthless movie is expensive! Stay away... or else the billion bubbles machine will get you!
 Behold the awesome calcinator death ray! July 11, 2004
cookieman108 (Inside the jar...)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In the pantheon of bad movies, few ever achieve the notoriety of Robot Monster (1953), except maybe for Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), as being among the worst of the worst. Written by Wyott Ordung (Target Earth) and directed by Phil Tucker, Robot Monster, intended to be a allegory of the post modern world of World War II, instead has become a cult classic of cosmic proportions in its' complete and utter badness...pSo what's the movie about? Well, apparently us Earthlings have become too smart for our own good, incurring the worrisome wraith of the Ro-Men, aliens with gorilla bodies and diving suit helmets for heads, as their fear is we will someday become powerful enough to destroy them...or they just want our planet (their motivation seemed to flip-flop between these two ideas). Their plan? Send a deadly emissary (only one) armed with a death ray and bubble machine to annihilate the population of Earth, allowing for others to follow...to which they find great success...almost. Yes, the entire population of our planet, about two billion at the time, are destroyed, except for 5 people. Seems these five people share some sort of immunity to the death ray, and now find themselves huddled for survival in bombed out ruins, trying to hide their existence from the alien fiend, who just happens to reside in a cave not to far from their hiding place. Can these lone survivors, these last remnants of humankind, find a way to destroy or make peace with this menace before they find themselves extinct?pMan, this movie, which was shot on location in Bronson Canyon in California, probably one of the most used locations for Hollywood films, was a painfest...cheap effects I can usually take, as I've seen hundreds of B movies, but everything in this film seems like it was scraped from the bottom of some barrel. I guess the most obvious element to start out with is the aliens' extremely cumbersome costume, limiting its' mobility to the point where anytime it would chase someone, for it to actually catch them, the prey would have to either run very slow and awkward, or conveniently trip and fall to the ground. A gorilla suit with a diver's helmet? That's pretty sad, even for a film like this...I especially loved the fact that the person wearing this getup was also wearing a mask within the diving helmet, and so we were unable to see his face, so whenever he spoke, he would usually make all kinds of exaggerated gestures with his hands much like your stereotypical Italian, as if to compensate for lack of facial expressions. And really, what is the deal with the bubble machine? I suspect they got a really good deal (possible free use of it) or something on it, as the company who supplied is listed within the credits, but if I was making a film with the intention of providing chills or scares to my audience, a bubble machine only serves to counteract any terror as bubbles just can help but emote a sense of happiness. I also got really tired of that cheesy view screen the monster kept using to contact his homeworld, where he would then get messages from his leader, known as The Great Guidance, on how to proceed in his task of eliminating these last five surviving members of the human race, which proves entirely too difficult given the ease and speed of which he wiped out the other two billion humans on Earth. The acting was about as bad as you'd expect, and I found myself actually hoping for the alien to eliminate this persistent band of less then plucky survivors. The dialog...once you got past the gorilla suit/diving helmet alien element, the viewer is bombarded by round after round of some really awful dialog. The direction, while not great, is serviceable, but given the mish mash plot, it hardly makes a difference. One bright spot throughout the film was the musical score, presented by legendary Academy Award winning composer Elmer Bernstein, who later working on such films as The Ten Commandments (1956), The Magnificent Seven (1960), To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), and The Great Escape (1963), to name a very few.pThe film, which I believe was originally presented in 3-D (in fabulous 2-D here), looks surprising good. The source material used for the transfer has obviously suffered some deterioration over time, but not as much as I would have thought, as the picture, while having many flaws visually, all seem minor at best. The audio was pretty soft here, as I had crank the volume up high to fully catch every bit of riveting dialogue as it was spoken. As far as special features, there is a theatrical trailer present, along with some other trailers, most all for Ed Wood films I believe, and that's it...not much, considering the cult status level of the film, in my opinion.pAs I said, cheap effects don't necessarily make for a bad movie, but in conjunction with extremely lame dialogue, incredibly poor acting, passable direction, and a completely incoherent plot equal a cinematic hurting few others have ever achieved. I read that the director, Phil Tucker, took this movie so seriously that when released and the extremely critical reviews began coming in, he was so distraught he attempted suicide, but was unsuccessful, and actually went on to direct about six more films, certainly none as memorable as this, his first. I can't help but wonder when a director makes a film as bad as this, how they can't see just how awful it is prior to releasing it. How deluded would you have to be to think this was actually going to be a good movie? I guess the most important thing to have if you are going to watch this film is a sense of humor, as that is where the main gist of the entertainment lies, unintentional as it may be... pCookieman108
 ROBOT MONSTER Review! June 21, 2004
Crazy Jim (Massachusetts)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
While Ed Wood's Plan 9 From Outer Space is often regarded as the worst film in cinema history, anyone who has sat down to watch Phil Tucker's Robot Monster will tell you it makes anything Wood has done look like brilliant filmmaking. This one is so entertainingly stupid that it should make for ideal viewing for any group of drunk teenagers looking to do their own MST3K. pEasily the finest apocalyptic sci-fi film to ever feature a giant monkey in a diving helmet, Robot Monster could not be any worse if it was penned by a grade schooler who just learned how to write. Fifteen minutes into it, you will literally wonder where half of the movie went as it jumps from the opening to what should be the halfway point of it without so much as an explanation, though the use of unexplained dinosaur stock footage could have been an elaborate distraction to make us forget there was a plot in the first place. When we finally are brought up to speed, we learn that the monkey-suited invaders are the evil Ro-Mans who have wiped out the entire planet with an awful-looking light show. Well, everyone except for a family of five, who live in a ditch for some unknown reason, and the heroic Shirtless Roy who isn't afraid to show off his amazing torso for no reason at all. In one of the film's most defining moments, Roy is thrown off a cliff, but not before letting out one of the greatest death shreeks in cinematic history. It's all wrapped up nicely with an ending, that in the tradition of the whole film, defies any logic what so ever but is filled with even more stock footage from old dinosaur movies. pRobot Monster is just an absolute mess from start to finish but it's all part of the fun. While this was supposedly intended to be a serious message about the fears of the atomic age, it never came across as such in the production. If you have a few extra bucks and you're looking for some absolute barget basement entertainment then you should pick this one up. I recommend looking for the DVD two-pack with Plan 9 From Outer Space included.
 FUNNIEST SCENE MISSING FROM DVD? May 16, 2004
I originally saw this film on a local television station and recall a scene which does not appear in my copy of Image's VHS release. I have to wonder if Image used a different print for there DVD transfer. The scene I am referring to occurs about two-thirds of the way through the film and lasts all of about 30 seconds. It's where RoMan is walking down a hillside and encounters some bushes blocking his path and then violently attackes the obstruction and contiunes on his way. I regard this as the goofiest and funiest scene in the film and would not wish to add the DVD to my collection unless this scene appears intact. Can someone out there who has viewed the DVD please let me know if this scene is included.
Catastrophic Masterpiece April 10, 2004
Chris O'Malley (New York, NY United States)
It is hard with mere words to describe this movie; suffice it to say that everything you've heard about it is true, and then some. This is one of the baddest of the bad, a masterpiece of utter incompetence, a cinematic failure in every way. It is a guidebook on how NOT to make a movie, tell a story, or act.pIt is, in short, a work of genius.pWhat plot there is involves the last humans on Earth battling the Ro-man XJ-2 and his boss, the Great Guidance Ro-man, both portrayed by actors in gorilla suits with diving helmets and TV antennae. The Ro-men fight with technical sounding gobbledygook babble and stock footage of dinosaurs, against which the plucky human survivors use a lot of bad philosophizing, hand-wringing, and, for some reason, a wedding. Along the way, XJ-2 becomes consumed with robot lust for the pretty daughter of the scientist despite her lack of body hair, but whether this is the result of the overactive bubble machine at the Ro-man's headquarters is not clear. If this summary makes no sense to you, then you are clearly one of the Hu-mans. If it does make sense, then you are still Hu-man, because in the world of Robot Monster, such contradictions are 0.7652 higher than our planet. Do you understand?pSo buy Robot Monster. Watch Robot Monster. Laugh heartily at Robot Monster. And have a moment of silence at the end, because this movie is so brilliantly bad that it qualifies as a religious experience.
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