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This is it: The film most of you will probably know from vintage ads
and lobby cards as being the one with the robot that is made up from a
gorilla suit and a diving helmet - and if you think this robot looks silly
on pictures, you should see it in the film. However, the film, that was
originally shown in 3D, then a new and amazing technology, does not quite
life up to the promises of the ads ...
Ro-Man the robot monster (played by George Barrows but voiced by John
Brown) has killed all human beings on earth, all but 6 - the Professor
(John Mylong), his wife (Selena Royle), their young son Johnny (Gregory
Moffett) and daughter Carla (Pamela Paulson), their teenage daughter Alice
(Claudia Barrett) and her love interest Roy (George Nader) -, who have
survived the attack because the professor is a clever inventor who has
made them immune to Ro-Man's death ray and who has built an electronic
fence around their home so Ro-Man's scanners can't detect them ...
curiously though, they live only a few minutes away from Ro-Man's cave so
all the robot monster would have to do is to take some walks in his
neighbourhood ...
Eventually, Great Guidance (also played by George Barrows but voiced by
John Brown) grows impatient with Ro-Man and demands total annihilation of
humankind ... It is around this time that Roy and Alice decide to marry
and go on a honeymoon (on this barren planet, where there are no more
humans and where their home is the only place where they can't be detected
by Ro-Man) outside of their secured home, and for some reason, little
Carla follows them but is intercepted by Ro-Man, who strangles her. Then
the monster/robot goes after Roy and Alice and kills him too while he
spares her and makes her his prisoner ... because he has fallen in love
with her ...
When the others learn that Alice is Ro-Man's prisoner, they decide that
little Johnny has to detract the monster while mum and dad free Alice.
Ro-Man really falls for it, but before he can kill the boy, he himself is
killed by Great Guidance, who has grown impatient with his minion. Then
Great Guidance releases dinosaurs (borrowed from 1940's One Million
B.C.) to wipe out the rest of humanity (all four of them) before he
blows up the earth, and ... and it all turns out to have been nothing more
than the dream of little Johnny, a boy with a very vivid imagination. You
know, there never really was any Ro-Man ... or indeed was there ?
Let's start with the good news - what makes this movie so appealing
besides Ro-Man's costume: The small scale in which Ro-Man's (large scale)
annihilation of humanity is represented - his superior technology is not
more than a communications screen, a few technical apparatus shoddily
piled upon one another on a kitchen table and something perpetually
blowing bubbles -, the dinosaur scenes that make next to no sense, and
some really dumb pieces of dialogue.
That said however, Robot Monster is not quite the cult item one
would expect it to be, probably bcause the plot is just a tad too
childish, the character Johnny - like most child actors having to play
heroes - is just a bit too obnoxious, the fact that the whole story is
just Johnny's dream (which we learn at the beginning of the film) takes
the suspense out of the proceedings, and the finale is definitely a
letdown.
All that said, Robot Monster is probably still worth a look and
a chuckle, just don't expect it to live up to its ads' promises.
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amazon.co.uk
amazon.de
eThaiCD.com
find Robot Monster at adultvideouniverse.com
