Robot Monster

Ro-man Hollandaise -- Yummy!
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...

This could be the best of the worst!
I must agree with those who say this could be the BEST "worst movie ever made." I have seen nearly every Ed Wood movie and although his "Plan 9 From Outer Space" has a special place in the heart of any fan of bad sci-fi movies, "Robot Monster" certainly gives it a run for the money. (Ed Wood had nothing to do with "Robot Monster" but it's similar to his type of movies.) This movie is so gloriously bad and yet entertaining on many levels. I love the stock footage of fighting lizards, interjected for no apparent reason. The tender moments like the impromptu wedding scene. The bubbles that float up around Ro-Man's junky-looking equipment. The fact that the heroine manages to get tied up in rope TWICE, once by her friends & family and later by the monster. The terminology (like the "calcinator death ray"). The pointless scenes showing the Ro-Man schlepping up and those barren hills and plains. Dialogue that is so stilted,...

The Great One
There's a moment in "Robot Monster" where every first-time viewer is kin: a lizard with a fin glued to its back jumps onto another lizard, in what is meant to represent the titanic struggle of two dinosaurs. Since this has nothing to do with anything that happened before, the novice can only watch in slack-jawed wonder, asking "What the...?"
"Robot Monster" is awash with stunning moment likes this, which may be why the trailer boasts it is "baffling." But there is the glimmer of a story.
Earth has been devastated by aliens using the calcinator death ray. The handful of survivors (and the planet's only hope) so far are immune to the ray, but are available through a viewscreen for regular taunting by the solitary Earthbound "Ro-Man" (his nom de guerre). He in turn is regularly berated by "the leader of all Ro-Men," the "Great One," sort of a psychotic nanny type who blurts his orders from across the void of space. We know it's space because of the dog food we see -- or...

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