An all-time classic in the genre of fun, crowd-pleasing “bad movies”, Robot Monster is just some tumbling cardboard tombstones and a bad Bela Lugosi impersonater away from Plan 9 From Outer Space-level lunacy. If “bad movies” have a mascot, it’s easily this film’s iconic Ro-Man, an alien robot gorilla in a space helmet with rabbit-ear antennae.
Nearly everyone on Earth is dead thanks to a conquering race of alien gorillas. The only humans who remain are a plucky family of scientists whose Austrian-accented patriarch (John Mylong) invented a serum that makes one immune to all diseases and, evidently, also resistant to alien death lasers. The Ro-Man hits the California desert to exterminate the lingering survivors, with his leader, “The Great Guidance” (another gorilla guy), breathing down his furry neck the whole time. Working from a cave stocked with electronic devices that detect humans, relay communication, and, uh, constantly blow bubbles into the air like it’s the set of The Lawrence Welk Show, the Ro-Man falls smitten with the family’s oldest daughter, Alice (Claudia Barrett). To the chagrin of The Great Guidance and also Alice’s dullard fiancee (the often-shirtless George Nader), the Ro-Man loses sight of his mission and becomes fixated on getting close to the girl so he can tear off her oh so constricting 1950s clothes. Or at least keep her tied up in his cave. King Kong could relate. So could Creature From the Black Lagoon a year later. So could the puberty-stricken boys in the audience.