26Apr
Monster A-Go Go, 1965
Okay, so I have to say, right off the top, A LOT about this film—the kinds of filmmaking errors made, the convoluted plot, and especially the scriptwriting—totally remind me of the collected works of Edward D. Wood Jr. Directors Bill Rebane and later Hershell Gordon Lewis (uncredited—he’s the guy who pieced the footage Rebane got before running out of money and moving on to new projects, with some new footage a couple years later and cobbled a mess of a movie together) were definitely channeling the B-Movie Great, and therefore this movie is deservedly on the list of worst movies ever made…but that only makes it all the more fun.
Oh, yeah…there are SPOILERS in this review!
This black and white masterpiece of Z-movie nonsense starts with groovy music (there’s a Monster A-Go Go album by the Fuzz Tones!) and the legs of the titular monster superimposed over SPACE as he ambles around. Go Monster, Go! (so say the lyrics) 😂 And this is as close to making sense as the title gets…there is no other monster a go-going goings on.
BAM!—hard cut to a helicopter over a field and silly voice over narration begins, much befitting a B-movie classic such as this. According to this narrator (the aforementioned Hershell G. Lewis provides us with this service, btw, guiding us through a most incomprehensible plot), what we are about to see might not even be possible. 🤔 🤣
So, absolutely dumb narration—check. Bad edits—check. Actors arriving in a Plymouth that we will see multiple other actors getting out of later in the film (do they all own the exact same model, or are they all borrowing the same car?)—check.
A search team (are they cops, military, NASA, who knows?) is combing the field for a space capsule “they” sent into space to get info on UFO satellites or some garbage, then they lost contact. It has crashed somewhere, natch.
Woah! That on location sound is absolute echoey CRAP! Marvelous! And I love how everyone keeps referring to the “astrophysical laboratory”, as opposed to an astrophysics lab. Cuz when we study the sciences, it’s called “physicals” and not “physics”, right? So, astrophysicals is a thing.
The four foot cardboard-looking space capsule that no full grown man could possible fit in is found, but Frank Douglas is not inside! Then the helicopter pilot gag-screams over the radio. When the pilot is found, he is supposedly mangled in a way no one had ever seen before, but we viewers don’t get to see that…at least not yet.
The stiff acting is well exemplified after another hard cut to a scene in Frank’s sister’s (I think) home, when she is visited by a couple from the lab. Her kid is especially awful. In this scene, and many more like it that follow, I am reminded and validated in my choice to shoot awkward wide shots in poorly angled scenes over a long period of time without many cutaways in my own B-movie, “Space Zombies…” Especially poignant is the choice to block the actors in profile, or outright stage them so their backs are to the camera. Couple this with truly awful lighting (I mean, sometimes we can’t even make out a major character’s face) and you’ve got gold, baby…GOLD!
In around closer to the middle of the film, we cut to a bunch of stiff white people doing the twist (sorta) and trying to clap rhythmically. They are failing miserably. This, however, may be an accurate representation of some white people trying to dance in the early 60s. The first woman in the shot is def there for the boob-bopping—I don’t know what the hell her legs are doing!
There’s a fight between a couple guys in this rhythmically challenged scene, and one guy leaves with his girl. As they drive off into the night, our trusty narrator muses on fate and life and death…had they stayed at the party longer, this may have never happened sorta thing. Yes, this narrator’s dialogue is strong with “the Ed Wood”. Then the couple parks somewhere and things almost gets rapey. She gets out, but spots something even more horrible than her boyfriend with a thousand grabby hands. She screams and in the very next shot, Doctor Manning (who is helping the lab sort out what the heck is going on with these weird burns and where is Frank anyway) is somehow there at the car, hovering over her burned and dead would-be-rapist with the General and a cop. The girl might be sick with radiation poisoning—this is something I only figure out (if I’m even right) later on, though. Oh, and the filmmakers are actually shooting at night, so you can barely see a thing—only faces that lights are directly pointed at.
Next, we’re on to lab scientist guy, Henry (one of two brothers who work at the lab…the brother is later played by the same actor, but so much time has gone by that he actually looks completely different) investigating near the crash site. A very tall burned on the face looking guy strangles him from behind. So, I guess Frank is a monster, now.
And then Ruth (again, I think this is Frank’s sister from a very stiff scene prior) is at a restaurant with the guy who first visited with her. She stirs her martini a lot and then eats the anchovy olive while she waits for Carl to take a call or some such. The whole thing is weird, as is when Carl or whoever asks her if she remembers ’that song’, but absolutely no music is playing.
Carl is called to Henry’s murder scene and takes Ruth with him for some reason. Henry’s body/face is burned but also contorted comically—eyes open, weird smirk, like he had a stroke but it was hilarious.
Then we come to the part of the film where the actors and characters have to change. This is because, as I mentioned earlier, director Rebane had abandoned the film in 1961. Lewis did not finish the film until 1965, so he was unable to gather all of the original cast, so almost half the characters are gone and replaced by other characters who end up filling most of the same roles. And as I mentioned before, one of the actors Lewis was able to rehire had dramatically changed his look in the intervening years, necessitating his playing the brother of the original character.
So anyway, Dr. Manning, who was originally looking into this mystery, has to turn over this info to a new doctor guy. Dr. Brent, I think. And a whole lot of other people change.
So what is happening to all these victims anyway? The blood in the attacked bodies has turned into powder and that’s supposed to account for the shrivelling. They figure Frank Douglas went up in the capsule and has come back a monster. And apparently he got all sorts of injections before going up into space, so he could withstand all sorts of “rays”. This may account for “the change”. Though Dr. Logan was sure the injections would be safe, he gave him 200 ccs instead of 100, so that might have been the wrong thing to do.
For I think a second time, we have another hard cut and suddenly 8 weeks have passed.
And now, another twist, Dr. Logan—the brother, that is—has been hiding Frank in the radiation lab for weeks. He’s been feeding an antidote to the newly 10 foot tall man over those weeks to keep him docile. But, of course, the antidote wears off faster and faster every time it is given, and with each relapse the raging monster gets worse and then there’s more killing. And to cap things off, Frank frees himself from Dr. Logan, and heads for Chicago to go hide in a disused sewer tunnel.
When Logan confesses all this to the new doctor…Dr. Brent, or something, the reprimand he receives is “It seems to me you’re one BIG mistake!” He then apologizes to Logan, as if he didn’t completely deserve worse.
Cut to bathing beauties! The monster Frank is ready to attack them. He marches along through the bushes towards four sunbathing women in a clearing. Three run away as soon as they see him.
And in another total non sequitur, a lady’s car breaks down and she totally seduces this trucker who has stopped to help (and not murder) her. Nothing happens—I have no idea what this scene was for. I think it may be that monster-Frank got into the truck, unbeknownst to the trucker, who was too busy making out.
And it would seem that the monster no longer has to attack people to kill them. Yes, he was in the trucker’s vehicle, as it turns out, and the trucker himself falls out, dead from radiation poisoning. Dr. Logan then calculates the monster’s danger zone at 20-25 feet. The monster himself is not growing (anymore), but the radius of the zone in which you could be poisoned by him is. So, you can’t really get near him without risking death.
Some guy (I’m not even able to keep track of who’s who anymore) dons a radiation suit with the help of the firemen so he can pursue Frank in the Chicago sewers. This is a super boring process we get to watch mostly as a dark wide shot that bores very quickly.
“There is one terrifying word in the world of nuclear physics…radiation…” Oh, good, our narrator is back.
And now we have a shot of Frank’s face without any radiation-type make up, for some reason. Then Douglas disappears suddenly, and the suited up men pursuing him in the sewers find nothing.
800 miles away, Douglas is on a boat, rescued and his rescuers send a telegram to the lab/military/EMT personnel who thought they were pursuing Frank Douglas in the sewers. “Has a cosmic switch been pulled?” the narrator intones. WHAT? 🤣
“Is the monster with us? Or is the monster gone?”
The full final narrator monologue:
As if a switch had been turned, as if an eye had been blinked, as if some phantom force in the universe had made a move eons beyond our comprehension, suddenly, there was no trail! There was no giant, no monster, no thing called “Douglas” to be followed. There was nothing in the tunnel but the puzzled men of courage, who suddenly found themselves alone with shadows and darkness! With the telegram, one cloud lifts, and another descends. Astronaut Frank Douglas, rescued, alive, well, and of normal size, some 8,000 miles away in a lifeboat, with no memory of where he has been, or how he was separated from his capsule! Then who, or what, has landed here? Is it here yet? Or has the cosmic switch been pulled? Case in point: The line between science fiction and science fact is microscopically thin! You have witnessed the line being shaved even thinner! But is the menace with us? Or is the monster gone?
Shot of the monster’s legs walking in space again…The End. Terrible. 😂 Oh, and I missed it, unfortunately, but apparently there’s a moment when a phone cue doesn’t happen during filming, so someone off screen simply makes a ‘brrrr’ sound. This movie has everything a bad movie fan wants. I recommend it too ALL the big bad B-movie fans!
