When you’re a fan of camp, but your monster nerd degree goes deeper than that, you know the goldmine that is the 1950s. You’re a fan of the nostalgia even if you were not yet born. You know that there is an endless supply of B-movie drive-in flicks that were made on babysitter money budgets. Costumes and sets were shared between productions. Sometimes, you could make three movies with the same creature props and canned lizard footage. Sometimes, these multi-productions even shared actors. And, sometimes, those actors provided their own costumes. If you have not seen Robot Monster (1953), your monster nerd card is temporarily suspended. When you finally do see it, you’ll know why this Kickstarter to produce a vinyl Ro-Man from Robot Monster is so important.
Before George Lucas came around, licensing was a vast wasteland, or so it seemed. No, licensing for movie properties was there, but the dark matter of that universe had not yet been discovered. Lucas saw an empty kingdom and he seized that throne before relinquishing (most of) it to the mouse behind the curtain. Nevertheless, that kingdom exists in an ever-expanding universe that has given licensing a seat at the producers’ table that determines which movies get made. It’s possible, given that some larger toy makers have adopted a new model of small-run specialty toys for targeted customers, that Robot Monster would have eventually licensed a toy or a model. But it was an extremely low budget film. Store buyers wouldn’t have wanted it. It’s a cult classic. The audience wouldn’t have been big enough. Without the internet, if it had ever made it to the shelves, it would have died there, and possibly landed in the script of Toy Story 10: The Forgotten Misfit Toys of Yesteryear. That one will be streamed directly to Disney+ in 2029.
Alas, we now have the internet, so we not only have a way for you to enjoy the movie in multiple ways, but now there is an upstart toy company comprised of two talented people who had the gumption to pursue the rights to officially license Extension Ro-Man XJ2 as a beautifully sculpted 13 inch vinyl figure. H.O.P. TOYS is high on plastic, and they’ve created one of the most important retro toys ever. Shaun Hadley and Bryan Doell previously crowdfunded The Saucer Man from Earth vs The Flying Saucers (1956), and killed it on the design. Ro-Man, the alien in an ape suit, was naturally the next step, and a smart one. Robot Monster’s famously stupid costume (worn by George Barrows who, as an actor known for willingly wearing a gorilla suit on set, and had cameos all over the map in Hollywood) is simply an overweight gorilla costume sans the mask. Instead, Ro-Man XJ2 from the planet Ro-Man, who answers to Guidance Ro-Man (aka Great Guidance), also from the planet Ro-Man wears a paper mâché space helmet, complete with antennae for picking up signals and scans from the “compulator.” Little Johnny thinks Ro-Man looks like a “pooped-out pinwheel,” but H.O.P. TOYS thinks otherwise and their sculpt kicks ass.
It’s easy to see that Bryan and Shaun have a healthy appreciation for the best cult favorite characters. I can’t insist enough how you should go and watch that movie. It’s just over one hour. Next time you’re picking favorites in Amazon Prime Video, give Robot Monster a peek. No matter how much you think you hate black and white movies, you will fall in love with Ro-Man and his Darth Vader-esque voice and Simon Bar Sinister gestures. If you need help making fun of it, you can check out MST3k’s riff of it on Tubi.
What? You “want facts, not words?” (What Great Guidance? WTF does that even mean? Facts are made of words. No wonder planet Ro-Man failed to take over the Earth… an Earth protected by its remaining eight, no six, no, now five, oops four remaining citizens. It was a good try, Robot Monster). Fact 1: Robot Monster is probably the most important piece of cinema that has ever been made. Okay, admittedly, that’s an opinion, and a rare one at that. Fact 1a: Whatever your opinion on that fact, Robot Monster deserved to be made into a tangible piece of history that should be on the shelf of every self-respecting movie monster nerd. Fact 2: It’s available for pre-order in variations of which will determine exactly how you will express your appreciation for this masterly designed character. Fact 3: That sentence is convoluted, so revert to Fact 2a: It’s on Kickstarter, and you should get one.
If you’re a filmmaker, after you pledge for your Robot Monster, contact me about writing the script for Return of Robot Monster. I have a few ideas for a sequel. I have an idea that it’s not all a dream. Johnny subconsciously wanted to whack his little sister Carla. And to get him out of the way, he wanted to off his big sister’s hunk of a boyfriend turned fiancé turned husband, Roy (after all, who gets married shirtless?). There must have been a reason. The obvious one is to embody Ro-Man himself, maybe as a less sibling-like avatar, so he could express his confused prepubescent lust to her. Lines like “You’re either too smart to be so beautiful or too beautiful to be so smart,” are clearly from the mind of a boy who has yet to have held an actual conversation with someone of the opposite sex. Johnny is clearly concerned about his sister Alice going to negotiate a treaty alone with the Robot Monster. “Is Alice going on a date with Ro-Man?,” is evidence of that. When Ro-Man carries Alice away shortly after killing the younger sister Carla, Alice is somehow titillated by his beastly strength. “How is it you’re so strong, Ro-Man? It seems impossible.” is dialogue a boy imagines. A woman would never say this to her captor. And, of course boys will be boys (I say that while biting my cheek at the absurdity of that excuse), Ro-Man begins to sexually assault Alice, grabbing her by the hips and saying, “Suppose I was hu-man. Would you treat me like a man?”
It’s easy to see that it was all in Johnny’s head. They nap after a picnic early on, and he wakes and runs off. That’s when the world devastation begins and Ro-Man appears amidst a bubble machine and giant iPad at the mouth of a cave. The screen is used for FaceTiming Earth’s survivors and the bubble machine was rented for a producer’s daughter’s seventh birthday party, and therefore is not listed on the budget. We are lead to believe it was all a dream at the end with the Wizard-of-Oz-like ending (“you’re alive and you’re alive” rather than “you were there and you were there”). I propose it was not a dream. I propose that after Guidance Ro-Man raises the lepidoptera levels on Ro-Man XJ2 and kills him for failing to kill all humans he causes a tear in the fabric of space-time. He creates another reality. The Calcinator Death-Ray has no effect on the Professor’s protected fortress, so he unleashes “prehistoric reptiles” to destroy everything before “smash[ing] the planet Earth out of the universe,” presumably out of frustration with humankind’s will to survive.
I propose that in Return of Robot Monster, it is Great Guidance Ro-Man who comes to this newly created reality to prove it can be destroyed. He doesn’t want to get the version of Earth that XJ2 loosened for him, so he smashes that version out of the universe. He wants the challenge. Ro-Man is more into the sport of killing than the Predator himself, um Predator (wish that first guy had a name). In Return of Robot Monster, Johnny isn’t the hero. The hero is Alice, the one of the group who had the balls to face Ro-Man alone, but was thwarted by Roy and her Dad because they couldn’t handle her logic, confidence, and bravery. Then some of you could argue she’s a Mary Sue or something, because you think the little pervert should be the hero. Why are you even still reading this? Go get your Robot Monster! You want facts, not words.
