(Voice Over) What is the worst movie you've ever seen?
No, I'm not talking about Grown Ups 2 or Transformers 2.
I mean a movie so bad...
So fundamentally broken...
That it leaves a pit in your stomach
or makes you feel frustrated and angry beyond any reasonable measure.
This is a question that I've been asking myself for a while,
and I think it's about time to do something about it.
So I've pulled up the list of the Bottom 100 Lowest Rated Movies on IMDb
and I'm going through them one by one to find the worst movie ever.
Welcome to The Search for the Worst.
[Music]
(Voice Over cont'd) "Robot Monster" sucks (elongated)!
It sucks real hard.
It's quite an accomplishment for a movie that is only one hour long to feel like several hundred.
But they managed it!
The director, Phil Tucker, who is also responsible for classics like:
"Dream Follies" and "The Cape Canaveral Monsters"
is the mastermind behind this monster of a picture.
Get it? Because the movie is called "Robot Monster" and I called it a monster.
It's yet another movie that suffers from something that I like to call
"Why couldn't we have seen that movie instead?" Syndrome.
The idea being that a race of gorilla people who have a dumb looking bucket on their heads
have somehow managed to kill everyone on the planet but a half a dozen
who have hidden away in the desert... or something
The thing is, they don't really make this fact very clear
so you spend the first quarter of the movie thinking to yourself:
"Wait... who are you?"
"What is happening?"
"Why are we in the desert?"
It's also hilariously clear that this movie was made on
an excessive budget of a paper clip and half an eaten packet of stale crackers
It's so, so, so cheap.
There are about... let me think. Three locations in the movie?
There's the "exciting" cave where the robot monster hangs around.
There's a hole in the floor with a fence around it where the humans are hiding.
Oh, and some barren hills in the desert.
The structure of this motion picture is pretty basic.
In fact, I can sum it up with one single word.
(**Not spoken in voice over.)
(Voice Over) Boring scene in cave where "Robo Gorilla" talks to other Robo Gorilla.
Followed by boring scene of the humans standing around
in their boring hideout.
Then topped off with a bit of Robo Gorilla aimless wandering.
Repeat a few times...
The End.
In fact, the entire flick was filmed over the course of a whopping four days!
Has no sets and was 100% filmed outside.
And it shows.
Supposedly the director tried to kill himself, due to the negative reception this film got.
He apparently tried to shoot himself in the head...
But missed.
Well, I guess as the famous Paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey said:
(Reads the quote on screen)
Wait. I think...
I think I've got the wrong quote here.
Just give me a sec.
We're immediately introduced to a couple of kids who are playing a game of:
"Who can be the least convincing, stiff, and awkward child actor?"
They find the aforementioned cave
where a couple of dudes who claim to be archaeologists are doing
whatever archaeologists do.
The family then have a picnic.
This is what I meant by it being very confusing.
Because it certainly doesn't seem like they're in a post-apocalyptic world.
Well, technically it isn't, at this point.
But you'll find out why later.
(Echoes) But it still makes no sense, and feels weird!
(Voice Over) The kid runs around by himself.
Then lightning strikes from the sky and he falls over.
Then it cuts to these completely unrelated clips of a lizard and a crocodile
with a spine attached to its back having a fight.
And some stop motion triceratops having a tussle as well.
(Clip) Totally, it's just... rolling around a bit.
Okay. Stop motion... what is happening?
I-I... I have no idea what that was supposed to be.
Who or what...
What was that?
(Voice Over) When the kid wakes up, there's some mysterious machines just sort of there now.
One of them looks like it's emitting some kind of
pollen? Or... bees?
Watch out, they might sting you kid!
Get out of there!
I eventually figured out what it was supposed to be.
They're bubbles.
It's a bubble machine.
(Clip) Oh, it's bubbles! They're bubbles, they're not bugs or bees. They're bubbles!
They're only just triggered because future.
Bubbles equal future, everybody.
Now, it's been set up and everything as a sci-fi trope.
Bubbles!
(Voice Over) Because when you think of post apocalyptic, robot gorilla monsters,
you definitely think of fun, little bubbles.
The kid hears a noise and out storms our first look at the robot monster.
It's fucking piss take.
(Clip) Oh. There he is!
The monster robot.
Sorry, I mean...
Oh, he's actually...
He's a gorilla.
He's a gorilla with a helmet on.
It looks really quite...
Wide. I wasn't expecting that.
By wide, I mean fat.
He goes on a little monitor that's set up in the desolate, isolated cave for some reason
and has a chat with his leader who looks identical to him.
They finally explain that Earth is their only rival.
Clip: "Earth is our only rival."
(Voice Over) And that's why they murdered everyone except a few they missed.
Their reasoning is that the human race is becoming too intelligent.
Clip: (Off Screen) "You don't look very happy. What's the matter?"
(Unintelligible mumbling)
(Off Screen) "What?"
"What?"
(Voice Over) Next we see that last remaining group of humans
Who do nothing but stand around looking disengaged.
They mention something about the older guy developing a cure for all diseases?
(Clip) Film: "I would have never developed the serum without him."
Film: "The trouble was, he..."
IHE: A serum that does what?
Turns you into not a gorilla?
(Voice Over) That conveniently has made all eight or so
of the remaining people immune to the Robo Gorilla death rays.
Clip: "Extension Ro-Man XJ 2, reporting to Guidance Ro-Man."
(Voice Over) Oh yeah.
The official name of the Robo Gorilla is the Ro-Mans.
You know, like the way the humans are called "Hu-Mans?"
Instead of hu- it's ro.
Like- like short for ro-bot.
Despite the fact that Romans are a thing that actually exist.
And I doubt it's a play on words.
Because I think it's safe to assume that writer Wyott Ordung
wasn't capable of such nuance calligraphy.
So it was definitely an accident.
Some dude shows up at the human hideout,
who explains that the Ro-Mans are in fact here to finish them off.
By "Ro-Mans," I mean one single trooper who was probably lost,
or too stupid to find a way back home.
The devise a fool-proof plan to re-jig their monitor to get into contact with a couple of other humans
they know are alive somewhere.
But it turns out that these other two people have somehow got hold of a rocket ship?
Which they attempt to fly to some kind of space station they mentioned offhand earlier
But unluckily for them, the Ro-Mans...
Fuck it, I refuse to call them that anymore. I'm not doing it.
I don't really understand why they decided that the robot part of them
is more significant than the gorilla part of them,
when it makes up 90% of their body. But there you go.
The Robot Gorilla uses the Force on the rocket and it explodes.
They keep showing this weird jet flying around as well.
(Clip) Come on, look at that.
It looks like it's made out of fucking plastic.
(Voice Over) They never explain why exactly,
but it looks like a cheap, plastic toy on a piece of string.
Probably because it's a cheap, plastic toy on a piece of string.
We're about half-way through the movie now,
and nothing more exciting than that really happens.
For pretty much no reason at all,
two of the characters have a romantic subplot where they wanna get married.
(Clip) [IHE laughing] What? What was that?
(Voice Over) Then they get married... then get chased by the Robot Gorilla
after they intelligently decide to make out in the desert.
Out of nowhere, the Robot Gorilla decides that it wants to have emotions.
Clip: "To be like the Hu-Man. To laugh, feel, want..."
"Why are these things not in the plan?"
(Voice Over) It becomes infatuated with the young lady.
So he wanders around in the hills for a while,
looking like a moron in an over-sized gorilla outfit with a bucket on his head.
'Cause that's... that is exactly what he is.
He comes across the young girl who is by herself in a post-apocalyptic desert
where there are confirmed aliens that are gonna kill her probably.
So he picks her up and carries her away.
Then brutally murders her off screen!
It's really unclear that he murdered her,
because the only clue we get is that they find her mutilated, dead body,
start crying, then bury her.
Actually, that's about as clear as you can get.
Robo Gorilla eventually ends up in a fight with the newlywed couple
and deflects all attempts of assault with his robo gorilla strength,
which ends with the bloak being strangled
and the woman being hoisted away by the beast.
Luckily, the bloak manages to get back to the others to tell them what happened
then dies, because Movie.
Meanwhile, the Robo Gorilla awkwardly pulls off the lady's shirt strap thing.
And then never does anything more than that before tying her up.
Thank god.
The dumb kid from earlier spouts out a stupid plan to save the lady.
By distracting the gorilla monster while the others rescue her.
Are you keeping up with this?
Because it's very complex!
The adults who could think logically agree to the plan because they're stupid.
Clip: "He can get us in the ravine if he promises easy death."
"You slip in and grab Alice when he comes out after me."
"It might work! There's no time to lose."
"...promises easy death."
(Clip slowed down) "Easy Death."
(Voice Over) And once the plan is in action, the kid gets strangled by the Robo Gorilla.
Great plan, you fucking geniuses!
But luckily the other Robot Gorilla is watching from his spaceship or something
and decides that the Robot Gorilla has failed to fulfill his task
of murdering the remaining people.
So he zaps him with some kind of death ray?
Well, that's convenient... Movie.
But suddenly we cut back to the stop motion dinosaurs
and crocodile lizard fight from earlier.
Which I still don't understand why it's in the movie at all.
But finally there's a super huge plot twist to wrap everything up
in a nice, old, little bow.
(Clip) They're exploding the ground?
Film: "I found him!"
Wha... what was any of that?
Film: "How is he?"
"He's alright. We just want to make sure he could get up after he fell down a bit."
"Hey! I found him!"
"Wow, that's quite a bump there, boy. What happened?"
[IHE] Oh no.
No, no, no...
Film: "You alright?"
It was a dream.
The whole movie was a fucking dream.
Fuck you.
It turns out the entire movie was a dream inside the kid's head
after he fell down and knocked himself out earlier.
Fuck this movie.
[Air horn sound effects]
He even says, (mimics) "Boy was that a dream or was it?"
(Clip) "Boy, was that a dream, or was it?"
(Clip slowed down) "Boy, was that a dream, or was it?"
(Voice Over) [IHE gritting his teeth] As if this movie couldn't be any more of a "fuck you."
I bet they thought they were real clever when they came up with that as well.
And then to add insult to injury,
as they all walk away from the cave laughing like idiots,
a robot gorilla ghost comes wandering out of the depths
multiple times on repeat?
As if it has some kind of meaning?
Or something?
The End.
It's ironic that this movie was a production of
"Three Dimension Pictures, Inc."
Because it looked pretty 2D to me!
[Fart sound effect]
I guess it's because I lost my 3D glasses.
Well, I guess as Louis Leakey always said,
(Reads the quote on screen)
Wait, that's not right.
That quote has nothing to do with anything.
Oh, here's the right one.
(Reads quote on the screen)
A little bit more relevant.
So, "Robot Monster," that was a real piece of shit, wasn't it?
Obviously the most minimal out of all the movies I've seen for this so far.
Almost insultingly so.
Oi! Robot Monster,
just because you were released in the 50s,
doesn't mean you get a pass for being fucking awful!
Completely devoid of charm or unintentional humor,
"Robot Monster" is the disastrous result of when an inept man gets a hold of an inept script
and somehow manages to work a camera long enough to squat out a miserable,
fecal discharge such as this.
Too boring to recommend,
too short to get obsessively angry over.
It's nothing more than a forgettable blink in the long history of shitty movies.
That's why it deserves it's middling place in the ranks.
Maybe slightly more towards the bad end because of that atrocious ending.
But in the wise words of the great Louis Leakey,
(Reads the quote on screen)
[Announcer Impression] And up next in The Search for the Worst Is...
[Normal Voice] "The Bat People..."
That sounds like something a guy called
Jerry Jameson would make.
Geez.
[Robotic Impression] So those are my thoughts on the masterpiece that is "Robot Monster."
[Normal Voice] Why didn't they straight up call it "Robot Gorilla" anyway?
Or "Robot Monsters," at least.
'Cause there are, what? Two of them?
But anyway, what do you think about the movie?
Did it look gloriously awful?
Or skin-crawlingly boring?
Did you like or dislike the video?
Tell me in the comments below.
Make sure to check out the rough cut of me trying to watch the movie for the first time
in the annotation or in the description below,
and as always, thanks for watching.
All comments and ratings are very much appreciated.
I'll see you next time.
Bye!