Robot Revolution: The one where the robot stomps Mexico

 

 

Title: Kronos

What Year?: 1957

Classification: Prototype/ Mashup

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

With this review, I’m back for more robot mayhem. After sacrilegiously starting with a movie still in theaters, I decided it was time to go the other way and look at an entry earlier than my usual 1970s-‘80s timeframe. That presented me with a wealth of material, but also some strange blind spots, especially when it came to the “killer robot” theme. That brought me to one particular film that has all the hallmarks that would usually draw my attention: Obscure, strange, difficult to classify and as it happens, quite good. I present Kronos, the definitive killer robot film of the B-movie era that very few seem to have actually heard of.

Our story begins with a mysterious object descending to Earth, observed by two scientists. When the object lands in Mexico, the proper authorities send them to investigate, unaware that one of them has been possessed by the energies of the strange object. Our hero, the younger and handsomer doctor Leslie Gaskell, goes south of the border with his spunky lady friend and a couple assistants who do the actual work. They discover a Godzilla-sized robot that is disconcertingly uninterested in the usual death and destruction. Instead, it mostly sits there, ignoring any attack and occasionally and incidentally flattening small swaths of civilization when it lurches from place to place.  In fact, it is a probe sent by an unknown civilization to absorb Earth’s energy supply by passive accumulation. To stop it, the doctor and his love interest must overcome the robot and the enemy within. But the Earth may already be doomed when the military feeds the enemy with an atomic bomb!

Kronos was a 1957 film by German director Kurt Neumann, produced by Regal Films, a company affiliated with B-movie produce Robert Lippert. The film’s story was credited to Irving Block, who also contributed to the film’s visual effects. Filming was reportedly completed within 3 weeks in early 1957. The film starred B-movie regular Jeff Morrow as Dr. Gaskell and Barbara Lawrence as the love interest Vera, with John Emery as the double agent Dr. Culver. The film received favorable reviews from contemporary critics as a superior low-budget science fiction film, and gained a following as one of the best genre films of the 1950s. Neumann followed the film with The Fly, released shortly before his death in 1958.

For the broader context, what really intrigued me going into this review was the counterintuitive role of the robot in 1950s science fiction films. On consideration, the subject of robotics and AI at this time offer an unusual case of cinema matching or even getting ahead of printed genre works. By the mid-‘50s, rebellious or purposefully warlike robots were no longer the rule or even necessarily a “norm”. In their place came the likes of Robby the Robot, who was if not entirely non-threatening at least clearly devoted to serving and defending his owners. The downside to this was that these robots usually got no further than supporting cast in their own stories. Like the zombie of the previous decades (see I Walked With A Zombie and for that matter my Revenant Review ebook), the robot was literally subordinate to its master/ creator, rarely if ever granted autonomy or motivation beyond killing the villain for the hero’s convenience. With all that in mind, the present film stood out very strongly, and as I have been saying, it had already been on my radar as an exceptionally good film for its own or any other time.

Moving forward, the obvious points to get out of the way all come down to the fact that this is a “formulaic” film that shows why the formula worked in the first place. Everything here is what you would expect to find, done anywhere between average and unusually good: The stoic/ generic authority-figure hero; the technobabble; the plans that either succeed immediately or fail never to be tried again; and the love interest who gets into just enough trouble to need rescuing. It is in the lady where the film comes closest to finding its own path. Sure, she doesn’t do much beyond setting up a confrontation between the hero and the possessed traitor. (Sorry, the statute of limitations on spoiler warnings expires at 50 years…) Still, there’s certainly no overt condescension in how she is treated or portrayed. If it comes to that, she does get through most of the film without falling into any more or less peril than the rest of the cast. Most intriguingly, the romance arc does show her willing and able to say what she wants, which I will get back to.

Meanwhile, what certainly is unique is the utterly implacable “monster”. Whether classified as bot, alien invader or kaiju, this antagonist earns its place in the highest ranks of B-movie creations. On paper, it’s so non-threatening that a case can be made that it would go away if simply left alone (intriguing enough in itself). When the giant is on-screen, however, any objections become moot. This truly looks as huge and menacing as it is meant to be. That it tends to ignore humanity quickly becomes unnerving in its own right, with a further note of indignity often missing in more conventional alien invasion spectacles. When the damn thing does move, there is no doubt that it is truly unstoppable. What gets the bonus is a slowly revealed cunning, which builds to a real payoff when it turns the usual nuclear counterattack to its own advantage. The movie never really resolves if this is by its own intelligence or the direction of its unseen masters. The difference from the usual subordinate killbot is that there are no easy or certain answers, only the blank wall of the unknown and unknowable. Of course, one more honorable mention is in order for the double agent, every bit as inscrutable as his master.

That leaves the “one scene”, and there was one I was definitely going to come back to. A little past the 30-minute mark, we find the hero and his lady friend running ashore at the end of a romp in the surf. They settle down to kiss. Things get really interesting when the lady says, “Dr. Gaskell, will you marry me?” What I went back to sort out was the doctor’s reply, which turned out to be, “Can you cook?” Of course, it’s clearly supposed to be obvious that they are both joking, which on consideration makes the entire exchange all the more intriguing. They go on with a playful yet thoughtful exchange about gender roles. Just when everything is settling down to above-average routine, the doctor quite casually admits making the “biggest boner” in science. Before one can try to sort out the etymology and nuance on that one, a light mercifully appears on the horizon. In the midst of that, the two lesser scientists race in, clearly indicating that they have been within sight and hearing. It’s everything you would expect from a “good” B-movie: It’s dated, it’s horrifying, and it’s smart enough to know it.

In closing, what I come back to is how I really feel about 1950s science fiction films. In the course of my reviews, I’ve been very sparing with the “B movie” era and genre(s). It’s been easy to say that they have simply been outside my areas of interest. (See my Plan 9 review way back when, which is also in an ebook.) But the underlying reality is that these were never a big part of my formative pop culture experiences. Sure, I had heard of the major ones, and I saw several of the very best and worst at a fairly early date. For me, however, I just didn’t get interested enough to put in the time and money it would have cost  to undertake a proper exploration in the days before online shopping and streaming, and to a significant extent, I never caught up. I would like to think that the upside is that I was able to go in with a truly neutral  perspective. I’m not nostalgic about the era, and I wasn’t one of the ones laughing at the low budgets and “outdated” effects (which, suppressed rant, were usually outmoded or rock-bottom cheap at the time) either. It’s the right perspective to appreciate the ones that truly rise above the rest. In those terms, the present film is a clever and creative offering that can hold its own against “classics” with actual budgets (see When Worlds Collide). That’s tribute enough for a film that had to wait a long time to get its due. With that, I can finish with a salute. Not bad, for a human.