MovieChat Forums > The Magnetic Monster (1953) Discussion > Saw it again after 50 year gap

Saw it again after 50 year gap

posted 19 years ago by BullMoose
4 replies | jump to latest

I found a copy of The Magnetic Monster on ebay. I have not seen the movie since the early 1950's but I have been fascinated by the story ever since I first saw it as a kid. When I got the tape, I immediately sat down and watched it. My thoughts:

Times have changed so much that LA looks like a foreign country (tho maybe it always was) but the storyline still holds my attention. I suppose if all you had ever known in SciFi movies was the current crop of computer generated glitz, you would think TMM was made from floor sweepings (old floor sweepings) in a cutting room. And you'd be right. I think the term is "poor production values" but that phrase wasn't uttered in 1953.

It is a classic in many ways. The documentary style was different and the story was right in line with the scientific advances of the time. It was just one step beyond reality and that made it believable. Of course, the script is loaded with technobabble but it sounded good to the relatively unsophisticated audience (me for instance). Despite the PR efforts to make it sound horrific like the other SciFi monsters of 1953, TMM is still only a rock without any intelligence or malice. It just goes about it's business of sucking up all the world's energy because it needs it (works for me).

There is even a bit of humor with that long lasting (145 movies) character actress Kathleen Freeman. Richard Carlson asks her if she was still skinny in her 4th month of pregnancy (he is concerned about his wife not showing) and she replies with a straight face "I was never skinny".

Ivan Tors, Curt Siodmak and Richard Carlson did a credible job of creating a doomsday movie on a really low budget (even for that time) and I think it deserves more historical credit.

So now I have copies of all three "A-Men Production" films by Ivan Tors and Richard Carlson: TMM, GOG and Riders To The Stars. What's next for my collection of 50's SciFi films?

-The big BM

[–] Newsgroupie 15 years ago

I had been looking for this movie for a long time, but not remembering the title, it was a fruitless search. That is until I posted a request in one of the scifi or vintage film news groups hoping someone would be able to tell me the title based on my mere scrap of memory of it. I had not seen it since childhood, but the memory of big steel doors with a ladder, coil of wire and pair of pliers stuck to it was as clear as if I had seen it just the day before. That and it was about something that fed on energy. I received several responses naming "The Magnetic Monster" as the film I was looking for, and suggested Kim's DVD as a place I could get a copy. I've watched it several times since receiving it. I'm glad to find someone else with fond memories from seeing it so long ago. I'll have to get the two other "A-Men" films you mentioned.

Bob

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[–] hobnob53 15 years ago

Neither Gog nor Riders to the Stars is as good as The Magnetic Monster. Both are in color and have fair casts, but they are much more plodding and talky than TMM.

Still, I kind of enjoy them for what they are, and because Ivan Tors at least tried to make something scientifically serious (although he failed miserably with Riders, whose premise is utter scientific bilge, as was well known even in 1954). As weak, talky and implausible as they may be, there's something kind of charming about these early '50s films about space travel and the mysteries of science and the atom, of people groping toward knowledge in a clumsy and often dumb, melodramatic way. Although you can get these films on DVD, I do wish a proper release of all three would be made some day, hopefully on MGM's Midnite Movies line. Not holding my breath, however.

For the record, I don't believe that all three films were from Ivan Tors's A-Men productions (of which he was a co-owner with Richard Carlson). I think just the first two -- TMM and Riders -- were actually made by A-Men. (As in "Atomic Men", although the religious overtone may have also been intentional.) Gog, the last of the three, was filmed by Ivan Tors Productions. But both that film and The Magnetic Monster dealt with Tors's mythical government organization, the OSI -- Office of Scientific Investigation. He once wanted to do a TV series based on the exploits of that agency's investigators, but it never jelled. Riders to the Stars has no OSI personnel in it -- just good old FBI snoops. Plus the absolute worst, most inappropriate and utterly dreadful title song ever written for any motion picture! Naturally, I posted the lyrics on the Riders IMDb message board for posterity.

No, no -- no need to thank me.

[–] lnoft97 12 years ago

I'm watching it right now on TCM! Purely for nostalgia's sake, I thought it was a dull old black and white thing on Monster Movie Matinee 50 years ago and my opinion hasn't changed. But I do think back to those days, when my brothers and I were so young, so excited to be able to sit up late and watch this movie, and life was (unbekownst to us) as good as it was gonna get!

[–] MoviemanCin 8 years ago

I saw it again a year or two ago after at least a 50 year gap. Sill a very engaging movie, one with a unique "monster".

Schrodinger's cat walks into a bar and doesn't.