GOG (1954)

GOG (1954)

Tagline: Built to serve man... it could think a thousand times faster! move a thousand times faster! kill a thousand times faster ...Then suddenly it became a Frankenstein of steel!

(Sci-Fi, Drama, Romance) [G]

Note: This movie did not have an MPAA rating when it came out. However, if it came out today, I believe it would be given a [G].

Science is never frightening, Miss Merritt.

In this one, scientists are working on trying to hibernate people for long-term space travel, but end up being killed. A security agent is brought in named Dr. David Sheppard. He is tasked with trying to investigate what is going on and why. As it turns out the entire underground research base is being manipulated by a supercomputer named NOVAC and a few crazy robots named GOG and MAGOG as well as a strange aircraft in the area. 

First off, I tried to watch this damn thing twice and only made it through the movie once. For me, this isn’t really the kind of sci-fi I go for regarding the first 60 minutes. The final 23 minutes though are actually pretty good. One thing that this movie does really well, is nail the dialog. The sets were also pretty cool and I did like the robot designs for the most part. 

Where this thing kind of drops the ball for me is that the first two-thirds of the film feels very much like an 80’s NASA film you might see at the beginning of a science class. For a lot of people apparently, that’s totally fine because this movie doesn’t draw a lot of hate. For me, it equated to just a bunch of talking and boredom and if we really don’t have a promise of some sort of action happening, I start to check out. I also wasn’t intrigued by any of the characters and really couldn’t identify with anyone. Normally when I take in a sci-fi flick from the 1950s, I can at least identify on some level with at least one of the characters. This is not to say that Dr. David Sheppard (played by Richard Egan) wasn’t good. 

Acting wise Richard Egan was good and had an accomplished career that lead all the way into the deep 80s. Constance Dowling was also good as Joanna Merritt so that wasn’t the issue here. For that matter, Herbert Marshall was also good in this as Dr. Van Ness. His other big sci-fi appearance was in RIDERS TO THE STARS. 

I wish outside of that there were more good things to say about this one. I really did want to like this after reading the reviews and seeing how it impacted some people’s childhoods. I just couldn’t get into it much at all. For me, it’s going to help your sci-fi film go a lot further if you at least give me something more interesting than an hour of sci-fi jargon. Even if the script was pretty good and actually did have some witty lines, you have to build up the suspense. This movie never really delivered even though we do get a total of 8 people killed in the movie. I mean if just seeing a Coca-Cola machine in the background and watching people randomly killed in a lab is your idea of fun, then run to this thing as fast as you can. 

Overall I have to give this one a 3 out of 7 for the writing and a few cool robots, but that is the best I can do. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF IVAN TORS PRODUCTIONS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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