On Aug 22, 2:04 pm, "Jacques E. Bouchard" <***@invalid.invalid>
wrote:
> Scary movie robots, in no particular order (feel free to add to the list):
>
> - 'The Terminator' (all of them, except for Kristanna Loken in red
> leather);
> - The psycho robot in 'Robocop 2';
> - the bodyguard robot in 'Judge Dredd';
> - most of the robots in 'Sky Captain';
> - the tripods in 'War od the Worlds' (they kinda of count, don't they?);
> - none of the robots in 'Transformers';
>
> ...
>
> jaybee
If you're talking about scary robots, I've got to go back to my
childhood (as I do more and more often these days).
Tobor the Great -- an experimental robot designed to pilot the first
space ship built, as such things often are, by a scientist down in a
lab in the basement of his house, where his young son can sneak down
and get a look at it. It can be controlled, somehow or other,
telepathically (yeah, man) but you need this kind of booster gadget
that looks like a pen. Then spies get ahold of it and it's bad news
for awhile because Tobor runs fucking amuck.
Speaking of which, Robby the Robot also appears in a sequel called The
Invisible Boy (although he's only invisible for like two seconds)
where they kind of find him in a storage closet and the kid gets him
working -- and meanwhile Dad (also a scientist) is working on this
giant computer who gets all intelligent and hostile and sort of takes
over Robbie and they take the kid hostage and orders Robbie to *tear
his fucking eyes out!!* I'm not kidding. This is fucking family
entertainment. Okay, he doesn't do it. But when you're a little kid
watching this shit, you don't know that.
Then there's Gog -- actually there are two robots, Gog and Magog --
actually real non-humanoid robots in an underground military/
scientific base that's being run by (get this) a giant computer that's
been co-opted by enemy agents that are using the two robots to
sabotage the base. These things have multiple arms, one has a blow
torch, the other a kind of gripper thing that can like crush your
throat.
And how about Colossus of New York -- he starts out nice -- Ross
Martin, gentle scientist, gets run over and let's face it, if your Dad
is a scientist experimenting in robotics and your son gets run over --
what would you do, except transplant your son's brain into the body of
an eight-foot tall, weird ass, cloaked golem-looking robot, who
promptly begins to go completely crazy -- ending in a scene where he
drops by the U.N. and starts to *laser down the delegates in cold
blood!!* with beams from his eyes while standing beneath that sign
about beating swords into plowshares.
Then there's the giant robot in "The Mysterians" that comes tunnelling
out of the side of a mountain. Probably not too impressive to viewers
today, but it certainly impressed the hell out of me when I saw it in
a matinee around forty years ago.
And if you're going to include the war machines from the recent WotWs
then you should certainly include the war machines from the original
George Pal version. The scene when the cylinder first unscrews and the
gleaming snake-like brass neck comes out and blasts the three men is
one of the great scary moment from fifties science fiction and the
Nozaki-designed war machines among the great cool-scary designs.
If you want to go a bit farther afield, how about Talos from Jason and
the Argonauts -- or the gold warriors from Hercules and the Moon Men
that killed people by simply hemming them in and crushing them between
their solid metal bodies.
Oh, and speaking of the giant robots from Sky Captain -- if you're
going to include them, you should go back to the source, which is one
of the original Max Fleischer Superman cartoons from which the design
and even some of the sequence, shot for shot, was lifted without any
credit or acknowledgment of which I am aware.
Here's a link. You can judge for yourself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkElf1KtaBs
NMS