The peculiar charm of ‘Robot Monster’

Robot Monster (Phil Tucker, 1953) is a terrible film, but it’s weirdly haunting. The film tells the story of a group of people who, after waking from a picnic nap, find themselves the remaining six people on Earth. Ro-Man, an alien with a diving-helmet head and the body of a gorilla, has destroyed the human population with a combination of nuclear attacks and rampaging prehistoric creatures. Now he’s out to kill the few survivors.

What’s notable about Robot Monster is that its low production v...