Monster a Go Go

Plot

The plot concerns an American astronaut, Frank Douglas, who mysteriously disappears from his spacecraft as it parachutes to Earth. The policeman in one scene inspect the landing sight of Douglas's capsule and notices a burned patch, only to dismiss it as a prank. The vanished astronaut is apparently replaced by or turned into a large, radioactive humanoid monster. This is revealed when it comes into the scene and kills off Dr. Logan. A team of scientists and military men also attempt to capture the monster – and at one point succeed and imprison it in the lab, only to have him escape. Neither the capture nor the escape are ever shown, and are simply mentioned by the narrator.

At the end of the film, the scientists later corner the monster in a sewer under Chicago, but the monster suddenly disappears. The scientists receive a telegram stating that Douglas is in fact alive and well, having been rescued in the North Atlantic, perhaps implying the monster was an alien impersonating Douglas. The narrator provides the film's closing dialogue:

As if a switch had been turned, as if an eye had been blinked, as if some phantom force in the universe had made a move eons beyond our comprehension, suddenly, there was no trail! There was no giant, no monster, no thing called "Douglas" to be followed. There was nothing in the tunnel but the puzzled men of courage, who suddenly found themselves alone with shadows and darkness! With the telegram, one cloud lifts, and another descends. Astronaut Frank Douglas, rescued, alive, well, and of normal size, some eight thousand miles away in a lifeboat, with no memory of where he has been, or how he was separated from his capsule! Then who, or what, has landed here? Is it here yet? Or has the cosmic switch been pulled? Case in point: The line between science fiction and science fact is microscopically thin! You have witnessed the line being shaved even thinner! But is the menace with us? Or is the monster gone?

Cast

Production

The film had an unusual production history. Director Rebane ran out of money while making the film. Herschell Gordon Lewis, who needed a second film to show with his own feature, Moonshine Mountain, bought the film, added a few extra scenes and some dialogue, and then released it, creating an odd, disjointed film with little continuity. Rebane had abandoned the film in 1961; Lewis did not finish the film until 1965 and so was unable to gather all of the original cast, resulting in almost half the characters disappearing midway through the film to be replaced by other characters who fill most of the same roles. One of the actors Lewis was able to get back had dramatically changed his look in the intervening years, necessitating his playing the brother of the original character. At one point, when a phone supposedly rings, the sound effect is obviously a person making a noise with their mouth.

The actor playing the film's monster, Henry Hite, was seven-foot-six, but the director wanted the monster to be ten feet tall, so Hite was filmed from an upward angle in every shot.

Reception

Critical reception has been predominantly negative. The film is regarded as being one of the all-time worst. Allmovie gave the film a negative review calling it "an incoherent concoction brewed solely to fill space on a double bill".

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