The nineteen-fifties were, of course, notorious for all the sci-fi and schlock that got churned out, and with all the new technology and prosperity available to people around the world, anything was fair game for the sci-fi and schlock treatment. Even mysterious creatures that spring forth from seemingly inert substances and somehow become radioactive. This was potentially scary for people in the fifties, with the Cold War going full blast and nuclear war always a possibility, at least in the background.
The Magnetic Monster certainly fed into that, with plenty of low-budget, indie film energy. We’ll just have to use our imaginations, y’all.
It’s the present day, well, the present day of the fifties, and there’s a lot of strange technology and chemistry has taken on strange new forms. An organization has been formed to study radiation particles called the Office of Scientific Investigation, and the scientists who work for it are called A-Men. As in, Atomic Men. I have too many thoughts about this, so I’m just going to move on.
One of the A-Men is Dr. Jeffrey Stewart (Richard Carlson), whose wife, Connie (Jean Byron) is four months pregnant. He wonders why she isn’t fat yet, and this becomes a running gag for the whole rest of the movie. It’s all in good fun, or at least it’s supposed to be, but eeeek. That bit hasn’t really aged well.
All of that homely bliss can wait, though, because strange things are afoot at the local hardware store. The clocks are all set at the wrong time, the washers and dryers are opening and closing by themselves, and a vacuum cleaner seems to move on its own.
Never fear, though, because Jeffrey and Dr. Dan Forbes (King Donovan) are on the case. They show up with a Roetgen counter and start searching around. It doesn’t take long to determine the source of the radiation is coming from the office above, where a guy is dead of radiation poisoning.
Whatever caused the weirdness is now gone, and OSI determines the office belonged to a Dr. Howard Denker (Leonard Mudie), who has now boarded a plane to someplace with his mysterious substance, And how do Jeffrey and Dan find out which flight he’s on? By checking the airline insurance receipts, of course, and seeing which one is radioactive.
Meanwhile, the good doctor is on the flight clutching his suitcase and looking listless. Dan and Jeffrey radio the pilot that they need to turn around and come back to the airport because of the radiation, and if they don’t their plane might break apart. As if to illustrate the point, one of the engines starts to fall apart, so back to the airport they all go.
Clearly dying, Dr. Howard tells Jeffrey and Dan that what’s in the suitcase is a science experiment gone wrong–serrenium infused with alpha particles suddenly went radioactive and took on a life of its own. Really. This monster feeds off of everything and doesn’t care who gets hurt. It must be destroyed or life on earth will end as we know it.
It turns out that Jeffrey and Dan will have to work fast. They try to isolate the compound at the science department of a local university, but the building imploded, so unconventional methods are clearly needed. Their quest literally takes them under the sea to a research facility that would make Jacques Cousteau envious.
The Magnetic Monster isn’t bad. It clocks in at just over an hour and brings a kind of Outer Limits-type energy. For all it’s low-budget, it doesn’t look like it, and there were a lot of creative solutions going on. The biggest one is that the monster doesn’t look like anything identifiable, just a vaguely stylized squiggle. Whenever the characters peer at it through their special view window, it always looks the same, although their words might say differently. We as the audience just have to take things on faith and check the surrounding area to see if anything metal is still sticking to the walls. If nothing weird is happening, then the monster is under control. In an era
It helps that the movie has a decent cast who play their roles very intelligently. There aren’t really any A-list stars here, obviously, but we still see some very recognizable ones. Richard Carlson, for instance, had a huge filmography which included Presenting Lily Mars. The clerk in the hardware store was played by William “Billy” Benedict, who had a very respectable career as a bit player and character man. I don’t know why, but he always seemed to play cabbies or delivery drivers.
Most recognizable of all, though, is the wonderful Kathleen Freeman, who plays Nelly, the OSI telephone operator. Her biggest claim to fame was, of course, the very patient Miss Dinsmore in the perennial classic, Singin’ In the Rain.
Despite The Magnetic Monster’s many strengths, Hollywood and theater owners didn’t seem to have any delusions about how far the film would go–it was firmly in the B-picture category. Critics described with with words like “adequate,” “intelligent,” “very strong,” and “plausible,” but it was rare for anyone call it entertaining, maybe because the idea of atomic energy getting out of hand hit a little too close to the mark.
Photoplay’s review said, “Nervous note to experimenting physicists: Watch it, boys!”
Still, theater owners saw an opportunity to draw the public in. Some put on scientific exhibits for customers to look at. Others played up the creature aspect of the film. People came, but the numbers were merely average.
Seen today, The Magnetic Monster might not be as splashy as other creature features of the era, but it is certainly interesting and hasn’t aged too badly in most respects.
Coming up in October (click the image for more info):
Another post is coming up on Thursday. Thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you in a few days…
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