A space capsule containing American astronaut Frank Douglas crash lands in a field. Colonel Steve Connors is in charge of finding the craft and astronaut Douglas. A helicopter is sent out to find where it landed. The helicopter pilot locates the capsule and reports back. A scream is heard over the radio and then communications abruptly stops. When Connors gets to the location of the capsule the helicopter pilot is found dead and Douglas is nowhere in sight. The capsule, which is the tiniest space capsule I’ve ever seen, appears charred.
It appears that the missing astronaut was turned into a ten foot tall radioactive monster. The monster is loose in the countryside and is terrorizing or killing whoever he encounters. Eight weeks later Doctor Brett shows up to take over the investigation. Through his investigation he learns that Doctor Conrad Logan found Douglas and has been giving him injections trying to cure him of the radiation. When Dr. Logan is late with the last injection Douglas escapes and again goes on a rampage and ends up in the sewers of the city.
All of a sudden the monster disappears. Then the scientists get a telegram telling them that Douglas was found alive and well thousands of miles away.
“Monster A Go-Go” was released in 1965 and was directed by Bill Rebane and Herschell Gordon Lewis. It is a science fiction/horror story. Oh yes, there will be spoilers.
This is another of those movies where the money ran out before the film was completed. Herschell Gordon Lewis bought the film from Bill Rebane, added some extra scenes and additional dialogue and then released it. This resulted in a weirdly disjointed film that didn’t really go together. The film had been abandoned in 1961 by Rebane and not finished by Lewis until 1965. After four years the cast had scattered so Lewis had to continue the film with different characters. The one actor that could be found had changed so much, (he lost a lot of hair), he now played his own brother. Additional narration was also added by Lewis.
The monster, Henry Hite, was a little over 7 foot 6, but the director wanted the monster to be 10 feet tall, so Hite was filmed at an upward angle in every shot. Not that he appeared a lot. I was OK with the monster. I’ve seen worse and would have liked to have seen this one more as well.
The sound is horrendous and the camera wobbles, a lot. I’m not sure if that was done on purpose or not. At one point, when a phone rings, the sound effect is reported to be a person making a noise with his mouth. Perhaps that’s true, I don’t know.
The ending is stupid and very confusing. The narrator says that Frank Douglas was found alive and well on some island. If the monster/astronaut was back to normal, except for his size, when he had the antidote then why didn’t the scientist know it wasn’t Frank Douglas he was treating? If the monster was an alien then why didn’t Logan know that?
As for its historical value, the movie is considered one of the worst movies ever and beat out “Plan 9 From Outer Space” 1959, which I can understand since the underlying plot for Plan 9 was awesome and this one is just lame.
Even the cast and crew of MST3K considered it the worst film they ever spoofed. This movie is so disappointing that I am including the MST3K version. I haven't watched it, but I'm sure it's better than the original movie.
Full movie
MST3K version