Scientist Jeremy Spensser (Ross Martin), a genius if there ever was one
and on the brink of discovering the cure for world hunger, dies in a freak
car accident - so his father William (Otto Kruger), a brilliant brain
surgeon, and his brother Henry (John Baragrey), a genius technician who
has nevertheless always been jealous of his brother's success, build a
robot to house his brain. When Jeremy comes back to life though as the
robot Colossus (Ed Wolff), he's pretty cranky, because he doesn't really
want to be a robot, but soon also feels superior to humans and decides the
annihilation of the human race - and his newly acquired hypnotic powers
and the ability to shoot death rays from his eyes (where the hell did he
get those powers from?) sure come in handy. Colossus is able to have a
loving relationship only with his son Billy (Charles Herbert), while he
shoots his brother Henry after he finds out he tried to get into his
wife's (Mala Powers) panties. Ultimately, Colossus enters the
UN-building and shoots people quite randomly, but there is still a little
bit good left in him, so he has hypnotized his father into bringing Billy
to the UN, as Billy is the only one he lets near himself and thus the only
one who can push Colossus' off-switch (which was designed in a way that he
can't reach it and turn himself off). And thus, Billy saves the day - and
humankind, too. The best thing about this film is the robot
design, that looks just as cold-hearted as the character is supposed to
be, and Colossus on the poster alone makes this one a must-see for every
serious science fiction film. The film that hides behind that poster
though is nothing short of horrible, an incredibly cheesy, childish,
overlong (at a mere 70 minutes!) and pretty boring tale about a mad robot
who is finally bested by the love to a little boy. And within the film,
colossus doesn't even habve that many menacing scenes, he is actually seen
more often playing with the boy than doing anything else - thus after a
time you come to ask yourself what's the point of the whole story to begin
with. Pretty bad and pretty disappointing.
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