Gog
Gog - Space Station USA

USA 1954
produced by
Ivan Tors for United Artists
directed by Herbert L. Strock
starring Richard Egan, Constance Dowling, Herbert Marshall, John Wengraf, Philip Van Zandt, Valerie Vernon, Stephen Roberts, Byron Kane, David Alpert, Michael Fox, William Schallert, Marian Richman, Jean Dean, Tom Daly, Alex Jackson, Patty Taylor, Beverly Jocher, Aline Tower
story by Ivan Tors, screenplay by Tom Taggart, additional dialogue by Richard G.Taylor, music by Harry Sukman, special effects by Harry Redmond jr

review by
Mike Haberfelner

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Gouvernment agent Sheppard (Richard Egan) is called to a top secret, computer controlled giant research facility in the middle of the desert that's supposed to develop a space station. Lately though, several bugs have been found at the place, and cases of minor sabotage have occured. Sheppard, who finds his girlfriend Joanna (Constance Dowling) working in security here, soon finds himself confronted with a virtual army of eccentric scientists, all of whom could qualify as suspects, from the womanizing solar energy researcher (Philip Van Zandt) to the arrogant robotics specialist (John Wengraf). And then there's the facility's supercomputer NOVAC that nogody really seems to understand. Things start to get out of hands when people start dying in the exact way their research would suggest, like a sonar scientist being killed by killer soundwaves and two subjects testing a new pessure suit being killed on the spinning table. And then the place's robots Gog and Magog run amok, and it's up to Sheppard to fight and defeat them using flamethrowers, heavy objects and whatever else he gets into his hands. The real threat though is an enemy airplane undetectable by radar hovering over the facility that has secretly taken over NOVAC using signals on the computer's wavelength - a result not of inside sabotage but having the computer built in Switzerland, apparently. A few American fighterjets soon put an end to the enemy plane, and everything's back to a-ok again. And a miniature space station is launched to outer space within the week ...

In 1954, the space race between the USA and the USSR was still in its infancy, and the Americans still believed they could beat their Eastern counterparts - which is perfectly mirrored in the very patriotic tone of this film, which is less of a sci-fi-espionage-mystery and more of a demonstration of technological achievements - though many of these achievements were actually some time in the future, and quite a bit of the underlying science has long since this movie proven wrong.

Anyways, all of this says little about Gog, the film, which is basically a fun time capsule that more than anything else gives its viewer a feel of cold war scentiments but also the optimism concerning outer space travel - all packaged into a silly little narrative full of scientific absurdities and silly looking robots doing silly things. Fun, really ... and in its overly serious tone and its ambition to make something worthwhile much campier than many cheap pieces of drive-in schlock.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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