Escapement

Moviecut—The Electronic Monster

source: The Electronic Monster

Escapement

Saw this movie in DC when it first came out. It Was called The dream Machine. Now the name has changed and the DVD of it has a Large amount a footage edited out.

Well, it wasn't the worst film I've seen but it was pretty awful. Nonetheless, there were redeeming features and it wasn't a bad storyline, but just as others have noted, poorly executed. Lots of dials and switches probably courtesy of the Battersea power station, interesting electronic music (which the subtitles dubbed "creepy"), an idealistic inventor, an ex Nazi concentration camp experimental doctor, a psychopathic assistant, a megalomaniac clinic owner and best of all 1950's European cars - Peugeot, Messerschmitt, VW, Renault 750, with a Buick among period others. Pity about Rod Cameron - he should have stayed in Westerns. Its an interesting parallel to Total Recall in a low tech way.

Glad I missed it. Sounds like the earlier version of BRAINSTORM,,, Natalie Woods last film. I guess they can't all be blockbusters, but I always liked Mary Murphy. She seemed more "real" in Beach Head, and I will have to go back and look at When Worlds Collide again. Too bad about Dale Robertson; he should have treated her better.

This is an abominably bad movie, far worse than anything Ed Wood ever did. Wood's oeuvre is at least watchable, if only for camp humor. And Wood's films had a certain loony integrity, a virtue lacking in "The Electronic Monster". "The Electronic Monster" has none of that, offering only an excruciatingly dull mishmash of a confusing script, dreadful acting, a totally misused electronic music background and grade-Z production values. Professional lox, Rod Cameron, never any threat the Lawrence Olivier anyway, is egregiously bad and his somewhat fickle paramour, Mary Murphy demonstrates why she was seldom heard from again Watching this movie makes one wish the dream machine really worked so that they may erase the memory of ever seeing this completely valueless waste of film.

British made - with scarcely a British accent evident, Escapement is an extremely corny B-Film yet somehow gripping. Rod Cameron's wooden all-american hero chews the scenery while Mary Murphy's natural beauty makes that scenery glow. This film would certainly not have won any awards for sound design as the soundtrack of primitive electronic 'music' is overdone and jarring, at times competing with the dialogue.

Cheaply made and slow moving B movie, it even uses the sets from "Z cars", (which are supposed to be Scotland Yard - this is on the coast of France) twice, in two different locations, a police station and a morgue. An American insurance agent investigates the death of a film star and suspects a psychiatric clinic in France. By a huge and unexplained coincidence he happens to find a well upholstered ex working there.

THE ELECTRONIC MONSTER is a truly trashy Z-grade flick forgotten by even the most ardent of British B-movie lovers. The director is none other than Montgomery Tully, at his most workmanlike, while the American import lead is the indescribably dull Rod Cameron. The story is about a clinic for experimental electronic therapy, so expect lots of scientific apparatus and electronic noises on the soundtrack. The muddled plot draws in a little romance, a little peril, mysterious death and the ubiquitous criminal gang, but it's all entirely by rote.