The Colossus of New York
June. 26,1958 NRA brilliant surgeon encases his dead son's brain in a large robot body, with unintended results...
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Reviews
The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.
Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.
The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.
A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.
There have been a lot of stories about brains being separated from their owners' bodies and kept alive for one reason or another. Usually the brain is that of a genius, as in John Hersey's 1960 novel. Sometimes it's an evil brain or a mad brain. Here it belongs to a genius, run over by a truck while in his prime.His equally brilliant brother (John Barragray) is an expert on automation. That's a fancy word for "robots." The father (Otto Krueger) is a renowned neurosurgeon. When you put the three of them together -- the brain of a brilliant young scientist, his automating brother, and his neurosurgeon father, you merely put Tab A into Slot B, and you get a robot with an exceptional brain.The performers are okay. Alas, Otto Krueger has aged since he was the suave villain in Hitchock's "Sabotage," not so much in his appearance as in his speech. It sounds as if his dentures were sliding around. Barragray, the automating brother, has a voice made for radio but his looks fit the template of the role. Robert Hutton as a scientist who is a friend of the family is painful. The poor guy. Mala Powers is the wife of the lonesome brain, the brain that's asleep now in its fancy aquarium. She is a knockout in the most wholesome sort of way. She looks like a particularly buffed version of the girl next door, if the girl next door looked like Mala Powers. A serious actress too, a committed follower of Michael Chekov.Anyway, the resulting robot resembles a human being as painted by some futurist nut. It has a body like Frankenstein's monster and a simulacrum of a barely human metal head and face. I don't know why the faces of these robots have to look so threatening. A normal human mask can be pretty scary. "Les Yeux Sans Visage" -- "Eyes Without A Face" -- are pretty eerie. A Guy Fawkes mask is unsettling.Anyway, this robot, although a giant, is no Frankenstein's monster. With its supports removed, it stumbles to a mirror, gets a look at itself, lets out a shriek, and flops on the floor. Any one of us who has looked into a bathroom mirror the morning after a particularly troubled night can immediately empathize. But if the robot is ugly, it's also clairvoyant and predicts a collision at sea involving a passenger ship called the Viking. The film was released in 1958, probably written in 1957. Barragray is stunned when the TV news reports the collision, showing the listing Italian liner Andrea Doria, which was sunk by collision the year before. Actresses Betsy Drake and Ruth Roman were among the survivors. The incident was still fresh in the public's mind.A year later and the wretched thing is no longer speaking in drawn-out electronic gargles but is fully articulate. And, like other monsters before him -- the invisible man, Frankenstein's creation -- he goes round the bend, driven by his ego. But instead of running for president, he paralyzes his surgeon father and bursts through the laboratory door to take a walk outside. Discovering that his brother is in love with his wife (or widow) the monster commits fratricide and then goes irretrievably mad. The ending is more or less arbitrary and not worth much attention.Sometimes these Grade B monster movies can be diverting. I found this one to be more irritating than anything else.
A science fiction story somewhat resembling Frankenstein. When brilliant scientist Ross Martin is killed by a truck, his father (Otto Kruger) insists on saving his brain. He is able to keep the brain alive, and insists his other son (John Baragrey), an inventor, create a vessel for the brain so he can keep on with his important, life-saving work. Martin, now the titular colossus, doesn't take too kindly to being reincarnated as a giant robot, and he longs for the love of his bratty son and wife (Mala Powers), who know nothing of his continued existence. He especially doesn't take it too well when, a year after the accident, Baragrey has fallen for Powers. It might have been a good idea not to make such a gigantic, powerful body for the guy. This B-movie ain't too bad. I liked the monster. The horrible little kid made me laugh a lot - he's directly responsible for his father's death in the first place. I kept hoping the colossus was only reconnecting with the little boy so he could crush him. In the end, though, it's pretty unmemorable.
Despite some clunky moments I still think the best and most eerie part of Colussus of new york is when the "dead" scientist awakes, and gradually with mounting terror, realises his brain is in the body of a robot! This scene I'm sure influenced Director Paul Verhoeven when he made "Robocop" many years later. look at the creepy visuals in this scene as we see everything from the robots P.O.V and note that its visualisation is similar to what you see on an old Television monitor. those lines spoken by his creator "you can see, you can hear, you can speak and you can move" still sends a chill down my spine. I rate this as one of the best eerie mad lab scenes in the movies.
****SPOILERS***** Very outdated in the special effects department but very up to date in the timeless debate of faith and theology versus science and technology. "Colossus of New York" brings up the questions about the human soul, for those billions of us who believe it exists, that goes well beyond modern science. Can a brain as advanced and dedicated that it is to the ending of suffering in the world and human as it was in life be the same in death? Or in the case of being without a body and soul a brain will only think logically without feeling and without the soul's goodness and humanity. that in many cases is not logical and will only respect the law of the jungle: survival of the fittest and destruction of the lame sick and unproductive.Brilliant scientist Dr. Jaremy Spensser, Ross Martin, who just came back to New York from Stockholm after receiving the International Peace Prize for his work in growing frost resistant plants that is to provide the world with an unlimited food supply. Getting off the plane and meeting his family Jaremy is suddenly killed by a runaway truck at the airport.Jaremy's father the imminent brain surgeon Dr. William Spensser, Otto Kruger, can't accept his son's death. With the help of his other son automotive engineer Dr. Henry Spensser, John Baragary, Dr. Spensser has Jaremy's brain removed and puts it into a tropical fish tank for the time being. Henry construct a eight foot Colossus for the brain to work out of but what both William & Henry totally forgot was that for the brain to be as effective, as the good kind and feeling person that Jaremy was, in death as it was in life it would need what only God can provide for it: A SOUL.Even though Henry was hesitant in going along with it,saving Jeramy's brain, he gave into his fathers William's mad. In the end it led to him being killed by the mad Colossus. The movie has been compared to "Frankenstein" but unlike the Frankenstein monster which had the brain of a murder the Colossus in the movie had the brain of a brilliant and kind human being, Jaremy Spensser. Like in both stories they didn't have a soul and that's what made all the difference. The ending of the movie the Colossus went to the UN and killed about a dozen scientists and policemen, with some kind of killer ray, at a conference for peace in the world. Later with the Colossus, who was really Jaremy, was shut down by his son Billy, Charles Herbert, and thus being destroyed was a bit ridicules. Even the Colossus' ability to see into the future, when he saw in a vision a sea disaster, wasn't all that convincing. Later we see both William and Henry watching the TV where they see stock footage of the sinking of the Andrea Doria after it collided with the US ship Stockholm. The Colossus calls the ship in his vision The Viking! That seen and the Colossus' fortune telling ability was never really explained and was totally unnecessary to be put in the story. The main plot of the movie about the human soul as well as the heart and how it makes the difference in all of us when it comes to being a good kind and understanding human beings, instead of a cold calculating and unfeeling machine, was right on target. Like the song says, with a few minor changes, "Without a Soul You Don't Have Anything".