Dr. Futurity

Dr. Futurity

[www.imdb.com]

bobopolis

Annalee Newitz

"...I can't remember the name. It's a movie about landing on either Mars or Venus.."

Could the movie you are thinking of be "Journey to the Seventh Planet?"

And, until now, all I've ever seen of Kronos was the poster. I had no idea this was a seriously giant robot. I think I was picturing something the size of Nomad from ST.

Absolutely must see this now.

victheremin

oldandintheway

I think because the trend has gone away from evil robots and on the route of giant-evil-bug-alien or evil-that-can-not-be-seen or evil-tiny-thing-created-by-man or
evil-humanoid-possibly a vampire or zombie-but-definitely-evil.

That and the proliferation of HGTV logic dictates that nothing is more evil that kitschy retro lamps. . .except maybe ceiling fans. Man, HGTV hates ceiling fans.

vurtscribe

hlkneedler

Maybe you Sci-Fi junkies can help me find one. I can't remember the name. It's a movie about landing on either Mars or Venus. And there is a scene where the astronauts come upon a fortress which looks like it's made of dark volcanic columns with a red dome on top. That's all I can remember. It wasn't cheesy like "Angry red planet". And it's not "First spaceship on Venus". UGH! This is driving me crazy!

FrankenPC

russdanger

Plague

Gyrus

Thrubeingcool

ParJoe

dealbo

Jeff-Minor

Oxfordian

SavannahJack

All robots are abstract, to a degree, because they are extrapolations of human form, unless they are human analogs, but then those are androids.

Kronos is definitely one of the creepier robots though. It's so starkly inhuman and obviously artificial. Like a wlaking Borg Cube.

Gyrus

Jeff-Minor

1369ic

physik

This looks like something to watch!
io9 turns me on to some great Sci-Fi.

strider_mt2k

hfgiii

Always a satisfying moment!

Princess Stacey

The asexual geek in the movie who runs a computer the size of a Wal-Mart named S.U.S.I.E, is George O'Hanlon, the voice of George Jetson himself!

The head of the research lab looks almost exactly like Walt Disney, and it's a hell of a lot more fun watching the film pretending he is.

Some of the effects are quite good, with a few nice matte paintings of the thing tromping across Mexico on its way to Los Angeles for lunch. There are a couple of hilarious "everybody scrunch together and scream so you'll all fit under the monster's foot" scenes, though.

All in all, it's a minor classic. You've got a research lab that looks like something Norman Bel-Geddes dreamed up, George Jetson devoting his life to running a huge computer less powerful than your wristwatch, a non-humanoid giant killer robot (you HAVE to see the scene where they go to nuke it and it just sucks the plane in), your basic beefy scientist hero and his hot babe scientist girlfriend who runs the lab's photographic department, and Walt Disney going insane and betraying us to his alien overlords. It's also got the two scenes that HAD to be in any SciFi movie: extensive helicopter footage and a-bombs being casually tossed around. What's not to love?

The aliens in the film, who are never seen, have completely used up all the resources of their planet, and are sending out robot probes to get more, and they're not too picky about how they do it.

Which is a pretty realistic scenario but utterly unexpected coming from a film made when gas was 25 cents a gallon, the cars weighed close to two tons, and they were seriously thinking about using atomic bombs to dig canals and create harbors.

No, really: the biggest crater at the atomic testing grounds northwest of Las Vegas is from the Sedan test, which was part of Project Plowshare, designed among other things to see if the radiation would be a problem -- and boy, it was one of the dirtiest tests ever conducted there, with a massive fallout plume that irradiated towns for miles around. They told people to just stay indoors and keep the windows closed. It's at the north end of the site; you can't miss it in Google Maps or Earth: [maps.google.com]

Scroll south of the big crater if you want a better idea of why your grandpa who served in the army back in the fifties died early of leukemia. The craters are only the underground detonations; the surface "events" are usually just scorch marks with a circle around them for the bomber pilot. There were literally hundreds of these tests, and many times the troops were sitting in trenches just two or three miles away.

uglyMood

Silver_Back

Michael_GR

I have to say the Movie scared the Crap Out of me at the time when I was a younger man. I think Mom & Dad had to replace the floor in the T.V. Room cause they could never get the "Stains" out after I saw that one..

These days since that glorious movie, Aliens and such I am no longer scared of cause I know we "Really Have All Those Cool Weapons" and I can use them against any Badass Thinking Aliens that happen to touch down in my Neighborhood when I'm out back cooking up some great BBQ.

keithldick

Hoaxe

tomun

geekzilla

Tiwa Face Kontrol