By
Hank Reineke
Curt
Siodmak’s The Magnetic Monster is one
of the more thoughtful – and thought provoking - science-fiction films of the
era. Produced by Ivan Tors (whom would
share screenplay credit with Siodmak), this intriguing 1953 release from United
Artists is a cerebral, worthy addition to the classic sci-fi canon. Its likely most fondly remembered among devotees
of 1950s sci-fi for whom the presence of a rubber-suited monster is not a prerequisite.
Richard
Carlson (It Came From Outer Space, The
Creature from the Black Lagoon) essays the role of Dr. Jeffrey Stewart, a
brilliant graduate of Boston’s M.I.T. now working for the OSI (Office of
Scientific Investigation). Stewart and
his assistant, the bespectacled egghead Dr. Dan Forbes (King Donovan) are
self-described “Detectives with Degrees in Science.†They’re government
“A-Men,†the “A†prefix representative of their pedigree in atomic energy
research. The two are called by an official
from the Office of Power and Light to investigate a complaint regarding strange
occurrences taking place inside a Hardware Store. It seems as though the entire establishment has
become magnetized. The assortment of display
clocks adorning the walls have all stopped working, the doors of such household
appliances as washing machines are snapping open and shut, and steam-irons are
careening across store counters. One frightened
employee is nearly run down inside the shop by a barreling rotary-blade lawn
mower. “I can’t have appliances sailing
around my store!†the distressed shopkeeper sensibly complains to the arriving investigators.
With
the assistance of a Geiger counter, the two scientists discover that traces of
radiation are present. Through
additional testing, they conclude the epicenter of radioactivity can be traced
to an apartment sitting directly over the shop. There they discover a corpse that has succumbed to radiation
poisoning. After checking with officials
in Washington D.C. that no government-held radioactive elements have recently gone
missing, the trail goes briefly cold. Things
heat up again when they receive reports that the radio and radar communications
systems at a local airfield have suddenly gone haywire. They’re also contacted by an exasperated cabbie
at the airport whose taxi’s engine has gone inexplicably dead - and mysteriously
magnetic. His most recent passenger, we
learn, was a somewhat distraught elderly gentleman desperately clinging to a
small suitcase.
The
man with the suitcase, they soon learn, is also a scientist, Howard Denker
(Leonard Mudie). Denker, as we might
have initially suspected, is neither a foreign spy nor a Soviet saboteur. He was merely an ambitious research scientist
from Southwestern University; his cosmic creation has – much in the manner of
Frankenstein’s monster – quickly turned on him and escaped. He too is slowly dying from the ravages of
radiation poisoning. His monstrous creation
is a super-charged element with an insatiable appetite for energy. Denker cautions that his creation must be
constantly fed an electric charge or else “it will reach out with its magnetic
arms and kill anything within its reach.†The scientists arrange to have a sample of the dangerous element put in
to the Cyclotron at the State University. But the massive particle accelerator is no match for this man-made monster
of magnetism. Dr. Denker’s unstable element
is made stronger following an implosion of the Cyclotron in which two men are
killed and all energies absorbed by the creature that doubles in mass with each
feeding.
The
A-Men finally realize what they’re up against. The element continues to aggressively feed and grow and, when starved, compensates
by swallowing all energies existing in “empty spaces.†This energy is then
converted into mass. Carlson recognizes
this chain reaction is, essentially, the same from which the universe was first
created and the planets formed. Unable
to prevent the element from continually doubling in strength and size, the
scientists warn that at such a growth rate this magnetic monster will
eventually knock the earth from its axis. When a government defense administrator suggests the creature might be disposed
of by dropping it into the ocean (ala The
Blob), he’s advised the super-heated element would likely turn the sea bed
into a blanket of steam.
The
only hope for mankind is, unusually, in the hands of the Canadians. Apparently, the U.S. has learned that its
neighbor to the north has built a secret nuclear energy facility some seventeen
hundred feet down a mineshaft near Nova Scotia. The Americans believe the only way to destroy the magnetic monster is to
not starve it but to overfeed it with
power generated by the facility’s Deltatron. Their plan is to allow the monster to literally
choke itself to death by pumping some 900 million volts of power into it. The Canadians aren’t too enthused with the
idea. The Deltatron’s expensive and expansive subterranean facility, its temperature
naturally regulated by surrounding sea water, has only been tested to emit some
600 million volts. The Canadians argue
that increasing the output to 900 million volts is suicidal; it would put the
infrastructure and the safety of everyone working at the facility at great
risk. More egregiously, if Dr. Stewart
is wrong in his calculation, this so-called “magnetic monster†will become so
powerful that no force on heaven or earth will ever be able to contain it.
The subterranean base housing the Deltatron is of impressive scope and design for an exploitative B-movie. One immediately wonders how the art department working on The Magnetic Monster was able to construct such a massive set on a generally modest budget. The simple answer is… they couldn’t. To affordably stage the film’s climactic scene, the producers made generous use of footage of the grand, futuristic soundstage constructed for Karl Hartl’s alchemist film Gold (Germany, 1934, and also available on Blu from Kino-Lorber). To pull this deception off, the filmmakers of The Magnetic Monster had to match the props and clothing worn in the original German film to the props and wardrobe worn in its own production. For the most part this bit of subterfuge works.
The identity of the true director of The Magnetic Monster has long been the subject of some controversy. In an interview with film editor of Herbert L. Strock by film historian Tom Weaver, the filmmaker suggested that it was he who handled a lion’s share of that film’s directorial duties. This, according to Strock, was partly due to a combination of Siodmak’s Germanic intractability as well as his inability to best match footage he had shot with the footage excerpted from Gold. He suggested it was beleaguered and behind schedule producer Ivan Tors who thought Strock’s editing background made him the better candidate to storyboard and seamlessly merge the old footage with the new.
His assertion may, or may not, be apocryphal. Strock also suggested he directed the follow-up Riders to the Stars (1954) as well but, if this was so, his contribution went again un-credited. Strock did make a name for himself as a competent if unremarkable director of television dramas. He kept his hand in the movie business as well, cranking out of such beloved low-budget sci-fi and horror offerings as Gog (1954), I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957), How To Make a Monster (1958) and The Crawling Hand (1963). It’s acknowledged his assertion that he served as the de facto director of The Magnetic Monster might have some merit. Though Siodmak was, without doubt, a brilliant and prolific screenwriter, his few directorial credits were relatively undistinguished.
In any event, what we do know for sure is that the synthesis of energies of Siodmak, Strock, and Tors combined well enough to make The Magnetic Monster one of the most intelligent and intriguing sci-fi films of the Silver Age. The Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu-Ray edition of The Magnetic Monster is offered here in its original black and white presentation in an aspect ratio of 1:37:1. Supplements include an audio commentary by Film Historian Derek Botello, and a collection of four original theatrical trailers promoting The Magnetic Monster, Invisible Invaders, Donovan’s Brain and Journey to the Seventh Planet.
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