Interesteg
What makes it different from others?
CheerupSilver
Very Cool!!!
CrawlerChunky
In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.
d-millhoff
I was expecting 1950's cold war schlock, and that's what I got.But there were some other unexpected details.While they got atomic physics wrong and clearly didn't understand the concept of orbital mechanics, they otherwise did an above-average job of sticking to real science. Way above average for its genre.The robots LOOKED LIKE functional robots, not even remotely human-shaped. And in an early scene, you see the computer operator removing and examining something from a rack, that looks a LOT like a PCI card with some sort of memory module on it (very reminiscent of the "hard drive sled" in my old Mac Pro). And a pretty ingenious solar optical system with very-convincing parabolic mirrors.Not bad!
daoldiges
I recently saw a restored 3-D print of this film at MoMA and have to say I enjoyed it. It seems so much of it's time, when the Cold War was getting warmed up and interest in space exploration was taking hold of our collective imaginations. I loved the costumes, and of course the lead female scientist running around in heels, and that they thought radiation could only travel in a straight line and that just a turn of the corner would keep you safe. I imagine that I would not have enjoyed this film as much had I seen it in its original release in 1954, but given the chance to see it now in the 21st century I found it great fun!
bkoganbing
A good healthy dose of Cold War paranoia is permeated throughout this film entitled Gog. Gog is one of two robots controlled by a giant computer in a space project the other being Magog. But someone has seized control of the giant computer which goes by the name of Nowac and the two robots are reeking havoc on our space program which was not yet under the control of NASA as NASA was not created until 1958 and this film came out in 1954.Richard Egan is both scientist and security agent sent out to the desert where this project is to find out what's been going on as a series of accidents. Already there is another scientist Constance Dowling who is also a security agent, but there incognito. She can't find an explanation as to who or what might be a traitor.It's both a who and a what. The who is our enemies, unnamed to be sure but we know it's the Russians who else has supersonic planes that have penetrated our air defenses. They've got control of Nowac and with it control of Gog and Magog so we have no traitor in the ranks of the scientists.Seeing the kind of sophistication the Russians have put into the sabotage, no doubt everyone left the film saying we ought to beef up security and give the military what they need.For a low budget B film, the special effects weren't bad. Gog and Magog look like more sophisticated Daleks, but Daleks were pretty scary on the Dr. Who series. Egan, Dowling, Herbert Marshall who played the top scientist and the rest of the cast gave sincere performances. Gog is most definitely a film for the paranoid at heart.
BullMoose
In my opinion this is one of the best films made by Ivan Tors. Tors created "Science Fiction Theater" for TV and made several SciFi films (like The Magnetic Monster) before this genre was really popular. He brought real science to the screen in plots that may seem dated today but afterall, it was 1954. In GOG, Tors brings in then brand new inventions such as jets, computers, robots, high frequency sound, cryogenics, sunlight as a weapon, electronic surveillance, atomic power and even man-made satellites (which would not become reality for 3 more years). To an audience unfamiliar with such things, it was exiting and scary. Especially scary when you were made to think such super weapons were under the control of a foreign power. The Korean War had just ended and the USSR was making aggressive comments about atomic war with us. This movie gave me nightmares for quite awhile.-BullMoose
