Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

DipitySkillful an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

JLRVancouver Purportedly a 'hard' science fiction film, "The Magnetic Monster" (1953), presents little 'science' and even less 'fiction', as the film is mostly voice-over exposition and stock footage. The story starts intriguingly: pockets of inexplicable magnetism appearing that a special team of scientist-detectives (the OSI) are brought in to investigate. The story then slides downhill into endless pseudo-scientific chatter about magnetic monopoles and new elements. As it turns out (spoilers hereafter), the 'monster' is an element capable of direct conversion of energy to mass that will, if allowed to continuously 'feed', consume the planet. The answer, of course, is to overfeed it until it explodes, which necessitates a trip to Nova Scotia (of all places) where it can be exposed to some borrowed footage of a BDO from a pre-WW2 German science fiction film. Superimposed on the monster-hunt is a tedious and unnecessary 'relationship drama' concerning the lead investigator and his pregnant wife. What I disliked the most about this film was its inability to be true to its 'hard science' premise: the replicating element could have been treated as a completely lifeless yet existential threat (perhaps like the crystals in the "The Monolith Monsters" (1957)) but instead, in keeping with the misleading title, the script was full of silly anthropomorphising with references to the element being "hungry" or that it will "reach out its magnetic arm". This kind of dialogue just seemed ridiculous coming from the ostensibly hard-boiled scientists investigating the phenomena. Overall, neither clever enough to be interesting nor silly enough to be entertaining, IMO "The Magnetic Monster" is not worth the time spent watching by anyone other than hard-core fans of the genre.

JimS The script of this low budget (no one could afford a scientific adviser) film consists of an incoherent jumble of misused terminology with a side story that the main character's wife is going to have a baby (no mystery here - we know how that happens). The plot says that Denker created this thing (it's called an element in the script) by bombarding serranium (a fictitious element name) with alpha particles for 200 hours. Note that this was done in his clandestine laboratory above the local appliance store. Now we find that magnetism and radioactivity, two unrelated phenomena, are the result of this creation. It magnetizes stuff around it but the magnetized stuff behaves in odd ways. The source is found to be above the ceiling but the metal objects move horizontally across the floor or counter. So they catch up with Denker with the stuff in a briefcase and store it in the cyclotron for safe keeping - wrong. That's not what one does with a cyclotron. Supposedly, this thing has the ability to absorb energy and convert it to mass (a great misapplication of the Einstein equation E = mc(squared) and so the cyclotron gets destroyed when it goes through one of its energy absorbing episodes. Whether it is one atom getting bigger or one atom making other atoms we are not told, only if no one can stop it the Earth will be ejected from its orbit. This is so bad. Never mind the ending. Along with the misapplication of scientific terminology the makers of the film want us to believe that the plane carrying the thing to Canada changes from a T-33 Trainer on the ground to a F-86 Saber jet after takeoff in the air. It shouldn't take much to realize that error and to correct it but no. In conclusion, don't pay money to see it or the time for that matter unless you get your kicks out of watching things that Mystery Science Theater 2000 would pan. I can't believe that so many reviewers actually thought it was good.

sol1218 ***SPOILERS*** Complicated and confusing movie with so much scientific jargon in it that you need a degree in nuclear physics to understand what it or those n it the film are talking about. The movie has to do with this growing piece of nuclear energy or matter that if not stopped will consume the entire earth and after that the universe along with it.It was nutty professor Denker, Leonard Mudie, who created this thing while experimenting with nuclear material in his laboratory upstairs of a local electrical appliance store in L.A. that had his assistant die from nuclear fallout with a scared to death Denker then taking off for L.A Airport for a flight out of the country together with the dangerous nuclear element, which he dubbed Serranium, along with him. It's hot shot nuclear physicist Prof.Jeffery Stewart, Richard Carlson, and his equally hot shot assistant Prof. Dan Forbes, King Donovan, who get the lowdown on what Prof. Danker was up too and found out, with their geiger-counters, what plane he was on to get him and the Serranium in a safe place where they can study it and at the same time save his life from dying form radiation exposer. As things tuned out it was too late for Prof. Danker but not for the earth that's if that both Stewart & Forbes can find a way from keeping it the Serranium from growing by feeding on all the matter around it. A fantastic growth that doubles every 11 hours until there's nothing left for it to feed on by consuming all the matter on the entire planet earth!***SPOILERS*** Despite all the action on screen it's almost impossible to know exactly what's happening with all the over your head talk about nuclear physics by Stewart & Co that it would have been much better if there were sub-titles added so you could be able to under what everyone, all men and women with degrees and doctorates in nuclear mechanics, in the film are talking about. The ending is anything but exciting in that all you get to know what happened is what Stewart and his fellow nuclear physic professors are telling you which is like trying to understand what their saying in ancient Greek or Latin! We do get a number of earth shaking underwater explosions, the result of bombarding the Serranium with a billion volts of electricity, that we can't quite figure out what exactly they had to do with the movie's plot but at least they keep us awake and from falling asleep during the great and exciting climatic sequence in the film.P.S The shots of the inside of what I think is a super Canadian nuclear reactor were in fact taken from the 1934 German futuristic film "Gold" which the US & UK Government thought at the time was about Nazi Germany's nuclear program. In fact the movie "Gold" was about as confusing and mind boggling as it's imitator "The Magnatic Monster" in that we now know that there wasn't a German nuclear program back in 1934 or any other time during Hitler's 12 year Nazi regime.

Michael_Elliott Magnetic Monster, The (1953) * 1/2 (out of 4) Far-fetched sci-fi has a wacky scientist coming up with an artificial radioactive material that takes up so much energy around it that it could possibly knock the entire planet Earth off its axis. Richard Carlson plays the doctor preparing for his first child but first he must try and find a way to destroy the isotope before the world comes to an end. During the 1950s there's no doubt that people were paranoid over various science experiments that could possibly go wrong and destroy the world and this here led to producers coming up with all sorts of stories to try and get on the big screen. I've seen dozens of such science fiction movies and this one here is without question one of the most frustrating to watch. It doesn't help that we get some pretty bland narration that tries to explain what's going on but there were several times where the story just goes off into directions where you can't help become confused. There are scenes that appear to be happening for no apparent reason and the eventual twist that happens towards the end just isn't all that believable. I think it was a pretty dangerous thing to have a "monster" that really isn't a monster at all. After all, people were expecting giant lizards, giant ants or some sort of radioactive creature but instead this film just delivers a magnetic force. This "force" isn't the greatest killer out there but I give the film credit for trying something different but the problem is that the screenplay wants to go for childish matinée thrills that the "brains" that the story might hold are never allowed to grow or develop into something more interesting. Carlson is a fan favorite and he delivers a fine performance here as do the supporting players including King Donovan, Harry Ellerbe and Jean Bryon as the wife. The finale contains some amazing special effects but THE MAGNETIC MONSTER can't really take credit for them since they were lifted from the 1934 German film GOLD and one can't help but want to track it down after seeing the work edited into this picture.