The Magnetic Monster (1953)
The Office of Scientific Investigations tracks down the source of increased magnetism and radioactivity in Los Angeles, and discovers that a man-made isotope is consuming available energy from nearby mass every few hours, doubling its size in the process. Although microscopic, it will soon become big enough to destroy Earth; and how to stop it is yet to be determined. The film's Deltatron special effects footage is taken from the 1934 German sci-fi film GOLD.
- Curt Siodmak
- Richard Dixon
- Maxwell O. Henry
- Herbert L. Strock
- Curt Siodmak
- Ivan Tors
Rating: 5.6/10 by 34 users
Alternative Title:
Country:
United States of America
Language:
English
Runtime: 01 hour 16 minutes
Budget: $0
Revenue: $0
Plot Keyword: magnetic field, radiation, pregnancy, black and white, stock footage, radiation sickness, hardware store, scientist hero, magnetism, energy absorption, office of scientific investigation
Richard Carlson struggles to inject much life into this rather dry sci-fi adventure. He and his scientist colleague "Dan" (King Donovan) are called into investigate mysterious goings on in a small town where just about everything metallic appears to have become magnetised. Bizarre, eh? What's causing it? Well that might have something to do with poorly scientist "Denker" (Leonard Mudie) who is travelling on an aircraft with a briefcase containing an highly toxic, radioactive, element that absorbs energy from adjacent metallic objects allowing it to expand exponentially. It's soon down to our intrepid duo to come up with a way of destroying it before it becomes huge enough to destabilise the Earth's orbit. This has one big problem for me - it has no object or creature for me to focus on as the danger. The film consists of loads and loads of dialogue, a bit of romance from Carlson and his wife "Connie" (Jean Byron) but until the last ten minutes, nowhere near enough actual action to keep the momentum going for what seemed like an over-long seventy-five minutes of haring about and chatter.
