Gog (1954, directed by Herbert L. Strock)

Ever look suspiciously over your shoulder when you're alone in a room with your toaster oven, or your curling iron? If you were living in the 1950's, you might have. The post-war, high-technology prosperity of the space-racy 50's had many people feeling the future had sort-of already arrived. Amongst the glut of science fiction films made during the era, imagining "tomorrow" often meant imagining technology that had already infiltrated everyone's front lawns. Hence, films about machines and technology running horribly amok became adequate therapy for audiences unable to express fear of progress, which was unpatriotic. The scientists in Herbert L. Strock's Gog (1954) who create and work on amazing robotic inventions are all pipe-smoking, condescending creeps with pointy goatees, foreign accents and an open disdain for simple American etiquette. (click below to see Gog)...

The film's tag line read: "Built to serve man... It could think think a thousand times faster! Move a thousand times faster! Kill a thousand times faster ...Then suddenly it became a Frankenstein of steel!" Thank God Mr. Joe America is able to beat the damn thing down with a baseball bat at one point. But maybe the robots in this film are just mad because the characters keep incorrectly referring to them as "row-buts." Gog is loads of fun, but unfortunately rather lost, having never been released on video or DVD (finer video establishments may stock a rentable bootleg copy). But, ahem... if you're sitting in front of your computer right now (without fear) and aren't doing anything for the next 82 minutes, feel free to watch the entire thing over here. You might just feel safe enough afterwards to go ahead and have that second piece of pecan pie down at the automat.

Comments

[woid]

I see by the imdb that Gog was released in 3D!

They say so under the heading "Trivia." But one person's trivia is another person's salvia — and these are divine:

Shot in 3D, but released mainly in regular 2D.

The robots Gog and Magog were operated by midgets.

The shooting schedule was fifteen days on two sets at Hal Roach Studios, with exteriors at George AFB (Victorville).

The Hoover Dam's turbines were photographed on glass to provide projected backgrounds to some of the lab scenes.

The centrifuge scene was filmed at USC. The actors became sick and were replaced by dummies.

Herbert L. Strock got in trouble with the Director's Guild for combining his directing and editing credits.

William Schallert was paid $250 for two days' work.

As of April 2005, only one complete dual-projector stereoscopic 3-D print is known to exist anywhere in the world. The Left and Right prints do not match: the color is severely faded on one side, but the film is still viewable in 3-D.

Director Herbert L. Strock had very poor vision in one eye and consequently was unable to properly gauge how the 3-D effects were, and had to rely on others to tell him. Coincidentially, André De Toth, who directed House of Wax (1953), arguably the most famous 3-D film, only had one eye and could not see the 3-D effects at all.

We need to track down that one surviving print and run it through Final Cut to fix the cuts and the color. Or, we could take it to a salon for a cut and color. In any case, WE MUST HAVE GOG IN 3D.

[Liam Baldwin]

If anyone ever comes up with a translation of whatever it is our robots' creator says in the heat of the moment when his accent goes into hyper-drive and our hero rushes out of the room to get one of the flame-throwers please let me know. I have absolutely NO idea what he says. I have played that section of the movie over and over again and it still sounds like:
"Time bext zoim - in demzoim down ze hall - hurry up!"

My take on the whole movie here:

http://anotherjunkmonkey.blogspot.com/2008/01/gog-go-go.html