As an impressionable kid growing up in the ’50s, I watched just about every horror and science fiction film they made—and they made a lot. The horror movies scared the crap out of me, and so did most of the sci/fi flicks, especially ones involving weird-looking invaders from space, or killer robots. Which brings me to Gog.
MECHANICAL FRANKENSTEIN
The above goofy tagline belongs to the 1954 sci/fi thriller, Gog. I’ll keep this overview brief. A top-secret government facility in the New Mexico desert has numerous scientists working to create a space station. A super-computer called NOVAC (Nuclear Operative Variable Automatic Computer—I kid you not) runs the show. These days its functions would probably fit on a laptop, but NOVAC’s hardware is about the size of the United Nations building. (Hey, it’s the ’50s!)
Gog and his, uh, flame thrower.
Lately, a series of “accidents” has caused the deaths of a number of scientists, which brings a couple of agents from the Office of Scientific Investigation to the facility. As they’re shown around, we meet two advanced robots, Gog and Magog, both linked to NOVAC. (The names derive from apocalyptic figures in the Old and New Testaments, as well as the Koran.) Early on we see examples of their usefulness as they perform a variety of tasks.
But some outside force—possibly a foreign country, or maybe beings from another planet who do not want our world to reach the stars, a la The Day the Earth Stood Still—is responsible for hacking NOVAC and causing all of the deaths and malfunctions. This includes Gog and Magog, which leads to some scary confrontations with our main characters toward the end of the film.
Gog and Magog.
You can probably figure out where it goes from there. As far as “scary” for an impressionable kid is concerned, a scene where one of the robots has a character trapped in a lab and is about to kill him stuck in my brain’s hard drive long past childhood. I couldn’t remember exactly how the scene played out, just that it scared me big-time, and I never forgot it.
Fast forward a whole lot of years—decades, in fact. I recently found Gog on Prime and viewed it for what might have been the first time since the 1950s. An interesting film, well done for its time, but… Really? This scared me? Gog and Magog were more on the “cute” side, sort of like Number 5 in Short Circuit. And their flame thrower devices, awkwardly located where they were, appeared rather, uh, phallic, which cracked me up. When not spewing flames they—how should I put this delicately?—stood at attention. 😊
I enjoyed revisiting Gog. And I doubt if I’ll have any more dreams about killer robots about to turn me into burnt toast.