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Kronos (1957) Directed by Kurt Neumann

Genre: Sci-Fi / Thriller

Kurt Neumann's 1957 feature Kronos came near the tail-end of a science fiction cycle that had kicked off the decade with classy independent "B" productions such as Destination Moon and Rocketship X-M (the latter also directed by Neumann), before getting elevated by such "A" features as Howard Hawks' The Thing (1951), Robert Wise's The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951), Joseph Newman's This Island Earth (1955), and Fred McLeod Wilcox's Forbidden Planet (1956) -- Neumann's The Fly, shot in color as well as CinemaScope and released the same year as Kronos, would mark the start of the closing phase of the "A" movie end of the science-fiction cycle, capped off with Ranald MacDougall's The World, The Flesh And The Devil (1959) and Wolf Rilla's Village of the Damned (1960), and from here until Hammer's Quatermass And The Pit and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey in the second half of the 1960's, most of the sci-fi films produced would be of the "B" movie variety. Kronos was also a B-picture, but it was an unusually handsome one, shot in CinemaScope and released by 20th Century-Fox, with a cast featuring a Broadway veteran with a Shakespearean background (John Emery) in a key role; and displaying special effects that, if not always first-rate, were never less than fascinating in their design, detail, and execution. As with all but the best movies in this genre, the acting -- apart from Emery in the role of the elder scientist taken over by the invading aliens -- is uneven and the script could have used another pass or two by a good editor; but despite these flaws, and action that includes such odd moments as the rather nonchalant removal of a dead body from a crime scene before the police have even been called, Kronos never sinks too far into a juvenile level for it to be appreciated by adults. The unexpectedly compelling giant robot (it impact enhanced by a superb score from Bert Schefter and Paul Sawtell) held the attention of kids and their parents alike, and there was just enough real science mixed in with the pseudo-science gobbledygook that usually afflicts these movies ("omega particles," indeed!) to allow adults to follow along on a different level from the juvenile audience at its core. And just for another ace up the sleeve of the makers, there was legendary cinematographer Karl Struss shooting this mix of strange, moody futuristic scenes at Lab Central, bleak desert and beach scenes, and the animated/life action mix attending when the robot of the title rampages across Mexico and California. Even cast members Rex Reason and George O'Hanlon, and fetching Barbara Lawrence, manage to rise to the occasion, despite the scripts occasional lapses into weak dialogue, unclear motivations, and absurd leaps of logic.

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