Escapement (1960)

Well, it wasn't the worst film I've seen but it was pretty awful. Nonetheless, there were redeeming features and it wasn't a bad storyline, but just as others have noted, poorly executed. Lots of dials and switches probably courtesy of the Battersea power station, interesting electronic music (which the subtitles dubbed "creepy"), an idealistic inventor, an ex Nazi concentration camp experimental doctor, a psychopathic assistant, a megalomaniac clinic owner and best of all 1950's European cars - Peugeot, Messerschmitt, VW, Renault 750, with a Buick among period others. Pity about Rod Cameron - he should have stayed in Westerns. Its an interesting parallel to Total Recall in a low tech way.

I remember seeing The Electronic Monster as a lad way back when I was 11 years old and it was the second feature of a double bill. It had an interesting concept, but it was poorly executed.Rod Cameron and Mary Murphy are a pair of Americans in the leads of this British production which is set in France. An American film star dies in a car crash and the autopsy showed he was dead before his car went out of control. Too much electric shock of the brain. Cameron is an insurance investigator employed by the film star's studio. He discovers some other deaths of prominent people all had known the same femme fatale and all had extended stays at a 'resort'. Roberta Huby is our Mata Hari.The resort is run by a rather cold and bloodless Peter Illing and the people are there for some kind of new psychotherapy. Dr. Meredith Edwards has investigated a kind of electric shock therapy which feeds certain erotic images into the brain and records. Kind of a Krell brain test. But Illing has seen the possibilities of mind control.Illing is also engaged to another film star Mary Murphy who was once an item with Cameron. That's one major weakness of the movie there. He's so cold and bloodless, sinister but also a drip. What she saw in him I'll never know.Interesting concept, but the execution was so lifeless and dull. Both the leads got a European vacation out of it so that might have been the reason they signed for The Electronic Monster.Good a reason as any.

This is an abominably bad movie, far worse than anything Ed Wood ever did. Wood's oeuvre is at least watchable, if only for camp humor. And Wood's films had a certain loony integrity, a virtue lacking in "The Electronic Monster". "The Electronic Monster" has none of that, offering only an excruciatingly dull mishmash of a confusing script, dreadful acting, a totally misused electronic music background and grade-Z production values. Professional lox, Rod Cameron, never any threat the Lawrence Olivier anyway, is egregiously bad and his somewhat fickle paramour, Mary Murphy demonstrates why she was seldom heard from againWatching this movie makes one wish the dream machine really worked so that they may erase the memory of ever seeing this completely valueless waste of film.

Dull, dull, cliche ridden film . Brainwashing has been used as a topic for many interesting films(IPCRESS FILE for one). This 1950s British film is not one of them. Instead we get a very basic storyline with no punches whatsoever. Rod Cameron sleepwalks throughout, looking like he would much rather be in a Western. There is an annoying love angle thrown in and some two dimensional characters(mad scientist, caring scientist, power hungry industrialist, rock jawed hero,psycho etc.). The result is a very boring film with no delivery whatsoever. Only the poor viewer is brainwashed.