The Colossus of New York (1958)

Very well executed

To me, this movie is perfection.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Is there anyone in this world so indispensable that their continued existence is absolutely essential? That's the question that is posed to the viewers in The Colossus Of New York.Ross Martin plays the super achieving son of Otto Kruger in a family of geniuses. In said family Martin is the crown jewel, a world famous scientist who on the day he's awarded the Nobel Prize is killed in a traffic accident. The world mourns but not Otto Kruger who takes the body and does some Frankenstein like experiments.In short he puts Martin's preserved brain in the body of one rather large and powerful robot who can kill with a ray gun blast. The values he developed as a human gradually fade away.Watching The Colossus Of New York I thought back to this truly horrid film They Saved Hitler's Brain where some Nazis have concluded the genius of the Fuehrer must be preserved for eternity. This is a much better film, but the same principle applies. Applied in fact by a father who just will not accept his son's death at the height of his fame and ability to do good works.Not a big budget film, but it does give one a lot to think about. What are human beings without the packaging?

THE COLOSSUS OF NEW YORK boasts one of the most impressive mind-reading monstrosities ever committed to film: it looks like something that the late, great jack Kirby might have dreamed up. Watching It lumber around the landscape, I almost expected It to take flight and announce that It had decided to take over the World- and the scenes of the Colossus walking underwater were nothing short of spectacular, you ask me. I also liked the idea that the Colossus developed a form of Telepathy/ESP; the Death Ray was just icing on the proverbial cake. If (like myself) you have a fondness for '50s Science Fiction and Horror movies, you'll love THE COLOSSUS OF NEW YORK.

There have been a lot of stories about brains being separated from their owners' bodies and kept alive for one reason or another. Usually the brain is that of a genius, as in John Hersey's 1960 novel. Sometimes it's an evil brain or a mad brain. Here it belongs to a genius, run over by a truck while in his prime.His equally brilliant brother (John Barragray) is an expert on automation. That's a fancy word for "robots." The father (Otto Krueger) is a renowned neurosurgeon. When you put the three of them together -- the brain of a brilliant young scientist, his automating brother, and his neurosurgeon father, you merely put Tab A into Slot B, and you get a robot with an exceptional brain.The performers are okay. Alas, Otto Krueger has aged since he was the suave villain in Hitchock's "Sabotage," not so much in his appearance as in his speech. It sounds as if his dentures were sliding around. Barragray, the automating brother, has a voice made for radio but his looks fit the template of the role. Robert Hutton as a scientist who is a friend of the family is painful. The poor guy. Mala Powers is the wife of the lonesome brain, the brain that's asleep now in its fancy aquarium. She is a knockout in the most wholesome sort of way. She looks like a particularly buffed version of the girl next door, if the girl next door looked like Mala Powers. A serious actress too, a committed follower of Michael Chekov.Anyway, the resulting robot resembles a human being as painted by some futurist nut. It has a body like Frankenstein's monster and a simulacrum of a barely human metal head and face. I don't know why the faces of these robots have to look so threatening. A normal human mask can be pretty scary. "Les Yeux Sans Visage" -- "Eyes Without A Face" -- are pretty eerie. A Guy Fawkes mask is unsettling.Anyway, this robot, although a giant, is no Frankenstein's monster. With its supports removed, it stumbles to a mirror, gets a look at itself, lets out a shriek, and flops on the floor. Any one of us who has looked into a bathroom mirror the morning after a particularly troubled night can immediately empathize. But if the robot is ugly, it's also clairvoyant and predicts a collision at sea involving a passenger ship called the Viking. The film was released in 1958, probably written in 1957. Barragray is stunned when the TV news reports the collision, showing the listing Italian liner Andrea Doria, which was sunk by collision the year before. Actresses Betsy Drake and Ruth Roman were among the survivors. The incident was still fresh in the public's mind.A year later and the wretched thing is no longer speaking in drawn-out electronic gargles but is fully articulate. And, like other monsters before him -- the invisible man, Frankenstein's creation -- he goes round the bend, driven by his ego. But instead of running for president, he paralyzes his surgeon father and bursts through the laboratory door to take a walk outside. Discovering that his brother is in love with his wife (or widow) the monster commits fratricide and then goes irretrievably mad. The ending is more or less arbitrary and not worth much attention.Sometimes these Grade B monster movies can be diverting. I found this one to be more irritating than anything else.

Along with a few others, I too, must chime in with my 'thumbs up' opinion of this lost classic. I was fortunate to see nearly ALL of the horror/sci-fi 'Classics' in theaters during the 50's binge..when there was a new double feature nearly every other week.This one, stands quite a bit above all the others. The creep factor is high and it has some truly haunting moments. The piano score just adds to the muted terror. Cheap? Yep. But I think that adds to the atmosphere.Sure, I was a 'kid' when I saw all of these back then, but only a handful of these films were 'great'. 'Colossus' is hands-down one of the best of that era. If you watch it in the proper context, I'm sure you will agree.