Monster a Go-Go! (1965)

So much average

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

"Monster A Go-Go" was supposed to be the first feature film for Bill Rebane, who started filming this thing in 1961. His monster flick, originally called "Terror At Halfday", had a budget of 80.000 dollars, which was pretty much gone after a couple of days of filming. After he ran out of funding the film lay on the shelf for about four years, unfinished and with no hope (or desire) of actually being released.Cue Herschell Gordon Lewis (of "Blood Feast" fame), always on the look-out for the cheapest way he could get a film released. So he bought the abandoned footage from "Terror At Halfday" and 'finished' the movie. To cut costs, he decided to only ask a couple of performers back, which did not include Henry Hite. I should point out Henry Hite played the monster. He finished this monster flick ... without the monster. That's one of the main reasons why this movie feels like such a blatantly cynical cash grab.So Lewis only had a tiny little bit of footage shot with Henry Hite, and none of that footage could be edited to look like an actual ending. Lewis 'solved' that problem by creating one of the saddest anti-climaxes in the history of filmmaking. I honestly can't imagine how the people that paid to see this left the theatre after this screening. To quote Rich Hall: "It was so bad I wanted everyone's money back!". That was about a Bob Dylan concert, but it works equally well for this movie.For what it's worth: Rebane actually did try to shoot a big climax for this, that's actually the main reason the budget ran out so quickly. Some of the ending scenes feature dozens of extras, so that's clearly Rebane's footage. Lewis really wouldn't bother to do any of that. In later interviews Rebane has stated he hates this movie even more than the audience does, and I can't blame him. Lewis didn't even put his name on it, Rebane is the only credited director. Did I mention he only sold his "Terror At Halfday" footage for 8.000 dollars, while it cost ten times as much to film? I guess he got a really quick course on how film business worked.

This is one of world's worst films ever made - or so some say but I have seen worse.. so much worse than 'Monster A Go Go'. This film is not great at all but it is entertaining but drab at the same time. This is not a film I would recommend to anyone although I found it kinda neat in a way. This is an 'ok' bad b-film - not good but certainly not the worst.The film reminds me of a fairly good home movie... as if some inspiring filmmakers and actors made it. It has it's moments of being fun and interesting but I will admit it is a bit dry.If you really want to watch a drab but kinda entertaining bad b-film then you might like 'Monster A Go Go' - otherwise you can easily pass on this flick because you won't miss anything by not watching it.3/10

A space capsule crash-lands, and the astronaut aboard disappears. Is there a connection between the missing man and the monster roaming the area? No bones about it, this is a terrible movie. Were it to be remade (heaven forbid) this might actually be alright, because the plot is not awful for a monster movie. But the execution! Oh, man! Poor editing, awful sound (many times conversations are hardly audible or are reverberating), nasty lighting that washes everything out (which is made worse by poor prints, no doubt). Widely considered one of the worst films ever made, it has earned that honor.What makes it interesting, though, is that despite being a piece of garbage, it was actually made by two great independent filmmakers -- H. G. Lewis and Bill Rebane, the godfather of the Wisconsin film industry. Perhaps even more interesting is a man named Rick Paul who acts in a small role. After this, he apparently stayed out of movies for twenty years before resurfacing in "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" as a victim and the film's art director. Odd! (Though not that odd given the Chicago connection.) None of this makes up for it being a terrible movie, though. Watch it at your own risk.

I watched the MST3K version of this movie, and I don't think I could have watched the original version. This was just too boring & confusing of a movie to watch without someone making fun of it. The audio was atrocious and it was hard to make out what the actors were saying, not to mention that some of the sound effects were way too loud for the action (which made not only Joel & the bots jump, but me as well). The one scene were the guy goes "brrring" before he answers the phone is priceless. I suspect they meant to overdub a ringing phone sound effect at that point but forgot to. The tiny space capsule was also quite laughable.The ending, though, is totally anticlimactic, pointless, and confusing. Two men in radiation suits are chasing the monster through the sewers when all of a sudden it disappears, and a telegram arrives saying that the missing astronaut was found safe & sound in the Atlantic Ocean. We're supposed to be left pondering whether or not the monster was the astronaut and how the monster disappeared the moment the astronaut was found. But it rather gives the impression that they didn't really have an ending for the movie and hurriedly wrote one.Overall, this is one of the worst movies of all time and deserves its spot in the bottom 100.