The Invisible Boy (1957)

Really Surprised!

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

When it Came to B-Movies MGM Usually Didn't Have a Clue. Here is Another Example of the Haughty Studio Cashing in On the Popularity of Robby the Robot and Abandoning or Not Caring About Any of It.This is an Unintentionally Disturbing "Kid's" Movie Where the Child is Literally Beaten by His Father, Threatened to be Beaten by His Father Even More, Spanked by His Mother, and Threatened by the Supercomputer to be Put to Death "Slowly". This is All Qute Cringe-Worthy.The Movie Also Shifts Tone Half Way Through from a Light-Hearted "Having fun with my pal Robot" Story to a Kidnapping, Ultra Smart Computer Doing Brain Implants and Aspiring to Take Over the World.Robby the Robot, Halfway Through the Thing Turns from Friend to Foe and it is Imaginable that Kids who Saw This in the Fifties Went from Amused to Terrified as it Unfolded. It is Worth a Watch Just Because it is So Bizarre as it Turns Every Which Way and the Disjointment is "Ed Wood" Like the Way it is Handled. The Look of the Film is Shiny and Some of the Supercomputer Sets are Fifties Nifty. Overall, it is a Very Odd Movie and its Strangeness and the Bizarre Behavior by the Parents is Part of its Retro Appeal, and That was Certainly Not its Intention.

The main "feature" of this movie is watching the poor child getting the hell spanked out of him time and time again for over an hour and a half.It's hard to imagine how someone could allow that to happen. But, it did. The writer, director and actors all seem to be fine with subjecting this child to endless humiliation. And, the actors who portrayed the mother and father seem to really be getting off on it.Maybe they recruited them from Nazis who worked the extermination camps? Or, maybe Catholic priests who were taking breaks from raping children?Hard to know. But, as a child of abuse, this really sickened me. And, it shouldn't be shown, on Turner Classic Movies, or anywhere else.* (1 Out of 10 Stars)

This film was charming to review and gives us some of the 50's thoughts and fears. It is charming because it shows us a nuclear family with precocious son of a government rocket scientist. The son's casting is another of Hollywood's predilection with red haired and freckle-faced son/ actors mid-America types that goes to Ron 'Opie Taylor' Howard, today. Another gem of this film is the appearance of 'Robby the Robot' an icon of 50's sci-fi films. This robot's first appearance was in the epic 'Forbidden Planet'. However in this film Robby has a more sinister role by being the unwilling agent of the super computer. The large cast of important roles does a nice job in building the suspense. The super computer trying to taking over worldwide humanity is a well-used film theme with the best redo in "Colossus, the Forbin Project", "2001", and a few more. The ending of the film taking place aboard the spaceship is somewhat unsatisfactory and hard to accept. But then the film's ending is also vintage 50's family sitcom's 'happy ending'.

This IS a kids' movie, so Timmie is there to fix the viewers' point of view and point of sympathy. Invisible Boy also fits into 1950s paranoid sf genre. So there is a secret installation, and there are army officers, and so on down the list of clichés. Unlike so many movies of this genre, the Russians aren't the enemy. The superdupercomputer is it. Its motive is independent survival. This machine is an early draft of HAL 9000.I love Robbie too, but remember, Robbie is actually a costume. There is not much point in conflating Robbie's role in this movie with its debut role in Forbidden Planet. We are supposed to like Robbie. Robbie is a hero. Unlike most movie automatons, Robbie has built-in morals. The superdupercomputer can't break that. Robbie won't torture Timmie.I love the climactic confrontation of the computer's maker (Timmie's dad) with his creation. The machine proceeds to hypnotize the man with its sequencing status display lights. But Robbie "knows" in its circuits what the right thing is and proceeds to destroy the learned-experience storage units.After that, the machine can only work like an ordinary computer (external intelligence). That is quite a sophisticated storyline. Sorry about the kid stuff.