Gog was one of those 50s sci-fi movies I had heard of years ago, but never got around to seeing, even though the title really intrigued me. In an age where you had to have a real grabber of a title like "Invasion of the Brain Eaters" or some such, just calling your movie "Gog" seemed positively artsy.
In some super secret lab, two scientists are performing an experiment on a monkey where they attempt to freeze it, put it into suspended animation, and then revive it (hey, Captain America totally ripped Gog off!).
These two deaths are part of a string of mysterious mishaps, so the man in charge of the installation, Dr. Van Ness (the great Herbert Marshall, who I'm familiar with from The Razor's Edge and The Fly) calls in the OSI to get to the bottom of this!
An agent named David Sheppard (Richard Egan) arrives, teaming with another OSI agent named Joanna Merritt (Constance Dowling) who is already at the base. After a lot of talky scenes, Sheppard determines its due to sabotage committed on NOVAC, the giant computer that runs the base.
The computer also runs two robots, Gog and Magog:
Just as it looks as though Gog is about to kill Shepard, it suddenly stops and becomes inert. Our heroes wonder why, and we learn that a US fighter jet patrolling above shot down a secret enemy jet had sneaked into American airspace and was controlling NOVAC remotely.
Merritt faints, and when she wakes up its in a hospital bed with Sheppard at her side. They reveal their feelings for one another, and embrace.
This is where we'd normally see "The End" scrawled across the screen, but Gog still has one scene to go: a talky exchange between Van Ness and the Secretary of Defense, where Van Ness explains that a working space station is about to be blasted into orbit (you'd think the Secretary of Defense would, you know, know about this already!):
Merritt faints, and when she wakes up its in a hospital bed with Sheppard at her side. They reveal their feelings for one another, and embrace.
This is where we'd normally see "The End" scrawled across the screen, but Gog still has one scene to go: a talky exchange between Van Ness and the Secretary of Defense, where Van Ness explains that a working space station is about to be blasted into orbit (you'd think the Secretary of Defense would, you know, know about this already!):
This station will be equipped with cameras that will see all, preventing any future sabotage, ever. The SecDef is thrilled, announcing "We will never be taken by surprise again!" And with that, we have our ending, complete with cool sci-fi background:
...everything's gonna be great, from now on! The End!
The final scene reminds me of the one from Psycho, where a bunch of characters explain what just happened. Its generally unnecessary, but I enjoyed it because of its sheer oddness: I totally expected the film to end with Egan and Dowling's clinch, and to see it keep going made me chuckle. Clearly, producer Tors' fascination was more on science than the gushy romance stuff, which feels pretty pro-forma.
As I mentioned, Gog is a bit talky, and the two robots--who are supposed to be imposing--are pretty rickety looking. When it approaches one of the scientists, we see the actor actually grab one of Magog's claws and sort of place it around his neck, Bela Lugosi-and-the-rubber-octopus style. But all that can be forgiven; Gog is still a lot of fun and it does have a slightly different, more brainy feel than a lot of other 50s sci-fi.
1 comment:
God and Magog are Biblical references. They are enemies of God's people (Israel in the Old Testament and Christians in the New Testament book of Revelation.)
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