Monster a-Go Go – USA, 1965 – reviews of one of the worst films of all-time

Monster a-Go Go is a 1965 American science-fiction horror feature film directed by Bill Rebane (Blood Harvest; The Demons of Ludlow; The Capture of Bigfoot; The Giant Spider Invasion) and Herschell Gordon Lewis (uncredited). The movie stars Phil Morton and June Travis. It is generally considered to be one of the worst films ever.

The film had an unusual production history. Director Rebane ran out of money while making the film. Lewis, who needed a second film to show with his own feature, Moonshine Mountain, bought the existing footage, added a few extra scenes and some dialogue, and then released it, creating an odd, disjointed film with little continuity.

Rebane had abandoned his feature in 1961; Lewis did not finish his version until 1965 and so was unable to gather all of the original cast, resulting in almost half the characters disappearing midway through the movie to be replaced by other characters who fill most of the same roles.

Plot:

A spaceship is sent into orbit to investigate mysterious satellites. The ship returns to Earth but crashes in a remote field. The astronaut is missing and the helicopter pilot who investigates the crash landing scene is found dead.

Other victims are soon found, seemingly having been”cooked to death” in a horrible manner. It seems that the astronaut has metamorphosed into the enormous, strange mutated creature (played by real giant Henry Hite) responsible for the grisly deaths…

Reviews [click links to read more]:

“It takes a true connoisseur to find anything of the slightest interest in Monster a Go-Go. The casual viewer will see only an uncommonly inept example of a genre five years past its expiration date, an Amateur Night fiasco that makes even The Beast of Yucca Flats look accomplished in comparison. And of course, they’ll be right about that.” 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting

“You would expect more from a movie that was directed by two people, one of which being the great H.G. Lewis, but it still sucks. Everything from the terribly recorded sound to the monster, who’s just a tall guy with some bad skin who hugs people to death.” Video Dead

“Monster A Go-Go is definitely not the worst movie of all time, that dubious distinction is better served with many of the fan films shot on VHS and phone cameras on the half dozen Pendulum Pictures 50 Movie Packs released from Mill Creek.” Oh, the Horror!

“For once, the hype is accurate, every bit of it. The Chicago-based Monster A-Go Go really is one of a kind — a movie so god-awful it’s almost “anti-art,” in a way that might appeal more to appreciators of David Lynch and underground art cinema than to fans of such entertaining “bad” cult movies as Plan 9 from Outer Space and Robot Monster.“ The Bloodshot Eye

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” …the horrible sound quality that had me worried something was wrong with our new flat-screen TV and the crappy photography which has faces washed out of the scenes in a bright solarized glare or has all the action lost in darkness. The acting is non-existent and while there is a story here it is just too baffling to follow.” The Uranium Cafe

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“It is undoubtedly a spectacle of how to do everything wrong in making a movie. From an academic perspective, that makes the movie kind of fascinating. On the other hand, it lacks much of the entertainment value that people expect from “good-bad” movies.” Misan[trope]y

Cast and characters: