Edgar Allan Pooh . . . THE MAGNETIC MONSTER are WATCHING OLD PAINT DRY and SEE THE GRASS GROW SOYLENT GREEN. Despite little backing from a U.S. film industry quaking in its boots over the prospect of potentially offending America's Northern Bully (Canada), THE MAGNETIC MONSTER does the best job it can--given its extremely limited resources--of revealing the True Story about an otherwise covered-up Real Life incident in which a rogue Canadian scientist suffering from tunnel vision nearly enabled Earth to be spun out of the friendly confines of our Solar System to become a wandering Dead Planet. At the time of this imminent Human Extinction Event, U.S. "A-Men" operating out of the Office of Scientific Investigation, were poised "on call" in nearly every American city. A-Man "Jimmy Stewart" finds a murderous molecule Hell-bent upon Earth's destruction at THE MAGNETIC MONSTER opens. After four slayings and many more close calls, Jimmy finally corners Hedwig's angry nanometer deep down a Nova Scotian mine. But as Jim's closing in for the final kill, crazed Canadian "Dr. Benton" begins shouting "Soylent green is people!" Oh, the horror, the horror!

ebeckstr-1 MM is a lesser movie, and not nearly on par with the best the 50s had to offer by way of American scifi flicks. It pales in comparison to movies like Them, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing from Another World, The Monolith Monsters, 20 Million Miles to Earth, Forbidden Planet, It Came from Outer Space, Tarantula, The Mole People, and others. Not all of these are superb movies, but all of them are far more entertaining than The Magnetic Monster.MM suffers from the same problems as a good many scifi films from that era. Unlike any of the above listed examples, MM is filmed in a documentary style, which also characterized some of the lesser film noir of the same time period. Exposition is handled mainly through very boring voice-over narration. In this way, instead of conveying information and through interesting character interactions or suspenseful plot reveals (watch The Thing for a perfect example of how it should be done), we have to listen to the protagonist drone on and on in sci-babble through his voice-overs. In addition, the movie makes liberal use of Air Force stock footage leading up to the climax. The climax itself consists largely of re-used footage from what I believe is the 1935 scifi movie, Trans-Atlantic Tunnel (worth a look, BTW). All of the above alludes to the main problem with MM: a bland, uninteresting script which never draws the viewer in after the fashion of the better scifi movies from that era. Most of the movies I listed above make a sincere attempt to present entertaining dialogue, and those with less complex scripts still create suspense through competent pacing and editing. Some of them, such as Them and The Thing, inject some humor into the script, thus investing the movie with another level of entertainment, while also fleshing out the characters a bit more. MM possesses none of these attributes, which is somewhat surprising, given Curt Siodmak's involvement with the film. He was both a competent writer and a reasonably talented director (perhaps not coincidentally, he conceived the story for Trans-Atlantic Tunnel).Anyway, Magnetic Monster is worth a look, I guess, if you are a connoisseur of 50s American scifi; but I suggest you go in with low expectations.

dougdoepke A radiation experiment goes wrong, multiplying a magnetic field to earth shattering proportions that only 'A-men' specialists can deal with.The emphasis here is on realism, something 1950's sci-fi movies weren't often concerned with. The screenplay builds effectively from the appliance store to the MANIAC laboratories to the Canadian deltatron. Each stage is depicted in realistic fashion, even the final fictional deltatron that's also very impressive in size and operation. Suspense builds as a fateful critical mass approaches, but there's less of a fear factor, probably because there are few grisly casualties along the way.Good thing Richard Carlson is in the cast since he saved the world from doom a number of times during the decade. Here, he's his usual serious self, a good choice for the role. But my favorite scene is aboard the passenger plane where Prof. Denker is dying of radiation. As Denker, aging actor Leonard Mudie really looks like he's expiring-- sunken cheeks, limp body, stricken behavior. It's one of the most convincing death scenes I've seen in years.I'm a bit surprised the movie isn't better known than it is. For example, it was made the same year as It Came From Outer Space (1953)-- also with Carlson in the lead. But whereas the latter is well known, Magnetic Monster isn't, despite its many strengths. My guess is that this film dwells too much on technical jargon and realistic effects, instead of hokier eye-catching features like aliens or mutating creatures that fire the imagination.But, whatever the story, the movie was better than I expected and is worth catching up with.

moonspinner55 Richard Carlson stars in this earnest, cautionary sci-fi as an agent from Boston's Office of Scientific Investigation discovering to his horror that a renown scientist has independently developed an artificial radioactive element which has taken on a life of its own. This isotope feeds on the energy around it, which doubles its size, and in time will harvest enough power to knock planet Earth right off its axis! Not-bad suspense thriller--with both textbook physics and non-textbook logic--smoothly incorporates footage from the 1934 German film "Gold" for its rousing conclusion. A low-budget entry in the man-made monster genre, but certainly an enjoyable one. ** from ****