Kronos

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

A alien satellite enters close orbit around the Earth and releases a projectile that takes over the body and mind of Dr. Hubbell Eliot (John Emery), the director of Lab Central, America's top astrophysics research facility. Even as Elliot is falling victim to the invaders, Lab Central scientist Dr. Leslie Gaskell (Jeff Morrow) and his colleagues, Vera Hunter (Barbara Lawrence) and Dr. Arnie Culver (George O'Hanlon), have begun tracking the object -- not certain what it is -- and determine that it is going to hit the Earth in less than 24 hours. An attempt to destroy it with nuclear warheads fails, and the vehicle comes down off the coast of Mexico. While Eliot tries to resist the invaders' control and is hospitalized in a state of collapse, Gaskell, Vera, and Culver fly to the site of the landing, where the submerged craft emits a powerful energy pulse that spreads across the surface of the ocean and toward the beach. When it clears, there stands on the beach a huge metallic object -- a towering robot, inadvertently christened "Kronos" by Gaskell, in a relative moment of whimsy. Hundreds of feet tall and possessing immense power, Kronos proceeds to rampage across the countryside, destroying everything in its path as it seeks out and absorbs all sources of electrical and atomic energy. Back at Lab Central, Eliot temporarily breaks free of the aliens' control, long enough to tell Gaskell of the robot's purpose and mission -- Kronos is a accumulator, sent to Earth by a race whose own planet is depleted of energy, and it will continue to grow stronger unless someone can find a way of reversing the process; worse yet, if Kronos isn't destroyed, other accumulators will be sent to drain the Earth of all its energy. The robot advances relentlessly, growing in destructive power as it moves up the coast, and not even a hydrogen bomb can slow it down. Finally, as it heads toward an H-bomb depository and prepares to destroy the city of Los Angeles in its path, Gaskell devises a possible method of stopping Kronos, based on an untested, untried scientific theory. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 1
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Theatre Wide Screen)
• Audio: 5.1, PCM Mono
• Screen: Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV, Black and White
• Features:
  • • [None specified]

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Director:

  Kurt Neumann

• Producer:

  Irving A. Block, Louis de Witt, Kurt Neumann, Jack R. Rabin

• Screen Story:

  Irving A. Block

• Screenwriter:

  Lawrence Louis Goldman

• Cinematographer:

  Karl Struss

• Composer (Music Score):

  Paul Sawtell, Bert Shefter

• Editor:

  Jodie Copelan

• Production Designer:

  Theobold Holsopple

• Set Designer:

  Chester L. Bayhi, Walter Scott

• Special Effects:

  Irving A. Block, Louis de Witt, Jack R. Rabin, Gene Warren, Block de Witt, Menrad von Mulldorfer, William Rheinhold

REVIEW:

• Kurt Neumann's 1957 feature Kronos came near the tail-end of a science fiction cycle that had kicked off the decade with classy independent "B" productions such as Destination Moon and Rocketship X-M (the latter also directed by Neumann), before getting elevated by such "A" features as Howard Hawks' The Thing (1951), Robert Wise's The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951), Joseph Newman's This Island Earth (1955), and Fred McLeod Wilcox's Forbidden Planet (1956) -- Neumann's The Fly, shot in color as well as CinemaScope and released the same year as Kronos, would mark the start of the closing phase of the "A" movie end of the science-fiction cycle, capped off with Ranald MacDougall's The World, The Flesh And The Devil (1959) and Wolf Rilla's Village of the Damned (1960), and from here until Hammer's Quatermass And The Pit and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey in the second half of the 1960's, most of the sci-fi films produced would be of the "B" movie variety. Kronos was also a B-picture, but it was an unusually handsome one, shot in CinemaScope and released by 20th Century-Fox, with a cast featuring a Broadway veteran with a Shakespearean background (John Emery) in a key role; and displaying special effects that, if not always first-rate, were never less than fascinating in their design, detail, and execution. As with all but the best movies in this genre, the acting -- apart from Emery in the role of the elder scientist taken over by the invading aliens -- is uneven and the script could have used another pass or two by a good editor; but despite these flaws, and action that includes such odd moments as the rather nonchalant removal of a dead body from a crime scene before the police have even been called, Kronos never sinks too far into a juvenile level for it to be appreciated by adults. The unexpectedly compelling giant robot (it impact enhanced by a superb score from Bert Schefter and Paul Sawtell) held the attention of kids and their parents alike, and there was just enough real science mixed in with the pseudo-science gobbledygook that usually afflicts these movies ("omega particles," indeed!) to allow adults to follow along on a different level from the juvenile audience at its core. And just for another ace up the sleeve of the makers, there was legendary cinematographer Karl Struss shooting this mix of strange, moody futuristic scenes at Lab Central, bleak desert and beach scenes, and the animated/life action mix attending when the robot of the title rampages across Mexico and California. Even cast members Rex Reason and George O'Hanlon, and fetching Barbara Lawrence, manage to rise to the occasion, despite the scripts occasional lapses into weak dialogue, unclear motivations, and absurd leaps of logic, though it was clear that Morrow was having more fun in The Giant Claw. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi