cult film freak: RICHARD EGAN AND CONSTANCE DOWLING BATTLE ROBOTS IN 'GOG'

Constance Dowling and Richard Egan in GOG Year: 1954 Grade: C—

There's nothing cooler than taking a flamethrower to killer robots... unless it's the 1950's, during the peak of the pulpy-magazine-inspired b-movies where GOG plays out like what's referred to as real science-fiction as opposed to fantastical programmers involving laser pistols...

Herein mostly entailing scientists inside a multi-room laboratory explaining various gadgets and theories on space travel... which would be semi-intriguing if the action weren't at a snail's pace...

Constance Dowling and Richard Egan in GOG with Herbert Marshall

The opening sequence (in contrived 3D) where a doctor... followed by a female assistant... are frozen to death in a testing-room takes up an entire 10-minutes, which is longer than it sounds... as the movie finally gets going long after muscular hero Richard Egan arrives to investigate...

He's the one being presented all the science expository by capable character-actors Herbert Marshall, Byron Kane, John Wengraf, Philip Van Zandt, Michael Fox and William Schallert... but the best thing going is writer/producer Ivan Tors' gorgeous blonde wife Constance Dowling (in what's sadly her last role)...

Constance Dowling and Richard Egan in GOG

Her classic-beauty presence provides Egan someone great-looking enough to stand beside during the ongoing/roving lecture and, at 40-minutes in, they finally learn about a pair of rolling robots that will go predictably berserk...

That's when that flamethrower lights up and there's finally some suspenseful urgency... in what had been a rather innocuous body-count since the previous victims didn't matter beyond the finally-endangered Egan and Dowling, both deserving not only a better movie but more time to bond in-between all the cold/steely banter.