The Colossus of New York (1958)

An atomic-age update of Frankenstein, 1958’s The Colossus of New York takes Mary Shelley’s concept of man resurrecting the dead and puts a 1950s spin on it. Directed by Eugène Lourié (The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms,) the film has some visual panache, but is hampered by a weak script and a low budget.

Gifted botanist Dr. Jeremy Spensser (Ross Martin) wins the “International Peace Prize” for his humanitarian work. He takes his wife, Ann (Mala Powers) and son, Billy (Charles Herbert,) with him to Europe to accept the award. Upon his return to the United States, he is killed in a freak accident. His father, neurosurgeon Dr. William Spensser (Otto Kruger,) requests that his body is taken back to his laboratory instead of the morgue or a hospital.

Secretly, the elder Spensser removes Jeremy’s brain. (Although, how it’s kept a secret is a mystery considering that, at the funeral, the body is displayed in an open casket with a huge bandage on his head.) Dr. Spensser convinces his other son, Dr. Henry Spensser (John Baragrey,) a gifted mechanical engineer, to build a body out of machinery for Jeremy’s brain to operate. Supposedly, Jeremy’s father can’t bear to see the potential of Jeremy’s genius lost to the Grim Reaper. So, the two remaining Spensser men construct a gargantuan robot that houses Jeremy’s brain.

Jeremy’s brain initially reviles at being encased in a body that can’t feel anything. He doesn’t want to be seen by anyone. He’s told his wife and son are dead, so he won’t worry about them. After some mild prodding by his father, Jeremy resumes his work on growing plants that resist the cold. Of course, this kind of anatomical blasphemy can’t go unpunished, right?

Soon, though, Jeremy discovers that The Colossus has great strength, the ability to see the future, hypnotic powers, death rays that shoot from his eyes, and, for some reason, the ability to walk underwater. And, this being a science fiction movie made in the 1950s, Jeremy cannot possess those things without using them to hurt someone. Once he learns that his wife and son are still alive and his brother is putting the moves on Ann, who do you think that might be? Pack your bags for the afterlife, Henry.

This movie is a real curiosity. The script by Thelma Schnee (The Detective) and Willis Goldbeck (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance) is super-dark in execution and mildly schlocky towards the end. The plot is certainly not that original but the depiction of “life after death” is effectively creepy. The Colossus initially communicates with a screaming, staticky voice that conveys pain and confusion. As he comes to the realization that he’s alive but cannot feel anything, he tells William and Henry, “Destroy me.” As his voice becomes more understandable, though, it signals the movie’s decline into a more conventional and less contemplative fare. There’s also the lingering question as to how, exactly, Jeremy’s mechanical body possesses all of these strange traits unintentionally. I can see the psychic powers being a possible side-effect but death rays?

I’d seen stills from The Colossus of New York in monster movie books I read voraciously when I was a little kid. I never got a chance to see it until I found a copy of the Olive Films Blu-Ray super-cheap on eBay a week ago. I think it would have had more of an effect on me had I seen it at a younger age. It clearly influenced later films like RoboCop so there’s merit in the concept, although it’s obviously a lesser version of Frankenstein. I wish it had stayed on the darker, more unconventional path it started to take. But, I have to give it recognition for at least acknowledging the psychological aspects of a brain removed from its body.