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Watching a mid-20th-century sci-fi film can be an odd experience. Cinematic techniques had developed far enough to make futuristic technologies look possible, and filmmakers in the genre were keen to let their imagination run on screen. Sometimes they were startlingly prescient, predicting technologies and trends that we find commonplace today. Other times, their guesses were so far off the mark as to seem like parody. Producer Ivan Tors’s 1954 thriller, Gog, fits both descriptions while going through the paces of a fairly standard locked-room mystery.
The film opens in a large underground laboratory, where scientists are designing and testing new technologies for the first orbital space station. After a couple of researchers are killed in inexplicable accidents, a government security agent is brought in to conduct an investigation. As more scientists are killed, it becomes clear that the deaths are acts of sabotage and that the “mechanical brain” that runs the station—a computer called NOVAC—and its robotic agents, Gog and Magog, may be responsible.
On the sci-fi side of things, it’s important to remember that this film was produced before both the first manned spaceflight and the development of computers as a commonplace tool. Tors had already gained a reputation for intelligent sci-fi films that hewed as closely as possible to technological accuracy, and it’s fascinating to see his projections for the shape of things to come. Ideas like freezing humans in order to launch them out of Earth’s atmosphere or microwave-based orbital heat rays have long since proven fantasy, but the concepts of a complex building that’s controlled and regulated by a central computer and robots being used for dangerous labor have both been proven and employed around the world. And then there are the odd cultural touches, including the distinctly ‘50s-era fashions and acrobatic astronaut exercises that border on cartoonish.
In the meantime, all of this window dressing goes toward gussying up a standard plot about sabotage and sneaky murder. The security agent and his girlfriend (who just happens to have been assigned undercover in the lab as an assistant), soberly assess the evidence and draw their conclusions while the scientists bristle at work being disrupted in the face of looming deadlines. While the leads have a little fun around the edges, most of the characters are portrayed with the earnest straightforwardness common to films of that era.
The climax, pitting the remaining humans against the rampant robots, suffers from a lack of development, largely due to uninspired designs for Gog and Magog and the frequently referenced but seldom expressed presence of NOVAC. The design and effects for the robots have not aged particularly well, and it’s a little disconcerting to see supposedly highly-trained security agents cowering in front of a giant piece of plastic with a large pair of pliers.
For its time, Gog displays some endearing ambitions, playing with big technological ideas that were little more than fantasies at the time. The ‘50s were a good decade for sci-fi, as public interest in technology and cinema produced some classics that still hold up today. While Gog doesn’t quite live up to those standards, it’s still worth checking out for fans of the genre.
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