The meaningful art of one of the ‘worst movies of all time’: Phil Tucker’s <i>Robot Monster</i> (1953) as an existentialist critique of American modernity

This article analyses one of the ‘worst movies ever made’, Robot Monster (), demonstrating how text, through weirdness, pulpy absurdity and cinematic ineptitude, examines mediates on existential anxieties modern America during Cold War. Through strange language gorilla-robots alien invasion, text articulates those that arise from our awareness freedom vs. need to be contingent under increasingly interconnected societal conditions. As such, is also posited as a contribution contemporary intellectual currents 1950s. will investigate sense in which key aspects film: Ro-Man society mass society; conflicted between ‘must’ ‘cannot’; gorilla-robot; perspective Johnny’s dream, articulate mediate anxieties. An examination allows us appreciate ways ‘bad’ cinema creates alternative seeing problems American modernity.