1952's "The Magnetic Monster" was the first of the Ivan Tors trilogy depicting the OSI (Office of Scientific Investigation), and easily the standout, followed by "Riders to the Stars" and "Gog." This was the only one directed and cowritten by German émigré Curt Siodmak, author of classics like "Black Friday," The Wolf Man" and "Invisible Agent," and by far the best movie he directed, galloping at an energetic pace that its two sequels could not match, bogged down as they were with so much scientific jargon. Making his science fiction debut is Richard Carlson, as Jeffrey Stewart, lead investigator partnered with King Donovan's Dan Forbes, kicking things off at a hardware store where the clocks all stopped running at the same time, and everything is now magnetized. They find a dead body on the second floor, a victim of radiation poisoning, but the element responsible missing, transported to the airport for a flight that could end in disaster if the isotope affects the engines. A dying 'lone wolf' scientist (Leonard Mudie) confesses to giving birth to the magnetic monster by bombarding serranium with alpha particles, causing it to grow in magnitude and become unstable. The problem is how to stop its growth and keep it from feeding on electrons, doubling in size at regular intervals until it could cause a shift in Earth's orbit. The climax takes place in an underground facility in Nova Scotia where they hope to stabilize the element with an excess of 9 million volts, represented by stock footage that Tors had acquired from the 1934 German feature "Gold," and though the seams are obvious the execution is spectacular. Carlson would cement his brief stardom with his next role in Universal's "It Came from Outer Space," here playing a no nonsense man of action with a pretty wife (Jean Byron) four months pregnant with their first child (Michael Fox would be the only actor to show up in all three OSI titles, and Strother Martin can be seen as a copilot). Everything works so well that Siodmak's subsequent efforts behind the camera ("Curucu Beast of the Amazon" in particular) make one wonder if editor Herbert L. Strock might have played a major part in this picture's success (he later made an unsubstantiated claim that Siodmak walked off the production, which lasted 11 days). Tors completed his theatrical trilogy (and the 1956 documentary "Unidentified Flying Objects: The True Story of Flying Saucers") before television beckoned with SCIENCE FICTION THEATRE, SEA HUNT, RIPCORD, FLIPPER, GENTLE BEN, and DAKTARI.
Review of The Magnetic Monster
