Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Directed by Herbert L. Strock
• Written by Tom Taggart with Richard G. Taylor
• Starring
  • Richard Egan
  • Constance Dowling
  • Herbert Marshall
  • John Wengraf
  • Philip Van Zandt
• Produced by Ivan Tors

With the DVD revolution no longer a novelty, the idea of “lost movies” that used to entice all of us VHS-o-philes a decade ago is passing into obscurity. Frankly, DVD reproduction is so cheap that just about any movie can make back the investment of authoring, at least in a bare-bones edition. Movies that were once available only via sixth-generation bootleg dubs are now on sale for chump change at Best Buy — and if the picture quality isn’t quite as good as the “Digitally Remastered” claim on the box would suggest, it’s still better than a sixth-generation dub.

There are, however, some movies that still haven’t seen the light of day on DVD. In fact, I can find no indication that Gog was ever legimitately released on either VHS or DVD. (So how did I get a copy? Well, it involved a scratchy print being shown on late-nite TV, an enterprising soul with two VCRs, and eBay.)

“Hey! Who’s driving this lab, anyway?”

Having seen this almost-forgotten epic of Cold War tension and techno-paranoia, I can tell you: No one’s really going to be grateful when this inevitably gets a DVD release. The reason it’s mostly forgotten is that it’s eminently forgettable.

We start promisingly, thought — by torturing a monkey! Well, not torturing, exactly; the pretty lab assistant gives the cute widdle monkey an injection, hooks a couple of electrodes to it, and locks it inside a steel chamber with a window out to the control room. There, two male scientists give instructions while, naturally, the woman does all the work. Their experiment involves lowering the temperature… lowering… lowering… until all of the monkey’s vital signs register zero. As well as the audience’s; waiting for something to freeze in realtime isn’t the best way to grab our attention and signal excitement. Then they bring the temperature back up, up, up to thaw the frost-covered monkey. ‘Course, raising the temperature that quickly would render the monkey not only thawed, but lightly poached. (That’s right, I’m complaining that the movie is both too slow and too fast at the same time!) A couple of galvanic shocks to the monkey’s vital organs, and the little primate is as right as rain, stretching and mugging for the camera for far longer than is necessary to get the point across.

While one scientist takes the monkey down to the lab for blood tests and the assistant goes for a replacement whatsit for the machine (thrill to the exciting footage of her browsing among the shelves in the store room!), the third scientist, Dr. Hubertus (Michael Fox) stays in the refrigeration chamber to take some readings. He doesn’t notice the door shutting by itself… the controls and knobs switching themselves on… and suddenly he’s seeing his own breath and banging ineffectually on the observation window. By the time the assistant gets back, we’ve gone all the long way down and back up the thermometer again; she does into the refrigeration chamber, screams at the dead body of Dr. Kavartis, the door shuts by itself, and….

Beakers? Of colored liquids? But that must mean — there’s SCIENCE going on here!

Well, we’re spared the whole long cooling/thawing sequence again. But this is fair warning: While this movie was originally filmed in 3-D, it’s also done in Extend-O-Scope, wherein every scene is stretched out as long as it possibly can so as to make a molehill’s worth of story extend to feature length.

Don’t believe me? We then cut to a helicopter flying over the desert. Fly, helicopter, fly! Fly some more! The occupant of the chopper, along with the pilot, is one Dr. Sheppard (Richard Egan), sent from Washington to look in on some of the strange goings-on in the installation under the desert to which he’s flying… and flying.. and flying… The pilot no longer has to mind the controls; to maintain the secrecy of the installation, the autopilot is being guided by NOVAC (Nuclear Operation Variable Automatic Computer), known colloquially as “the Brain.”

And while I’m never too cautious about spoilers, I’m going to set a record by spoiling one this one so early in my description of the plot: The computer did it. The murders we’ve seen, the murders we’ve yet to see, the computer’s behind it all. I don’t feel any particular ethical qualms about telling you this, because I’m assuming that any halfwit could figure it out even this early. Controls that move on their own, and our first piece of dialogue with a central character describing an all-controlling computer? Boy, that’s a tough one to figure out. And that’s assuming that the audience members hadn’t seen the posters, which boldly proclaim, “Built to serve man… it could think faster! Kill faster!… THEN IT SUDDENLY BECAME A FRANKENSTEIN OF STEEL!” Really, what else is there to spoil?

All of this security for… an eight-track collection?

Sheppard has been called in because this facility, dedicated to the race for space, has been a victim of sabotage. In addition to the murders, the grandfatherly facility head Dr. Van Ness (Herbert Marshall) has discovered two radar beacons suitable for guiding in foreign aircraft or missiles. His assistant, Joanna Merritt (Constance Dowling), takes Sheppard around for a tour of all of the projects around the installation.

Now, it’s pretty obvious that Sheppard and Joanna are meant to be at least the perfunctory romantic couple. But wait — there’s no meet-cute! How can there be a romance without a meet-cute? Simple: As soon as they’re alone, it’s revealed that they already know — and love — each other, and she’s been here under false pretences from Security Section to give Sheppard a head start. No, this has absolutely no impact on the plot, but it does allow us the following bit of priceless dialogue:

“It’s been such a long time.”

“It’s been longer than that.”

The best minds of a generation, I see.

So. Sheppard notices some metallic-looking dust on one of the radar beacons, so they stop by the chemistry lab to have it checked out. Then Joanna shows him:

- The solar mirror lab, which is supposed to be the power source for the proposed space station. The French scientist Dr. Elzevir (Philip Van Zandt) explains proudly that the solar energy collected by the solar mirror will power the steam turbine that will provide electricity to spare for the station. Kinda sad that we’ve got all this whiz-bang technology, but our main power still comes from boiling water, isn’t it?

- The weightlessness lab, where a strong magnetic field acts upon the aluminum foil suits of the test subjects to simulate reduced weightlessness. The test subjects are pretty obviously played by professional dancers, with their lifts and flourishes and such. The con is that they feel compelled to end each demonstration with a graceful bow and twinkling smile; the pro is that they probably provided their own aluminum foil suits.

“Yes… Yes… No, hold the anchovies.”

- The security office, where Major Howard (Steve Roberts) has a bizarro contraption of tuning forks that’s supposed to be able to pick up the vibrations of any plane flying into their restricted airspace. The major design flaw is that there’s no volume knob — or off-switch. And did you know that ultra-powerful soundwaves from tuning forks can start fires? Neither did I.

- And finally, the computer lab, where Swedish scientist Dr. Zeitman (John Wengraf) oversees his creation, NOVAC, and proves his scientific qualifications with such statements as “Science is never frightening.” NOVAC is equipped with two robots, Gog and Magog, just in case any End-Times enthusiasts in the audience hadn’t caught on to all of the ominous hints about NOVAC. Gog and Magog seem to be the prototypes for the Daleks, complete with meaningless arm-waving while rolling around.

Now that we’ve pretty much got the entire cast introduced, the computer can start killing them, while Sheppard and Joanna run around a step behind, finding the bodies. Most of the labs are dangerous enough to kill either the scientists or the subjects easily, but in the case of the zero-g lab, the ante had to be upped by putting our dancers in a centrifuge that goes out of control. (It’s really hard to take it seriously, though, because the doomed subjects are wearing the same pressure suits that Bud and Lou wore in Abbott & Costello Go to Mars.)

Blah blah blah, Sheppard figures out that an enemy airplane on the outer limits of their detection range is beaming instructions to NOVAC to sabotage all of the experiments, either via its hardwired control of all systems or through the robots. There’s a life-or-death struggle to keep the robots from overloading the atomic pile before the Strategic Air Command can scramble the fighters to intercept the enemy craft. How long does it take to get fighters into the air? As long as it takes to show it in clinical detail and push this movie over the line to feature length, dammit!

“EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!”

It ends… um… how does it end? Oh, yeah, robots prove remarkably flammable, and wouldn’t you know it, there’s a flamethrower in just about every janitorial closet in the installation. And in case you’re wondering why Gog was honored in the feature’s title while its counterpart got snubbed, Gog just happened to be the robot destroyed last.

I suppose the movie does have some small historical worth, recording both speculations as to the necessities of survival in space (the freezing experiments were for surviving the rigors of space travel, for example) and the general tenor of Cold War paranoia (and even though the enemy is never named more explicitly than “the enemy,” you knew there was a particular hammer’n’sickle-brandishing enemy in mind). But I don’t think we’re going to hear about a letter-writing campaign for a remastered special edition DVD anytime soon.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 9
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 2
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
  • William Schallert (”Engle,” Dr. Zeitman’s assistant) played “Commodore Nilz Baris” in “The Trouble With Tribbles” (and yes, I did recognize him) and “Varani” in the DS9 episode “Sanctury”