Twenty five years before Hal there was Twonky. Disguised in a TV set Twonky has the same my way or the highway attitude the soothing voice computer had towards mankind in 2001. Purchased by a college professor and his wife it begins to wreak havoc at home and in the classroom driving the prof to a state of insanity. Eventually the football coach using a paper plate and applying Einstein solves the mystery of the stair climbing pre laser throwing control freak set. Pondering what Knute Rockne would do he sets his backfield on the embedded robot but they are subdued instead. It is left up to professor West (Hans Conreid) to outsmart the determined invader.
Made during the era in which television was transforming the American way of life and heeding Philo Farnsworth's grim prediction about his own invention Twonky is a sloppy slapstick satire that makes a strong point in its own goofy way about the mind numbing possibilities of the tube.
Director Arch Oboler is not out to make Network but he does get his digs in about society while maintaining the films low brow humor with a bevy of kookie characters in brief roles and situations. The introspective football coach (Billy Lynn) bedridden after being injured by Twonky, holds court from his room, his headboard covered in soft porn. The TV salesmen are comically oily and Evelyn Beresford as a tire changing English dowager insists on driving on the left side of the road since the US was once a colony of Great Britain. Suffering them all with exasperating befuddlement Hans Conreid handles the only leading role of his career with comic energy.
The Twonky may be disheveled and lame much of the time but it remains one of the first in line to satirize an object that is in nearly every home and still held up to ridicule (for good reason) over a half century later. It's a goofy trend setter.
Made during the era in which television was transforming the American way of life and heeding Philo Farnsworth's grim prediction about his own invention Twonky is a sloppy slapstick satire that makes a strong point in its own goofy way about the mind numbing possibilities of the tube.
Director Arch Oboler is not out to make Network but he does get his digs in about society while maintaining the films low brow humor with a bevy of kookie characters in brief roles and situations. The introspective football coach (Billy Lynn) bedridden after being injured by Twonky, holds court from his room, his headboard covered in soft porn. The TV salesmen are comically oily and Evelyn Beresford as a tire changing English dowager insists on driving on the left side of the road since the US was once a colony of Great Britain. Suffering them all with exasperating befuddlement Hans Conreid handles the only leading role of his career with comic energy.
The Twonky may be disheveled and lame much of the time but it remains one of the first in line to satirize an object that is in nearly every home and still held up to ridicule (for good reason) over a half century later. It's a goofy trend setter.