Purportedly a 'hard' science fiction film, "The Magnetic Monster" (1953), presents little 'science' and even less 'fiction', as the film is mostly voice-over exposition and stock footage. The story starts intriguingly: pockets of inexplicable magnetism appearing that a special team of scientist-detectives (the OSI) are brought in to investigate. The story then slides downhill into endless pseudo-scientific chatter about magnetic monopoles and new elements. As it turns out (spoilers hereafter), the 'monster' is an element capable of direct conversion of energy to mass that will, if allowed to continuously 'feed', consume the planet. The answer, of course, is to overfeed it until it explodes, which necessitates a trip to Nova Scotia (of all places) where it can be exposed to some borrowed footage of a BDO from a pre-WW2 German science fiction film. Superimposed on the monster-hunt is a tedious and unnecessary 'relationship drama' concerning the lead investigator and his pregnant wife. What I disliked the most about this film was its inability to be true to its 'hard science' premise: the replicating element could have been treated as a completely lifeless yet existential threat (perhaps like the crystals in the "The Monolith Monsters" (1957)) but instead, in keeping with the misleading title, the script was full of silly anthropomorphising with references to the element being "hungry" or that it will "reach out its magnetic arm". This kind of dialogue just seemed ridiculous coming from the ostensibly hard-boiled scientists investigating the phenomena. Overall, neither clever enough to be interesting nor silly enough to be entertaining, IMO "The Magnetic Monster" is not worth the time spent watching by anyone other than hard-core fans of the genre.
Review of The Magnetic Monster
