Have you, dear reader, ever been tempted to engage in unholy medical experiments ? And to meddle in matters Man was not meant to touch ? If so, "The Colossus of New York" has a message for you : 1) don't do it, 2) if you do do it, don't perform your top-secret lab work in or near the same house you share with several innocent citizens. You don't want to lose precious time arguing with people spooked by desperate screams ; just invest in a nice sound-proofed bunker situated somewhere in the desert...
So. By now you will have guessed that "Colossus" belongs to that time-honoured horror/science fiction genre in which a presumptuous scientist, or a team of presumptuous scientists, comes a cropper after embarking on a hair-raising project. When it comes to influences, the shadow of Frankenstein's monster looms large over this kind of movie and this is true for "Colossus" too. Still, "Colossus" has enough character and originality to stand on its own two legs.
I won't pretend that it is the finest thing ever filmed but it has something, it is both creepy and sad. Part of what makes it so poignant, I guess, is this idea that a father would do anything to keep his son's brain alive - not so much out of paternal love, but rather out of a desire to wallow in his reputation as the progenitor of a genius. For it is pretty clear here, that the father never loved and appreciated his son as a flesh-and-blood individual with his own traits, needs and ambitions. (The rest of the family didn't count for much either : the second son is browbeaten into a terrible enterprise, while the daughter-in-law and the young grandson are lied to 24/7.) In the movie, the father is also strangely keen to order his dead/alive son around as if he were but a calculator machine or a piece of automated furniture. One can't shake off the impression that he PREFERS his offspring to be powerless.
All of which leads me to state that here, the creator is far more monstrous than his tortured creation, which only turns against Humanity after it has been rendered insane by its entombment in unfeeling metal.
So quite a watchable movie, if you're willing to look past all this "glowing death-ray eyes" nonsense. Comes with an interesting musical score that seems to have been composed for something else - perhaps a documentary about glassblowing or early Danish airships ?
So. By now you will have guessed that "Colossus" belongs to that time-honoured horror/science fiction genre in which a presumptuous scientist, or a team of presumptuous scientists, comes a cropper after embarking on a hair-raising project. When it comes to influences, the shadow of Frankenstein's monster looms large over this kind of movie and this is true for "Colossus" too. Still, "Colossus" has enough character and originality to stand on its own two legs.
I won't pretend that it is the finest thing ever filmed but it has something, it is both creepy and sad. Part of what makes it so poignant, I guess, is this idea that a father would do anything to keep his son's brain alive - not so much out of paternal love, but rather out of a desire to wallow in his reputation as the progenitor of a genius. For it is pretty clear here, that the father never loved and appreciated his son as a flesh-and-blood individual with his own traits, needs and ambitions. (The rest of the family didn't count for much either : the second son is browbeaten into a terrible enterprise, while the daughter-in-law and the young grandson are lied to 24/7.) In the movie, the father is also strangely keen to order his dead/alive son around as if he were but a calculator machine or a piece of automated furniture. One can't shake off the impression that he PREFERS his offspring to be powerless.
All of which leads me to state that here, the creator is far more monstrous than his tortured creation, which only turns against Humanity after it has been rendered insane by its entombment in unfeeling metal.
So quite a watchable movie, if you're willing to look past all this "glowing death-ray eyes" nonsense. Comes with an interesting musical score that seems to have been composed for something else - perhaps a documentary about glassblowing or early Danish airships ?