Great Film overall

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

I watched this movie when it first came out in 1958 when I was a young boy all of nine years of age. This film, along with "I Was A Teenage Werewolf" with Michael Landon as the Werewolf, "I Was A Teenage Frankenstein", "The Blob" starring Steve McQueen and "The Fly" featuring Vincent Price are all horror movies that I would consider to be worthy of enshrinement in the'Horror Movie Hall of Fame' if there were such a place. I would also like to say that all of these movies scared the living 'bee-gee-bees'out of me when I watched them! In fact, my younger brother fled the theater at one point during "I Was A Teenage Frankenstein" (probably the scene when the 'dead' teenager sat upright when the mad doctor's fiancé pulled open the morgue reefer) To this day I don't think he's ever watched the movie to completion. There were a large number of other excellent horror movies made during the late 50's and 60's that I remember, but this handful really stick out in my mind. All that being said, I would much rather watch any or all of these classics today than watch some of the films that are being made nowadays. Don't get me wrong, there have been many, many outstanding horror movies to come out since these films were released, but for my money, give me'the good old days' of horror movies. Just saying.

There have been a lot of stories about brains being separated from their owners' bodies and kept alive for one reason or another. Usually the brain is that of a genius, as in John Hersey's 1960 novel. Sometimes it's an evil brain or a mad brain. Here it belongs to a genius, run over by a truck while in his prime.His equally brilliant brother (John Barragray) is an expert on automation. That's a fancy word for "robots." The father (Otto Krueger) is a renowned neurosurgeon. When you put the three of them together -- the brain of a brilliant young scientist, his automating brother, and his neurosurgeon father, you merely put Tab A into Slot B, and you get a robot with an exceptional brain.The performers are okay. Alas, Otto Krueger has aged since he was the suave villain in Hitchock's "Sabotage," not so much in his appearance as in his speech. It sounds as if his dentures were sliding around. Barragray, the automating brother, has a voice made for radio but his looks fit the template of the role. Robert Hutton as a scientist who is a friend of the family is painful. The poor guy. Mala Powers is the wife of the lonesome brain, the brain that's asleep now in its fancy aquarium. She is a knockout in the most wholesome sort of way. She looks like a particularly buffed version of the girl next door, if the girl next door looked like Mala Powers. A serious actress too, a committed follower of Michael Chekov.Anyway, the resulting robot resembles a human being as painted by some futurist nut. It has a body like Frankenstein's monster and a simulacrum of a barely human metal head and face. I don't know why the faces of these robots have to look so threatening. A normal human mask can be pretty scary. "Les Yeux Sans Visage" -- "Eyes Without A Face" -- are pretty eerie. A Guy Fawkes mask is unsettling.Anyway, this robot, although a giant, is no Frankenstein's monster. With its supports removed, it stumbles to a mirror, gets a look at itself, lets out a shriek, and flops on the floor. Any one of us who has looked into a bathroom mirror the morning after a particularly troubled night can immediately empathize. But if the robot is ugly, it's also clairvoyant and predicts a collision at sea involving a passenger ship called the Viking. The film was released in 1958, probably written in 1957. Barragray is stunned when the TV news reports the collision, showing the listing Italian liner Andrea Doria, which was sunk by collision the year before. Actresses Betsy Drake and Ruth Roman were among the survivors. The incident was still fresh in the public's mind.A year later and the wretched thing is no longer speaking in drawn-out electronic gargles but is fully articulate. And, like other monsters before him -- the invisible man, Frankenstein's creation -- he goes round the bend, driven by his ego. But instead of running for president, he paralyzes his surgeon father and bursts through the laboratory door to take a walk outside. Discovering that his brother is in love with his wife (or widow) the monster commits fratricide and then goes irretrievably mad. The ending is more or less arbitrary and not worth much attention.Sometimes these Grade B monster movies can be diverting. I found this one to be more irritating than anything else.

A science fiction story somewhat resembling Frankenstein. When brilliant scientist Ross Martin is killed by a truck, his father (Otto Kruger) insists on saving his brain. He is able to keep the brain alive, and insists his other son (John Baragrey), an inventor, create a vessel for the brain so he can keep on with his important, life-saving work. Martin, now the titular colossus, doesn't take too kindly to being reincarnated as a giant robot, and he longs for the love of his bratty son and wife (Mala Powers), who know nothing of his continued existence. He especially doesn't take it too well when, a year after the accident, Baragrey has fallen for Powers. It might have been a good idea not to make such a gigantic, powerful body for the guy. This B-movie ain't too bad. I liked the monster. The horrible little kid made me laugh a lot - he's directly responsible for his father's death in the first place. I kept hoping the colossus was only reconnecting with the little boy so he could crush him. In the end, though, it's pretty unmemorable.

"The Colossus of New York" has aged rather well. It still evokes the same strange fascination it had back in the late 1950s, when its story and title character startled me. It was evident back then that the film was a low-budget production, and that it was not a masterpiece of fantastic cinema, but its variation of the theme of the scientist that creates a monster was interesting, and the appearance of the colossus was impressive. I have read a couple of commentaries from producer William Alland, in which he expressed that he was very unsatisfied with the results, and put all the blame on Eugène Lourié. Allan definitely did not paid too much attention to the limitations of the budget he administered –forcing to reuse shots, and the inclusion of stock footage-, of Thelma Schnee's weak script, or the negligence of Floyd Knudtson's editing. But especially, Alland overlooked John F. Warren's images, some of which are remarkable. This is also due to Lourié's background: he was originally an art director and set designer, and it shows. The lightning, compositions and camera angles are effective most of the times, and compensate for the shortcomings. Where Lourié's lack of expertise shows is in the routine camera set-ups, putting the camera (and the spectator) in the same position, in scenes that take place in the same locations, but separate in time. This somehow makes the movie unfold too cautiously, an explanation to the speed up of some shots when the colossus moves. Otherwise it is a recommended, little cult film that will stick to your memory.