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Kronos (1957)
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Krel
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 25, 2021 8:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

If you're planning an invasion, can you think of a better way to soften up the native population then by removing the natives power, and the ability to generate power?

David.
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 25, 2021 9:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Send them back to the stone age!

Just don't let them "Ewok" you!

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Pow
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 26, 2021 4:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The aliens neutralizing our electricity is an excellent strategy, David. It was also employed by Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Any aliens that can render our power sources impotent will have the earth on its knees and capitulating within weeks.

That's why I always found those films and TV SF shows about aliens with technology light years beyond humans and yet having to swoop into our atmosphere with their star ships and blasting away at us with their ray beams to attack us a hoot. It makes for visually entertaining movies or television, but it isn't credible at all.

So having Kronos dropped onto the earth and absorbing all our electricity makes great sense.

I was questioning the plot in regards to how come an alien civilization would require electricity for themselves if Kronos was both sucking up the earth's electricity and then transmitting it to the alien space craft for their needs?

Would not a race that makes us look like cavemen compared to their immense sophistication, be unable to produce their own electrical power without help?

Could such a race be beyond using electricity at all and be utilizing power sources we can only theorize about at this stage?
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scotpens
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 26, 2021 10:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pow wrote:

Would not a race that makes us look like cavemen compared to their immense sophistication, be unable to produce their own electrical power without help?

Could such a race be beyond using electricity at all and be utilizing power sources we can only theorize about at this stage?

Inconsistent technology is the bane of filmed sci-fi. You've got interstellar empires with faster-than-light travel and super energy weapons -- yet they don't seem to have developed guided missiles or homing torpedoes. They keep pointing, shooting and missing!

And the aliens conducting some sort of Martian mining operations in Robinson Crusoe on Mars -- they have beam weapons that can blast mountains to smithereens, but they still need slaves?
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Krel
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 26, 2021 11:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

scotpens wrote:
Inconsistent technology is the bane of filmed sci-fi. You've got interstellar empires with faster-than-light travel and super energy weapons -- yet they don't seem to have developed guided missiles or homing torpedoes. They keep pointing, shooting and missing!

They seem to have neglected to create targeting systems for their directed energy weapons too.

scotpens wrote:
And the aliens conducting some sort of Martian mining operations in Robinson Crusoe on Mars -- they have beam weapons that can blast mountains to smithereens, but they still need slaves?

Who says they needed the slaves? As I pointed out on the RCOM thread, they could be prisoners, criminals, excess population on worlds they control or the slavers could have just been jerks, and that's how they got their jollies.

They murdered all of the slaves when they left, a waste of resources. That seems indicate that they really didn't need them or life is very cheap to them, and they're just monsters.

David.
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Pow
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 20, 2021 8:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

And don't ya love how the medical doctor played by the wonderful Morris Ankrum dies in this movie?

He's in his office dictating into his tape recorder when the scientist taken over by the aliens walks in and kills him.

He pushes Ankrum up against a grate in front of a transformer — which electrocutes Morris.

How many medical physicians have a power transformer inside their private offices?
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Krel
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 20, 2021 9:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pow wrote:
He pushes Ankrum up against a grate in front of a transformer which electrocutes Morris.

It ignores the fact that the reason for the grate is usually to keep people from being electrocuted by the transformers.

Pow wrote:
How many medical physicians have a power transformer inside their private offices?

Well, if I remember correctly, his office was located in a super science lab.

David.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 21, 2021 3:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Krel wrote:
Pow wrote:
How many medical physicians have a power transformer inside their private offices?

Well, if I remember correctly, his office was located in a super science lab..

Yes, of course! Sad

The offices of medical doctors in "super science labs" are routinely equipped with generators which run electricity through the protective fencing which surrounds them, because they . . .

Ummm . . . because . . . Confused

Okay, I got nothin'. That's the silliest damn thing imaginable, and that dumb idea has been used in countless movies and serials! Rolling Eyes

Somebody is pushed up against a protective fencing surrounding electrical equipment — or even a control panel itself — and they get fried on the spot!

Such scenes are perfect examples of just how stupid Hollywood filmmakers can be . . . or just how stupid they think WE are!
Mad
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Pow
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 16, 2022 1:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Author Bill Warren on Kronos.

Irving Block's story is unusual and imaginative, and has about three times as many fantastic elements than most pictures of its ilk.

The film has not only what John Baxter correctly describes as the movies' only technological monster, but many good small touches as well.

When Les first sights the machine, he radios a description back to the States, and a newspaper sketch artist prepares a drawing — which we see is highly inaccurate.



_________


Later, based on better information, another newspaper presents a sketch — better but still off. It all works here as both mild satire and to add to the sense of reality.





The love interest is a little more reasonable than in most of these films.

It's a shame that the picture didn't have a larger budget and a more imaginative director.

Much of what's wrong with the film seems to have been because the budget was reduced after the production was planned.

A major problem with the character of Dr. Eliot is that we have no idea what kind of person he was before the alien took him over.

The special effects are variable, ranging from fair to excellent. The design of Kronos (which is never referred to as a robot), is brilliant, almost iconographic.

The total cost of the film was about $160,000. Which is amazing, considering the impressive and sophisticated effects that enliven many of the film's scenes.

Kronos was one of the Titans of Greek myth, who ate jealous rivals. This titan, the robot, as Block saw it, "came to earth and was eating us up."

The fact that Kronos is just a black box is what makes the machine's design so elegant and so alien. It is one of the most beautiful robots ever designed for a film.

Not so satisfying, in fact silly enough to draw laughter from the most unsophisticated audiences, is how the "asteroid" continually discussed at the beginning of the film was depicted.

Les and Arnie are watching the "asteroid" on the view plate of a telescope, noticing that it is acting a little funny for an asteroid. But what we see on the plate is anything but an asteroid, which is in reality a small, rocky, moon-like object. What's on the plate is a gigantic, obese, pulsating flying saucer. When our supposedly learned scientists see this huge, clearly artificial object and continually refer to it as only a mildly eccentric asteroid, credulity goes out the window, at least temporarily.

Most low-budget SF films of the 1950s function adequately within their monetary limitations, but you rarely get the feeling that had the producers had more money, the film would have been better.

Kronos on the contrary, is interesting enough and spectacular enough that it keeps threatening to burst the bonds of its budgetary limitations.

Kronos had the potential to be a classic of special effects spectacle.
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Sidebar: Another review by the late Bill Warren that I can agree with.

I found it interesting that he felt the rather simplistic design for the robot made it so alien.

For comparison, I recall reading that SF writer Norman Spinrad when he wrote the classic episode "The Doomsday Machine" for Star Trek: TOS, he described the Doomsday Machine ("essentially a robot," as Mr. Spock explains), as bristling with weaponry.

Due to budget considerations the episode could not create such a complex and sophisticated model. They resorted to the simpler windsock look for the Machine.

I loved it! By being so simple looking a creation it truly did seem very alien to me. A civilization technologically comparable to the Federation of Planets would have come up with a complex looking robot loaded with obvious looking weapons all over it. Just like the Federation would have if they did that kind of thing. This would make this mysterious and unknown race too similar to the FOP, too relatable.

By having a robot that did not possess such cliche weapons on it, it made it not only alien but frightening.

The designer for Kronos must have felt the same way. Why create a robot that might look cool with its multitude of obvious weapon systems as if from a comic book? Make it a clean and simple design that says it does not have to resort to such tactics because we are so far advanced beyond you that you won't recognize how deadly we can be.


Last edited by Pow on Mon May 23, 2022 10:14 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 16, 2022 2:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

You and Mr. Warren did bang up jobs of reviewing this movie.

Bill is right about the silly scenes of poor Jeff Morrow and George O'Hanlon staring down at the telescope view screen and making witless remarks like, "Good Lord, that asteroid just shifted it's trajectory by a good 3%!"

Meanwhile the glowing, pulsating, wiggling fly saucer is zipping back and forth on the screen like a tennis ball at Wimbledon! Rolling Eyes

And I always roll my eyes when alien-possessed John Emery kills poor Morris Ankrum by shoving him up against the protective cage around a group of high voltage electrical switches!

But there's no doubt that Kronos is a highly enjoyable science fiction movie from the Golden Age. Cool

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Last edited by Bud Brewster on Sun May 22, 2022 6:37 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun May 22, 2022 5:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

__________________________________________________

All Sci-Fi's Saturday Live Chat (<— link) is getting more popular each week, and this Saturday (May 28th) we're watching the 1957 film which features a very unusual alien invasion — Kronos!

This movie answers the question, "What if aliens needed to invade Earth and steal our energy, but they were so fat and lazy they just sent a big robot to do their dirty work?" Rolling Eyes

I found a wonderful article about the FX for this film on a site called CineSavant which discusses how the special effects team took footage from other movies and then matted in Kronos.

Here's an excerpt from the article, along with an image which illustrates a scene which took place in Mexico. The borrowed footage for the scene was actually shot in Hawaii for a 1956 movie called The Revolt of Mamie Stover, which included the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

Here's a portion of the article, along with two comparison images — one from the original film, and then the other version created for Kronos.
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One of the best effects illusions in Kronos is just below — a dramatic wide shot in which the alien robot ‘accumulator’ broadcasts energy waves over a vast agricultural valley. The very recognizable location is a huge pineapple field in the Northern central plain of the island of Oahu. If I have the orientation correct, we’re looking slightly Southeast. Pearl Harbor is offscreen to the left, perhaps ten or fifteen miles away.







___________________________________________________

These comparison images not only show us how skillfully the FX guys combined the alien robot with the scene from another movie, they also give us a sample of what a color version of Kronos would have looked like! Very Happy
_________________________________________________

Ah, come on, Folks!

Any All Sci-Fi member can obtain a free HD download of Kronos and then have fun watching it with our Wild & Krazy chatroom crowd!

All you have to do is go to UPCOMING MOVIES IN THE ALL SCI-FI CHAT ROOM! and then scroll down to the post about this Saturday's fun-filled synchro-cinema!

Each week's Chat Room posts includes detailed instructions on how to get the downloads of the features — free! Very Happy

Think about it! We're giving away free downloads of the movies and TV series we watch. And you can get them, whether you join the chat or not! What a deal! Cool

So . . . be there, or be square — kind of like this guy! Shocked




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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


Last edited by Bud Brewster on Sat May 28, 2022 3:54 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Pow
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PostPosted: Tue May 24, 2022 6:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

From Wikipedia.

Wiki: Kronas was shot in just a little over two weeks.

Wiki: In Greek Mythology, Kronas or Cronus, was the leader and the youngest of the Titans, who were the divine descendants of their father, Uranus (the Sky), and mother, Gaia (the Earth.)

Wiki: Cronus overthrew his father he and his siblings ruled during a Golden Age, until they were overthrown by his son, Zeus. Cronus was then imprisoned in Tartarus underworld.

Wiki: George O' Hanlon who plays Dr. Arnold Culver starred in 63 Warner Brothers shorts as the hapless character Joe McDoakes aka "Behind the Eight Ball."

Wiki: O'Hanlon was also the voice of George Jetson on the Hanna-Barbera futuristic cartoon TV series.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat May 28, 2022 3:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

_______________________________________________

Just to raise my anticipation for All Sci-Fi's Saturday Live Chat on May 28th, I Googled this question.

"Can energy be absorbed wirelessly from a source and stored for later use?"

Here's what Wikipedia says about this subject.
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Wireless power transfer

The technology of wireless power transmission can eliminate the use of the wires and batteries, thus increasing the mobility, convenience, and safety of an electronic device for all users. Wireless power transfer is useful to power electrical devices where interconnecting wires are inconvenient, hazardous, or are not possible.

Wireless power techniques mainly fall into two categories, near field and far-field. Far field methods achieve longer ranges, often multiple kilometer ranges, where the distance is much greater than the diameter of the device(s).

_______________________________________________

So, our own technology is developing methods to "wirelessly absorb electrical energy" and store it for future use. Thus Kronos is a giant storage device which draws power from a source, even when it's a significant distance away.

One criticism of Kronos is the assumption that the aliens who sent it should have been able to generate power in ways that would make Kronos unnecessary.

However, it occurred to me today that the purpose of Kronos could be two-fold. Not only is it collecting power to run it's own systems, with power to spare for other uses by the aliens, it might also be deactivating Earth power facilities prior to an alien attack! Shocked

That way, mankind's defenses would be hampered, and we could be conquered more easily.

However, another possibility is that the alien ship is surveying worlds to be conquered, and whenever it finds one like Earth that has a technology which generates energy they can harvest, they send Kronos out to "refuel their ship" before they travel on to the next world to be surveyed.

I like that second idea better, because it sets up a perfect sequel, one that's more interesting than yet-another-alien-invasion.

If the alien ship is still on the bottom of the ocean waiting for Kronos to refuel it, then the sequel would be about mankind's efforts to either (a) negotiate a peace with the stranded aliens or (b) send military forces into it so we can capture the vessel and its crew.

In a sense, this concept makes Kronos similar to Independence Day in two ways.

First of all, the aliens use mankind's own technology against use when they used our own operating systems to hijack our communication satellites and communicated with their ships around the world. But then we beat them by sending a simple, self-replicating virus (the laughing skull gif . . . obviously!) into their "clones" of our operating systems, briefly overloading their own systems.



______________________


I can't for the life of my understand why one of All Sci-Fi's most intelligent members insisted that this was impossible in our debate on the ID4 thread! Confused

After all, we're constantly battling viruses that attack the most sophisticated systems on planet Earth! Hospitals, for example, have to shut down whenever hackers hold their databases hostage, demanding ransoms!

Basically the aliens in ID4 were dumb enough not to realize that hacking into OUR system was a two-way street, and it could have negative consequences! Rolling Eyes

Ditto for the alien "Krononians" who sent the giant robot.

They protected Kronos from an "energy overload" by giving it the ability to convert energy into matter — and thus enlarge itself when hit by an atomic bomb!

But Jeff Morrow realized that he could turn Kronos' own stored energy against it, causing the huge robot to eat itself alive from the inside!

Gentlemen, this movie is a prime example of why a science fiction movie cannot simply be "watched and enjoyed" like a comedy or an action adventure. It must be carefully ponder, thoroughly analyzed, and ultimately understood by the viewer!

Failure to do this is like being given a beautifully wrapped present — and then not opening it! You simply praise the decorative box and the pretty ribbon . . . but then you set it aside and never give it another thought! Shocked



______________


The analysis and discussion of a science fiction concepts is what I created All Sci-Fi for back in 2006! Unfortunately, some of our members never quite figured that out. Sad

However, I'm happy to say that the folks who are still here are not members of that group!

For that, I thank you. Very Happy

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scotpens
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PostPosted: Sat May 28, 2022 7:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here's an interesting piece on the effects and extensive use of stock footage in Kronos.

Link: https://trailersfromhell.com/a-clever-resourceful-special-effect-surprise/
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun May 29, 2022 9:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

_________________________________________

Yes, it's interesting. Scroll up three posts and you'll find that I posted the same link, with those two comparison images. Very Happy

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