The Movie:

Directed by Eugene Lourie in 1958, Paramount's The Colossus Of New York has been pretty tough to see since it originally played theaters. Never having been released on VHS or DVD domestically it did pop up on TV every once in a while but aside from that, it's been a tough one to see and this is in spite of a fairly recognizable monster and some iconic poster art keeping it reasonably easy to identify, at least for those of us who paid attention to monster magazines and what not. Thankfully Olive Films, as part of a recent licensing agreement with Paramount Pictures, has made the movie available again and it can justly enjoy new life on Blu-ray.

As to the movie itself, it tells the tragic tale of Dr. Jeremy Spensser (Ross Martin), a kind and caring scientific genius who loves his pretty blonde wife, Anne (Mala Powers), and his young son Billy (Charles Herbert). When the film begins he's won the Noble Peace Price for his work in science and technology which focuses on ways to make food more readily available for those who need it. He heads to Europe to collect his award and once he arrives back in New York City, he's promptly run over by a giant truck while trying to retrieve poor Billy's toy plane when it falls into a roadway. His family is understandably devastated, no one more so than his father, a neuroscientist named Dr. William Spensser (Otto Kruger) who, unbeknownst to Jeremy's widow, takes his son's brain out of his body and keeps it alive until he can place it inside a hulking metal body (Ed Wolff - who also played a giant robot in The Phantom Creeps) so that he can continue his important work.

Despite a few kinks, William's experiment works and a semi-resurrected Jeremy soon resumes his studies, content to stay in the laboratory inside the family estate and keep his identity secret from the world outside. What William doesn't realize is that while the robot may have Jeremy's mind, he doesn't have his heart and so when it comes to pass that Anne moves on and starts to get involved with Jeremy's brother, Henry (John Baragrey), something snaps inside him and he becomes insanely jealous. At this point, the previously docile robot starts using his abilities to control people's minds, shoot lasers out of his eyes, and generally start wreaking havoc.

Set to a score composed solely on a single piano by Van Cleave and clocking in at a brisk seventy-two minutes in length, The Colossus Of New York is a bit on the predictable side in that we won't have any trouble seeing where it's all heading as the storyline very obviously shows its cards in the first fifteen minutes or so. That said, the film plays with some interesting themes and ideas, that of family and paternal relations specifically, in interesting ways particularly when Jeremy in robot form decides to befriend his own son, Billy having no idea that the 'friendly giant' is his own father. John F. Warren's cinematography is slick, helping to create a good bit of tension in the big finale where it all hits the fan but also doing a good job of capturing the subtle movements of the robot and the quirky gear in the laboratory. Stock footage inserts used for the airport, the external bits of the family estate and some inner New York City footage are easy to spot and take us out of the picture a bit but for what was likely a modestly budgeted B-picture things shape up rather well as far as the production values go. The robot stands out as a genuinely eerie creation, seemingly soulless and capable of using his powers and size for great destruction.

Made with an interesting cast (Wolff also appeared in Return Of The Fly while Herbert appeared in the original The Fly), The Colossus Of New York isn't the most original horror movie ever made but it's a fun one with an excellent ending and a lot of character.

Video:

The Colossus Of New York arrives on Blu-ray from Olive Films framed at 1.85.1 widescreen in AVC encoded 1080p high definition. Detail is considerably improved over the DVD release that came out some time ago, as is texture (particularly as it pertains to clothing - notice the tweed jackets and sweaters worn by the characters in the opening scenes and how you can notice the fibers used in the clothing) not only in close up shots but in medium and long distance shots as well. The black and white picture shows very good contrast and only minor print damage throughout, just a few specks here and there and some very minor scratches, and overall the picture is quite clean and shows nice depth and dimensionality. Aside from some very minor shimmer, there are no authoring defects to note and no problems with compression artifacts, edge enhancement or noise reduction. All in all, if this wasn't given a full restoration this transfer was taken from source elements in very nice shape, resulting in a strong and pleasingly film like transfer.