The The Magnetic Monster - Feeding 1950's atomic paranoia
Here’s an interesting little known movie that once fed mid twentieth century paranoia about atomic consequences. Enjoy!
The ‘Magnetic Monster’ 1952
Movie scenario lightly sprinkled with thoughts
The Office of Scientific Investigation (OCI) was established in response to “what man has unleashed but has not yet learned to control.” The men of OCI, sporting degrees in science are called A Men, “like the end of a prayer” as quipped in the opening narration. (A = Atom).
The A Men become aware of a “paramagnetic force” emanating from an element “heavier than uranium and capable of wiping out a few city blocks.” It’s discovered in a clandestine lab over an appliance store causing downstairs merchandise to “sail about the store.” A Geiger counter leads OCI investigators to the element’s container and a corpse, but not the offending element that “must be contained because it will strike again.”
The public is informed that “a dangerous radioactive element is at large” and asked to call in if anything suddenly becomes magnetic. A related call from an airport taxi driver, with a stalled vehicle and tools sticking to his engine block, leads to OCI’s discovery of airport radar and radio communication interference. It also leads to an airport ‘flight insurance vending machine’ where Howard Dinker’s completed insurance form Geiger counts him as the man with the element. Dinker, a Research Physicist at South Western, is toting it around in his brief case. Dinker’s plane has already taken off and the contents of his brief case are causing the engines, and his health, to sputter. The plane is ordered (absent “radio interference?”) to promptly return to the airport.
With the plane evacuated and Dinker in his passenger seat at death’s door, he informs OCI investigators that the new element, “serenium,” is unstable, hungry and must be fed constantly or it will reach out with its magnetic arms for anything within its reach and kill it. It’s monstrous! It grows bigger and bigger.” Dinker instructs OCI to keep it under constant electric charge. When asked, “How can it be stopped?” Dinker responds, “I don’t know, other scientists will have to find the answer. My contribution (?) is finished.” Dinker’s interview and life ends with these dying words, “In nuclear research there is no place for lone wolves.”
The offending element is transported to a university where it reportedly “explodes,” killing two. Jeff Stewart (Richard Carlson), chief of OCI research, laments “The score: four murders in two days. Cause of death: The element was hungry. He rephrases one of Dinker’s dying sentences stating that, “The element was reaching out with invisible fingers grabbing metallic objects with terrifying strength.”
So the element “explodes at the university” and is reportedly “capable of wiping out a few city blocks,” yet we see no explosion or related carnage. If indeed the element was capable of wiping out a few city blocks how come it only took out two individuals and seemingly no university brick and mortar? Perhaps it’s the script’s clumsy way of catering to a public perception that “a dangerous radioactive element at large” has to explode to prove that it’s radioactive?
In the wake of the “university explosion” it’s reported that, “All metal parts within a radius of 100 yards (of the explosion) became magnetic.” Although the radioactive element reportedly exploded, it fails to explode (destroy) it self? But then, as Stewart observes, it “defies every law of physics” and has yet “…to be defined.”
The efforts of OCI get barked at by military brass…“Metal objects can’t grow” and “we’re losing valuable government property.” Except for providing a fast jet and a suggested resource for destroying the element, the military nags instead of helps suggesting a degree of self obsolescence in its ability to protect the nation from things to come.
The mysterious element (serenium) is placed in an electrograph resulting in Stewart’s observation that, “Mass is growing in supposedly empty space. Energy is being drawn into space transforming itself into mass. They are like planets. This process might have been the origin of the solar system. Yes gentlemen we are witnessing the secrets of creation.” Ironically the goal of OCI is to destroy the element before it destroys creation.
Stewart observes that the element “follows a direct mathematical progression.” So, states Stewart, “the computer was awakened from its slumber and the data fed into the brain of the MANIAC.” (Mathematical Analyzer Numerical Integrator and Computer). “Our problem was to feed the brain.”
“At last we were coming to understand the monster that Dinker had blundered into existence,” proclaims Stewart. While waiting for results from the MANIAC, Stewart’s assistant asks him if he’s “afraid?” "Sure, aren’t you?” Stewart replies. This exchange reveals a sense of fear and danger applicable to everyone, from the most knowledgeable (with science degrees) to the most ignorant, about a nuclear genie released from its bottle into a world unable to understand its function or predict its consequences.
The care and feeding of a new and ever hungry element, “serenium,” soon requires the electrical power of an entire city to stabilize it for another eleven hours, until it’s ready for (demanding) its next feeding – requiring (again) twice the nourishment to (again) double its size.
A Men contemplating “the limit of its growth” concludes, “There is no limit.” Observing the element in the electrograph coupled with the calculations of the MANIAC cause OCI agents to believe the element will “grow to the point that the earth will be thrown off its axis and spin off into space.” Oops!
Following the rogue element’s city power meal the MANIAC calculates that 900 million volts will be needed to “over feed (electron bombard) and destroy it” when it demands its next meal. There is only one hope! Unless a top secret power plant (generator), the “deltatron,” located in Nova Scotia, can generate enough energy to over feed and destroy it the earth is doomed. The element is scheduled for a quick military flight to Nova Scotia with OCI’s expressed concern that, “We didn’t know how it would react with the sudden acceleration of the jet plane.” It sure is a mysterious element isn’t it!
Anticipating their actions in Nova Scotia Stewart exclaims, “What we’d do there we didn’t know for sure. If we got there we had exactly one hour and thirty five minutes to find out.” When the OCI agents arrive local officials are heard to say, “Here are the Americans. I hope they know what they are doing!”
The Canadian guy in charge of the deltatron reveals its output to be “600 million volts,” disclosing that it has “never been tested” to exceed that amount. Stewart responds, “There’s no time for a test." The deltatron’s proprietor asks Stewart, “How are you going to use the deltatron?” Stewart responds, “To choke it (the element). Kill it. Choke it to death.” “But what if it doesn’t work?” asks the proprietor. “I’ll leave that to your imagination” responds Stewart. “Our only hope is that the deltatron will break the element before she breaks herself.” This is not comforting to the proprietor and developer of the deltatron who seemingly has been told nothing about why his deltatron is being put at risk.
Interestingly the deltatron’s push bar power control has a large handle resembling a German iron cross (with a “Danger” sign along side the push bar). Taking charge Stewart pushes the deltatron to its untested maximum in hopes of over feeding and destroying the element destined, without potent intervention, to “throw the earth off its axis and causing it to spin off into space.”
Fortunately the deltatron proves equal to its untested task, but the element (serenium) doesn’t go easy taking the deltatron with it in an explosion visible (this time) to the naked eyes of movie patrons leaving them to believe this explosion, unlike the one at the university, is truly the undoing of this unholy radioactive element.
Stewart exclaims, “We did it. We killed it. It’s gone. It’s gone forever.”
In the final scene Stewart ruminates, “Secret of multiplication.” His pregnant wife asks, “What are you talking about?” Stewart replies, “I’m not sure, except they both have something to do with multiplication. Done with love the result is a baby, a beautiful thing. But without love, done with hate or with fear, the result is a monster, an element that grows.”
Primary theme: Mans’ ignorant tampering with the laws of nature result in unleashing powers he cannot understand, control, or contain. The ‘Magnetic Monster,’ was released into theaters to feed on mid twentieth century man’s cold war fears and ignorance about nuclear consequences. Stewart’s (Richard Carlson’s) concluding statement speaks to the use of nuclear power for good or for evil (nuclear power plants VS nuclear bombs? Make nuclear love not nuclear war?).
The ‘Magnetic Monster’ 1952
Movie scenario lightly sprinkled with thoughts
The Office of Scientific Investigation (OCI) was established in response to “what man has unleashed but has not yet learned to control.” The men of OCI, sporting degrees in science are called A Men, “like the end of a prayer” as quipped in the opening narration. (A = Atom).
The A Men become aware of a “paramagnetic force” emanating from an element “heavier than uranium and capable of wiping out a few city blocks.” It’s discovered in a clandestine lab over an appliance store causing downstairs merchandise to “sail about the store.” A Geiger counter leads OCI investigators to the element’s container and a corpse, but not the offending element that “must be contained because it will strike again.”
The public is informed that “a dangerous radioactive element is at large” and asked to call in if anything suddenly becomes magnetic. A related call from an airport taxi driver, with a stalled vehicle and tools sticking to his engine block, leads to OCI’s discovery of airport radar and radio communication interference. It also leads to an airport ‘flight insurance vending machine’ where Howard Dinker’s completed insurance form Geiger counts him as the man with the element. Dinker, a Research Physicist at South Western, is toting it around in his brief case. Dinker’s plane has already taken off and the contents of his brief case are causing the engines, and his health, to sputter. The plane is ordered (absent “radio interference?”) to promptly return to the airport.
With the plane evacuated and Dinker in his passenger seat at death’s door, he informs OCI investigators that the new element, “serenium,” is unstable, hungry and must be fed constantly or it will reach out with its magnetic arms for anything within its reach and kill it. It’s monstrous! It grows bigger and bigger.” Dinker instructs OCI to keep it under constant electric charge. When asked, “How can it be stopped?” Dinker responds, “I don’t know, other scientists will have to find the answer. My contribution (?) is finished.” Dinker’s interview and life ends with these dying words, “In nuclear research there is no place for lone wolves.”
The offending element is transported to a university where it reportedly “explodes,” killing two. Jeff Stewart (Richard Carlson), chief of OCI research, laments “The score: four murders in two days. Cause of death: The element was hungry. He rephrases one of Dinker’s dying sentences stating that, “The element was reaching out with invisible fingers grabbing metallic objects with terrifying strength.”
So the element “explodes at the university” and is reportedly “capable of wiping out a few city blocks,” yet we see no explosion or related carnage. If indeed the element was capable of wiping out a few city blocks how come it only took out two individuals and seemingly no university brick and mortar? Perhaps it’s the script’s clumsy way of catering to a public perception that “a dangerous radioactive element at large” has to explode to prove that it’s radioactive?
In the wake of the “university explosion” it’s reported that, “All metal parts within a radius of 100 yards (of the explosion) became magnetic.” Although the radioactive element reportedly exploded, it fails to explode (destroy) it self? But then, as Stewart observes, it “defies every law of physics” and has yet “…to be defined.”
The efforts of OCI get barked at by military brass…“Metal objects can’t grow” and “we’re losing valuable government property.” Except for providing a fast jet and a suggested resource for destroying the element, the military nags instead of helps suggesting a degree of self obsolescence in its ability to protect the nation from things to come.
The mysterious element (serenium) is placed in an electrograph resulting in Stewart’s observation that, “Mass is growing in supposedly empty space. Energy is being drawn into space transforming itself into mass. They are like planets. This process might have been the origin of the solar system. Yes gentlemen we are witnessing the secrets of creation.” Ironically the goal of OCI is to destroy the element before it destroys creation.
Stewart observes that the element “follows a direct mathematical progression.” So, states Stewart, “the computer was awakened from its slumber and the data fed into the brain of the MANIAC.” (Mathematical Analyzer Numerical Integrator and Computer). “Our problem was to feed the brain.”
“At last we were coming to understand the monster that Dinker had blundered into existence,” proclaims Stewart. While waiting for results from the MANIAC, Stewart’s assistant asks him if he’s “afraid?” "Sure, aren’t you?” Stewart replies. This exchange reveals a sense of fear and danger applicable to everyone, from the most knowledgeable (with science degrees) to the most ignorant, about a nuclear genie released from its bottle into a world unable to understand its function or predict its consequences.
The care and feeding of a new and ever hungry element, “serenium,” soon requires the electrical power of an entire city to stabilize it for another eleven hours, until it’s ready for (demanding) its next feeding – requiring (again) twice the nourishment to (again) double its size.
A Men contemplating “the limit of its growth” concludes, “There is no limit.” Observing the element in the electrograph coupled with the calculations of the MANIAC cause OCI agents to believe the element will “grow to the point that the earth will be thrown off its axis and spin off into space.” Oops!
Following the rogue element’s city power meal the MANIAC calculates that 900 million volts will be needed to “over feed (electron bombard) and destroy it” when it demands its next meal. There is only one hope! Unless a top secret power plant (generator), the “deltatron,” located in Nova Scotia, can generate enough energy to over feed and destroy it the earth is doomed. The element is scheduled for a quick military flight to Nova Scotia with OCI’s expressed concern that, “We didn’t know how it would react with the sudden acceleration of the jet plane.” It sure is a mysterious element isn’t it!
Anticipating their actions in Nova Scotia Stewart exclaims, “What we’d do there we didn’t know for sure. If we got there we had exactly one hour and thirty five minutes to find out.” When the OCI agents arrive local officials are heard to say, “Here are the Americans. I hope they know what they are doing!”
The Canadian guy in charge of the deltatron reveals its output to be “600 million volts,” disclosing that it has “never been tested” to exceed that amount. Stewart responds, “There’s no time for a test." The deltatron’s proprietor asks Stewart, “How are you going to use the deltatron?” Stewart responds, “To choke it (the element). Kill it. Choke it to death.” “But what if it doesn’t work?” asks the proprietor. “I’ll leave that to your imagination” responds Stewart. “Our only hope is that the deltatron will break the element before she breaks herself.” This is not comforting to the proprietor and developer of the deltatron who seemingly has been told nothing about why his deltatron is being put at risk.
Interestingly the deltatron’s push bar power control has a large handle resembling a German iron cross (with a “Danger” sign along side the push bar). Taking charge Stewart pushes the deltatron to its untested maximum in hopes of over feeding and destroying the element destined, without potent intervention, to “throw the earth off its axis and causing it to spin off into space.”
Fortunately the deltatron proves equal to its untested task, but the element (serenium) doesn’t go easy taking the deltatron with it in an explosion visible (this time) to the naked eyes of movie patrons leaving them to believe this explosion, unlike the one at the university, is truly the undoing of this unholy radioactive element.
Stewart exclaims, “We did it. We killed it. It’s gone. It’s gone forever.”
In the final scene Stewart ruminates, “Secret of multiplication.” His pregnant wife asks, “What are you talking about?” Stewart replies, “I’m not sure, except they both have something to do with multiplication. Done with love the result is a baby, a beautiful thing. But without love, done with hate or with fear, the result is a monster, an element that grows.”
Primary theme: Mans’ ignorant tampering with the laws of nature result in unleashing powers he cannot understand, control, or contain. The ‘Magnetic Monster,’ was released into theaters to feed on mid twentieth century man’s cold war fears and ignorance about nuclear consequences. Stewart’s (Richard Carlson’s) concluding statement speaks to the use of nuclear power for good or for evil (nuclear power plants VS nuclear bombs? Make nuclear love not nuclear war?).
posted by guytoe at 11:51 PM
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