OUT OF THIS WORLD (1956)
TV-Movie aka The Robot of Regalio
Article 2462 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-29-2008
Posting Date: 5-9-2008
Directed by Hollingsworth Morse
Featuring Richard Crane, Jimmy Lydon, Sally Mansfield
Country: USA

Rocky Jones must do battle with the evil ruler of Regalio, who has the power to pull planets from their orbits and plans to do so with Earth. Unfortunately, he also has to contend with another problem; the female ruler of Herculon who is his ally has an evil twin sister with designs of her own.

This marks my final foray into the world of Rocky Jones for this series. I must admit that I’ve been fairly loose in my coverage of the movies culled from the series; in certain cases, I’ve watched not the movie version, but the episodes of the series from which it was culled. Still, I think this is acceptable; other than the removable of beginning and ending credits and the occasional change of a credit sequence, the movies presented the episodes as is. This one features Ian Keith in a fun little role as the Nizam of Regalio. All in all, this one has a decent pace, and is one of the more enjoyable stories from the series. Granted, you have to make allowances; the show was rather stiff, the acting uneven, and certain segments are hard to swallow (there’s a lot of knock-out potions in drinks in this one), but I still think the scripts showed more sophistication than is usually to be found in kiddie space fare. Oh, and the robot gets loose and goes on a rampage (such as it is) in the final episode.

Goodbye, Rocky Jones; I initially expected to hate these movies, but I found them far more enjoyable than I expected, and I’ll miss covering them.