1957's "Kronos" was a late entry for director Kurt Neumann ("Secret of the Blue Room," "Rocketship X-M," "She Devil"), released one year before his final horror film "The Fly." 20th Century-Fox farmed the project out to 'B' subsidiary Regal Films and their chief executive Robert L. Lippert (his Lippert Pictures company had just ended its seven year run), who also made "She Devil," "The Unknown Terror," "Back from the Dead," and "Ghost Diver," this policy continuing the following decade when Lippert relocated to Britain for efforts such as Lon Chaney's "Witchcraft" and Brian Donlevy's "Curse of the Fly." More ambitious than the budget would allow, "Kronos" opened with a spacecraft dispensing a glowing essence that takes control of a top research scientist (John Emery), as the ship itself is directed to land in the ocean off the Mexican coast. From this emerges on the beach a gigantic cube-like structure dubbed Kronos by lead scientist Jeff Morrow ("This Island Earth," "The Creature Walks Among Us," "The Giant Claw"), capable of devouring any force of energy used against it (the aliens seek another world of energy because theirs has died out). When a hydrogen bomb proves ineffective, Morrow hits upon the idea to use the power of Kronos to destroy itself by reversing polarity. Little is made of the possession theme, though it does feature sci-fi veteran Morris Ankrum trying to make sense of his crazed patient, before his untimely electrocution. STAR TREK would feature a similarly indestructible menace in "The Doomsday Machine," while this film ran continuously until reaching American Movie Classics in the 90s.
Review of Kronos
