Ed Wood has a reputation as the worst director of all time with Plan Nine from Outer Space as his masterpiece but I've always found Robot Monster a lot more fun. The film has many admirers too but its auteur, Phil Tucker, is far less colourful than Wood. He was still an interesting dude and Anders Runesta has devoted an entire book to the making of the movie... and the life and times of Tucker, plus the adventures of collaborators like Wyatt Ordong.
It's an astonishingly detailed book - Robot Monster fans couldn't ask for more, as it not just details the making of the film (throwing in a complete copy of the script), it provides a biography of Tucker (orphan, war veteran, diabetic, someone who appears to have pretended to attempted suicide several times for publicity), looks at several of his other films in depth, analyses the career of some of his key collaborators such as Wyatt Ordung.
Sometimes the detail overwhelm the story, and even Runesta can't solve all the mysteries of Tucker's life - there is a lot of guessing. But it's a book written with such dilligence and passion that it's impossible to dislike.
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