Nadine Tallier, the future Baroness Rothschild, at the Cannes Film Festival, May 9, 1958.

The sign 'Vedettes' marks the row as reserved for movie stars. (Photo by RDA/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.)

This time it's Constance Dowling ...

And the mechanical masher is "GOG" ... or is it "MAGOG?" I dunno ... all horny robots look alike to me. And with those Biblical names, fruitfulness and multiplication are sure to be involved.

The tagline of the celluloid curiousity in which Dowling finds herself the object of robot lust promises so much: "Built to serve man ... It could think a thousand times faster! Move a thousand times faster! Kill a thousand times faster ... Then suddenly it became a Frankenstein of Steel!" They apparently left out "Paw a thousand times more insensitively!"

Owing to a talky script, the only riveting things about this Herbert L. Strock 15-day stock-footage special are the rivets holding the tinplate "rowbuts" together. And so too the rivets that embellish the retro-nifty Gog Font used in the title credits.

"Gog" (1954) is an Ivan "Magnetic Monster" Tors production that concerns the goings-on at a secret desert base during the Cold War. Let's call it Area 50 and a half.

Aside from the subtle-as-an-incoming-ICBM sub-themes of Cold War tension and techno-paranoia, we get to see what a film shot in 3D looks like in 2D.

The producers opted out of releasing the picture in "Gog-o-Vision" when they realized the extra-D gimmick was all but over in the minds of the movie-going public.

Truth be told, the thing might be missing more than just one dimension. I mean it's just a little flat. And, I suppose, that's where Dowling comes in, at least on paper (ah, that would be the script).

But don't get your hopes up that you're gonna get hopped up on some vintage Fifties bullet-bra cheesecake — "Gog" might be set during the prime time of "The Space Race" between the U.S. and Russia, but that's as racy as things get. Dowling is too prim and wooden to muster any real sexual tension, especially gusseted in a jumpsuit that appears to have a pair of adult underpants sewn into it. Into which, I might add, she may have made a deposit during filming, or so it appears. She just looks so damned uncomfortable walking away from the camera. Even more oddly, they have in her cha-cha heels with white socks to boot! I won't mention the yellow armbands if you won't.

The former Goldwyn Girl was about to become Mrs. Tors at the time, so I assume that nailing Ivan played into her nailing the part.

This thing might have fared better with the likes of a Mara Corday or a Barbara Rush in the role, someone with a little oomph personality-wise and a tad more pneumatic. A gal who could put more sass in her sashaying to the far-out Harry Sükman score. And, yes, that is Harry's real name; that umlaut commands you to pronounce it "Sook-man." (More about the music is here.)

Oddest sequence? An overlong Mengele-grade freezing and thawing experiment performed on a cute li'l chimp, which segues into the death-scene of a bigger chimp, Dr. Hubertus (Michael Fox), who finds himself trapped in the freezing chamber by an unknown person ... or force. Wooooooooooooo. The chamber even has windshield wipers on the windows, inspiring some vintage Crow T. Robotisms ... "Hey, who's driving this secret underground base anyway?"

Best line of lofty dialogue: "Every punched hole is a thought" — a reference to the computer punch cards used in the base's supercomputer. Hey, that's deep. Now, let's get back to torturing that helpless monkey!

Set design is as expected for Eisenhower-era sci-fi. There are a lot of beakers and flasks full of colored liquid, bunsen burners burning, banks of lights blinking, dials flicking, and meters measuring. All labeled with Batcavian subtlety and in 48-point Poster Bodoni.

Back then all of those visuals meant science and math was going on. But make no mistake, this was American science and math, and we'd be damned if we'd let those damn dirty Commies steal it!

Excuse me. I got a little worked up there.

The scientists are all caricatures. Officious Operation Paper Clip Nazis with Van Dykes, pipes, and slide rules whose accents are so thick that we are treated to fractured Dutch-sounding outbursts like "Time bext zoim in demzoim down ze hallweg ... harry oop!"

They do occasionally speak clearly enough for some gems to get out. Like "science is never frightening." Tell that to the lab workers who have all their blood forcibly rushed to their heads in the base's giant centrifuge!

The staff seem to be working on a project best described as "Space Stations with Death Rays for Dummies" that has caught the attention of an unnamed "European" power — but you can be double-damn sure the power the moviemakers wanted you to think of was the USSR. Enemy numero uno since 1945.

The fun begins when two eggheads at the installation are killed, and the Feds summon undercover government man David Sheppard to investigate. Shep is played by the likeable, but underwhelming Richard Egan, an actor who always seemed on the brink of bigger things but never broke through.

The wily, practical Sheppard is up to the task, though he's a little too easily distracted by the presence of one Joanne Merritt (Dowling), and consistently arrives too late to save anyone.

Miss Merritt is project director Dr. Van Ness's (Herbert Marshall) assistant, but turns out to be a plant. And I don't mean as in turnip, which I equate her acting chops to, but an undercover agent working for the government, assigned to keep an eye on things.

Sheppard and Merritt are as puzzled as the rest of the staff by a series of seemingly inexplicable events: equipment suddenly malfunctioning with lethal results ... a mysterious flying wing endlessly circling the base ... the dialogue so relentlessly rehearsed just minutes before not ringing true at all when the rented cameras start rolling.

Not until he enlists the help of NOVAC (no, not James Franciscus; I mean a Nuclear Operated Variable Automatic Computer), the central brain of the complex, does Sheppard start to put two and two together. There's that arithmetic again.

It seems that the omnipotent NOVAC was offline during one of the "accidents," during which time the computer's operators can't account for the whereabouts of robots GOG and MAGOG, always under the computer's infallible control. (Insider's Note: they were really under the control of two SAG-card-carrying midgets, a la R2D2.)

Piece of paranoid dreck?

Pseudo-scientific stink piece?

Prescient inspiration for HAL in "2001: A Space Odyssey" and Wildfire in "The Andromeda Strain"?

Hollywood's first techno-thriller?

It's all that and strangely less.

But you decide.

You can go ga-ga over "Gog" at Guba right here; a short clip follows, just for a taste ...

Yet another favorite photo of mine of Fifties starlet Susan "Wasp Woman" Cabot, one of those tragic actresses I seem to have a fondness/weakness for.

Why tragic, you ask?

Hmmmm. For one thing, Sus was beaten to death with a weightlifting bar-bell by her dwarf son Timothy Roman in 1986. Roman told police that "a tall Latino with curly hair, dressed like a Japanese Ninja warrior," had attacked them both with "ninja methods" and had escaped making off with about $70,000 cash.

Roman said that he fought with the intruder, and was knocked out. (One question I have: did former TV Sweathog Robert "Epstein" Hegyes own ninja garb in 1986?)

Bullshit detectors went off in the heads of the LAPD dicks on the scene, who noticed only the most superficial wounds on Roman, and he popped to the top of the suspect list. After grilling, he quickly confessed to the killing, but blamed his mother for abusive treatment.

His lawyers blamed the murder on her too, but also pointed to the Human Growth Hormone gimlets he was guzzling every day to counter his dwarfism.

Long story short, he got off with a suspended sentence and three years probation, and inherited his mom's entire estate.

Moral of the story: Don't fuck with a crazy midget, even if he is your son.

Ya just can't write this stuff ... Hollywood writes it for ya.

And I thought Spinal Tap made up the concept of "Bitch School."

Sus banged Brando for a long time, even during her several marriages, and canoodled with King Hussein of Jordan, and maybe Sixties hunk Christopher "Young Doctors" Jones, though that's unclear. Hussein dumped her when he learned of her Jewish heritage.

Her real name?

Harriet Shapiro.

That palm tree on the left has the right idea.

Payne's bare-chested in pants n' boots look would be aped numerous times by the physically similar Bob Conrad in "The Wild, Wild West" in the Sixties — though Conrad's trousers were much tighter — if you can believe it!

When one examines the original, it looks like those wing-like parts of her hair are wrapped in cellophane.