The business about plugging robot and computer together with stout cable is clunky now, but was unprecedented at the time and represents clever forecasting on the part of screenwriter Cyril Hume (returning from Forbidden Planet and working from a robot-free source story by sci-fi author Edmund Cooper). This is a film full of computer/robot/space business for which technical terms hadn't yet been invented, which the modern viewer takes for granted: artificial intelligence, modem, interface, programming, software upgrade, etc.



There's a slack middle-section as Timmie gets Robby to grant him wishes while the computer calculates its next evil steps -- though there's actually a slight, believable chill to the scene in which Timmie fools around dangerously on his hang-glider (another uncoined word) while his mother frets and we see that she has a point about his recklessness. The business promised in the title comes when Timmie gets Robby to prepare an invisibility potion and he pulls some mildly creepy pranks -- distracting stuffy scientists (who, let's face it, are trying to save the world) with Three Stooges pokes and prods and, in one oddly adult moment in a kidflick, preventing his parents from having sex. This pushes Dad too far and, in a strained and uncomfortable moment, he grabs the see-through kid and spanks him soundly (Abbott is not as good at this as other actors in 'invisible' films have been).

Then, the film drops the mildly tasteless knockabout and gets on a more nightmarish kick as the computer uses an irresponsible, even malign Robby to implant control devices in the brains of Dad's co-workers (more Invaders From Mars business) and plot to control the world (or even the universe) from a satellite which is about to be launched. Timmie and Robby go up in the rocket and get put into orbit, and all the computer needs is a secret code-number from Merrinoe to attain its full independence -- the scientist staunchly refuses, but the computer calmly tells the worried parent that Robby knows all about the human body and could torture a child for weeks without killing him ('you may begin with the eyes,' it instructs Robby). However, at this crisis, anthropomorphism kicks in -- it's unthinkable that the lovable, helpful, always-polite Robby will really hurt Timmie and so he resists the computer's control (just, as decades on, the T2 would bond with John Connor) long enough for the lad to save the day.



Directed by the unsung Herman Hoffman, The Invisible Boy could do with some of the inventive visuals William Cameron Menzies or Jack Arnold deliver in Invaders From Mars or The Space Children. There's a sense that MGM put this together just to reuse a couple of expensive props, and otherwise didn't bother much about it: certainly not feeling any need to repeat the widescreen, colour, experimental music or star power (Abbott and Brewster are unmemorable, though well-cast in their roles) of Forbidden Planet.

Hume's solid script shifts subtly from character drama through comedy to paranoid horror, but Hoffman directs every scene as if it were a sit-com -- the home stretch, which features some surprisingly scary ideas, frustratingly doesn't take advantage of what's on the page. Nevertheless, what matinee audiences wanted in 1957 was more Robby -- he later showed up on a variety of TV shows including The Twilight Zone, The Thin Man, Lost in Space and Columbo -- and this was duly delivered.