Arguably the most iconic monster in 1950s science fiction is a man in a gorilla suit wearing a deep-sea diving helmet with two antennae glued to the top.

The director, 25-year-old Phil Tucker, had wanted a robot. He couldn't afford one, so he called a friend who owned a gorilla suit, found a diving helmet, and shot the whole picture in four days for about $16,000. The result was ROBOT MONSTER (1953), and it has sat on every worst-movies-ever list since.

Here is what those lists leave out. The score was written by Elmer Bernstein, the same man who would later compose The Magnificent Seven, The Ten Commandments, and To Kill a Mockingbird. He was scoring a film about a gorilla in a fishbowl because the McCarthy-era graylist had nudged him out of better work for his left-wing politics, and this was the work he could get. He said later that he enjoyed the challenge.

Robot Monster was a hit. It grossed around a million dollars, and Tucker saw almost none of it. The distributor cut him out of the profits, and exhibitors were reportedly told to charge him admission if he wanted to see his own film. Broke and unable to find work, Tucker attempted to take his own life that December. He survived, and went on to direct again.

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Robot Monster used a dual-camera "Tru-Depth" 3-D system and was distributed nationwide by Astor Pictures to capitalize on the 1950s 3-D craze.