The Invisible Boy

The Invisible Boy (aka S.O.S Spaceship) is a 1957 black and white American science fiction film from Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, produced by Nicholas Nayfack, directed by Herman Hoffman, and starring Richard Eyer and Philip Abbott. It is the second film appearance of Robby the Robot, the science fiction character who "stole the show" in Forbidden Planet (1956), also released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. According to an implied, subtle back story in The Invisible Boy, the robot is the same character as that in Forbidden Planet, which is set in the 23rd century; Robby is brought back to the film's mid-20th century era by time travel. Plot In 1957, ten-year-old Timmie Merrinoe only wants a playmate. After a peculiar encounter with a supercomputer operated by his father's research lab, he is mysteriously invested with superior intelligence, and reassembles a robot that his father and other scientists had been ready to discard as irreparable junk. (It is explained that a vanished scientist claimed to have developed a time machine and retrieved the robot from the future—a photograph on the wall depicts the return to Earth of the space cruiser from Forbidden Planet, and the arrival of "Robby the Robot".) No one pays much attention to the robot after Timmie gets it operating again, until Timmie's mother becomes angry when her son is taken aloft by a huge powered kite that Robby has built at Timmie's urging (once Timmie, prompted by the supercomputer, has disabled Robby's programming to never endanger a human). When Timmie expresses a wish to be able to play without being observed by his parents, Robby, with the aid of the supercomputer, makes him invisible. At first Timmie uses his invisibility to play simple pranks on his parents and others, but the mood soon changes when it becomes clear that the supercomputer is independent, ingenious, and evil. The supercomputer had manipulated Timmie into altering Robby's programming and, over many years, manipulated its creators into augmenting its intelligence. It can control Robby electronically, and later uses hypnosis and electronic implants to control human beings, along with intending to take over the world using a military weapons satellite.