Robot Monster (1953)
Directed by Phil Tucker
Ro-Man, an alien robot who greatly resembles a gorilla in a diving helmet, is sent to earth to destroy all human life. Ro-Man falls in love with one of the last six remaining humans, and struggles to understand how his programming can instruct him to kill her while his heart demands that he can't.
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What critics compared Robot Monster to
Probably the cleverest thing about the movie is having Megamind’s minion—named Minion (David Cross)—designed after the infamous Ro-Man from the grade Z cult classic Robot Monster (1953).
The look of Minion—a robot/gorilla body with a fishbowl head—may be an obvious homage to the title character of the 1953 grade-Z 3D movie Robot Monster, but horrid Hal Stewart apparently takes his name from the first two modern-day Green Lanterns: Hal Jordan and John Stewart.
("Plan 9"'s only rival is Phil Tucker's "Robot Monster" and Ed's own "Glen or Glenda".
As an alien invasion, the literal menace is subdued and distant -- the film hints at some larger plan spreading the countryside, if not further, and later implies that Laura's experience infiltrating humanity fails in part because she ultimately becomes too human (an unlikely correlation with the almost-equally batshit Robot Monster) -- but what stands out most is an unspoken essay on empathy, epitomized in a touching scene in which Laura offers a kindness that would seem to go against her directives, and which arguably sets up a later scene that acts as both savage humor and heartbreaking insight.