http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050546/
The Invisible Boy (1957) Herman Hoffman
This fitfully entertaining late-50’s oddity enjoys the distinction of being one of the more inaptly named movies I’ve seen in a good long while. With a title like The Invisible Boy, you’d probably expect a kiddie matinee variation on the venerable H. G. Wells novel, while Spaceship S.O.S. suggests something along the lines of the later Marooned. In fact, what we have here plays more like a hybrid of Tobor the Great and a family-friendly version of Colossus: The Forbin Project.
Dr. Tom Merrinoe (Philip Abbott, later of Hangar 18 and The First Power) is the head scientist at the Stoneman Institute of Mathematics. His is the brilliant mind behind the institute’s pride and joy, a typically gargantuan 50’s-style computer, complete with dozens of erratically rotating reel-to-real tape drives and countless thousands of tiny, flickering lights. One day, an air force officer named General Swayne (Harold Stone, from X! and The Werewolf of Woodstock) comes to the institute to use Merrinoe’s machine. Swayne’s unit has finally developed a workable transatmospheric rocket, and he wants to run one last check on the calculations central to its impending launch. As it happens, the current estimates of the amount of fuel necessary for the mission are off by an alarming 29%. Having made that check, the general has another question for the computer: how does it rate the likelihood of “our friends across the pole�
