The opening titles appear over a static shot of a galaxy of stars. According to pop culture historian Albert Walker, the exact same image was used under the opening titles of Rebane's film The Giant Spider Invasion (1975).

The working title Terror in Half Day refers to an unincorporated settlement on the outskirts of Chicago, where portions of the film were shot. Local legend has it that the village was so named because it took half a day to reach it from Chicago by carriage. Other sources claim it was named after a Native American chief.

Director Herschell Gordon Lewis is best remembered today for his collaborations with producer David F. Friedman. They made nudist pictures in the early 1960s, before embarking on a cinematic experiment that changed the face of the horror film. Beginning with Blood Feast (1963), they made a series of films with gratuitous shots of explicit gore. The films were an immense success, and soon virtually every drive-in exploitation film sported lingering shots of actors spattered with blood and viscera. Lewis made Monster A-Go Go just as his partnership with Friedman was coming to an end. Friedman is not believed to have been involved in the making of the film.

According to modern sources, the actor who portrayed Dr. Logan had changed so much between the original shoot in 1961 and the 1964 retakes that he posed a continuity problem. To remedy this, Lewis (or Rebane) concocted a new character for him to play: Henry Logan's twin brother Conrad.

The most fascinating aspect of Monster A-Go Go is an extended sequence (much of it out of focus) of Chicago's Civil Defense rescue trucks being mobilized to stop the marauding alien. The sight of this actual radioactivity response team reminds the 21st-century viewer of the Cold War context of the film, when the threat of nuclear annihilation was a clear and present danger to the average American.

The voice on the radio sounding a red alert is that of director Bill Rebane.

Rebane was born in Riga, Latvia in 1937, and was educated in Germany until emigrating to the U.S. circa 1952. "I came to America from Germany when I was 15 and couldn't speak English," Rebane said in a 2002 interview, "I lived on the south side of Chicago, off 63rd St. I went to four movies a day and in six months, learned to speak English. The moment I could, I got myself a little red wagon, and went to the supermarket and made myself a bundle of money delivering groceries for people." After high school, he studied drama at Goodman's Art Institute in Chicago.

Rebane went on to actually complete some films. After working in the film industry in Germany for a time, he set up a production company: the Shooting Ranch Motion Picture Studios in Gleason, Wisconsin. His best-known achievement was 1975's The Giant Spider Invasion. Among the more colorful Rebane titles is 1987's Blood Harvest, which features musician Tiny Tim as a demonic ukulele-playing clown named Marvelous Mervo.

Upon watching Terror at Half Day redux, Rebane called it, "the worst picture ever made. And I mean it."

Rebane suggests that the film was not true to the kinds of pictures he really wanted to make. "I departed from what I wanted to do. First, I became aware of what was making money in those days in the independent arena. American International Pictures' Sam Arkoff, Jim Nicholson, and Roger Corman were setting the trend. It was logical to do something that has some exploitation values and was relatively easy to make. After all, all it took was some kind of monster. Right?"

"I was into the musical and westerns as a kid. I just fell into the sci-fi groove while all the time writing screenplays of different types were my way of justifying all the B movie fare I was producing...'One more and we'll have enough to make a major picture,' I'd say."

Many filmmakers delve into schlock filmmaking with the expectation of earning a few dollars and then steering their careers to a higher road. Few, however, are able to find their way back, as Rebane discovered. "I soon realized my B movies had typecast me, even as a producer. Once you get into the B movie mode, nobody wants to talk to you about a comedy, a drama, or for that matter any serious effort."

In 2002, Rebane made an unsuccessful bid for the governorship of Wisconsin, as the American Reform Party candidate. "My campaign platform is that I am a non-politician," Rebane declared, "Politicians are out of touch with reality. Unless he is a real statesman, it doesn't take a professional politician to represent people." He was not elected. Some sources say he had previously run in the 1978 election.

In 1993, Monster A-Go Go was initiated into the pantheon of kitsch when it was visually defiled and verbally mocked in an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (the cinematic equivalent of graffiti).

Today, Herschell Gordon Lewis works as a direct marketing consultant in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and has authored numerous books on advertising, copywriting and motivation, such as Sales Letters That Sizzle: All the Hooks, Lines, and Sinkers You'll Ever Need to Close Sales (1999). He still makes forays into stranger realms, directing Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat (2002), and co-authoring the book Everybody's Guide to Plate Collecting with wife Margo Lewis.

The expression "A-Go Go" (usually written as "a Go-Go") was popularized in the counter-culture movement of the 1960s. It is derived from the French term "ˆ gogo," which means "galore." Monster A-Go Go stands as one of the earliest published usages of the name in the U.S., probably inspired by the first Whisky a Go-Go nightclub, which opened in 1958 in Chicago, where the film was made.

Theatrical trailer: "Go! Go to this theatre to see the science fiction picture to end all science fiction pictures! Did he or didn't he? Is he a monster or isn't he? Only his space agency knows for sure, and they won't tell...Here's the picture that grabs the screen and shakes it. The picture that makes you wonder if the earth is coming to an end, right in the theatre in front of you. Never in your life have you seen such a combination of happy, sad, good, bad, rock 'em sock 'em action. When you walk out, you'll wonder what you've seen, because never has there been a motion picture like this! ... With a genuine ten-foot tall monster to give you the wim-wams. Monster A-Go Go! With astronauts and space capsules and pretty girls. And cosmic radiation...and pretty girls. And screams...and pretty girls...The picture with 'Go.'"

by Bret Wood

SOURCES:
Interview with Bill Rebane:
http://www.bijouflix.com/innerviews/rebane_interview1.htm
Detailed plot description:
http://www.agonybooth.com/recaps/Monster_A_Go_Go_1965.aspx