Phil Tucker

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Phil Tucker (22 May 1927 – November 30, 1985) was an American film director, writer and producer. While Tucker directed his first six feature films in the span of 2 years (while still in his mid-twenties), he is best known for his first film, the science fiction B movie Robot Monster, often considered an example of "so bad it's good" filmmaking in the Ed Wood vein, and for the Lenny Bruce movie Dance Hall Racket.

A frequent rumour is that a 1953 suicide attempt was in response to the poor reception of Robot Monster. According to Keep Watching The Skies! by Bill Warren, his attempted suicide was actually due to depression and a dispute with the film's distributor, who had allegedly refused to pay Tucker his contracted percentage of the film's profits. There are further claims that after 1955, Tucker was blacklisted within the film industry, though he did go on to direct a number of other productions, including the 1960 film The Cape Canaveral Monsters. Tucker had already become a true footnote in screen history in 1953 when he directed Lenny Bruce and Bruce's wife Honey Harlow in Dance Hall Racket, a crazed no-budget saloon film shot from Bruce's own lunatic script.

By the 1970s Tucker had established himself as a formidable film editor, finally escaping the stigma of his early directorial work. He contributed to such well-known films as Orca and the 1976 remake of King Kong and remained in post-production throughout the rest of his career.

In addition to his love of film, Tucker had an avid interest in all things mechanical. He invented a hot air engine known as the Surge Turbine for which he was granted a US Patent. Tucker built a prototype of the engine which he tried, unsuccessfully, to sell to the automobile industry as a more efficient alternative to the traditional internal combustion engine.