Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob
Speaker 1: Lamb and oh we have a fun one for you today.
Speaker 1: This is our discussion of the nineteen sixty Mexican sci
Speaker 1: fi comedy musical Ship of Monsters. So I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed this one. This one originally published nine three, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick and Rob. I am so thrilled
Speaker 3: to be talking about the movie that we've selected for today.
Speaker 3: Lea Nave de los monstros or The Ship of Monsters,
Speaker 3: an astoundingly, shockingly devastatingly awesome Mexican film from nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: in the exquisite genre of science fiction, horror, romantic comedy,
Speaker 3: music goal. This is a movie about women from the
Speaker 3: planet Venus who are roaming deep space on a quest
Speaker 3: for the hunkiest aliens in the galaxy and skip from
Speaker 3: planet to planet collecting reptile cyclops hunks, kissy face brain
Speaker 3: mutant hunks, fang head skeleton hunks until they finally meet
Speaker 3: the hunkiest hunk of all a rascal writer of the
Speaker 3: Chihuahua Planes, played by the incomparable Lallo Gonzalez aka l Pipoorro.
Speaker 3: More on him later. This movie is so much fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was a real pleasant surprise when you brought
Speaker 1: this title to our attention. I did like some preliminary research.
Speaker 1: I looked it up in the Psychotronic Video Guide and
Speaker 1: I was like, all right, it's listed there. Sounds like
Speaker 1: it might be good. So I went into it expecting
Speaker 1: there to be something awesome about it. You know, i'd
Speaker 1: find a monster I liked or a performance I liked.
Speaker 1: I was also expecting a certain amount of dead space
Speaker 1: in there is sometimes the case with films from this
Speaker 1: time period of this caliber, but this one is just
Speaker 1: wall to wall excellence.
Speaker 3: Yes, totally. They're not a dull moment. I mean, we've
Speaker 3: we've watched some sci fi horror movies from the fifties that,
Speaker 3: you know, they might have a really fun, goofy looking monster,
Speaker 3: or they might have elements that work really well, not
Speaker 3: of this Earth comes to mind. But then there'll be
Speaker 3: other moments that are kind of some dead space, yeah,
Speaker 3: or kind of dull square lug dude, it's just standing
Speaker 3: around delivering dry dialogue. This movie has essentially none of that.
Speaker 3: It's all killer, no filler exactly.
Speaker 1: Oh man, Yeah, this one's This one's great.
Speaker 3: Would this count as our first science fiction, horror, romantic
Speaker 3: comedy musical.
Speaker 1: Yes, it definitely would, and it I guess you could.
Speaker 1: You could rank it as one of our first true musicals.
Speaker 1: Or it's as close to a true musical as we've covered. Certainly,
Speaker 1: some of the movies we've looked at have complete songs
Speaker 1: within them, but this one has multiple musical numbers. I
Speaker 1: mean they're not I mean they're very they're definitely lip SYNCD. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's maybe only a limited amount of dance choreography
Speaker 1: going on, but still there's enough music in this film
Speaker 1: that it feels like a musical.
Speaker 3: Oh no, I would defend the dance sequences. There's one
Speaker 3: dance scene in this movie that is just divine. It's
Speaker 3: the one later on where Lalo Gonzalez is dancing and
Speaker 3: singing to the to the Vampire Queen. Spoiler we'll get
Speaker 3: to some twists about this later on. But he's also
Speaker 3: trying to steal her, like her technology, her space weapon,
Speaker 3: and so they're dancing around and she's making eyes at him,
Speaker 3: and he's singing a song about the seasons.
Speaker 1: Yeah, true, okay, but that that felt also very organic.
Speaker 1: It felt like organic dancing that just came out of
Speaker 1: the music in the moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So of course, folks out there, you know, we
Speaker 3: love our unlikely genre mashups. We've talked about supernatural wrestling movies,
Speaker 3: supernatural biker movies, but this has got to be one
Speaker 3: of the biggest like you know, suicide soft drink kind
Speaker 3: ofups of all time. It's got really almost every movie
Speaker 3: genre in the same thing. I think it is most
Speaker 3: often referred to as a science fiction comedy, but it's
Speaker 3: also definitely got horror elements. Like some of the things
Speaker 3: about the monsters in this movie gets surprisingly dark in
Speaker 3: a way that you would not expect for a light comedy.
Speaker 3: And the musical numbers are just just wonderful.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Like when we say they're alien monsters and they're
Speaker 1: hunks or males, you might think of' what's that movie
Speaker 1: the Head Jeff Goldblum in it where they were all
Speaker 1: alien hunks?
Speaker 3: Oh? Is that Earth Girls or easy?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you might be thinking of Earth Girls are easy,
Speaker 1: but no, these are entirely non human aliens. Some of
Speaker 1: them are not even remotely human, So just go ahead
Speaker 1: and exercise that image from your mind.
Speaker 3: This movie might be called earth males or liars, but
Speaker 3: lovable liars. But so anyway, having read about this movie
Speaker 3: before I watched it, I expected the plot to be bonkers,
Speaker 3: which it absolutely It is just like Goober's Inside Out.
Speaker 3: This movie will give you hard boiled egg eyes. But
Speaker 3: also the musical numbers are charming, the comedy scenes are
Speaker 3: really funny. It just works on almost every level. It
Speaker 3: pretty much rules. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the humor I found held up pretty well. I
Speaker 1: was laughing at some of the intentional humor in this picture.
Speaker 1: I also have to throw in that, oh man, I
Speaker 1: love a good movie poster, and if you look around
Speaker 1: for movie posters for this film, you'll find some kind
Speaker 1: of boring images. But there's also a terrific image of
Speaker 1: the sort of lizard cyclops monster, way bigger in the
Speaker 1: poster than he is in the film, and he's holding
Speaker 1: a woman in one hand like palm, like a baseball,
Speaker 1: and it's got this wonderful orange and red look going on.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely beautiful. And in fact I showed this to
Speaker 1: my wife, and she has agreed that if we can
Speaker 1: find this, we are going to put it on a
Speaker 1: wall in our house. It's just that lovely.
Speaker 3: Godspeed on your quest. I hope you do find it now.
Speaker 3: You've been having trouble, right, it seems like merch for
Speaker 3: this movie is rather scarce on the ground.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so far, all I've seen is somebody in
Speaker 1: Italy selling this poster on eBay. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: continue to look around a little bit.
Speaker 3: Now. I think this poster is the Italian poster for
Speaker 3: the movie, right, because it's the title is a little
Speaker 3: bit different. It's Lenave del Monstrim.
Speaker 1: Yes, that would be it. Yeah, that now I think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I've also seen maybe the Italian DVD has
Speaker 1: this art on it. So yes, I highly recommend looking
Speaker 1: this up. It's just gorgeous.
Speaker 3: Maybe we can hit a little montage of some audio
Speaker 3: from the films Bigle and Our Well.
Speaker 1: I hope that conveyed at least some of the magic
Speaker 1: of this of this this film, because there's a lot
Speaker 1: visually going on here.
Speaker 3: Are Are you ready to talk about some of the
Speaker 3: people involved.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's get into it.
Speaker 3: Okay. So the director of this movie was named Rogalio A. Gonsalez,
Speaker 3: and I was looking around for good biographical info about him.
Speaker 3: I couldn't find much in English, but I found a
Speaker 3: biography in Spanish on the website of the National Autonomous
Speaker 3: University of Mexico website, and I had to run this
Speaker 3: through Google Translate. So I hope nothing significant is getting lost,
Speaker 3: but just to summarize some of the stuff that covered
Speaker 3: in there. Gonzalez was a Mexican actor, director, radio host,
Speaker 3: radio producer, film producer, and screenwriter who worked throughout the
Speaker 3: Golden age of Mexican cinema. He was born on January
Speaker 3: twenty seventh, nineteen twenty two, in Monterey, Nuevo Leon as
Speaker 3: Antonio Rogalio Gonzalez Villarial, and apparently in his younger years,
Speaker 3: Gonzalez was preparing for a career in medicine, but at
Speaker 3: some point he got that movie bug. He quit his
Speaker 3: studies and he went into the film industry, first as
Speaker 3: an actor and a screenwriter in the forties, and then
Speaker 3: as a director beginning in the fifties. And he directed
Speaker 3: a ton of movies in the fifties through the early eighties,
Speaker 3: though I don't think I have seen any of them.
Speaker 3: Other than this one.
Speaker 1: Now, yeah, I agree. I don't think I've seen anything
Speaker 1: on this list, though there's some interesting looking titles. I
Speaker 1: noticed that his last picture in eighty three was Mexico
Speaker 1: two thousand, which, yes, some sort of a sci fi
Speaker 1: political commentary, sad attire sort of a thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And there was one title of his I came
Speaker 3: across that I don't remember if he wrote this one
Speaker 3: or directed it. What was called like the Skeleton of
Speaker 3: Missus so and so, I don't.
Speaker 1: Know, Missus Morales. Oh, yeah, okay, Yeah, And I've also
Speaker 1: heard that Conquistador di la Luna is also supposed to
Speaker 1: be rather weird.
Speaker 3: Oh, Conqueror of the Moon. Yeah, Actually, Michael Weldon mentions
Speaker 3: that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he mentions that as being a stand out weird
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 3: I was trying to find a copy of this that
Speaker 3: could be watched. The only thing I can find is
Speaker 3: it's on a DVD that you can get somewhere that
Speaker 3: I think does not have dubbing or English subtitles as
Speaker 3: far as I can tell, so, but I don't know.
Speaker 3: It looks so visually strange that it might be worth it.
Speaker 3: Even if you don't speak Spanish, you can probably kind
Speaker 3: of suss out the plot. Yeah, But anyway, a little
Speaker 3: more about Gonzalez's Regalio Gonzalez's biography. There are actually two
Speaker 3: major Gunzaleses in this movie, but Rogalio Gonzalez the director.
Speaker 3: He was also a union leader in the Director's Division
Speaker 3: of the Mexican Union of Cinema Production Workers, and he
Speaker 3: passed away due to a tragic highway accident in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty four. But as for personal descriptions of his sort
Speaker 3: of you know, his presence and personality, the website I
Speaker 3: mentioned cites a description of Gonzalez from a magazine called
Speaker 3: Cinevos in the year nineteen forty nine, so this would
Speaker 3: have been before he started directing, back when he was
Speaker 3: just an actor and a writer. But the description through
Speaker 3: translation goes like this, He has a clear intelligence and
Speaker 3: his sentences are logical and precise, despite the passion he
Speaker 3: puts into them. He is tall, with blue eyes, thin,
Speaker 3: almost transparent. Sometimes he hunches over as if overwhelmed by
Speaker 3: excessive work, since he writes at all hours, sometimes living
Speaker 3: exclusively at night. Oh wow, Now this profile was written
Speaker 3: many years before he made Ship of Monsters. Ship of
Speaker 3: Monsters came out in nineteen sixty. Again, I think this
Speaker 3: was in nineteen forty nine, but I like to imagine
Speaker 3: that it was this nocturnal consciousness that birthed the physical
Speaker 3: forms of the eye popping monsters in this movie, the
Speaker 3: furry Spider Beetle, the irritable Lizard Cyclops, the Kissy Face
Speaker 3: brain Mutant, and the wonderful Bone Boy. So, like I said,
Speaker 3: I have not seen any of Gonsalez's other movies, but
Speaker 3: given this, he's got a real talent for extremely visually charming,
Speaker 3: tight well paced cinema.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, absolutely. Now a quick note about the individuals
Speaker 1: with writing credits on this film. First of all, the
Speaker 1: story credit goes to Jose Maria Fernandez Unsein, who lived
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty one through two thousand and three, an Argentinian
Speaker 1: film director, screenwriter, and playwright who was exiled to Mexico
Speaker 1: after the overthrow of Juan Toon. This was because Unsan
Speaker 1: had connections to Eva Peron, so very prolific. He has
Speaker 1: I think one hundred and twenty two writing credits on IMDb.
Speaker 1: But then adaptation writing credit goes to Alfredo Verrella, who
Speaker 1: lived nineteen twelve through nineteen eighty six. This is a
Speaker 1: guy who wrote various westerns and now according to IMDb,
Speaker 1: this is definitely the Mexican born Alfredo Verrella. But there's
Speaker 1: also an Argentinian novelist and communist journalist named Alfredo Verrella
Speaker 1: who lived at the same time, like with birth and
Speaker 1: death dates just like two years off. So I was
Speaker 1: a little confused by that at first. I was trying
Speaker 1: to figure out could this be given the Argentina connection here,
Speaker 1: but it seems to be two different people.
Speaker 3: Okay, Now coming to the cast, this movie again just
Speaker 3: has a wonderful cast, and we should start with the
Speaker 3: lead actor Ulalio Gonzalez, also known as Lalo Gonzalez, also
Speaker 3: known by the nickname El Pipouro. And I was trying
Speaker 3: to look it up. What does that really mean? I
Speaker 3: don't know if it means something different in the context
Speaker 3: of his nickname. But the only thing I could really
Speaker 3: find is a translation is that this word means bassoonist,
Speaker 3: like the player of a bassoon. I'm not sure what
Speaker 3: to make of that. But Lalo Gonzalez was a musician.
Speaker 3: He was widely known as a comic, actor and a singer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Gonzalez was a musician, comedian, actor, director and producer.
Speaker 1: And in this film, yeah, he's playing this Pipooro character,
Speaker 1: a kind of stereotypical North Mexican rancher. This was an
Speaker 1: immensely popular character. It was central to his musical identity
Speaker 1: and it helped make him the face of Musica Nortegna
Speaker 1: during the Golden Age of Mexican cinema. Now, Musica at
Speaker 1: Nortegna is the regional music of Northern Mexico. That's essentially
Speaker 1: what it means, traditionalized, traditionally utilizing the accordion the bajo
Speaker 1: sexto guitar, and it apparently emerged in the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: out of elements of traditional Mexican music along with German,
Speaker 1: Austrian and Czech folk music, very popular in Northern Mexican
Speaker 1: and also among many Mexican Americans. So within this genre
Speaker 1: and within Mexican cinema all this period, Pipporo Here Gonzalez
Speaker 1: is a legend. I think it's important to realize, like
Speaker 1: this is this is a film that is showcasing somebody
Speaker 1: that was already at or near the peak of their
Speaker 1: their initial popularity. Though this is a guy that would
Speaker 1: remain important throughout his life.
Speaker 3: Right and so as we're saying so much about this
Speaker 3: movie is great, but a lot of it really rests
Speaker 3: on the incredible star power of La Lo Gonzalez. He
Speaker 3: is a I would say like he has a once
Speaker 3: in a generation kind of star presence. His screen charisma
Speaker 3: is overwhelming. He is just an absolutely lovable liar rascal,
Speaker 3: and the personality it just sort of like drips out
Speaker 3: of the TV screen, like fifteen minutes into the movie.
Speaker 3: Rachel and Rachel and I watched it together and she
Speaker 3: adored the movie as well, but we were immediate just
Speaker 3: like googling other La Low Gonzales movies, we wanted to
Speaker 3: see everything he was in. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything
Speaker 3: else he did involving monsters. So this might be the apex,
Speaker 3: but we'll see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, his humor really translates even without
Speaker 1: an actual like I mean, with translation. Obviously we had subtitles.
Speaker 1: I think we each had slightly different subtitles, as is
Speaker 1: kind of becoming a tradition here, but you still it
Speaker 1: still oozes through, you know. Like you say, he's very charismatic,
Speaker 1: he's very funny. I think you would find him humorous
Speaker 1: even if you didn't know what he was saying.
Speaker 3: I'm not aware that this movie has ever been dubbed
Speaker 3: into English, but it's the kind of performance where I
Speaker 3: would recommend watching it with the Spanish audio with subtitles,
Speaker 3: just because, like the line delivery is so funny. It's
Speaker 3: like you can hear that. It's funny even if you
Speaker 3: don't speak Spanish, right, right.
Speaker 1: And then also the songs that he's singing there, I
Speaker 1: think always part of the plot, so you need to
Speaker 1: know what he's singing as well well.
Speaker 3: Right, So, if anyone.
Speaker 1: Out there wants to learn more about Nortegna, then there
Speaker 1: are various sources you can go to. But I was
Speaker 1: looking around and there's actually a book by Catherine Ragland
Speaker 1: titled Musica Nortegna Mexican Americans Creating a Nation between Nations.
Speaker 1: This came out in two thousand and nine. In this book,
Speaker 1: she explores the topic in depth, but I found this
Speaker 1: particular summary rather interesting. Quote. Musical Nortaigna, a musical genre
Speaker 1: with its roots in the folk ballad traditions of northern
Speaker 1: Mexico and the Texas Mexican border region, has become a
Speaker 1: hugely popular musical style in the US, particularly among Mexican immigrants,
Speaker 1: featuring evocative songs about undocumented border crossings, drug traffickers, and
Speaker 1: the plight of immigrant workers. Musical no'artagna has become the
Speaker 1: music of a quote nation between nations, and she also
Speaker 1: points out that it's sometimes seen this particular genre as
Speaker 1: being maybe less technically refined compared to other genres of
Speaker 1: Mexican of like folk music, but it is seen as
Speaker 1: often seen as being imbued with more feeling, And a
Speaker 1: lot of this seems to come from the idea that
Speaker 1: this was the music of working people who had to
Speaker 1: make time for music in the evenings and then put
Speaker 1: all their passion into that.
Speaker 3: That's true, and a lot of the greatest folk music
Speaker 3: traditions do have origins like this. They're not from people
Speaker 3: who were, you know, full time professional musicians, but you know,
Speaker 3: consists of songs and structures and elements created by people
Speaker 3: who were, you know, just like regular working people who
Speaker 3: were playing music for entertainment in the evenings. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So anyway, I was very interested to learn this.
Speaker 1: So if anyone out there, if you know a great
Speaker 1: deal more about Nortaigna and you have some experience with it,
Speaker 1: do write in let us know. I'd love to know
Speaker 1: more about this interesting genre of music.
Speaker 3: But the excellent cast does not stop there. So Lolo
Speaker 3: Gonzalez is playing our main earthling for the movie. He
Speaker 3: is Loreano is his character's name. But there are also
Speaker 3: a couple of other major characters who are Aliens, these
Speaker 3: Ladies from Beyond, and they are played by Anna Bertha
Speaker 3: Leppe and Loraina of Alaskez.
Speaker 1: Yes. Lepe plays Gamma and Velasquez plays Beta. Both of
Speaker 1: our Venusians are played by former Miss Mexicos.
Speaker 3: Now, I know you could easily make this mistake, but
Speaker 3: I want to be very pedantic about this. Lorain of
Speaker 3: Alaskaz's character Beta, though she initially starts the movie on
Speaker 3: the planet Venus, she is not a Venusian.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 3: That's true, they say. They say she is a daughter
Speaker 3: of or the planet of Shadows, and so she's an
Speaker 3: alien on Venus at the beginning of the movie and
Speaker 3: then travels with the Venusian Gamma on her mission.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the really delectable things about this film
Speaker 1: is that there seems to be so much world building
Speaker 1: going on in it that, on the surface would be
Speaker 1: completely unnecessary for a dumb monster movie that is basically
Speaker 1: just a vehicle for a popular musician, and you know,
Speaker 1: in a couple of very attractive actors.
Speaker 3: This is a light, romantic musical comedy with killer monsters
Speaker 3: in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and yet you get a sense that somebody puts
Speaker 1: some thought into this about like, Okay, what is Venus's
Speaker 1: role in the Solar system and realms beyond the Solar System?
Speaker 1: How is their power arrived? Yeah, because we ultimately have
Speaker 1: an interplanetary civilization outlined within this film. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: well let's talk about these these two individuals. First of all,
Speaker 1: Lepe who again plays Gama. She lived nineteen thirty four
Speaker 1: through twenty thirteen, and she was a big deal. She
Speaker 1: was a stunning star of Mexico's Golden Age of cinema
Speaker 1: and a runner up representing Mexico in the nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: three Miss Universe pageant. Other credits of hers include Renee
Speaker 1: Cardona's Neutron Traps The Invisible Killers from nineteen sixty five
Speaker 1: that stars also stars a guy by the name of
Speaker 1: Jorge Riviero, who is in a film called Where Wolf
Speaker 1: that I think you're familiar with.
Speaker 3: Oh Jorge Rivero. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. She was also in three Santo movies Santo Versus
Speaker 1: The Diabolical Brain from sixty three, Santo in The Hotel
Speaker 1: of Death from sixty three, and Santo Versus The King
Speaker 1: of Crime from sixty two.
Speaker 3: Okay, gotta put those on the list. Which one are
Speaker 3: we doing first? Diabolical Brain? That sounds good.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I was looking. I think these all
Speaker 1: sound like maybe they're more crime based Santo movies. You know.
Speaker 3: Oh, diabolical brain isn't like a huge alien brain. It
Speaker 3: might be like a smart criminal.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, Velasquez, who again plays Beta. She was born
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty seven. I think as of this recording
Speaker 1: is still around. She was also a big deal during
Speaker 1: Mexico's Golden Age of cinema. She was in two different
Speaker 1: Santo movies, both in sixty two, Santo Versus the Zombies
Speaker 1: and Santo Versus The Vampire Women, and in that she
Speaker 1: plays Zorina, Queen of the Vampires.
Speaker 3: Oh, okay, there's gonna be some crossover here. Warning, I
Speaker 3: think I already said something to this effect. We will
Speaker 3: be spoiling some minor twists in this film. I hope
Speaker 3: you're okay with that. And so here's the spoiler. There
Speaker 3: is just a delightful twist about halfway through this movie
Speaker 3: where Lorain of Alaskaz's character is revealed to be a
Speaker 3: space vampire from the planet of the Vampires. In fact,
Speaker 3: she's going to become the Queen of the Vampires by
Speaker 3: h I don't recall the exact plan, suck in everybody's
Speaker 3: blood and kidnapping Lolo Gonzalez, I think.
Speaker 1: Right, And there's some politics in there, you know, like
Speaker 1: marrying the Prince of Mars and so forth.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, she's a natural to play a vampire queen.
Speaker 1: You know, she's got the look, she's got the charisma.
Speaker 3: And she I gotta say she is so good in
Speaker 3: this movie and in a comedy performance, because even in
Speaker 3: moments where she doesn't have any lines, she's really funny.
Speaker 3: She's often the funniest actor in a scene just by
Speaker 3: doing hilarious things with her face, Like she does these
Speaker 3: weird I want that eyes at things, you know, like
Speaker 3: at weapons, or at monsters, or at a jukebox or
Speaker 3: at Pipoo when he's dancing and singing a song about
Speaker 3: the seasons. She just does these eyes that had Rachel
Speaker 3: and I shrieking with laughter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's really good. And you know, sometimes in films
Speaker 1: of this caliber, you have a role like this, go
Speaker 1: to somebody who just kind of stands there. But no,
Speaker 1: she's never still, if not physically, at least like energy wise,
Speaker 1: there's always something going on in her head. She was
Speaker 1: also in Renee Cardona's nineteen sixty three non Santo wrestling
Speaker 1: picture Doctor of Doom, in which she stars as female
Speaker 1: wrestler or luchadora Gloria Venus, who has to stop an evil,
Speaker 1: mad scientist with an ape named Gomar from carrying out
Speaker 1: sadistic brain transplant experiments.
Speaker 3: What yeah, well, and she's Gloria Venus and in this
Speaker 3: movie she's on a mission sponsored by the planet Venus.
Speaker 1: It makes me think that this film was a big
Speaker 1: hit or at least impressed enough people where they're like this,
Speaker 1: this guy's great. We need a we're gonna make a movie.
Speaker 1: We need a vampire queen. Bam, she's in. Or hey,
Speaker 1: we're thinking about having a Venusian, let's put her in.
Speaker 1: She has some sort of tie to Venus because she
Speaker 1: went on to play that Glory of Venus character again
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty four as wrestling women versus the Aztec Mummy.
Speaker 1: So yeah, a number of interesting films are coming up
Speaker 1: with these two.
Speaker 3: Beta is a queen, Loraina Velasquez rocks the screen in
Speaker 3: this film.
Speaker 1: Now we also have an actual queen in this we
Speaker 1: have the Queen of Venus. Oh, and she is played
Speaker 1: by Quinzuelo Frank who lived nineteen twelve through nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1: And she has two Santo credits as well, sixty seven
Speaker 1: Santo versus the Martian Invasion in sixty eight Santo's versus
Speaker 1: the Villains of the Ring. I haven't seen that one,
Speaker 1: but that one sounds like the most obvious title. Of course,
Speaker 1: Santo is going to fight villains of the Ring.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I'd also want to fight them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she was also she was active much earlier. She
Speaker 1: was in I think two different nineteen forty two Mexican
Speaker 1: adaptations of first The Three Musketeers but then also The
Speaker 1: Count of Money Cristo. Now, another great thing about this
Speaker 1: film is that has wonderful costumes, has wonderful monster effects.
Speaker 1: So I had to look up, well, who's behind this?
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure exactly. Sometimes the monster credits are
Speaker 1: kind of lost, especially in limited credits for a film
Speaker 1: like this, But Julio Chavez is credited for costumes, and
Speaker 1: I noticed that, among many other credits, they did costumes
Speaker 1: and wardrobe on nineteen sixty nine's Santo w and the
Speaker 1: Treasure of Dracula, which was covered several months back.
Speaker 3: So this is a Santo heavy connection section.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And when it comes to the music, we
Speaker 1: have another direct reference to Santo and the Treasure of
Speaker 1: Dracula because Sergio Guerrero, who lived nineteen twenty one through
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, he did the music in this
Speaker 1: which has some neat sci fi sounds in there in
Speaker 1: places which I liked. But this is a guy with
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty two composer credits on IMDb, including
Speaker 1: such Mexican films as Neutron Traps, The Invisible Killers, Le Sombra, Viingadora,
Speaker 1: and again Santo in the Treasure of Dracula. So yes,
Speaker 1: lots of Santo connections here.
Speaker 3: Now, if Guerrero here did the music, I don't know
Speaker 3: if that necessarily would include other types of sound design,
Speaker 3: but I did want to highlight that this movie has
Speaker 3: some really good sound design, Like there are moments where
Speaker 3: the monsters are speaking, and it's not necessarily music, though
Speaker 3: I do love the music in this movie. But it's
Speaker 3: like the way the vocal effects they've done on the voiceovers,
Speaker 3: for when the puppets are talking, giving them these raspy
Speaker 3: voices as if they're emanating from the caves of Hades.
Speaker 3: You know, just great monster voices.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some wonderful Spanish monster voices in this it's pretty great. Well,
Speaker 1: should we get into the plot a little bit here?
Speaker 1: We've been talking it up. Let's tell folks what this
Speaker 1: movie is about.
Speaker 3: Okay, Now, we're not going to do a full scene
Speaker 3: by scene on this one. We might go a little
Speaker 3: more detail early on and then later for the later
Speaker 3: parts of the movie, just talk about some highlights and ideas.
Speaker 3: But I do want to get very granular with the
Speaker 3: introduction because I think the very intro of the movie
Speaker 3: really sets the move fast and break things tone. I
Speaker 3: would say, in the much better sense of that phrase,
Speaker 3: that's the attitude this film has toward plotting. So the
Speaker 3: very first thing we see is an atom, you see,
Speaker 3: like the old school representation of the atomic nucleus with
Speaker 3: all of its orbitals, and the narrator says, this is
Speaker 3: an atom, then it shows us a planet. At first
Speaker 3: I thought it was the Moon, but I think it's
Speaker 3: supposed to be planet Earth. And then it says, this
Speaker 3: is the universe. Then it goes on and atom is
Speaker 3: infinitely small, the universe is infinitely large. However, everything is
Speaker 3: ruled by the same laws. Man has learned to release
Speaker 3: the power of the atom, and with it wants to
Speaker 3: conquer the universe. Some really elegant symmetry in this opening narration.
Speaker 3: This is almost a strange poem of sorts. And then
Speaker 3: the narration goes on it says, but he dreams of
Speaker 3: leaving the Earth and leaving his seed on a distant planet,
Speaker 3: perhaps with the subconscious desire of starting a new race,
Speaker 3: one that will remain ignorant of atomic power and warfare. Right,
Speaker 3: so the idea is that, okay, all species maybe that
Speaker 3: discover atomic energy and atomic weapons, eventually we'll want to
Speaker 3: go sort of create a new version of themselves on
Speaker 3: a planet that is blissfully free of this terrible knowledge.
Speaker 3: And of course, throughout the well this we're getting a
Speaker 3: lot of we're getting stock footage of mushroom clouds from
Speaker 3: atomic tests. But then it goes on to say, and
Speaker 3: that is a planet known to us. So here we
Speaker 3: cut to Venus. It says, let's go on a characteristically
Speaker 3: dark night to Venus, and we see the these creepy
Speaker 3: images of lights with a hazy four ground, so they're
Speaker 3: just kind of these very fuzzily defined lights in the
Speaker 3: background and mist and darkness with these figures and cloaks
Speaker 3: wandering into the frame, and it's actually quite creepy. It is.
Speaker 1: I found this quite evocative early on. Now I understand
Speaker 1: some of these space scenes we see early in the
Speaker 1: film or are taken from nineteen fifty seven's Road to
Speaker 1: the Star as a Soviet film about the possible future
Speaker 1: of spaceflight. But I'm not sure about these kind of dark,
Speaker 1: hooded figures here with the cosmic backdrop.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know about those. I do think, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think you're right. I was also reading that some
Speaker 3: of these early scenes are just lifted from other films.
Speaker 1: One thing I want to add is that you could
Speaker 1: easily you could be watching this and think, all right,
Speaker 1: here's our sort of out there's introduction, but then we're
Speaker 1: going to go onto another movie and this will have
Speaker 1: little more nothing to do with where we're going. But
Speaker 1: it does come back up again. It seems to be
Speaker 1: in you know, it seems to be stitched into the
Speaker 1: plot itself, and it's not just some thing that's just
Speaker 1: tacked on the front to keep us in our seats
Speaker 1: for a few minutes.
Speaker 3: That's right. I would say that actually this is this
Speaker 3: is pretty coherent. As as bonkers as the plot of
Speaker 3: this movie is, it all kind of ties together, like
Speaker 3: it makes sense even though it's nuts. So, okay, we
Speaker 3: learned that the planet Venus is preparing for the most
Speaker 3: important interplanetary space flight in their history, and then we
Speaker 3: get shots of the surface of Venus where we see
Speaker 3: a bunch of women lining up in military formations outside
Speaker 3: of a rocket ship and there is nary a man
Speaker 3: in sight. So what's going on here? Well, we get
Speaker 3: some exposition. The region to Venus comes out. I think
Speaker 3: she's the queen of the planet and she's addressing two women.
Speaker 3: So you have Annabertha Leppe and Lorraine of Alaskas as
Speaker 3: the characters Gamma and Beta, respectively, and they are being
Speaker 3: given a mission. Gamma is the commander in chief of
Speaker 3: the interplanetary spacecraft. So the region of Venus explains the situation,
Speaker 3: and the situation is dire. She says, Okay, the last
Speaker 3: male on our planet is dead. They're all gone. They
Speaker 3: are dead due to an atomic scourge. And so she
Speaker 3: is giving a mission to these two brave space pilots.
Speaker 3: They're going to fly around and go to all the
Speaker 3: planets and collect the most perfect male specimens to bring
Speaker 3: back to Venus. And then Gamma says, I will bring
Speaker 3: you the most beautiful male specimens. The most perfect of
Speaker 3: them will sire the new generations of Venus. And then
Speaker 3: we get the part I alluded to earlier where the
Speaker 3: regent says that Beta, played by Lorrain of Alaskaz, she's
Speaker 3: a foreigner to Venus. She's the daughter of or the
Speaker 3: planet of shadows, and she has been assigned to travel
Speaker 3: alongside Gamma on her mission because she's the greatest space
Speaker 3: navigator on the planet. And then the last thing she
Speaker 3: says to them is in you we trust. Question about
Speaker 3: Gamma's outfit. Did you ever figure out what the thing
Speaker 3: on her shoulder is? Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it kind of has this kind of tassly feathery thing,
Speaker 1: but also might be an antenna. I'm not sure. Maybe
Speaker 1: she has like wireless in the suit. I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: I couldn't tell if it was supposed to be decorative
Speaker 3: or supposed to be technology. But yeah, she has this
Speaker 3: array of sprigs of something coming off of her left
Speaker 3: shoulder and I don't know what they are, and they're
Speaker 3: there like the whole movie. She changes outfits, but that's
Speaker 3: always there. It looks kind of like she had some
Speaker 3: of those like wire fairy wings, but somebody crumpled them
Speaker 3: up and moved them all to one shoulder. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's stylish. I mean that seems
Speaker 1: to have been the main intent here is that these
Speaker 1: women should look extremely stylish. As they travel through space.
Speaker 3: They look super cool. And it is announced via footage
Speaker 3: from another movie that the orbits have aligned and so
Speaker 3: it is time for them to depart. So we see
Speaker 3: Gamma and Beta. They enter the interior of their spaceship,
Speaker 3: which maybe we should describe because a lot of the
Speaker 3: action of the film will take place here. So there
Speaker 3: are like two pilot seats where they're operating these big
Speaker 3: control panels. I guess Beta is the nownavigator and Gammas
Speaker 3: the commander, and then behind them there is all this
Speaker 3: heavy machinery which looked like real heavy machinery, not just
Speaker 3: like something on the set. I don't know what they
Speaker 3: were filming. Maybe they were generators of some kind, like
Speaker 3: these big years working back and forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the set is great, it definitely. They do a
Speaker 1: great job establishing it as the command center of the spaceship.
Speaker 1: I got kind of tones of observatory from parts of it,
Speaker 1: but I'm not really sure, because clearly huge parts of
Speaker 1: it are an actual set, so it's not just that
Speaker 1: they went into an observatory or into a factory and
Speaker 1: started filming there. There's also some really elaborate stuff they constructed,
Speaker 1: so I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are these big clusters of balls up on
Speaker 3: the ceiling, like gigantic grapes. I don't know what those
Speaker 3: are supposed to be. And then there is a big
Speaker 3: platform looking out over the rest of the set like
Speaker 3: a preacher's pulpit, and there's I don't know, various weird
Speaker 3: glass bulbs and files in the background, and just rivets
Speaker 3: and metal everywhere. It's cool. And then while the credits play,
Speaker 3: we see them setting down on strange worlds, including this
Speaker 3: one world that's full of crooked spires of rock that
Speaker 3: are sort of the same size and shape as the
Speaker 3: rocket that lands, except you know, they're stony and jagged,
Speaker 3: and I guess this must be happening off screen. But
Speaker 3: during this credit sequence we're to understand that they're out
Speaker 3: there collecting all of the mails along their journey, which
Speaker 3: they tend to keep frozen in giant cubes of ice.
Speaker 3: And they accomplish this by operating a camera flash at them.
Speaker 3: And it made me wonder which of the male monsters
Speaker 3: comes from the spike rock planet.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it could be home to. Well, we
Speaker 1: know this is not the surface of Mars because we
Speaker 1: know what Mars looks.
Speaker 3: Like, so right, that's where brain Boy comes from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's not the Prince of Mars, so it
Speaker 1: must be. It must be one of the others. This
Speaker 1: would be a suitable planet, and perhaps for the skeletal,
Speaker 1: fleshless being.
Speaker 3: Yeah Billy Bones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but we'll get him in a minute now.
Speaker 3: Another major devil on the initial premise is that somewhere
Speaker 3: along the way, Gamma and Beta acquire an alien robot
Speaker 3: called Tor, and Tor is a major helper of their
Speaker 3: mission as they go along. He wasn't theirs originally, but
Speaker 3: they say that they again in a strange bit of
Speaker 3: just just ever so briefly alluded to world building. They
Speaker 3: say that they collected him from a dead planet where
Speaker 3: all of the humans had annihilated themselves with atomic war.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He's key to the whole operation though, because he
Speaker 1: has the ability to freeze the monsters in blocks of
Speaker 1: some sort of ice. Otherwise, I mean, they could still
Speaker 1: handle the monsters. They prove that later on they have
Speaker 1: space flamethrowers, but this is a huge help.
Speaker 3: Well, now I think they can also freeze the monsters
Speaker 3: with their little camera flashbox.
Speaker 1: I think, oh, can they?
Speaker 3: Okay, But he's very helpful for he's very helpful because
Speaker 3: he contains these encyclopedias of knowledge about all the planets.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, that's right, And these are often really funny
Speaker 1: sometimes with some you know, kind of I guess political
Speaker 1: satire thrown in there, right when they like asking about
Speaker 1: Mexico and stuff.
Speaker 3: Right, yes, So, so eventually the robot tells them their
Speaker 3: spacecraft is suffering mechanical trouble and they got to set
Speaker 3: down on the nearest planet for repairs. Well, what's the
Speaker 3: nearest planet? The robot says, it is Intarsis one thirty
Speaker 3: five sub two planetoid of the fourth order. And so
Speaker 3: how does the robot know what this planet is? Well,
Speaker 3: he says, you know, before the men of his planet
Speaker 3: all destroyed themselves with nuclear war, they left these encyclopedias
Speaker 3: of knowledge inside his computer brain. And the men of
Speaker 3: his planet had originally wanted to explore this planetoid Intarsis
Speaker 3: one thirty five sub two. They wanted to explore it,
Speaker 3: but then they learned a bit of bit more about
Speaker 3: it and ultimately decided it was not worth it because quote,
Speaker 3: it is inhabited by beings that seemed to be intelligent,
Speaker 3: but they do not know what they want and enjoy
Speaker 3: destroying each other. And of course what planets he talking.
Speaker 1: About, it's us and it's pretty spot on.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Gamma and Beta perform a perilous emergency landing
Speaker 3: and they set down in the Mexican state of Chihuahua,
Speaker 3: which is in the central north. It's along the border
Speaker 3: with Texas and New Mexico, and so they're setting down
Speaker 3: their spaceship and as that's happening, we get our first
Speaker 3: meeting with La Loo Gonzales as a character named Loreano.
Speaker 3: What's he doing? Well, of course he is out riding
Speaker 3: his horse and singing a love song to nobody in particular.
Speaker 3: And the first scene where we meet him, you just
Speaker 3: kind of instantly fall in love with this g Like
Speaker 3: he sees the rocket ship, he thinks it's a shooting star,
Speaker 3: and he makes a wish and his wish is for
Speaker 3: is for quote, I hope for a pretty girl, but
Speaker 3: one who loves me. And then he sings a song
Speaker 3: about wishing on this star to find a woman to
Speaker 3: fall in love with. In my translation, he kept saying
Speaker 3: he was searching for a divine love. But then the
Speaker 3: other half of the song is about how everybody incorrectly
Speaker 3: believes that he is no good. So the lyrics include
Speaker 3: things like they say, I'm a crook and a liar
Speaker 3: and I chicken out in the end, but it's not true.
Speaker 3: And then you get you remember when when he gives
Speaker 3: the horse guarantee, he's like, if you don't believe me,
Speaker 3: ask my horse. My horse will tell you I never
Speaker 3: tell a lie. And then the horse starts like bucking
Speaker 3: and neighing.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. There's some fun stuff, like when you
Speaker 1: first see this character, there might be a temptation to think, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is going to be just a shining White Night.
Speaker 1: You know that he's going to be a pure hero,
Speaker 1: but then you quickly realize, no, he's a bard, if
Speaker 1: not an actual rogue, but a very funny one. Like
Speaker 1: he's the comedy begins to shine through, and there's some
Speaker 1: stuff with him, like the way he's riding his horse,
Speaker 1: either intentionally or accidentally, but I believe it must be
Speaker 1: part of the character. You get the idea that he's
Speaker 1: not that good at riding the horse. There's some awkward dismounts,
Speaker 1: which adds to the comedic nature of this character.
Speaker 3: You know. I was trying They may have said it
Speaker 3: in the movie and it went past me. Was trying
Speaker 3: to figure out what does Loreano do. I was thinking,
Speaker 3: maybe he's supposed to be a rancher, but you don't
Speaker 3: really see much about that. Is he just a professional liar?
Speaker 1: He has a cow, and we spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time with that cow. Yeah, so I think he's technically
Speaker 1: a rancher. Maybe that's part of the joke, is that
Speaker 1: he's because the character, I'm to understand his performance character
Speaker 1: is supposed to be a North Mexican rancher. But maybe
Speaker 1: the joke is okay, he only has this one cow
Speaker 1: and it may or might not even be that good
Speaker 1: of a milk producer, depending on the joke.
Speaker 3: But basically all he does is like ride around singing
Speaker 3: and then go into town and tell awesome lies. Yes,
Speaker 3: so we see him go into a bar and everybody's
Speaker 3: drinking and he's telling these tall tales about like how
Speaker 3: he foiled a robbery with a bunch of bandits and
Speaker 3: he killed two bandits with one bullet left in his
Speaker 3: gun by holding a knife in front of the barrel
Speaker 3: and splitting the bullet in half so it hit them both.
Speaker 3: And then he starts shifting from here to the increasingly
Speaker 3: bizarre stories about unusual bears and then dinosaurs. Did your
Speaker 3: translation include dinosaurs?
Speaker 1: It did? Yes, Okay. I wasn't entirely sure what to
Speaker 1: make of that. At first, I thought maybe it was
Speaker 1: a joke about chickens, and I was thinking, oh, this
Speaker 1: is actually scientifically accurate in some respects. But then there's
Speaker 1: the thing about dinosaurs without bones, and I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: so maybe something's something is ultimately lost in translation. But
Speaker 1: it still came off as very fun and funny.
Speaker 3: It seems like normally he just he is wont to
Speaker 3: tell stories about dinosaurs out by the sawmill, dinosaurs without bones,
Speaker 3: boneless boneless buffalo dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: But in this whole situation, he almost sort of gets
Speaker 1: into a duel. Yeah yeah, like a shootout, shootout a scenarios.
Speaker 3: Name Rubiano or something, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but then kind of talks his way, jokes his
Speaker 1: way out of it. So they do a great job
Speaker 1: of establishing his character, like, no, you know, everybody loves him,
Speaker 1: but also everybody's a little sick of him. You know,
Speaker 1: he's he's a likable guy, but maybe he's not really
Speaker 1: doing the most important job in town, whatever it may be.
Speaker 3: You almost get the impression that if he were to
Speaker 3: encounter real monsters later, nobody would believe him because he
Speaker 3: has cried dinosaur too many times.
Speaker 1: True.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, after Gamma and Beta land on Earth, they come
Speaker 3: out to explore their surroundings and there is this hilarious
Speaker 3: scene where they just appear to get extreme pleasure from
Speaker 3: the discovery of breathable atmosphere.
Speaker 1: Yes, yep, this is a great part. My wife actually
Speaker 1: walked in the room and saw this part and she
Speaker 1: was laughing as well. They're just totally turned on by
Speaker 1: this planet's atmosphere and they do a great job of
Speaker 1: playing this up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so the two aliens come across Loreano on
Speaker 3: the road while he's out wandering, and they are just
Speaker 3: immediately smitten, right, as I guess nearly anyone would be.
Speaker 3: But so there are some jokes about them trying to
Speaker 3: find a language where they can both communicate, but it
Speaker 3: turns out the aliens do speak Spanish. I think they've
Speaker 3: got sort of encyclopedic knowledge of all languages in the
Speaker 3: Solar System and a radio uplink to their robot Tour.
Speaker 3: They like they look things up. They like, in the
Speaker 3: middle of the conversation, freeze Loriano and then look up
Speaker 3: like Mexico to learn things about it. And then also
Speaker 3: when he asks are you two from the circus? I
Speaker 3: assume because of the strange way they're dressed, they have
Speaker 3: to look up what a circus is, and this was
Speaker 3: really funny. Tour gets back to them and says, well,
Speaker 3: a circus is where animals do human jobs and humans
Speaker 3: do animal jobs.
Speaker 1: I love that part.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but so oh, and then they're also like,
Speaker 3: soh hey, Loriano, are all earthmen as gorgeous as you?
Speaker 3: And he's like, no, I admit it. No, they're not,
Speaker 3: because it should be stressed.
Speaker 1: All the males that they have kidnapped thus far are
Speaker 1: literal monsters. Yeah, they're not even remotely human. They're big,
Speaker 1: like scaly or shaggy or pulsating monsters, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: like it makes sense that they see this guy and
Speaker 1: they're like, well, well, heck, we can stop the project
Speaker 1: right here.
Speaker 3: Right, So they split. They tell him they'll meet him later,
Speaker 3: and then they go to their ship to phone home.
Speaker 3: They're like, Commander, we have hunks and they're going to
Speaker 3: bring him back to Venus, And so I think some
Speaker 3: other stuff happens here. But then eventually we get back
Speaker 3: to the home of Loreano, where he also he lives
Speaker 3: with his little brother who he takes care of named Chewy,
Speaker 3: and Chewey plays a decisive role in the climax of
Speaker 3: the film in a big violent showdown with some monsters.
Speaker 3: But eventually Gamma and Beta come by Loreano and Chewy's
Speaker 3: house where they want to learn about love. Like they
Speaker 3: show up at the door and they're like, hey, we
Speaker 3: don't have love on our planet. Can you explain to
Speaker 3: us what love is? And he explains love by singing
Speaker 3: a song accompanied by a jukebox that's in his house.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't know what to make of this. I mean,
Speaker 1: it certainly pays off in the plot, but I was
Speaker 1: asking myself, why would there be a jukebox in the house,
Speaker 1: not only a jukebox, but a jukebox they have to
Speaker 1: use a quarter on so they're having to pay to
Speaker 1: use it. And I don't I'd never heard of this
Speaker 1: being a thing, and maybe it wasn't. Maybe it just
Speaker 1: makes sense in this film.
Speaker 3: Who would come and collect the quarters for the jukebox
Speaker 3: inside your house?
Speaker 1: I don't know. But this man loves music, so maybe
Speaker 1: it's a good investment.
Speaker 3: But I think here actually is where we start to
Speaker 3: get a taste of conflict between the visiting aliens, because
Speaker 3: because it starts to become clear that maybe both Gamma
Speaker 3: and Beta want Loreano for themselves, but Loriano seems to
Speaker 3: only love Gamma. He's just like not into Beta.
Speaker 1: Right, He's just not into her. And you know, he's
Speaker 1: very upfront, you know, he's he's very clear that he's
Speaker 1: not French. Yeah, he's not interested in two women. He
Speaker 1: wants one woman and there has to be this mutual
Speaker 1: attraction there. So yeah, he's just not feeling it with Beta.
Speaker 3: It's literally in the song, he's like singing lyrics about
Speaker 3: how he says love is when two people love each other.
Speaker 3: If there were three, that would be French.
Speaker 1: Yes, there are at least a couple of digs at
Speaker 1: France in the picture, and also a really awesome dig
Speaker 1: at Texas at one point.
Speaker 3: So the comedy's pretty much I forgot that part.
Speaker 1: It's something about, oh, they like big things in Texas,
Speaker 1: what would they think of this? But I can't remember
Speaker 1: what they were referencing.
Speaker 3: Oh, okay, was it a monster?
Speaker 1: Probably a monster, yeah, or spaceship or something.
Speaker 3: Loriano is also so lovable in the gentlemanly way. He
Speaker 3: sort of explains things to Beta, so she also wants
Speaker 3: him for herself, but he's like, hey, you know, you
Speaker 3: can't make somebody love you. Look I like this other lady.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And luckily he has some songs prepared about the
Speaker 1: nature of love, right, he sings them for us, and
Speaker 1: so that's very They're great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Now we haven't really gotten into the monsters yet,
Speaker 3: so maybe we should explain the monster subplot and then
Speaker 3: how that links up with what's going on with Loreano
Speaker 3: and Gamma and Beta.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's let's dive into these monsters and certainly jump
Speaker 1: in if I if you have a different name than
Speaker 1: I have, because I think the name did differ slightly.
Speaker 1: So first of all, let's talk about this big reptilian
Speaker 1: cyclops character. He's the one on that Italian movie poster
Speaker 1: that I that I described earlier. This creature's name is
Speaker 1: Uk spelled uk, and he is the King of the
Speaker 1: Fire Planet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so he was also called Uk in mind.
Speaker 3: And he speaks in a kind of brutish way. He
Speaker 3: says like me king fire Planet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's all actually, he's like, we're gonna fight,
Speaker 1: you know. That's that's he's he's a very brutal kind
Speaker 1: of an alien. But then we also have a cerebral alien.
Speaker 1: And when I mean cerebril, I mean he's got a
Speaker 1: big old brain, a big pulsating brain. This is the
Speaker 1: Prince of Mars. This is in my version Tagoul.
Speaker 3: In mind, he I think he was Tao waal Okay.
Speaker 3: But yeah, so he's the Prince of Mars. Yeah. I
Speaker 3: think you only maybe find that out late. I'm not sure,
Speaker 3: But at first he just looks kind of like a
Speaker 3: I mean, I will say again, the monster design is great.
Speaker 3: He's got these kind of translucent layers over his eyeballs
Speaker 3: and you can see these obscure pupils moving around back
Speaker 3: behind the translucent layer. It's a very creepy effect. I
Speaker 3: want to just emphasize yet again, sometimes how strangely scary
Speaker 3: the monsters are for this light musical, romantic comedy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of love went into the craft of
Speaker 1: making these monsters. And yeah, you're not going to watch
Speaker 1: this and think, oh my goodness, real monsters. You know,
Speaker 1: they look like movie monsters of this time period, but
Speaker 1: they're they're really good. I loved watching them do their thing.
Speaker 3: But he's kind of like the brain mutant from This
Speaker 3: Island Earth, except maybe actually even more more lovely. He's
Speaker 3: got the big brain head, the creepy eyes, and he's
Speaker 3: got this this fish like kissy mouth, the kind of
Speaker 3: trumpet lips that work back and forth in a disgusting manner.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all of these, you know, all of you can
Speaker 1: certainly connect to other monster traditions and other films of
Speaker 1: the time period. But I love how the stinct they
Speaker 1: are in the stuff to blow your mind. Discord. Somebody
Speaker 1: had shared a video about the sameness of monsters in
Speaker 1: modern pictures, which is an interesting argument that maybe I
Speaker 1: have some critiques on. But you can't. You cannot say
Speaker 1: that these monsters are all the same in this picture.
Speaker 1: They all feel distinct. They feel like they definitely arise
Speaker 1: from different planets, from different different evolutionary paths, and you
Speaker 1: get a taste of their culture as well.
Speaker 3: That's right. Yeah, so we had the brain mutant, he's
Speaker 3: the Prince of Mars. But then there is also this
Speaker 3: furry spider beetle. He's like a cross between a giant
Speaker 3: killer insect and a squatch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is outr of the Red Planet, and he's
Speaker 1: ravenous and warlike, but plotting, not just brutal violence like
Speaker 1: the King of the Fire Planet. No, he's more like,
Speaker 1: you know, he's sneaky. He has some wonderful lines to
Speaker 1: his this bit where he's speaking in this creepy voice,
Speaker 1: and the translation I had was, I am Utyr of
Speaker 1: the Red Planet, and I will devour your entrails by
Speaker 1: the light of Utar and its seven moons. So good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like I was saying, strangely dark and good like
Speaker 3: creepy imagery. In my version, I think he was actually
Speaker 3: called Crassus, which is the most different of names we've
Speaker 3: reviewed so far. I'm not sure what explains that difference.
Speaker 1: Now, the other male alien in this picture is this
Speaker 1: fleshless creature that kind of looks like a bear skeleton
Speaker 1: that's kind of floating there. He has no name as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, and all we know is
Speaker 1: that is his homeworld is a place where the people
Speaker 1: gave up their material form ages ago, and now they're
Speaker 1: just animate beast bones floating around and talking and laughing creepily.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're rasping phantoms from beyond. Who are just who
Speaker 3: are just pure embodied hate? And our fang bone buddy here, Yeah,
Speaker 3: he's a mockery of life itself. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The one thing they all have in common, aside from
Speaker 1: being males, is that they all detest the fact that
Speaker 1: they have been kidnapped. They do not like it at all.
Speaker 1: But they're powerless against the superior technology of.
Speaker 3: Venus, Right, Gamma and Beta have it locked down, because
Speaker 3: as powerful as these monsters are, they cannot overpower science,
Speaker 3: which Gamma and Beta have on their side. They've got
Speaker 3: some powerful technology that even a real, real strong, beefy
Speaker 3: reptile cyclops can't overcome.
Speaker 1: But of course, as the plot develops, like we said,
Speaker 1: love tears this duo apart. You know, Gamma is thirst
Speaker 1: for blood. Yeah, love and thirst for blood. Beta gets
Speaker 1: fed up and she resorts to her old ways. We
Speaker 1: get this big reveal, which I think is an ideal
Speaker 1: reveal for any movie. This is a great plot twist
Speaker 1: for any film. Suddenly reveal that one of your main
Speaker 1: characters is a space vampire. She gives into her dark
Speaker 1: thirst is essentially you know, cursed by Gamma for her
Speaker 1: for giving into this thirst. And then Betas basically decides, well, heck,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna let the males loose. I'm going to
Speaker 1: strike a bargain with the males, and we're just going
Speaker 1: to rampage over this planet and we're going to do
Speaker 1: what we like with Earth.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right. So Beta vamps a guy she like,
Speaker 3: you know, there's some rancher guy, and she drinks his
Speaker 3: blood and then when Gamma finds out, it's like, oh no,
Speaker 3: that's a death sentence. Back on Venus again. Politics like
Speaker 3: a vamporism is a political issue in the interplanetary politics
Speaker 3: of this movie, where it's like a known crime that
Speaker 3: has been observed and dealt with in the past, and
Speaker 3: if you drink the blood of a human you will
Speaker 3: face the death penalty on v.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it raises a lot of questions, Like I was wondering,
Speaker 1: what is it like on the shadow planet? Is everyone
Speaker 1: a vampire there? Or are these like former Venusians who
Speaker 1: had to acquire some sort of vampiric infection in order
Speaker 1: to survive on a shadow world? Like what's going on here?
Speaker 1: There's something there, There's something under the surface. And it's
Speaker 1: so tantalizing because it feels thought out, it feels whole.
Speaker 1: It doesn't feel like just a you know, just a
Speaker 1: scrap of sci fi thrown into this romance.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Again the movie, it's catching you off guard. Every
Speaker 3: single twist and turn. We were screaming at this, just
Speaker 3: an amazing twist.
Speaker 1: And when we say space vampire, she can turn into
Speaker 1: a bat and it looks pretty good, looks pretty good
Speaker 1: a big.
Speaker 3: Bat at one point. At one point, Lolo Gonzalez like
Speaker 3: points at it because it's swooping down to attack Gamma
Speaker 3: and he's like, look a vulture. But so yeah, from
Speaker 3: here we get moving into the third act.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, wait, There's one more important bit here, and
Speaker 1: that is that Beta has also a lot with the
Speaker 1: Prince of Mars. So I don't know if they're going
Speaker 1: to be married and rule over Mars. There's some talk
Speaker 1: of this, though it's also pointed out by the Prince
Speaker 1: of Mars that he doesn't particularly find her attractive. But
Speaker 1: it seems like they're willing to work through this.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there's a great part where he's like, you
Speaker 3: are very ugly, but I what does he say? He's like,
Speaker 3: you are extremely ugly to me, but I admire your
Speaker 3: dedication to hatred or something. Yes, And she's like, oh,
Speaker 3: Like she's really excited by this observation.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Her plan now is so with the loose Males,
Speaker 1: they're going to destroy the initial settlement of Earthlings and
Speaker 1: then they're going to spread out and just take out
Speaker 1: the rest of the planet. But she realizes if she's
Speaker 1: going to lead this, she needs to she needs to
Speaker 1: assign tasks to the different monsters, so she divides humanity
Speaker 1: up among the loose males. So Utr gets the children,
Speaker 1: that's the spider monster uk or Uk. He gets the animals,
Speaker 1: and he seems fine with this. He's like, yes, let
Speaker 1: me at those cows.
Speaker 3: I will eat cows.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Beta and the Prince of Mars they're going
Speaker 1: to I think they're just going to get the blood
Speaker 1: of humanity. They they bond over their thirst for blood,
Speaker 1: and they're like, let's do it. They seem to leave
Speaker 1: the Bone Guy out of this entirely. He shows up,
Speaker 1: lad does he? He disappears from the movie at one point.
Speaker 1: He is in the scene where all the aliens, all
Speaker 1: the loose males attack our hero, but he's not very
Speaker 1: obvious in that scene. You kind of see clattering bones
Speaker 1: in the background, like maybe they couldn't figure out how
Speaker 1: to properly bring that to life on screen. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I really thought that the Bone Guy disappeared from the movie,
Speaker 3: but yeah, he could be wrong, so I don't recall
Speaker 3: him in the conclusion. Does anybody defeat him in the
Speaker 3: final battle?
Speaker 1: No? No, he does kind of vanish at that point
Speaker 1: because all the other monsters get some sort of a
Speaker 1: cool death. So Ouk's face is burned off by I
Speaker 1: think by the robot. They're kind of wrestling.
Speaker 3: There's a robot or burns in my thing? Yeah, m hm.
Speaker 1: The brainiac guy, the big brain guy is shot in
Speaker 1: the eye by the boy with like a slingshot I think, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: with a slingshot, and then his brain deflates like a
Speaker 1: punctured volleyball. Yeah, that's a nice grizzly scene. Utyr the
Speaker 1: spider Beast is forced to bite himself and kill himself
Speaker 1: with his own venom brutal. Oh, and then Beta has
Speaker 1: a pretty awesome death scene as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she goes to attack Gamma, and Gamma sort of
Speaker 3: like dodges out of the way at the right time,
Speaker 3: and then Beta gets staked with like vampire staked with
Speaker 3: a branch that's sticking up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then all that, the Fleshless One is never defeated,
Speaker 1: So I don't know, maybe he we don't know what
Speaker 1: part of humanity was given over to him. Perhaps he
Speaker 1: just went out and claimed it and he's the one
Speaker 1: who wins the day.
Speaker 3: Oh but there's one last thing I almost don't want
Speaker 3: to say because I don't want to spoil it because
Speaker 3: it's so good. But there's a stinger right at the
Speaker 3: end of the movie. If you don't want to hear it,
Speaker 3: if you don't want to be spoiled, you want to
Speaker 3: see the movie for yourself, maybe you should stop right here,
Speaker 3: but if you're okay with it. The surprise at the
Speaker 3: end where Tor and the jukebox fall in love. Yes,
Speaker 3: amazing reveal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because Tour makes eyes at the jukebox pretty early.
Speaker 1: He's like hey uh. And then at the end they're
Speaker 1: happy together. They're leaving the planet, they have found each other,
Speaker 1: and they're flying away in a spaceship.
Speaker 3: Yeah. He like compliments the jukebox. He's like going up
Speaker 3: to the glass saying, like, what beautiful bulbs you have?
Speaker 1: Yes. So at the end, everybody's happy, everyone's in love.
Speaker 1: Monsters and the forces of evil have been defeated, and
Speaker 1: it seems like political stability has been maintained for the
Speaker 1: interplanetary community.
Speaker 3: Gamma in the end learns that it was wrong to
Speaker 3: kidnap males from all the planets to take them back
Speaker 3: to Venus. Instead, she's like, hey, look, I'm not going
Speaker 3: back to Venus. I found a man on Earth i'm
Speaker 3: in love with, so we're just going to hang out
Speaker 3: here in Mexico.
Speaker 1: Yeah, though he no longer has a cow, so I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what he's going to do. Oh yeah, you
Speaker 1: know a cow, you know, and stripped to bones by.
Speaker 3: To bones with a stand. So yo. Yeah, the cyclops
Speaker 3: reptile comes in and like bites the cow and then
Speaker 3: the cow is just clean, like a bone model of
Speaker 3: a cow on a stand with like bars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they did a great job.
Speaker 3: But anyway, I was gonna say, Loriano, he's always going
Speaker 3: to find a way to get by.
Speaker 1: It's true. Yeah, he's a survivor.
Speaker 3: So ship of monsters what a delight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this one really is a delight. I highly recommend
Speaker 1: viewing this now. I think I should also add that
Speaker 1: all versions of this are apparently in black and white.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any evidence of an actual color
Speaker 1: cut of the film. If you think back to our
Speaker 1: Santo and the Tomb of Dracula episode, we discussed how
Speaker 1: at least later, at least, you know, close to a
Speaker 1: decade later, you had this tradition of shooting in black
Speaker 1: and white and in color for different markets. I don't
Speaker 1: think that was the case here. I ran across some
Speaker 1: color images of the film, but I think these were
Speaker 1: just colored stills that were used to promote it.
Speaker 3: Oh that would make sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but still, even in black and white, this film
Speaker 1: is just it's so alive you'll just be drawn right now.
Speaker 3: People, or oh forever?
Speaker 1: All right? Well, if you would like to check out
Speaker 1: additional episodes of Weird House Cinema, you can find it
Speaker 1: in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. You'll
Speaker 1: find that wherever you get your podcasts. Weird House Cinema
Speaker 1: publishes on Friday. We're primarily a science podcast, and you'll
Speaker 1: find our core episodes of the show Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind on Tuesdays and Thursdays, an Artifact episode on Wednesdays,
Speaker 1: listener mail on Mondays, and Vault Entry over the weekend.
Speaker 1: That's a rerun.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 3: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 3: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 3: to suggest a topic for the future, just to sayalo,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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