Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 3: today on Weird House Cinema, we are finally going to
Speaker 3: be devoting a full episode to a movie that we
Speaker 3: have referenced in passing quite a bit over the years.
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's come up as often as
Speaker 3: Highlander two, but it's got to be close. This is
Speaker 3: the subject of a fan favorite episode of Mystery Science
Speaker 3: Theater three thousand from season three with Joel and another
Speaker 3: example of one of our favorite niche subgenres, low budget
Speaker 3: atomic age sci fi horror thrillers, directed by Roger Corman,
Speaker 3: which played as part of a double bill at your
Speaker 3: local drive in in the fifties. This one. Most of
Speaker 3: these movies are great because they're usually less than seventy
Speaker 3: minutes long. This one's at the the longer end of
Speaker 3: that scale. It's like sixty nine seventy minutes, you know,
Speaker 3: they get even shorter. Attack of the Crab Monsters is like,
Speaker 3: what sixty two minutes or something, But it's still right
Speaker 3: in the zone. And as I've said before, I want
Speaker 3: to be on record that I think it's okay for
Speaker 3: feature films to be that short. You don't need to
Speaker 3: try to stretch it out, as even this short movie
Speaker 3: does with all these scenes of driving and parking.
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, modern filmmakers, you can make them this short
Speaker 2: we approve.
Speaker 3: Oh wait, but I didn't say the name yet. Sorry,
Speaker 3: Today we're talking about it Conquered the World from nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty six, starring Peter Graves, Beverly Garland, and a devious
Speaker 3: Earth betraying Lee Van Cleef, who is redeemed in the end.
Speaker 3: You know. So this is a movie I've seen primarily
Speaker 3: in the Mystery Science Theater episode, and I guess because
Speaker 3: of the MST framing, i'd never really give it a
Speaker 3: serious chance on its own terms. I actually had seen
Speaker 3: it on its own before, but still just kind of
Speaker 3: with the mind of looking for the cheesy bits, and
Speaker 3: there are plenty of those, we can talk about them.
Speaker 3: But this movie is not bad. This is a pretty
Speaker 3: solid scrappy drive in film.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah. This is a film I too, had seen
Speaker 2: numerous times in its MST three K format over the decades,
Speaker 2: but this was actually my first time watching it straight up.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I feel like, as is often the case
Speaker 2: with the best MST three K episodes, the underlying movie
Speaker 2: is very watchable on its own. You know, it has
Speaker 2: some wonky pacing at times, nothing really zings visually, at
Speaker 2: least as it's intended to zing.
Speaker 3: I mean, I would say the monster zing's but mostly
Speaker 3: because of how funny it looks.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, yeah, it does not inspire terror, but it
Speaker 2: is amazing and in a different way. Yeah. It has
Speaker 2: a couple of spirited performances that we'll discuss, and it
Speaker 2: at least bats around some deeper sci fi concepts as
Speaker 2: well as some rather obvious anxieties about communist brainwashing. Now,
Speaker 2: this is not a film about communists, but as is
Speaker 2: often the case with some of these sci fi films
Speaker 2: about alien minutes from this time period, you know, it's
Speaker 2: very clear that they're getting into some of the popular
Speaker 2: anxieties about communism in the way that they're describing and
Speaker 2: dealing with this extraterrestrial threat.
Speaker 3: In most of these movies with alien brainwashing, and it's
Speaker 3: the same case in this one. The alien ideology is
Speaker 3: less controversial and specific, and this one it's about ridding
Speaker 3: human beings of emotion, which At first that sounds like
Speaker 3: kind of a placeholder themes, like oh yeah, okay, but
Speaker 3: it actually leads to a couple of interesting dialogue scenes,
Speaker 3: Like they go deeper with that theme than you would
Speaker 3: expect for a movie of this sort.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I feel like I've always enjoyed those scenes,
Speaker 2: Like this is a film that is sixty percent living
Speaker 2: room dialogue scenes in which luckily they do get into
Speaker 2: some of these topics. It's like thirty five percent driveways
Speaker 2: and then some lab scenes and caves scene sprinkled to
Speaker 2: fill out the rest of it. But it moves right along.
Speaker 2: I feel like I always end up loving it when
Speaker 2: I watch it. Yeah, and it at least bats around
Speaker 2: some deeper concepts, even even if the same. At the
Speaker 2: same time, you have to acknowledge that this is a
Speaker 2: fast film. This is a cheap film. I think they
Speaker 2: filmed it in five days. Like all of that taken
Speaker 2: into account, it holds up really well.
Speaker 3: I agree, and I think the movie literally I think
Speaker 3: actually the weakest element of it is the padding. I
Speaker 3: think if you were to edit out about ten to
Speaker 3: fifteen minutes of this movie, cut it down to like
Speaker 3: a fifty to fifty five minute film, it would be
Speaker 3: really solid. Like you just cut out a lot of
Speaker 3: the driving and the three point turns, the dramatic three
Speaker 3: point turn. I'm sorry, Roger, they're not I'm not buying it.
Speaker 3: That's not as great as you think it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, A lots of parking scenes. And then
Speaker 2: you know, anytime we're outdoors, I feel like it feels
Speaker 2: like it's a thousand degrees like direct sunlight a high noon.
Speaker 2: It is not a technical masterpiece.
Speaker 3: Another one of the weak points. I would say, no
Speaker 3: offense to him personally, nothing against Peter Graves, but Peter
Speaker 3: graves performance in this movie I think is quite wooden.
Speaker 3: He's like pressure treated Pine in this But it's funny
Speaker 3: because they put him opposite actors who I think for
Speaker 3: a movie like this, are doing a fantastic job. We've
Speaker 3: got Beverly Garland and Lea van Cleef and they are
Speaker 3: wonderful in this movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with Peter Graves, it's interesting because Peter Graves certainly
Speaker 2: has has a style, you know, and this is very
Speaker 2: much a sort of teeth gritted square kind of performance.
Speaker 2: You know, this is Peter Graves and he's here to
Speaker 2: it by the books, but at the same time there,
Speaker 2: I think there are some very weird choices in his
Speaker 2: character that I mean, I don't know what you would
Speaker 2: ask God him to do, you know. So we'll get
Speaker 2: into that when we get into the plot a bit more.
Speaker 2: Because he ultimately his character is ultimately like the champion
Speaker 2: of human emotion, and yet his character seems to have
Speaker 2: only like maybe two emotions and makes some and engages
Speaker 2: in some very cold blooded murder as the plot progresses.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he is the advocate for the benefits of emotion
Speaker 3: as a motivating force for humans, and yet he doesn't
Speaker 3: really display any Levan Cleef is arguing against us having
Speaker 3: emotions and is giving a quite passionate performance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and is often in the throes of emotion, and
Speaker 2: I guess it kind of works with that regard, Like
Speaker 2: he he understands the throes of emotion and sees how
Speaker 2: this affects other people and has glimpse a path out
Speaker 2: of that trap. Peter Grive's character is more like get emotions, good, must,
Speaker 2: We've got to keep them. That's what makes it special.
Speaker 3: Now I want to talk briefly about this movie's meta
Speaker 3: because there's an interesting contradiction here. I think despite the
Speaker 3: fact that this movie has a famously goofy looking monster.
Speaker 3: When you actually get to it in the film, it
Speaker 3: mostly shows up in the last three minutes or so, well, no,
Speaker 3: a little bit before that, mostly in the last ten
Speaker 3: minutes or so. When you see the monster, it is
Speaker 3: not very convincing, It is not very scary, and in
Speaker 3: fact is quite hilarious. But the exact same monster design
Speaker 3: when rendered as an illustration gazing into your Soul from
Speaker 3: the movie poster rendering is awesome. I think that this
Speaker 3: monster looks great on every poster I've seen for It
Speaker 3: Conquered the World. In fact, I've got a poster for
Speaker 3: this movie framed in my office because it's one of
Speaker 3: my favorite fifties movie posters.
Speaker 2: It is indeed a terrific poster, and it's just a
Speaker 2: test to the craft that they can make it look
Speaker 2: this good when nothing else in the movie really looks
Speaker 2: this good.
Speaker 3: But further regarding the meta, oh man, this has some
Speaker 3: great taglines. So one of the posters, of course, it
Speaker 3: has the title. It's got a screaming Beverly Garland. It's
Speaker 3: got people being attacked by these sort of you know,
Speaker 3: mind control bats. It's got the creature from Venus, staring
Speaker 3: into our souls with red eyes. But then it's got
Speaker 3: some some text on it, so it says it conquered
Speaker 3: the world. Every man it's prisoner, every woman its slave.
Speaker 3: See world conquered by the horrible beast from beyond the stars.
Speaker 3: See the hideous flying fingers of the monster. And then
Speaker 3: below that, I think we see Leavan Kleef with like
Speaker 3: his little blow torch kind of oh yeah, monster like
Speaker 3: it's looking in the window of a house. But that
Speaker 3: doesn't ever happen in the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but certainly the monster the Benefactor looks amazing here.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I mean, I guess they couldn't really even
Speaker 2: attempt to depict the monster carrying a woman though, because it,
Speaker 2: as we see, it's so low to the ground.
Speaker 3: Yes, how would that even work. It's arms are not
Speaker 3: long enough to carry a human body. Yeah, well t
Speaker 3: rex arms, but they're mounted on the sides.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: No, wait, hold on, I said that, but I take
Speaker 3: it back, because actually the weight it's drawn in the
Speaker 3: poster here it has short little arms, but in the
Speaker 3: movie it does sort of reach out with its arms
Speaker 3: and really grab around people. That's how Lee van Cleef
Speaker 3: bites it. In the end, the monster just reaches up
Speaker 3: and grabs him with the with the claw.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they kind of reach up, but not so much out.
Speaker 2: It would still be hard to imagine this creature carrying
Speaker 2: a woman. All Right, we're not going to feature trailer
Speaker 2: audio on this one. But instead, Joe, why don't you
Speaker 2: just go ahead and recite the film's most famous monologue
Speaker 2: for us here.
Speaker 3: Oh, you're putting me on the spot, but I guess
Speaker 3: we should. We should do that. Do that near the beginning,
Speaker 3: because this is another one of the most famous things
Speaker 3: about the movie. I've already praised the scripts, so put
Speaker 3: that aside. It is I think, a pretty tight, kind
Speaker 3: of scrappy script. It's got some interesting ideas. This ending
Speaker 3: monologue is atrocious. Here's how it goes. He learned almost
Speaker 3: too late, that man is a feeling creature, and because
Speaker 3: of it, the greatest in the universe. He learned too
Speaker 3: late for himself that men have to find their own
Speaker 3: way to make their own mistakes. There can't be any
Speaker 3: gift of perfection from outside ourselves, and when men seek
Speaker 3: such perfection they find only death, fire, loss, disillusionment. The
Speaker 3: end of everything that's gone forward men have always sought
Speaker 3: an end to the toil and misery, but it can't
Speaker 3: be given. It has to be achieved. There is hope,
Speaker 3: but it has to come from inside, from man himself.
Speaker 3: And I like to sometimes. Of course, it is Peter
Speaker 3: Graves who says this at the end of the movie,
Speaker 3: and it's also a very bloated, wooden kind of delivery.
Speaker 3: But I like to imagine this monologue being given by
Speaker 3: David Huddleston as the Big Lebowski in The Big Lebowski,
Speaker 3: and it has to be achieved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it would have taken. It would have had
Speaker 2: a different energy certainly, But yeah, this is the ending monologue.
Speaker 2: This is ultimately like the the thesis statement for the picture,
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 3: I guess so to defend what comes before this monologue,
Speaker 3: I think the film makes these points without this hilarious
Speaker 3: speech at the end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just sort of like patting it out a little bit, maybe, yeah,
Speaker 2: and trying to punctuate it.
Speaker 3: It's the verbal equivalent of another parking scene.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, if you want to watch it conquered
Speaker 2: the world, you can certainly go out and do so.
Speaker 2: As of this recording, this one isn't available as a
Speaker 2: legit stream anywhere you can find it if you look around,
Speaker 2: but couldn't find it on any of the legit streaming platforms.
Speaker 2: You're also hard pressed to get a DVD of it,
Speaker 2: though there are some for sale and reasonable prices and
Speaker 2: some of the familiar websites, but I don't know who
Speaker 2: is putting them out, so I don't know what kind
Speaker 2: of releases these are. But there is not a Blu
Speaker 2: ray release. And while famously featured in that nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: one episode of MST three K, I don't think this
Speaker 2: episode has ever been made available on disc. So the
Speaker 2: rights for this film and a handful of other AIP films,
Speaker 2: including the amazing Colossal Man and I Was a Teenage
Speaker 2: Werewolf sadly seemed to be held up. And it's a
Speaker 2: shame because it conquered the world certainly deserves placement in
Speaker 2: a proper physical release of Roger Corman's films.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I got confused because I have a couple of
Speaker 3: different Corman box sets and this wasn't in either of them,
Speaker 3: so I had to go elsewhere. But yeah, so this
Speaker 3: has come up on the show before. There's a number
Speaker 3: of films on this list that are apparently being held
Speaker 3: up by the same rights holder. And this came up
Speaker 3: because we were wondering, why isn't the amazing Colossal Man
Speaker 3: viewable at all? Really?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and this would to be the answer. So
Speaker 2: you know, these things tend not to last forever. So
Speaker 2: you know, at some point in the future these films
Speaker 2: will be released, they'll get some nice physical additions and
Speaker 2: become available on streaming. But until that time, we're left
Speaker 2: with what we can get.
Speaker 3: But I agree with your statement that it conquered the
Speaker 3: world belongs in any proper you know, fifties Corman box set.
Speaker 3: It's I would say it is up there with movies
Speaker 3: like Not of This Earth, except it's a little bit flabbier.
Speaker 3: There's a little more, you know, there's a little more
Speaker 3: stuff you could cut out, not if this Earth has
Speaker 3: similar strengths, but I think is a little tighter.
Speaker 2: Yeah. All right, let's talk about the folks involved in
Speaker 2: this production, starting at the top with someone we've talked
Speaker 2: about in the show before, and that's Roger Corman, the
Speaker 2: director and producer here who lived nineteen twenty six through
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four. Corman was, of course the Wizard of
Speaker 2: b Movies, and a prolific creator of late fifties drive
Speaker 2: in flicks. We've covered numerous Corman produced and or Corman
Speaker 2: directed films on Weird House Cinema already, including sixty four's
Speaker 2: Mask of the Red Death, which is probably among his
Speaker 2: best work, as well as some of his many entertaining
Speaker 2: low budget films like nineteen fifty seven's Not of This Earth.
Speaker 2: Seth joined me on Weird House for an episode on
Speaker 2: the nineteen fifty nine beat Nick horror comedy A Bucket
Speaker 2: of Blood, and this is our first episode about a
Speaker 2: Corman directed film since his death earlier this year at
Speaker 2: the age of ninety eight.
Speaker 3: Though we may come back to Corman's Vincent Price Poe
Speaker 3: movies this October.
Speaker 2: Yes, so this was one of four Corman directed films
Speaker 2: released in fifty six, but the only sci fi or
Speaker 2: horror title. Swamp Woman, which also had Beverly Garland, was
Speaker 2: a crime picture, and both Gunslinger with Beverly Garland and
Speaker 2: The Oklahoma Woman with Peggy Castle were westerns. This was
Speaker 2: the year before Attack of the Crab Monsters, and as
Speaker 2: Michael Weldon points out in the Psychotronic Film Guide, this
Speaker 2: was only Corman's second sci fi film, which is it's
Speaker 2: always interesting to realize this sort of thing when we
Speaker 2: think about Roger Corman, who's best remembered for so many
Speaker 2: of these sci fi and or horror pictures, but he
Speaker 2: also did a lot of westerns and other sorts of
Speaker 2: flicks as well.
Speaker 3: It's hard to believe he only did four movies in
Speaker 3: this year though. I mean, yeah, pick up the pace, Roger.
Speaker 2: Well, those are just the director's credits. I didn't check production,
Speaker 2: but yeah, he was, you know, ratchet it up. I
Speaker 2: think the late fifties were really his key years of output. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Was it fifty seven that he I want to say,
Speaker 3: made either eight or eleven movies that year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean he would pump them out. I mean
Speaker 2: even this film again shot in apparently five days, shot
Speaker 2: in California, with key scenes taking place at Bronson Cave
Speaker 2: in Griffith Park, which has come up time and time
Speaker 2: again on the show a popular place in California to
Speaker 2: shoot your otherworldly or just desolate scenes.
Speaker 3: In this movie, they say that the creature from Venus
Speaker 3: is living there because the conditions inside mimic those on Venus.
Speaker 3: I don't know about that.
Speaker 2: All right, Let's get into the writing Here. Lou Rusoff
Speaker 2: is credited with the screenplay. He Lived nineteen eleven through
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty three, screenwriter and producer whose other credits include
Speaker 2: fifty Five's Day The World Ended, fifty six is The
Speaker 2: She Creature, sixty threes Beach Party, and sixty seven Zontar
Speaker 2: The Thing from Venus. I think that's kind of a
Speaker 2: reworking of some of the same ideas here. And his
Speaker 2: production credits include the US version and or US release
Speaker 2: of nineteen sixties Black Sunday.
Speaker 3: You know, I was surprised when watching the credits this time,
Speaker 3: and I noticed that the screenplay credit went to Rusof
Speaker 3: and not to who I assumed was the writer of
Speaker 3: this movie, which is Charles B. Griffith. Charles B. Griffith
Speaker 3: wrote Not of This Earth, wrote Attack of the Crab Monster.
Speaker 3: Was a common writer in the Corman scene of this time,
Speaker 3: and was famous for being able to crank out a
Speaker 3: script that was pretty witty and tight and quickly made.
Speaker 3: He could make he could write him fast.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, he apparently did some work on the
Speaker 2: script anyway. He's listed on IMDb as an uncredited screenwriter
Speaker 2: post film, so you know he got in there and
Speaker 2: worked on it to some degree anyway. But indeed, you
Speaker 2: think of Corman pictures from this area, You think of
Speaker 2: Charles B. Griffith, who lived nineteen thirty through two thousand
Speaker 2: and seven. You know films like Not of This Earth Attack,
Speaker 2: of the Crab Monster. It's a little shop of hors
Speaker 2: and bucket of blood. All right, let's get into the
Speaker 2: cast here, and I'm going to not go in billing order.
Speaker 2: We'll reference the billing order, but we're going to take
Speaker 2: it by couple because this film centers mostly around two
Speaker 2: married couples, the Nelson's and the Andersons, though I'd argue
Speaker 2: that it's chiefly the story of the Andersons.
Speaker 3: That's where the real emotional meat is.
Speaker 2: Yes, all right, so let's start with the Nelson's here,
Speaker 2: starting with Doctor Paul Nelson, played by the top Build
Speaker 2: Peter Graves. Graves live nineteen twenty six through twenty ten,
Speaker 2: best known to many for his long running hosting gig
Speaker 2: on A and E's Biography, or at least for some
Speaker 2: of us. I don't know if they're still rerunning episodes
Speaker 2: that Graves hosted, but he was a longtime host on Biography,
Speaker 2: and of course he had a long run on the
Speaker 2: original TV series Mission Impossible from sixty seven through seventy three.
Speaker 2: I don't think I ever watched any of that, but
Speaker 2: I do remember watching some of the late nineteen eighties reboot,
Speaker 2: a reboot that I only recently learned resulted from a
Speaker 2: Hollywood writers strike. The studio was like, well, we got
Speaker 2: to make episodes of something, but we can't use writers.
Speaker 2: And they realized, well, let's just go back and get
Speaker 2: old Mission Impossible scripts that weren't filmed and just film
Speaker 2: them in Australia, and that's what they did. That's where
Speaker 2: this show came from. But I remember watching it and
Speaker 2: digging it and getting very excited about a Nintendo game
Speaker 2: titled Mission Impossible that was some sort of tie in.
Speaker 2: I think it was an official tie in, but also
Speaker 2: just a legendarily difficult games. It's one of those Nintendo
Speaker 2: games that I don't know if anyone ever beat this thing.
Speaker 2: It was just so difficult, but also had some interesting
Speaker 2: like stealth mechanics that seemed ahead of their time.
Speaker 3: I'm looking it up now. I never played this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and nothing in the game really matches up with
Speaker 2: what you see in a Mission Impossible TV show, But
Speaker 2: I don't know. I was excited for it at the time.
Speaker 3: That was common for video game tie ins to movies
Speaker 3: and TV shows at the time. There's almost no resemblance
Speaker 3: to the plot of the original thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Graves was a US Air Force vet. He
Speaker 2: was also, of course the brother of James Arness. Graves
Speaker 2: is his stage name. Arness We talked about in the
Speaker 2: past because he was the Thing from Another World and
Speaker 2: graves acting credits go back to the early fifth these
Speaker 2: including an early starring sci fi role in fifty two's
Speaker 2: Red Planet Mars, but he scored much more success when
Speaker 2: he appeared in a supporting role in Billy Wilder Stalog
Speaker 2: seventeen in nineteen fifty three. He was not nominated, but
Speaker 2: the film earned AUSTAR nominations for two of its stars
Speaker 2: and its director. Graves went on from here to have
Speaker 2: a long career on TV and screen, appearing in the
Speaker 2: likes of fifty four's Killers from Space, fifty five's The
Speaker 2: Night of the Hunter seventy nine. Yeah, yeah, The Night
Speaker 2: of the Hunter not I think there was later a
Speaker 2: TV version it's different, but yeah, he was in the picture.
Speaker 2: He was in nineteen seventy nine The Clonis horror. Another
Speaker 2: MST three K favorite of many.
Speaker 3: Oh, is that the one about Going to America.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, it's a you know, it's a dull person
Speaker 2: movie about clones. But it's one that is I think,
Speaker 2: kind of stupid, but also kind of great and has
Speaker 2: been sort of re explored, we should say, I guess
Speaker 2: with subsequent clone movies. Yes, he was, of course in
Speaker 2: a nineteen eighties Airplane. He was in ninety three's Adams
Speaker 2: Family Values and nineteen ninety nine's House on Haunted Hill.
Speaker 2: I think he kind of played himself in both of those,
Speaker 2: like a TV presenter role, and he also pops up
Speaker 2: in two thousand and two's Men in Black two.
Speaker 3: Now we've already talked a bit about the irony of
Speaker 3: the casting here, where they have Peter Graves playing the
Speaker 3: sort of the earthling hero who stands up for human
Speaker 3: emotions and yet is quite stiff and clenched in his performance.
Speaker 3: But so he is, in a I think, traditional interpretation,
Speaker 3: the hero of the movie.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, yeah, he is, you know, and I guess
Speaker 2: he has the look for it right. He plays a
Speaker 2: he's a space flight scientist. He runs this satellite command
Speaker 2: center that I think is a government operation, or at
Speaker 2: least it's protected by government forces.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, I mean this is from the fifty so,
Speaker 3: which remember, like you know, we didn't really have our
Speaker 3: full space program yet at the time, you know, the
Speaker 3: Apollo program wouldn't until like nineteen sixty one. So they're
Speaker 3: imagining a space program that is being run by the military.
Speaker 3: And so, yes, Paul Nelson is he's I think the
Speaker 3: creator of a satellite that is sort of a first
Speaker 3: satellite in orbit sort of thing. And he is also
Speaker 3: depicted as great friends with Lee van Cleef's character, who
Speaker 3: will get to in a minute.
Speaker 2: All right, So that's doctor Paul Nelson. And doctor Paul
Speaker 2: Nelson's wife is Joan Nelson, played by Sally Frasier, who
Speaker 2: lived nineteen thirty two through twenty nineteen. I mean, glamorous
Speaker 2: b movie star of the nineteen fifties, whose credits include
Speaker 2: another couple of notable genre pictures in the late fifties,
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty eight's War of the Colossal Beast. Oh, actually
Speaker 2: two more, Giant from the Unknown and The Spider Hmmm.
Speaker 3: Trying to think if I've seen any of those.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure I've seen War of I think I've
Speaker 2: seen War of Colossal Beasts, but I can never remember
Speaker 2: if that is the film that comes before The Amazing
Speaker 2: Colossal Man or after, because the films before and after
Speaker 2: The Amazing Colossal Man featured the same makeup, this kind
Speaker 2: of like scarred faced Cyclops makeup, So I don't remember
Speaker 2: off the top of my head.
Speaker 3: Here, I think the Amazing Colossal Man is the first one.
Speaker 3: So War of the Colossal Beast has got to be
Speaker 3: a sequel or a subsequent film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but there is. I think there is another Giant
Speaker 2: Man picture in the mix.
Speaker 3: There, just looks it up. Yeah, Colossal Man is fifty seven,
Speaker 3: War of the Colossal Beast is fifty.
Speaker 2: Eight, and then what year is the Cyclops?
Speaker 3: Oh with Lon Chaney Junior. I think that that's fifty seven.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, that is the same makeup as War of
Speaker 2: the Colossal Beast, I see.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: So Joan is Paul's loving wife. This is a very
Speaker 2: much supporting role, but she gets to have some fun
Speaker 2: moments late in the picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she has a wonderful Paul. I have a present
Speaker 3: for you've seen? Yes, yeah, thats out. It's an alien
Speaker 3: in mind control device.
Speaker 2: All right, let's move on to the Andersons here starting
Speaker 2: with doctor Tom Anderson played by the legendary Lee van Kleef,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen twenty five through nineteen eighty nine. It's
Speaker 2: old Angelized himself. Now, Van Cleef's career would ultimately really
Speaker 2: take off in the mid nineteen sixties. That's when Sergio
Speaker 2: Leoni cast him in the Clint Eastwood Western for a
Speaker 2: few dollars more, followed by a role as the villain
Speaker 2: Angelize and sixty six is The Good, the Bad, and
Speaker 2: the Ugly, And this just cemented him as a spaghetti
Speaker 2: western superstar. And you know, before and after that too,
Speaker 2: he appeared in tons of westerns. Like you look at
Speaker 2: his filmography, it's really like mostly westerns and some crime
Speaker 2: pictures and that sort of thing. Director John Carpenter, of course,
Speaker 2: grew up as a fan of all these westerns and
Speaker 2: cast him as police Commissioner Bob Hawk in the nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty one classic Escape from New York picture, where I
Speaker 2: think Van Cleeve really shines. This is one of my
Speaker 2: favorite supporting characters, I think probably of all time, one
Speaker 2: of those supporting characters that leaves you wanting more and
Speaker 2: has some interesting hooks about where this character has been
Speaker 2: and where they might be going, and you want to
Speaker 2: know those stories. But of course the film doesn't take
Speaker 2: us there. It just teases us with these possibilities.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and of course I love Him. And The Good,
Speaker 3: the Bad and the Ugly. The Good, the Bad and
Speaker 3: the Ugly is a movie of many villains. Two main
Speaker 3: villains sort of alluded to in the title there. One
Speaker 3: is played by Eli Wallach, who is the more humorous
Speaker 3: and talkative of the sort of villainish characters with kind
Speaker 3: of shifting loyalties. But Lee van Kleef's character is the
Speaker 3: very straight, hard, bad, mysterious, serious villain. Nice.
Speaker 2: Now, at this point in Lee van Cleef's career fifty six,
Speaker 2: he'd already had a few years experience in TV and film,
Speaker 2: but with loads of credits as you often see, like
Speaker 2: he was working a lot. Let's see, he made his
Speaker 2: film debut in the Oscar winning western high Noon from
Speaker 2: fifty two, and in fifty three he was in the
Speaker 2: Beast from twenty thousand fathoms. He acted in again a
Speaker 2: lot of westerns and crime projects throughout his filmography, But
Speaker 2: one of the interesting things is that this film The
Speaker 2: Beast from twenty thousand Fathoms and Escape from New York.
Speaker 2: Those are apparently the only three sci fi or horror
Speaker 2: pictures that he ever did, though I believe he did
Speaker 2: act in at least one sci fi TV series in
Speaker 2: the early fifties, and he played a ninja on TV's
Speaker 2: The Master in the mid eighties, but you know that
Speaker 2: wasn't sci fi or horror, and so in this picture, yeah,
Speaker 2: he is Anderson, a disgruntled physicist whose big ideas about
Speaker 2: aliens have pushed him outside of the mainstream. But then,
Speaker 2: of course the picture of centers around the fact that
Speaker 2: he ends up making actual contact with an alien intelligence
Speaker 2: from the planet Venus, and it places him in the
Speaker 2: role of well, it could be Earth's savior or perhaps
Speaker 2: it's destroyed. For a lot of the picture, it depends
Speaker 2: which side of the philosophical debate you're on.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of interesting things about the way
Speaker 3: this character is written and the way Van Cleef plays him.
Speaker 3: So the character is in some ways portrayed as a crank,
Speaker 3: like he has these ideas that are not accepted by
Speaker 3: other scientists or by the the you know, the the
Speaker 3: civil leadership, and they have to do with aliens of course,
Speaker 3: and nobody pays attention to him. They're just like, ah,
Speaker 3: he's going off on his favorite subject again, and this
Speaker 3: makes him embittered to the fact that nobody's paying attention
Speaker 3: to him, which I think is pretty interesting because that is,
Speaker 3: you know, it almost makes me think of when when
Speaker 3: sun Zoo came up recently in our episodes about the Ninja,
Speaker 3: where you know, he's talking about who to find within
Speaker 3: the enemy's ranks to recruit to your side, to be it,
Speaker 3: to be a secret agent and betray the enemy, and
Speaker 3: one of the things he says is look for someone
Speaker 3: who has who feels they have been mistreated or unappreciated
Speaker 3: by enemy leadership, someone who feels their genius is not
Speaker 3: being made use of by the enemy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that matches up.
Speaker 3: So he's portrayed as simultaneously like in some ways an
Speaker 3: appreciated scientific genius but also at the same time a
Speaker 3: crying who people are dismissive of, at least with his
Speaker 3: ideas about aliens. But then he also interestingly, I would say,
Speaker 3: he plays this scientist character in a way that's very
Speaker 3: textually different than most scientist characters in horror and sci
Speaker 3: fi movies of the fifties, who are usually portrayed as
Speaker 3: very straight laced and with high social class signifiers in
Speaker 3: the way they speak. Van Cleef's character does not come
Speaker 3: off that way. He is playing a physicist who has
Speaker 3: a more rough, aggressive and kind of sounds like he
Speaker 3: has probably working class origins and speaks with a speaks
Speaker 3: with a distinctive voice rather than the kind of formal
Speaker 3: or or character free way that a lot of scientist
Speaker 3: characters in these movies talk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you're right. He does stand out in that regard.
Speaker 2: And and it's interesting too, like his some of his
Speaker 2: ideas that especially the ones we hear about early on,
Speaker 2: like you know that they are actual ideas that are
Speaker 2: sometimes batted around concerning the possibility of extraterrestrials, like the
Speaker 2: idea that they're watching and that they might interfere if
Speaker 2: they didn't like some development that was happening here, you know,
Speaker 2: Like some of these ideas, you know, they're they're not
Speaker 2: they're not out of line with with some of the
Speaker 2: speculative notions that are discussed regarding alien intelligence. Uh. And
Speaker 2: then of course it ends up taking on this this
Speaker 2: higher purpose that he sees the idea that through contact
Speaker 2: with aliens we can save ourselves. And of course this
Speaker 2: is a common theme in u apology. And and then
Speaker 2: I guess in in some like serious contemplations on what
Speaker 2: first contact would mean for humans, you know, the possibility
Speaker 2: that it could greatly improve life on Earth if we
Speaker 2: had outside contacts something some other force that could help
Speaker 2: us fix our problems.
Speaker 3: I don't know if we've talked about this recently, maybe
Speaker 3: it's come up on the show before, but I noticed
Speaker 3: a pretty strong tendency these days for beliefs about UFOs
Speaker 3: and alien life to essentially merge with religious thinking, for
Speaker 3: it to be actually not really separate propositions at all. Though,
Speaker 3: like a lot of people who believe strongly in UFOs
Speaker 3: and alien presence on Earth these days, that belief sort
Speaker 3: of edges into ideas about them being spiritual or heavenly
Speaker 3: beings that are in some way going to save us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it is. It is a common theme. I've
Speaker 2: seen it in crystal shops too, and actual and actual
Speaker 2: crystals for your christ consciousness. And then on the next
Speaker 2: table you got crystals for aliens, for extraterrestrial So I
Speaker 2: guess you can grab one of each, you know, put
Speaker 2: one in each palm, mix them up, mix and match.
Speaker 3: Oh but Lee Van Cleeve's character Tom Anderson, Doctor Tom
Speaker 3: Anderson here is the husband of Claire Anderson, who is
Speaker 3: also a very interesting character in this movie, played by
Speaker 3: Beverly Garland.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, Beverly Garland, who, to be clear, has second
Speaker 2: billing in the picture, even though we're discussing her fourth,
Speaker 2: I want to stress that she did have second billing.
Speaker 2: Her performance here is great. It's spirited, and she plays
Speaker 2: she doesn't just play like a damsel or some character
Speaker 2: who's just kind of like, oh, honey, I wish you
Speaker 2: wouldn't betray humanity to the aliens. Like she is supportive,
Speaker 2: like fiercely supportive, but she is also very skeptical, and
Speaker 2: she voices her skepticism and in the end she's also
Speaker 2: she's more than willing to fight for the man she
Speaker 2: loves and the planet she loves in a really inspiring
Speaker 2: fashion like this is ultimately, especially for this Ara, this
Speaker 2: is pretty strong role and she does a great job
Speaker 2: with it, like any she now, to be clear, occasionally
Speaker 2: she has some some some maybe not all that thought
Speaker 2: out lines she has to work with. But even then,
Speaker 2: like Beverly Garland, gives it her all, and she makes
Speaker 2: those those lines live on the screen when they should
Speaker 2: have been that they shouldn't have have had as much
Speaker 2: life to them.
Speaker 3: That's the part where she's talking to leaving Cleef. They're
Speaker 3: in the middle of talking about aliens, by the way,
Speaker 3: and she says something like, I'll stay with you not
Speaker 3: just because you're my husband, but because I love you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, lines like that. She's she'sually fighting for her life
Speaker 2: with lines like that. But she does a great job you.
Speaker 3: But yeah, she she has to manage. I think a
Speaker 3: difficult character here who's like her motivations shift over the
Speaker 3: course of the movies. She's always conflicted. But at the
Speaker 3: beginning of the movie, she's conflicted because she loves her husband,
Speaker 3: but she thinks he's losing his mind. She thinks that
Speaker 3: he is having delusions of contact with alien life. But
Speaker 3: then when it becomes clear he is actually talking to
Speaker 3: an alien and he was right all along and she
Speaker 3: was wrong for doubting him. Then it shifts to her
Speaker 3: realizing that his vindication is not a good thing because
Speaker 3: it means that he is actually partnering with this alien
Speaker 3: to take over the planet and destroy everything that she
Speaker 3: holds sacred and so she like makes a case to him.
Speaker 3: This movie involves a lot of scenes of people just
Speaker 3: like laying out an argument for why Earth should not
Speaker 3: be conquered, and she does great in those scenes, Like
Speaker 3: she sort of brings things up to Lea Vancleef about
Speaker 3: what this alien conquest would mean for their family and
Speaker 3: their marriage, and it's like things that he hadn't occurred
Speaker 3: to him before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so again I love this performents. Beverly Garland
Speaker 2: lived nineteen twenty six through two thousand and eight. She'd
Speaker 2: been enacting in TV and films since I think nineteen
Speaker 2: forty nine at this point, and It Conquered the World
Speaker 2: seems to have led to a number of additional low
Speaker 2: budget sci fi films, though she'd also act in supporting
Speaker 2: roles on bigger pictures and of course on TV. For instance,
Speaker 2: I think at least at one point, most people would
Speaker 2: be familiar with her from her role on TV's My
Speaker 2: Three Sons, but she also appeared in such films as
Speaker 2: fifty six's Caruku Beast of the Amazon Not at This
Speaker 2: Earth in fifty seven, so we have discussed her on
Speaker 2: the show before The Alligator People in fifty nine, Twice,
Speaker 2: Told Tales in fifty three, Pretty Poison in sixty eight,
Speaker 2: in Airports seventy five, In seventy four.
Speaker 3: Is Alligator People a sci fi horror movie where like
Speaker 3: a mad scientist is turning people into alligators and the swamp?
Speaker 2: Yep, that's the one, okay.
Speaker 3: I wonder if is that the movie that is being
Speaker 3: referenced in the Rocky Ericsson song It's a Cold Night
Speaker 3: for Alligators.
Speaker 2: I believe this is widely accepted, yes, okay, with as
Speaker 2: much clarity as we can have regarding what Rocky's singing
Speaker 2: about exactly in a number of these songs, but I
Speaker 2: think that is often pointed too, is the reference point
Speaker 2: for that awesome song.
Speaker 3: If you don't know what we're talking about and you're
Speaker 3: in the mood for some B movie themed rock and roll,
Speaker 3: go listen to the Rocky ericson album The Evil One,
Speaker 3: produced by Stu Cook. Yeah, it has this song on it.
Speaker 3: It's a Cold Night for Alligators has the great line
Speaker 3: the dogs choke on their barking when they see alligator
Speaker 3: persons in the bog and fog.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, great album, especially for October. I highly recommend
Speaker 2: putting that one on.
Speaker 3: I've listened to this one so many times. It's a
Speaker 3: personal favorite.
Speaker 2: All right. Getting into some of the bit performers here,
Speaker 2: we have to mention Dick Miller is in this, of course,
Speaker 2: legendary character actor and Corman mainstay who in nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: eight through twenty nineteen. He plays Sergeant Neil here, who
Speaker 2: I guess kind of he heads up the X comm
Speaker 2: squad of soldiers who are going to help us do
Speaker 2: battle with the aliens eventually, but mostly they just wander
Speaker 2: through the woods.
Speaker 3: They're primarily comic relief. They wander around in the woods
Speaker 3: that they stand guard at gates. They make wise cracks.
Speaker 3: Dick Miller makes some very nineteen fifties like my wife jokes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's a He has a lot of interaction
Speaker 2: with the private Manuel Ortiz, who is in this picture
Speaker 2: played by Jonathan Hayes Bor nineteen twenty nine American actor,
Speaker 2: best known for his work in Corman films, especially Little
Speaker 2: Shop of Hers, in which he played the main character Seymour.
Speaker 2: He was also in fifty seven's Not of This Earth
Speaker 2: and pops up in the nineteen eighty two Wings Houser
Speaker 2: film Vice Squad. This is a bit comedic role, and
Speaker 2: I have to say, not a shining moment in his filmography.
Speaker 2: Don't love it. And let's see who else we have. Oh,
Speaker 2: we have Russ Bender here playing Brigadier General James Patrick.
Speaker 2: He lived nineteen ten through nineteen sixty nine. General American
Speaker 2: B movie actor often played these kind of like authority figures.
Speaker 2: He was also in fifty seven's The Amazing Colossal Man
Speaker 2: and fifty eighth War of the Colossal Beast that plays
Speaker 2: a different character in each.
Speaker 3: Now, Rob, I think we've got to talk about the
Speaker 3: special effects here, especially the creation of the monster suit,
Speaker 3: because I have read some behind the scenes accounts of
Speaker 3: even the crew and cast at the time reacting with
Speaker 3: disbelief at this monster. I think there's a famous story
Speaker 3: of Beverly Garland being like that conquered the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, the benefactor the monster here was designed and
Speaker 2: monster suited by Paul Blasdell, who I've talked about on
Speaker 2: the show before, because he is responsible for some very
Speaker 2: iconic monster designs from this time period, including it the
Speaker 2: Terror from Beyond Space that we recently talked about on
Speaker 2: the show.
Speaker 3: That was great.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. He lived nineteen twenty seven through nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 2: responsible for Let's see what are some of the other creatures,
Speaker 2: The Beast with a Million Eyes and the Day the
Speaker 2: World Ended from fifty five not of this Earth, which
Speaker 2: I thought those were pretty cool little saucer creatures in there,
Speaker 2: Invasion of the Saucer Men Teenagers from Outer Space, which
Speaker 2: has a great dog zafting scene in it where the
Speaker 2: one of the alien zaps a dog and turns it
Speaker 2: to bones. So you know, he's involved in a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff in his designs. Have they have a signature
Speaker 2: look to them which is great and has and is
Speaker 2: you know, kind of worshiped by people who love nineteen
Speaker 2: fifties B movies, like they're model kits of the monster
Speaker 2: from this picture. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: it is also ineffective. Is it is a goofy looking
Speaker 2: monster that does not inspire terror, That is a great
Speaker 2: pains to convincingly interact with human actors. It just ultimately
Speaker 2: falls flat. But you can't help but love it at
Speaker 2: the same time.
Speaker 3: It's I how did I actually think it is a
Speaker 3: kind of great design If you were just going to
Speaker 3: say focus on the face and the shape of it
Speaker 3: and render it as an illustration or something. And that's
Speaker 3: why I think it works quite well on the movie poster.
Speaker 3: It just doesn't work as a physically embodied prop moving
Speaker 3: and interacting with actors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks and I'm not the first to make
Speaker 2: some of these comparisons to it, but it looks like
Speaker 2: the mascot, the demonic mascot for an arti Choke Heart company, Like,
Speaker 2: it looks like a big artichoke heart with tentacles, tentacle arm,
Speaker 2: clawed arm things. And it apparently at one point it
Speaker 2: didn't have that conical head. It was like flat because
Speaker 2: they were like, well, it's Venus and their head in
Speaker 2: their minds, Well, it would be crushed flat by the gravity.
Speaker 2: I don't know, we know that's that wouldn't exactly be
Speaker 2: the case. It was crushed, It would be by the atmosphere.
Speaker 2: But at any rate, they put it on on set
Speaker 2: and he realized, no, this thing's way too short. We've
Speaker 2: got to make it taller. So let's just make its
Speaker 2: head like an inverted ice cream cone. And that's what
Speaker 2: they did.
Speaker 3: I think that I've read that the cast were comparing
Speaker 3: it to an ice cream cone on the set because
Speaker 3: it's got a conical head, no body, and arms coming
Speaker 3: out of the side of its head. Uh. There's a
Speaker 3: great part in the movie where it's it's got sort
Speaker 3: of a little like, you know, a round skirt around
Speaker 3: the bottom of it, and it starts just sort of
Speaker 3: pooping out these little bats that fly away, the mind
Speaker 3: control bats. But as you said, artichoke, I've always thought
Speaker 3: of it as an artichoke. It is an art to
Speaker 3: choke from hell.
Speaker 2: If you look up images of the original costume, it
Speaker 2: was apparently read. Its name on set was Beulah. I
Speaker 2: believe Paul Blasdell called it as such himself. Oftentimes these
Speaker 2: monster effects have like little pet names behind the scenes,
Speaker 2: and this was Beulah. And yeah, I mean it. It's
Speaker 2: it's a it's a terrible and amazing design at the
Speaker 2: same time, it like it. It has stood the test
Speaker 2: of time. People love it. And it looks evil, it
Speaker 2: looks like it's up to no good. Yes, yeah, And
Speaker 2: I don't want to be too hard on it. There
Speaker 2: are maybe a couple of scenes with it that that
Speaker 2: do resonate, and it's it's interactions with the human actors
Speaker 2: are not entirely unconvincing, but clearly it needed a lot
Speaker 2: of help.
Speaker 3: Well, it's one of those things where you know that
Speaker 3: scene in ed Wood where Bella Legosi is being attacked
Speaker 3: by the octopus, but they don't have the motor to
Speaker 3: make its arms move, so he's got to kind of
Speaker 3: throw the arms around himself. Yeah, there's a similar thing
Speaker 3: happening in this movie where it can't really be made
Speaker 3: to in a perspective shot, be made to attack people,
Speaker 3: so instead we see people leaping into its claws.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you run at it, sort of skid into
Speaker 2: its claws and then go flat. Yeah. And like there's
Speaker 2: one scene in particular where the stunt person or actor
Speaker 2: doing this like really goes for it, really eats it
Speaker 2: and makes it look good, and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, it's looking alive now. But like, again, it
Speaker 2: takes a lot of help for this thing to look
Speaker 2: even halfway believable on the screen.
Speaker 3: Like for the people who get mulled by it are
Speaker 3: essentially like a puppy running up to somebody for a hug.
Speaker 2: Yeah. At the same time, I will acknowledge that part
Speaker 2: of the plot is that the thing can't move around
Speaker 2: all that well, and it's kind of like isolated, so
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's sort of a revelation, right, Like Leavan Kleef
Speaker 3: is all about, Oh, it's super powerful, it's perfect, it
Speaker 3: can do anything. But Beverly Garland is like, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: but it can't leave this cave and it's like stuck
Speaker 3: theirs and it needs people to do its dirty work.
Speaker 3: That makes it sound like it's not as powerful as
Speaker 3: you think. And she's got a point. Yeah, maybe it's
Speaker 3: supposed to look somewhat awkward and unable to act very
Speaker 3: effectively within Earth's atmosphere because it's not from here and
Speaker 3: it needs people to do its job for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it is highly intelligent and highly manipulative, as
Speaker 2: we'll get into all right. One final note on the
Speaker 2: music for this picture, though the music is nothing really remarkable,
Speaker 2: but the music is credited to Ronald Stein, who lived
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty through nineteen eighty eight. Composer who worked on
Speaker 2: a lot of low budget films, particularly for American international pictures,
Speaker 2: the likes of Not of This Earth, Attack of the Crab,
Speaker 2: Monster's Queen of Blood, Dementia thirteen, and more, including The
Speaker 2: Rain People, Francis Ford Coppola's picture prior to the Godfather.
Speaker 3: I didn't really notice much about the music itself one
Speaker 3: of the so the music wasn't bad, it wasn't great.
Speaker 3: But one thing I did notice that was quite funny
Speaker 3: was the pairing of certain pieces of music with what
Speaker 3: was happening on the screen. Rob, did you notice that
Speaker 3: some of the most dramatic music in the movie was like,
Speaker 3: while we were watching Peter Graves do a three point
Speaker 3: turn in the truck.
Speaker 2: I did. I don't think I really made note of that,
Speaker 2: but I always think when I think music in this
Speaker 2: I think about the musical stinger to the monologue where
Speaker 2: he finishes the monologue and then you hear bomb bomb
Speaker 2: bomb bomb or something to that effect. You know, just
Speaker 2: really just punctuating the whole message.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree with that, Uh, but it is it
Speaker 3: is funny getting the like the real like the strings
Speaker 3: are ascending as they're literally somebody coming out of a driveway.
Speaker 2: Yeah. There are whole scenes in this film where it's like, well,
Speaker 2: I drove up all the way, now I've got to
Speaker 2: go back, so I'll go back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let me turn around, go back down this winding
Speaker 3: road we sell people go up these s curves. I
Speaker 3: don't know, like five or six times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, well let's get into the plot of
Speaker 2: it Conquered the World.
Speaker 3: Okay. Well, the action begins with a bunch of scientists
Speaker 3: in a lab at what I think is an Air
Speaker 3: Force bace. It's a military installation of some kind. You
Speaker 3: got technicians in white coats, electronic equipment beeping all over
Speaker 3: the place, these big view screens on the walls, and
Speaker 3: radar pinging with contacts from the sky. And here in
Speaker 3: command of all this is doctor Paul Nelson. That's again
Speaker 3: Peter Graves. The people in this lab are preparing for
Speaker 3: a satellite launch. And note that this movie was released
Speaker 3: in nineteen fifty six, which was a year before the
Speaker 3: Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first ever artificial satellite to
Speaker 3: achieve orbit. So what is being depicted here was at
Speaker 3: the time pure science fiction. Humans had not yet at
Speaker 3: the time of this movie put a satellite into orbit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's always fun to sort of put these in
Speaker 2: the perspective of where we actually were with the space
Speaker 2: exploration at the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So some of the chatter between the scientists
Speaker 3: in the room reveals that the satellite program costs nine
Speaker 3: million dollars as wow, and it is at moderate risk
Speaker 3: of crashing into an unrelated airplane during liftoff. They're like, oh,
Speaker 3: I better get that plane out of the way. Peter Graves,
Speaker 3: he's got sort of corny, overwrought moments pretty much immediately,
Speaker 3: Like in this very first scene, one of one of
Speaker 3: the technicians says, you know, all systems are ago, and
Speaker 3: Graves looks almost directly into the camera and says, then
Speaker 3: man is finally ready to move into space.
Speaker 2: But these lines are perfect for Graves. Yeah, they're over
Speaker 2: the top, but like Man, he delivers them like few others.
Speaker 3: Well, I can just imagine, like, you know, Joan, his
Speaker 3: wife bakes him a macaroni and cheese TV dinner and
Speaker 3: sets it down in front of him, and he looks
Speaker 3: up and says, Men is finally ready to achieve sustenance.
Speaker 3: So from here we go into a general's office to
Speaker 3: meet our next main character, Tom Anderson. That's leave Enkleef.
Speaker 3: And in this scene we learned that Tom Anderson is
Speaker 3: a highly accomplished and respected physicist with quote every degree imaginable.
Speaker 3: So I guess that means he also has an MBA.
Speaker 3: He's got a you know, an accounting degree, all that stuff.
Speaker 3: He once worked on something called the perpetual missile project.
Speaker 3: I was trying to imagine what could that mean. A
Speaker 3: missile that is, a missile that lasts forever.
Speaker 2: What I don't know. My best guess is that it
Speaker 2: is maybe something like the supersonic low altitude missile or
Speaker 2: slam concept in the mid fifties, or just pure technobabble
Speaker 2: like it could be. It could be either perpetual missile.
Speaker 3: But anyway, we discover that Tom has lately developed some
Speaker 3: fringe ideas that are a cause for concern to the
Speaker 3: military leadership and to his colleagues. This has led to
Speaker 3: a sort of career exile. The way he explains that,
Speaker 3: Van Cleef says, there are a lot of fat heads
Speaker 3: who are not ready to hear the truth. And you know,
Speaker 3: it's classic rank behavior. People don't accept my ideas because
Speaker 3: they are stupid and wicked and want to hide the truth, which,
Speaker 3: you know, it's funny. I understand exactly why this is,
Speaker 3: because it makes for a better storytelling dynamic. But it
Speaker 3: is kind of unfortunate that most of the time in
Speaker 3: the movies the people who act like this are proven right. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: But anyway, so van Kleef. He's imploring the general to
Speaker 3: call off the satellite project before it launches. Why well,
Speaker 3: it seems that a smaller satellite that the Space program
Speaker 3: tried to launch some time ago exploded before it reached orbit,
Speaker 3: and Anderson says that this was no mere accident. It
Speaker 3: was a warning from someone out there. Other planets in
Speaker 3: our Solar system are watching us closely every minute of
Speaker 3: every day to make sure that we don't put anything
Speaker 3: into space, because if we do, that means we're a
Speaker 3: threat to them, and if we're a threat to them,
Speaker 3: they may choose to destroy us. So for the sake
Speaker 3: of all humankind, we've got to stock this whole project.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and as I alluded to earlier, this is not
Speaker 2: a crazy concept in and of itself. In the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 2: for example, cosmologist Edward Harrison argued that the first life
Speaker 2: form to achieve a certain level of interstellar technology at
Speaker 2: least within you know, certain distances, because of course the
Speaker 2: universe is so vast, but the first civilization to achieve
Speaker 2: a certain level of interstellar technology would essentially become a
Speaker 2: super predator intent on preventing other civilizations from advancing sufficiently.
Speaker 2: In their technology, you know, because it's like, well we
Speaker 2: have achieved it, anybody else achieving it, they could be
Speaker 2: as bad as us or worse. So we've got to
Speaker 2: prevent them. We've got to blow out their satellites, we've
Speaker 2: got to interfere with their launches. This is also a
Speaker 2: concept that is explored in the Three Body Problem.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, do you want to make a sound in
Speaker 3: a dark forest if you don't know what else is
Speaker 3: out there? And the idea that there's sort of a
Speaker 3: game theory logic at work within the dark forest, where
Speaker 3: it's in anybody's interests there to destroy anything else that
Speaker 3: makes a sound. Yeah, But in this case, the general
Speaker 3: is not dissuaded. He ignores Anderson's warnings, and the satellite
Speaker 3: launches into space. Now, the movie, as we've said, does
Speaker 3: not have a lot of visual excitement, but here there
Speaker 3: is some good use of downward facing blast off footage
Speaker 3: stock footage, I assume, but I don't really know what
Speaker 3: it would be from. I think that's kind of interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is not one like there are certain bits
Speaker 2: of stock footage you see a lot in movies from
Speaker 2: this period, or you feel like you've seen some repetition
Speaker 2: and that might just be similarity between different bits of footage,
Speaker 2: but yeah, this one felt new to me anyway.
Speaker 3: We cut from here to a dinner party three months later,
Speaker 3: so we're told some time has passed and here there
Speaker 3: are four characters, so we have Tom Anderson this leave
Speaker 3: Enkleef and his wife Claire played by Beverly Garland, and
Speaker 3: they are hosting at their house Paul Nelson as Peter
Speaker 3: Graves and his wife Joan played by Sally Fraser. And
Speaker 3: so this is where we learned that and Tom are
Speaker 3: actually good buddies. I don't know exactly how far back
Speaker 3: they go, but they've been friends for a while. Apparently
Speaker 3: they have a tendency to geek out about rocket science
Speaker 3: at the dinner table, and Joan has to beg them
Speaker 3: to stop talking about conical graduations, and there is in
Speaker 3: the scene something there's kind of a tension because there
Speaker 3: is clearly something Tom wants to bring up with Paul,
Speaker 3: but Claire is distressed. She is like, please do not
Speaker 3: start talking about this in front of company. They're gonna
Speaker 3: think you're insane. So whatever it is, it's something he's
Speaker 3: been champing at the bit to talk about, and she
Speaker 3: does not want him to bring.
Speaker 2: Up did we see what they were eating? I can't.
Speaker 2: I don't recall how they finished eating or hadn't started
Speaker 2: eating yet. And we're just doing drinks. There are a
Speaker 2: lot of drinks in this movie.
Speaker 3: They're talking about a pie, I think because Beverly Garland
Speaker 3: makes that quip. Somebody's like, ooh, this pie is so good.
Speaker 3: Did you make it? And Beverly Garland says, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's an old family recipe that my grandmother sold to
Speaker 3: the bakery. So Anywaym's not going to be able to
Speaker 3: resist sharing whatever it is he's not supposed to be
Speaker 3: talking about. So Tom takes Paul from the dining room
Speaker 3: into the living room and he pulls back a curtain
Speaker 3: to reveal this huge recess in the wall which is
Speaker 3: full of radio and stereo equipment, and then Tom tunes
Speaker 3: into some kind of signal on the dial which plays
Speaker 3: through the speakers. It is an eerie, hollow, humming sound,
Speaker 3: and Tom asks Paul, do you have any idea what
Speaker 3: you're listening to? Paul is flippant. He's like, is it
Speaker 3: the London Philharmonic? But Tom says no, it's Venus, And
Speaker 3: so at first Paul is like, oh, okay, so you're
Speaker 3: saying we're bouncing signals off of venus or something, or
Speaker 3: maybe it's radiating impulses geomagnetically or something. And Tom says, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: I don't mean the static. Can't you hear it the
Speaker 3: other thing. Listen to the voice. Listen to the voice, Paul.
Speaker 3: But Paul does not initially hear anything, and we don't
Speaker 3: hear to be clear, we don't hear an explicit voice either.
Speaker 3: We just hear the humming.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I guess it's to leave a little room
Speaker 2: open for the possibility early in the picture that he
Speaker 2: isn't hearing anybody that this is, you know, some unhinged
Speaker 2: behavior here or hallucination or something. Yes, but it also
Speaker 2: I have to It's also kind of similar to say,
Speaker 2: anytime a character has a conversation with a Wookie or
Speaker 2: a droid in the Star Wars universe, you know, where
Speaker 2: it's like, we don't understand what's being said, that there's
Speaker 2: some sort of conversation going on here.
Speaker 3: Yeah where. When these conversations happen later in the movie,
Speaker 3: Tom will often have to like repeat back what he
Speaker 3: has just heard from the other side. So it's those
Speaker 3: classic Wookie conversations. Yeah, what do you mean the hyperdrives broken? Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 3: while they're listening to the humming trying to hear the voice,
Speaker 3: the phone rings. It's for Paul. It's the Rocket Lab.
Speaker 3: They inform him that just this very moment, the satellite
Speaker 3: that they put into orbit three months ago has disappeared.
Speaker 3: It darted out of its bit and off into space.
Speaker 3: So Paul and Joan have to leave Claire in Tom's
Speaker 3: house in a hurry so Paul can deal with the satellite.
Speaker 3: And as they're going out and getting into the car
Speaker 3: to drive away, Joan says, I've always thought Tom was
Speaker 3: a little off tonight. He went too far. So anyway,
Speaker 3: they drive to the installation, but by the time they
Speaker 3: get there, the satellite is already back wherever it went.
Speaker 3: That was pretty quick, and Paul decides they're going to
Speaker 3: have to bring the satellite down for inspection. Is that
Speaker 3: a thing in reality with satellites? I don't know about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this is again it's a moment where you
Speaker 2: have to remind ourselves that the thing that they are
Speaker 2: depicting is near future science fiction and reality went a
Speaker 2: slightly different way with all of this.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, meanwhile, back at Tom and Claire's house, Claire
Speaker 3: is walking around fiddling with things nervously. She's in a
Speaker 3: state of anxiety. She is obviously unhappy that Tom started
Speaker 3: talking about the messages from Venus, even though he promised
Speaker 3: her that he wouldn't. So Tom goes to his covert
Speaker 3: Venus radio and he tunes in, but then, to our shock,
Speaker 3: he begins speaking to someone. Now, once again, we don't
Speaker 3: hear a voice on the other side. We just hear
Speaker 3: the spooky humming. It kind of oscillates at different frequencies.
Speaker 3: But Tom hears something because he responds to what the
Speaker 3: present says. He says, this is Anderson Acknowledge. Where are you? Yes, yes,
Speaker 3: it's true. I am your only friend. Nobody else even
Speaker 3: knows you exist, but they will and it will be
Speaker 3: the greatest day in the history of mankind. Now, at
Speaker 3: some point in this conversation, Beverly Garland comes out of
Speaker 3: the bedroom and like a big puffy nightgown with a caller.
Speaker 3: I love these old movie nightgowns. So she asks Tom
Speaker 3: to come to bed, but he is not ready. He says,
Speaker 3: he's here, darling. He drew the satellite to his world,
Speaker 3: to Venus, and now he's back. Within an hour, he's
Speaker 3: in the circling laboratory, just waiting to come down to
Speaker 3: us to save us. And Claire is obviously disturbed. She
Speaker 3: thinks he's going mad. But Tom is just a big
Speaker 3: ball of excitement. He says he's finally proven right. All
Speaker 3: of his theories about alien observers from other planets in
Speaker 3: the Solar System, they were all correct. He was right
Speaker 3: all along. But while in the past he didn't know
Speaker 3: if their intentions would be good or evil, he now
Speaker 3: knows that they're good. That this intelligence from Venus has
Speaker 3: returned with the goal of helping our planet to ascend
Speaker 3: and thrive. So later Tom falls asleep on the couch
Speaker 3: by his radio kit, and Claire comes out and lays
Speaker 3: a blanket over him, and it's a tender moment because
Speaker 3: she is frightened and bewildered by his behavior, but she
Speaker 3: still loves him and she wants him to be well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a nice little scene.
Speaker 3: So the next day there's a scene where the scientists
Speaker 3: are bringing down the satellite and it is not responding
Speaker 3: to their remote controls the way it's supposed to it
Speaker 3: eventually crashes somewhere near the base. In some ways, I
Speaker 3: think this is supposed to be one of the quote
Speaker 3: exciting scenes. It's creating a type of suspense, what's going
Speaker 3: to happen to the satellite? I don't think it works
Speaker 3: super well. I think they could have trimmed stuff like this.
Speaker 2: Not that there's a lot of space to trim.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well this could have gone in the pile with
Speaker 3: all of the parking scenes and the driving scenes.
Speaker 2: Yeah stuff, thin you risk cutting it down to like
Speaker 2: a nice lean forty minutes.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, but as we were saying earlier, I mean
Speaker 3: I think this movie could work as a good, like
Speaker 3: forty five minute you know, philosophical sci fi story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like basically like an Outer Limits episode.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, yeah. So Tom learns from his radio that
Speaker 3: the presence from Venus survived the crash and is now
Speaker 3: hiding in the mountains about ten miles south of the installation,
Speaker 3: And here we get our very first glimpse of the alien,
Speaker 3: moving slowly through the thick brush of a forest. We
Speaker 3: do not see its whole body. We see the conical
Speaker 3: tip of its head with some little antennae poking out
Speaker 3: and then it stops and reaches up and waves these
Speaker 3: clawed hands around. This part is already pretty funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's probably a bad sign when you're in the
Speaker 2: right thing, you're not showing your full monster. And it's
Speaker 2: already ridiculous because we've talked about other films where at
Speaker 2: least the first like in Mortal Kombat, the first little
Speaker 2: glimpse you get a goro, it worked really well. Yes,
Speaker 2: it's only as you reveal more that the problems become obvious. Here,
Speaker 2: it's a little hilarious from the get go.
Speaker 3: Oh you know what, I realized the static design of
Speaker 3: the monster face and it conquered the world is basically
Speaker 3: in the same zone as the goro punched in the
Speaker 3: groin face.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 3: Anyway, next we get a montage of all machinery coming
Speaker 3: to a halt. There's some clever use of stock footage
Speaker 3: played in reverse here to achieve a stopping effect on
Speaker 3: things like So the idea is the alien has managed
Speaker 3: to shut off every machine in the area. I think
Speaker 3: I saw some plot summary that said it managed to
Speaker 3: stop every machine in the whole world. I don't recall
Speaker 3: if they actually say that in the movie. I don't
Speaker 3: think they do well.
Speaker 2: The title of the movie is it conquered the World,
Speaker 2: And there's maybe like some brief mention of that, but
Speaker 2: the whole film feels very regional.
Speaker 3: Yes, the action is quite local. Yeah, so I don't
Speaker 3: know whatever's going on far away, at least within this talent.
Speaker 3: Around the military installation, all machines stop, and that's all
Speaker 3: machines of every kind, electrical gas combustion, all the cars
Speaker 3: come to a stop in the road. We see airplanes
Speaker 3: falling out of the sky. A train stops, we see
Speaker 3: I think a printing press stop printing, and it even
Speaker 3: stops just purely mechanical machines like Jones wind up watch
Speaker 3: stops working.
Speaker 2: This is like the same level of logic that you
Speaker 2: get in maximum Overdrive, where whatever is controlling all the
Speaker 2: machines controls everything from like a high tech vehicle to
Speaker 2: a toaster. Yeah, like whatever the alien is doing, it
Speaker 2: can stop a power plant, it can stop a wristwatch.
Speaker 2: Presumably like the drinking birds are no longer working.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, it stops dipping.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wind up toys are totally non functional.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that monkey is not clapping symbols anymore so, that's
Speaker 3: phase one of the takeover plan. Turn off all the
Speaker 3: machines begin phase two. Tom is on the radio with
Speaker 3: an alien. Now, why does his radio still work? Because
Speaker 3: the alien can specifically target certain machines to still function.
Speaker 3: They're the machines that belong to the alien's allies, and
Speaker 3: right now I think Tom is the only ally and
Speaker 3: Tom and Claire's household, so their stuff still works.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which again speaks to this being a very local invasion. Yes,
Speaker 2: maybe like maybe limited to a single California county. Yes,
Speaker 2: maybe not even municipal regions yet.
Speaker 3: So Tom's on the radio with the alien and he's
Speaker 3: reading off a list that he has created of control personnel.
Speaker 3: This includes the mayor of the town, the chief of police,
Speaker 3: the commander of the air Force base, and also his
Speaker 3: friend Paul Nelson. They say that these four men, along
Speaker 3: with their wives, will be the targets of the eight
Speaker 3: control devices that the Presence has brought with them from Venus,
Speaker 3: and it will take time on the scale of weeks
Speaker 3: to create more control devices. So this is all they've
Speaker 3: got right now. And then in a hilarious cutaway, we
Speaker 3: see these little mineoch type creatures, nasty little winged beasts
Speaker 3: scooting out from under the alien's costume and flying away.
Speaker 3: Now Here we begin a number of scenes that are
Speaker 3: the mind control attacks. So these flying creatures, they spread
Speaker 3: out all over the place, They swoop down on their targets,
Speaker 3: latch briefly onto the back of the neck, and then
Speaker 3: once they do and it only takes a few seconds,
Speaker 3: the target is fully obedient to the will of the
Speaker 3: benefactor from Venus, I think, in a seemingly psychic sense,
Speaker 3: like they automatically into it their orders. They don't have
Speaker 3: to check in via radio like Tom does.
Speaker 2: I guess there are a few moments in the in
Speaker 2: the in the plot though, where you're like, well, maybe
Speaker 2: it's not instant communication. Maybe they get like an update
Speaker 2: every few hours. I don't know. Yeah, but I'm going
Speaker 2: to try not to be too pedantic about it. Overall,
Speaker 2: pretty cool little mind control concept, I.
Speaker 3: Guess, yes. And then once they bite you and mind
Speaker 3: control you, they just fall off and die immediately. They
Speaker 3: say it's.
Speaker 2: Like a b sting, yeah, kind of like a face hugger,
Speaker 2: you know, yes, face hug Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now we learn that in this early phase of the
Speaker 3: plan that they're targeting these key leadership figures in the
Speaker 3: immediate vicinity of the crash site set where the satellite
Speaker 3: came down. But ultimately we learned that the way the
Speaker 3: being from Venus intends to help or save humanity is
Speaker 3: by subjecting all of us to a mind altering procedure
Speaker 3: which will leave us with no emotions, only logic. And
Speaker 3: Tom explains the rationale here, emotions are the source of
Speaker 3: everything bad in human society, all war, hate, stupidity, unnecessary strife.
Speaker 3: This purging of emotions will purge humankind of these evils
Speaker 3: and elevate us to a state of utopian rationality. Now,
Speaker 3: ultimately this plan comes under some serious interrogation by various
Speaker 3: characters in later scenes. But I first wanted to ask,
Speaker 3: so this is Tom's understanding of the alien's plan. We
Speaker 3: hear it explained in Tom's words, what the alien is
Speaker 3: going to do purge us of emotions and elevate us
Speaker 3: to a better existence. But I had a serious question,
Speaker 3: do we ever find out if the alien itself actually
Speaker 3: believes this? Like, from the alien's perspective, is it really
Speaker 3: trying to help us at least what it would consider help,
Speaker 3: or in the alien's own mind, is this just a
Speaker 3: mission of conquest and exploitation, and the emotion purging Utopia
Speaker 3: story is a way of manipulating Tom into helping it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know. There are various ways to sort
Speaker 2: of interpret this because on one level, I was thinking
Speaker 2: earlier about the earlier satellites that had failed gone missing,
Speaker 2: and Anderson's theory that this was due to alien interference.
Speaker 2: Perhaps those were different aliens, you know, the idea that
Speaker 2: there are different intelligence is in the Solar System that
Speaker 2: don't want Earth to advance too much. But then you
Speaker 2: have a few bad players on Venus who realize, actually,
Speaker 2: we can make this work for us. We need to
Speaker 2: get off Venus. We would love to manipulate these people
Speaker 2: and make them work for us, conquering their world.
Speaker 3: Because later we do learn that these creatures from Venus
Speaker 3: they have severe limitations their own environment, like they we
Speaker 3: sort of get the idea that Venus is lacking in
Speaker 3: the resources they need to achieve their ultimate goals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's also later discussed that the Venusians themselves
Speaker 2: lack emotion. Yeah, but at the same time, we've seen
Speaker 2: this creature's face. Its face is clearly evil, it's full
Speaker 2: of emotion. Yeah, so I don't know, the message is
Speaker 2: a little skewed here, like is it evil and I'm
Speaker 2: looking to manipulate our desire for betterment and Anderson's desire
Speaker 2: for human advancement? Or is this all just perfectly logical
Speaker 2: to it, like, of course I'm going to you know,
Speaker 2: take over key leaders and overthrow the government because these
Speaker 2: are all necessary logical steps that need to take place
Speaker 2: in order to bring about this new utopia. We don't
Speaker 2: really know. It's kind of the movie seems to have
Speaker 2: it both ways.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So I've got my own thoughts about the
Speaker 3: sort of emotion logic divide here that we can get
Speaker 3: into after we talk about some of the scenes where
Speaker 3: they discussed this. But before we get to that, in
Speaker 3: the middle of the movie, there are a lot of
Speaker 3: scenes of like Paul riding around on a bicycle to
Speaker 3: different locations trying to figure out what's going on. Paul
Speaker 3: sort of slowly gets wise to the fact that something
Speaker 3: is really wrong. But I had a question, if a
Speaker 3: wind up watch stops working, why would a bicycle work?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, because it's It's likewise the same question
Speaker 2: with maximum overdrive. Did the bicycles take off and if
Speaker 2: they didn't, why not Why is the bicycle immune to
Speaker 2: being maximum overdrived? Yeah, or maximum overdriven if you will.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure which term is preferred.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know the answer to that. But anyway,
Speaker 3: So in this middle, I'd say a big part of
Speaker 3: the middle of the movie is characters such as Tom's
Speaker 3: wife Claire and Paul becoming convinced that Tom is not
Speaker 3: hallucinating and that the plans of the benefactor from Venus
Speaker 3: are real. And so this leads to scenes where these
Speaker 3: characters are trying to talk since into Tom.
Speaker 2: And these scenes are really the meat of the movie. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I say that in a good way because they're
Speaker 2: generally entertaining scenes.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: If they weren't, the entire film would be a watch.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So there's one scene between Tom and Claire that's
Speaker 3: leev Ncleeve in Beverly, Garland, and he's trying to sell
Speaker 3: her on the benefits of being part of the alien's
Speaker 3: plan and purging all emotion. But she's like, if we
Speaker 3: have no emotion, will we won't we have no love
Speaker 3: for one another? And Tom is he's not dissuaded, but
Speaker 3: it seems like he doesn't really have a very good
Speaker 3: answer for this. He says something like, well, even if
Speaker 3: there are no emotions, they'll still need you. But Claire
Speaker 3: presses him on this. She's like, okay, but if you
Speaker 3: need me but you don't love me, what does that mean?
Speaker 3: So would I just basically work for you? And it
Speaker 3: seems that this kind of gets through. Tom doesn't really
Speaker 3: have a good answer, but he just kind of like
Speaker 3: is like, well, I can't think about that right now. Yeah,
Speaker 3: somewhere also in here, we've got the I've got a
Speaker 3: present for you scene, which is great but also a
Speaker 3: huge WTF scene, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Because because earlier we get a scene where Paul leaves
Speaker 2: Joan to go off on one of his bike rides
Speaker 2: to try and figure out the mystery, and he's like,
Speaker 2: don't you know, don't leave the window open, make sure
Speaker 2: you're inside, and like the door's open for a second,
Speaker 2: and we give you in like one of the flying
Speaker 2: bat creatures swoops in and we presume that it gets her.
Speaker 3: Yes, So Paul comes home and Joan is in. She's
Speaker 3: very much in Stepford wife mode. She's like, honey, welcome home.
Speaker 3: I love you. I have a present for you. Why
Speaker 3: don't you sit down? Right there, and I'll show you,
Speaker 3: you know, show you what I'm holding behind my back.
Speaker 3: And of course, what do you know, it's a mind
Speaker 3: control bat. Beautiful, thank you, thank you, Happy birthday. She
Speaker 3: releases it, and she's while it's attacking Paul. She's like,
Speaker 3: I'm going to go out for a while. I'll be
Speaker 3: back when you're feeling better, And so she goes out
Speaker 3: for a walk, but Paul bests the mind control bad.
Speaker 3: He kills it with a fire poker.
Speaker 2: And I rather like the scene where he kills it
Speaker 2: with the fire poker. It had some some oomph to it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's good. Uh. And then when she comes back,
Speaker 3: she thinks he has been turned. So these the people
Speaker 3: who have been turned by the mind control devices are
Speaker 3: not like omnipotent, like they don't fully understand everything. Uh
Speaker 3: So I guess that comes back somewhat on my guess
Speaker 3: about them being sort of psychic. She doesn't know he
Speaker 3: hasn't been turned. He's faking it, and he's like, will
Speaker 3: we ever go back to how we were? And she
Speaker 3: says no, the change is irreversible, and then Paul shoots
Speaker 3: her yes what yes, Like what if she was wrong
Speaker 3: about the fact that they couldn't go back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, what if there was some sort of cure? Yeah,
Speaker 2: so many questions here. So yeah, this is like really shocking.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think part of it is most of
Speaker 2: us at this point we've seen enough vampire and zombie
Speaker 2: films to be very well acquainted with the my beloved
Speaker 2: is no longer my beloved. They're a monster. Now I'm
Speaker 2: going to have to kill them. Seen. You know, he
Speaker 2: usually comes with a great deal of emotional anguish, and
Speaker 2: sometimes you know, it's it's the individual facing this choice,
Speaker 2: can't do it, you know, like their emotions are too strong.
Speaker 2: They're like, I know you're a zombie now, but I
Speaker 2: can't kill you. I'm gonna have to lock you in
Speaker 2: the basement instead, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: And most of the time in those scenes, there's like
Speaker 3: a lot of also just esthetic work being done to
Speaker 3: fully convince you like it's not the person anymore. They
Speaker 3: are not in there. It's a difference, it's just their
Speaker 3: body being controlled by a demonic entity or.
Speaker 2: So yeah, they want it. They have to drive home
Speaker 2: a very black and white scenario while also driving home
Speaker 2: that this is a terrible choice that is having to
Speaker 2: be made. Yes, but Paul does not hesitate. He just
Speaker 2: shoots her down in cold blood, then presumably has a
Speaker 2: smoke and finishes reading the newspaper. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's no exploration of the parameters here, no consideration of
Speaker 2: how much of her is truly in there anymore. And
Speaker 2: it's even weirder when you drag in the whole sort
Speaker 2: of like cold War anxiety aspects of this film, because
Speaker 2: it's kind of like, no, sir, I found out my
Speaker 2: wife was a secret Communist, and I did what any
Speaker 2: red blooded American would do, and it just comes off
Speaker 2: like darn. But Paul is a cold guy. Again. This
Speaker 2: is our champion of emotion in the film, and he
Speaker 2: shows very little emotion in making this fatal choice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. So that is a real tension and
Speaker 3: how these themes are realized within the movie because of
Speaker 3: how cold Paul is. But so later we get these
Speaker 3: scenes where Tom and Paul are themselves arguing about the
Speaker 3: plans of the benefactor from Venus. Paul is convinced basically
Speaker 3: of what's going on. He goes to talk to Tom
Speaker 3: about the merits of the plan. I think there are
Speaker 3: various they're planning to kill each other. Also in these scenes,
Speaker 3: because Tom has received orders from the alien that he
Speaker 3: has to kill Paul. I think Paul has plans of
Speaker 3: his own, but they're arguing it out, and so we
Speaker 3: get some speeches. One thing is that Tom says, you know,
Speaker 3: first of all, he tries to convince Paul to join him.
Speaker 3: He's like, he wants you on his side, next to me.
Speaker 3: He wants you so like, you know, come be, Come
Speaker 3: be the lieutenant of the Venus invasion plan. And Paul says,
Speaker 3: you want me to condone this reign of terror, to
Speaker 3: swear allegiance to this monstrous king of yours, to kill
Speaker 3: my own soul and all within reach. Well I won't, Anderson.
Speaker 3: I'll fight it till the last of breath in my body.
Speaker 3: And I'll fight you too, because you're part of it,
Speaker 3: the worst part, because you belong to a living race,
Speaker 3: not a dying one. This is your land, your world.
Speaker 3: Your hands are human, but your mind is enemy. You're
Speaker 3: a trader, Anderson, the greatest trader of all time. And
Speaker 3: you know why, because you're not betraying part of mankind,
Speaker 3: you're betraying all of it. That's a Peter Graves speech.
Speaker 3: That's pretty great.
Speaker 2: I mean, and you know, I have to say I'm
Speaker 2: glad they're doing this in person, because if this film
Speaker 2: we're set today, this whole conversation would take place on
Speaker 2: Facebook and it would just be super awful, and half
Speaker 2: of it would be in memes. Half of it would
Speaker 2: be memes.
Speaker 3: You know. Yeah, it's a comment. He's got a lot
Speaker 3: of little the mad face emoji reactions. Yeah, So he
Speaker 3: makes the case that he's being a trader. But they
Speaker 3: also have a conversation where Paul explains why the why
Speaker 3: he thinks that the emotion purging plan won't work. He's like,
Speaker 3: I think Earth is actually going to defeat these you know,
Speaker 3: these supposedly purely logical, mind controlled beings from Venus, because
Speaker 3: he says, for example, humans will feel emotional solidarity for
Speaker 3: one another, and their emotions will cause them to cooperate
Speaker 3: together and to sacrifice their own personal interests in you know,
Speaker 3: in the interest of better protect humanity as a whole,
Speaker 3: so they can coordinate and cooperate and make sacrifices in
Speaker 3: a way that these purely logical, rational, individualistic beings controlled
Speaker 3: by the aliens will not. Now I sort of get
Speaker 3: what they're going for there. I don't know if that's
Speaker 3: exactly the way I would frame it, but I think
Speaker 3: it raises a lot of interesting questions. I think the
Speaker 3: way I would think about it more is that the
Speaker 3: way Tom is thinking about logic versus emotion is just
Speaker 3: a little bit miscalibrated as to the roles these things
Speaker 3: actually play in how we act. Like, logic is a
Speaker 3: good way of formulating plans of action, right, It's better
Speaker 3: to think logically about what to do than to just
Speaker 3: act emotionally to try to figure out what you should do.
Speaker 3: But emotions generate all of the motivation states for action.
Speaker 3: So if you have a very logical plan about how
Speaker 3: to achieve a goal, the way you decide what your
Speaker 3: goal is as usually emotion like. You have emotional motivations
Speaker 3: that tell you what you want and what you think
Speaker 3: is good, and then you have logic to help you
Speaker 3: decide best how to achieve that thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and of course logic can be flawed. Logic can
Speaker 2: lead to incorrect answers like it's interesting to think about
Speaker 2: you Anderson here, like he has been he has followed
Speaker 2: a path that is both logical and emotional to reach
Speaker 2: this point where he risks dooming the planet, you know, yes,
Speaker 2: so yeah, it is hard to sort of tease tease
Speaker 2: these apart. You know, you get into the whole vulcan
Speaker 2: territory right of trying to figure out what a what
Speaker 2: a people would be like if they purge themselves of
Speaker 2: emotion and followed pure logic, you know, what what would
Speaker 2: that look like and what would be what kind of
Speaker 2: pitfalls would still be possible.
Speaker 3: But there's a great twist here because in one of
Speaker 3: these scenes where Paul comes over and he's arguing with
Speaker 3: Tom about what they should do, Claire actually sneaks out,
Speaker 3: like she she comes to hate this alien presence and
Speaker 3: she's like, you know what, I'm going to deal with
Speaker 3: this issue myself. So Beverly Garland steals Tom's rifle that
Speaker 3: he was going to use to kill Paul and then
Speaker 3: goes and gets in the car and drives away to
Speaker 3: find the alien. And she at one point, she I think,
Speaker 3: gets on the radio and says like I'm coming for you, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: and I love this. Like Claire, she gets in the car,
Speaker 3: arms herself, gets in the car and goes to find
Speaker 3: the cave where the alien lives, and she's like, I'm
Speaker 3: going to destroy it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. She's a woman of action, and Beverly Garland really
Speaker 2: brings a lot of energy to this role. Is great
Speaker 2: in this role, So like this alone is a breath
Speaker 2: of fresh air for movies of this time period.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and she has some great lines too. I think
Speaker 3: when she's going to kill it in the cave, she says,
Speaker 3: you think you're going to make a slave of the world,
Speaker 3: I'll see you in hell first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she sells it.
Speaker 3: She also tells it that it's ugly.
Speaker 2: It is ugly, Yeah, And I think that's one thing
Speaker 2: they were trying to sort of drive, like they're trying
Speaker 2: to like hold off this is one of the tricky
Speaker 2: things of having seen this picture so many times and
Speaker 2: or having seen that face on the poster. You know,
Speaker 2: the menace, the alien menace is ugly, and I think
Speaker 2: the film is crafted in a sense where they wanted
Speaker 2: that to be a big reveal and it you know
Speaker 2: that this would be a realization. Oh, the thing that
Speaker 2: we thought was a benefactor really as a hideous monster.
Speaker 2: And there's something about its appearance that cluses into this
Speaker 2: even more. But you know, what can you do? You
Speaker 2: got to put a monster on the poster.
Speaker 3: That's right. So eventually Tom is convinced. He's sort of
Speaker 3: he's talked down out of cooperating with the alien, which
Speaker 3: is pretty interesting. I don't know if I would normally
Speaker 3: expect the plot to work that way in a movie
Speaker 3: like this. I would normally expect some kind of I
Speaker 3: don't know, like sight or plot twist to change Tom's allegiance. Instead,
Speaker 3: he's just sort of convinced through argumentation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and well, and I think the fact too that
Speaker 2: his wife is in peril now, Like he realizes that
Speaker 2: she is in danger, right, and he has to go
Speaker 2: attempt to save her, but also rectify this problem that
Speaker 2: he is doomed that he's potentially brought to the planet.
Speaker 3: That's right. So Claire has run off to fight the
Speaker 3: alien herself. Tom is on Paul's side now, He's like, okay,
Speaker 3: we got to stop it. So Paul and Tom both
Speaker 3: run off to enact various parts of the plan. Tom
Speaker 3: arms himself with like a little flamethrower of some kind,
Speaker 3: like a it's not a huge flamethrower. What do you
Speaker 3: call this thing? It's like a little tiny, sort of
Speaker 3: kettle sized flamethrower.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like some sort of like little blowtorch sized flamer device. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but I really like this division in weapons because obviously
Speaker 2: Paul will shoot anything that moves, so he needs a
Speaker 2: handgun that fits his character. But Anderson. Anderson's more of
Speaker 2: a you know, a thinker. You know. It's like he
Speaker 2: had that rifle earlier and the rifle's gone now. I
Speaker 2: don't know, it feels appropriate that he's using something a
Speaker 2: little more sciency, a little more sci fi, you know,
Speaker 2: this little flamethrower device.
Speaker 3: There is some more brutal violence in this movie. Shocking violence,
Speaker 3: I would say for a movie from fifty six where
Speaker 3: the mind controlled police chief that is working for the
Speaker 3: alien he tries to stop Tom from getting to the cave,
Speaker 3: and he's like shooting at Tom and Tom just burns
Speaker 3: him yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, flames him up. Yeah, and he runs a
Speaker 2: little bit and falls over on fire. Yeah. So yeah, pretty.
Speaker 3: Harsh, But eventually they get to the cave. Oh and
Speaker 3: this intersects with a fairly consistently grown inducing subplot where
Speaker 3: some soldiers are wandering around in the woods and they're like, oh,
Speaker 3: we're hungry, where can we get food? They are not
Speaker 3: mine controlled, and they're wandering around but they eventually hear
Speaker 3: the violence in the commotion at the cave, so they
Speaker 3: go there with all their weapons, and so we end
Speaker 3: up with a bunch of soldiers going into the cave
Speaker 3: confronting the monster, and the monster attacks them. I think
Speaker 3: it kills some of them, and ultimately, in the final showdown,
Speaker 3: Tom himself has to go up against the creature that
Speaker 3: he invited from Venus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is a this is a pretty satisfying showdown.
Speaker 2: I mean, again, the blocking of it, what is possible
Speaker 2: with interactions between the monster and human actors aside? Uh,
Speaker 2: it plays out rather well, I think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the broad payoff in terms of what the characters do,
Speaker 3: at least maybe as described on paper works pretty well.
Speaker 3: So Paul, sorry, Tom does run up and he like
Speaker 3: burns one of the alien's eyes with the blowtorch.
Speaker 2: Oh, he like just like sticks that sucker into the
Speaker 2: eye socket. I mean it's it's great and and it's
Speaker 2: made even better because Lee van Kleef delivers like just
Speaker 2: this awesome line line that has a lot of like
Speaker 2: venom in it, you know, like he's finally seen through
Speaker 2: the to the menace here and he's like, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: like this is what you get for messing with Earth.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah. But then, of course he is killed in
Speaker 3: the scuffle as well, so he's laying there next to
Speaker 3: the dead overturned ice cream cone or artichoke, however you
Speaker 3: think of it. And then finally, so all of the
Speaker 3: characters except Paul are dead. Basically he's the only one
Speaker 3: left standing. And then he gives the monologue the one
Speaker 3: I delivered earlier. I'm not going to say it again,
Speaker 3: but he does explain that, referring to Tom, he learned
Speaker 3: almost too late, that man is a feeling creature. Well wait, no, actually,
Speaker 3: hold on a second. I always assumed in this monologue
Speaker 3: he's talking about Tom. Do you think he could be
Speaker 3: talking about the alien from Venus or is he definitely
Speaker 3: talking about Tom, who.
Speaker 2: Let's see, let's think about it, and for himself. That
Speaker 2: men have to find their own way, to make their
Speaker 2: own mistakes. There can't be any gift of perfection from
Speaker 2: outside ourselves. I think he's probably talking about Tom.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Because you know Tom is looking for that outside fix.
Speaker 2: It's going to help humanity, something that will help us advance,
Speaker 2: like we're struggling to advance on our own. We need
Speaker 2: salvation to come from above.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this monologue assumes it was a good faith desire
Speaker 3: to get perfection from the outside. And I don't know
Speaker 3: if Paul would assume that about the alien from Venus,
Speaker 3: that it was actually trying to help us. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: there is hope, but it has to come from inside,
Speaker 3: from man himself.
Speaker 2: Of course, they don't get into this, and of course
Speaker 2: there was never a sequel or anything to this film.
Speaker 2: But you know, there are still other members of the
Speaker 2: Benefactor race on Venus. I forget what the head count was.
Speaker 2: They said they're like nine of them.
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, it's only eight or nine or something,
Speaker 3: and this is just one of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's still eight super intelligent Venusians out there who
Speaker 2: may or may not be reaching out to humans via
Speaker 2: their radar. There may be other alien players in the
Speaker 2: Solar System who have a vested interest in keeping humanity
Speaker 2: from advance beyond a certain technological level. So I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's kind of commendable that a film like this, this
Speaker 2: does ultimately introduce those kinds of concepts, you know, where
Speaker 2: you can leave the theater thinking about all of these
Speaker 2: things and wondering, well, how would this how would the
Speaker 2: characters from this film, how would the world from this
Speaker 2: film progress?
Speaker 3: Yeah? What if the benefactors from Mars come to purgase
Speaker 3: of all logic and leave us with only emotion?
Speaker 2: Oh wow, there you go. Now there's an interesting sequel
Speaker 2: idea for it conquered the World. Like this time they
Speaker 2: promise pure emotion, pure ecstasy, they come in peace.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, well I think that's all I've got on
Speaker 3: It Conquered the World.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, yeah, it's a fun one. Highly recommend
Speaker 2: it to anyone who's never seen it, and if you've
Speaker 2: seen it before, watch it again. It's Yeah, it's a hoot.
Speaker 2: That MST three K episode is, of course rightfully considered
Speaker 2: one of the best as well.
Speaker 3: If I recall correctly, by the time that episode is over,
Speaker 3: they've played the end monologue by Peter Graves at least
Speaker 3: three times, maybe four.
Speaker 2: You have.
Speaker 3: Good choice.
Speaker 2: All right, We're going to gohea and close out here,
Speaker 2: but we'd love to hear from everyone out there. Misty's
Speaker 2: if you want to write in about this one. Old
Speaker 2: school science fiction fans, Roger Korman fans write in as well,
Speaker 2: Western fans. You may have some thoughts here as well.
Speaker 2: Especially as it relates to Lee van Cleef. But yeah,
Speaker 2: this was film number one hundred and seventy five for
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema. If you want to see the full
Speaker 2: list of films we've covered over the years and sometimes
Speaker 2: get a peek ahead at what's coming up next, go
Speaker 2: to letterbox dot com. That's l E T E r
Speaker 2: box d dot com. Our user name there is weird
Speaker 2: House and you can find that list. Let's see. If
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Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
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Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
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