Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is
Speaker 1: Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and I'm very
Speaker 1: thrilled to announce today's episode. Today we are going to
Speaker 1: be talking about the nineteen fifty three love lorn alien
Speaker 1: guerrilla borg attack movie Robot Monster, a film that absolutely
Speaker 1: proves beyond any doubt that a movie does not have
Speaker 1: to be good to be unforgettable. Robot Monster is about
Speaker 1: sixty two minutes long. It was made on a microscopic budget.
Speaker 1: It makes very close to zero since whatsoever, and ever
Speaker 1: since I first saw this movie about twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: now I have probably thought of it at least once
Speaker 1: every week of my life. It is a fascinating film
Speaker 1: and I want to throw up. This is this is crazy.
Speaker 1: We were not aware of this fact until later on
Speaker 1: in the day, but we both watched this on our
Speaker 1: each on our own on January thirty one. January thirty one,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, is a guerrilla suit day, like
Speaker 1: national or international. I'm not sure. Maybe there's a different
Speaker 1: international Guerilla Suit Day. I Either way, uh perfect that
Speaker 1: we should have watched this film because it does feature
Speaker 1: most of a guerrilla suit. Uh. And is and it's ultimately,
Speaker 1: I think an important page in the history of guerilla
Speaker 1: suits in cinema. Who establishes that day, is that like
Speaker 1: the National or the International Guerilla Suit Consortium or something
Speaker 1: or yeah, yeah, I can imagine their board meetings where everyone,
Speaker 1: of course is wearing a guerrilla costume. Are you ready
Speaker 1: to go A four Robot Monster? I think you are,
Speaker 1: because everybody is, because everybody should be. Yeah. It's Um,
Speaker 1: it's a nine film, and it's not just a bad
Speaker 1: B movie. It's a it's legendary slice of American schlock cinema.
Speaker 1: The titular monster is essentially an icon of BT cinema.
Speaker 1: And I mean that in the fully religious sense of
Speaker 1: the world. Yeah, it is a It's an image that
Speaker 1: may be venerated, that you may use an act of devotion. Um.
Speaker 1: All this is to say, this is a film so
Speaker 1: slapped together and yet unique that it transcends the original picture.
Speaker 1: And and say what you will about the the Roman Monster,
Speaker 1: the robot Monster of the movie. It's never boring, uh,
Speaker 1: and it certainly leaves an impression. Yes, Robot Monster is schlock,
Speaker 1: but it is not hack, which I think is a
Speaker 1: very important distinction, one that this movie really forced me
Speaker 1: to meditate on. Uh. And, if you'll allow me to elaborate,
Speaker 1: I would like to explain. Let's have it okay. So,
Speaker 1: schlock is a term we've used on the show before,
Speaker 1: but we've never really defined it. I guess it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of hard to define. It's a slang term that
Speaker 1: just discovered is derived from a couple of Yiddish root words.
Speaker 1: Apparently that has to do with the Yiddish words meaning
Speaker 1: like a stroke or meaning a person who is sort
Speaker 1: of unkempt. But it's often used to describe a certain
Speaker 1: kind of B movie. I think more broadly, you could
Speaker 1: use schlock to refer to cultural products in general, like
Speaker 1: you could have a schlock comic book, or maybe even
Speaker 1: a schlock novel or a schlock sculpture. Uh. And, as
Speaker 1: I said, the definition is a little fuzzy, but you
Speaker 1: can kind of build a word cloud around it, like
Speaker 1: what are the associations? And in that word cloud, I
Speaker 1: would say you would find terms like cheap, messy, or clumsy,
Speaker 1: weird and unsophisticated. So the exact opposite of a schlock
Speaker 1: movie or cultural product would be one that is expensive
Speaker 1: or high budget, very skillful, skillfully made down to earth
Speaker 1: and refined or tasteful sounds dreadful. Meanwhile, Hack, in its
Speaker 1: usage for cultural products like movies, refers more to things
Speaker 1: that are executed with a certain baseline of professionalism or
Speaker 1: no how but are boring, unoriginal, uninspired, and forgettable. And
Speaker 1: the annals of monster movie dum especially of the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: are full of both kinds of movies, and sometimes these
Speaker 1: things can overlap. But I think Robot Monster is special
Speaker 1: because it is all one and none of the other.
Speaker 1: This movie is a solid ten point oh on the
Speaker 1: Schlock scale and a zero point zero on the Hack scale,
Speaker 1: which makes it, in a strange way, kind of a masterpiece.
Speaker 1: I would put the Edwood movies like Plan nine from
Speaker 1: Outer Space in the same category. It is a bumbling, awkward, nonsensical,
Speaker 1: almost improvisational hour of of guerrilla suit mayhem, and it's
Speaker 1: never leaving my brain. This is the opposite of the boring, unoriginal, uninspired,
Speaker 1: forgettable schlock monster movies that that came out around the
Speaker 1: same time. I feel like if one day they upload
Speaker 1: my consciousness into a computer, and like my memories are
Speaker 1: lost in the transfer. Robot Monster is going to be
Speaker 1: one of the few that survives wherever I go, whatever happens,
Speaker 1: I am taking Roman with me. Yeah. Now, let me
Speaker 1: describe Roman for anyone who still doesn't know who we're
Speaker 1: talking about here, um, and you probably just need to
Speaker 1: be reminded, because again, this is a famous figure from
Speaker 1: B movie history. It is essentially a gorilla, like a
Speaker 1: guerrilla costume and uh, kind of chunky looking and in
Speaker 1: appropriately long arms. But instead of a guerrilla's head, there's
Speaker 1: this kind of looks like a robot head, kind of
Speaker 1: looks like a space helmet with very long, broad antennae
Speaker 1: on top. And there's this murky face plate through which
Speaker 1: you can see something like a featureless face or some
Speaker 1: sort of amorphous mass, or if you're looking at it
Speaker 1: in just the right way, you might think you see
Speaker 1: something like a skull. We'll get into the into the
Speaker 1: different interpretations of it later, but this is the Roman.
Speaker 1: This is the Robot Monster, and it it's easy to
Speaker 1: just look at it. And I've seen, you know, I've
Speaker 1: heard lots of jokes about how this is really thrown together.
Speaker 1: Look at that they just they couldn't afford a monster,
Speaker 1: so they got a guerrilla suit and they just put
Speaker 1: a robot um head on top of it. Yes, yes
Speaker 1: that's true, but it also you just can't dismiss how
Speaker 1: well this works on screen, Like, this creature is interesting.
Speaker 1: Throughout the film, there's sometimes where there is I think
Speaker 1: a legitimate feeling of menace to the creature, and it works.
Speaker 1: There are plenty of scenes in which it it does
Speaker 1: feel goofy, but I don't know it, Uh, it works
Speaker 1: in a weird way. Well, it's so odd. It's such
Speaker 1: a perverse combination, like the space helmet with the with
Speaker 1: the Google head inside, with the thick guerrilla body with
Speaker 1: like it's shaggy butt, but also the way that the
Speaker 1: person has to walk inside the gorilla suit, because like
Speaker 1: the suit is obviously much bigger than the person. So
Speaker 1: when you see them walking there, it's this big, thick
Speaker 1: guerrilla body taking these very dainty looking footsteps up the
Speaker 1: mountain pathways. It's you've never seen anything like it. It's
Speaker 1: just perfect. Yeah, and it and and I do also
Speaker 1: need to drive home, Like there's so many worse looking
Speaker 1: monsters in monster movie history, Like you can't even begin
Speaker 1: to list the monsters that look dumber or look more
Speaker 1: thrown together on the screen. And yet there is something
Speaker 1: unique about the way this came together, Like there's just,
Speaker 1: like you said, there's something kind of perverse about it.
Speaker 1: You can't believe this is what the monster is. And
Speaker 1: it's on screen for most of the movie. They're not
Speaker 1: like obscuring it behind fog or in the dark or something.
Speaker 1: It's just center frame. Half of the movie is the
Speaker 1: roman doing zoom calls with another romance are just walking
Speaker 1: around probably open broad daylight. Yeah. So another thing that
Speaker 1: I started thinking about with this movie is it's interesting
Speaker 1: how early it comes in the the fifties uh space
Speaker 1: invasion movie arc. I would have assumed it came out.
Speaker 1: I don't know, if you'd asked me, I would have
Speaker 1: assumed Robot Monster was nineteen fifties seven, you know, same
Speaker 1: year as uh like Attack of the Crab Monsters or
Speaker 1: something or move was that fifty seven or fifty eight
Speaker 1: and I know somewhere in there. But instead it was
Speaker 1: sort of an early runner in this arc. So to
Speaker 1: situate it within the history of sci fi movies, alien
Speaker 1: invasion movies or alien attack movies, I think really hit
Speaker 1: their peak in the in the like mid to late
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. Before that, if you look at the sci
Speaker 1: fi movies of the thirties and forties, there are actually
Speaker 1: very few alien invasion films. There are a few, but
Speaker 1: not not many. The most common theme of earlier science
Speaker 1: fiction films seems to be mad scientists. Like many of
Speaker 1: the sci fi movies from this period that we've covered
Speaker 1: on the show fit into that category. So we talked
Speaker 1: about Doctor X that's the one with synthetic flesh, mad
Speaker 1: science movie. There's Doctor Cyclops that's the guy who shrinks
Speaker 1: people and then menaces them with various animals and stuff.
Speaker 1: There's Mad Love that's about a hand transplant gone horribly wrong.
Speaker 1: There is Things to Come, which addresses all kinds of
Speaker 1: general scientific progress for good and for ill. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we haven't actually covered Things to Come yet properly on
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema, but I believe we talked about it,
Speaker 1: you know, the Time after Time episode, because it's the
Speaker 1: only H. G. Wells adaptation that Wells actually wrote a
Speaker 1: screenplay for. Uh. And in fact, you can even think
Speaker 1: about the big universal monster movies that included science fiction
Speaker 1: elements from the thirties and forties. You've got Frankenstein, Bride
Speaker 1: of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, and so forth. They're all
Speaker 1: mad scientist movies. Pretty much all of them involve a
Speaker 1: scientist breaking the boundaries of nature. You're in ordinary life
Speaker 1: with some kind of experiment or maybe experimental procedure or
Speaker 1: surgery or something. Everything goes horribly wrong and it leads
Speaker 1: to murder. And those kind of movies don't go away.
Speaker 1: Like the mad science breaks nature theme continues in the fifties,
Speaker 1: but almost always with atomic themes. Now, so you you know,
Speaker 1: somebody creates giant bugs with atomic radiation for obvious reasons,
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of hack movies in this category.
Speaker 1: But I think it's in the early nineteen fifties that
Speaker 1: a new type of science fiction movie takes over, and
Speaker 1: that is the alien invasion or alien intervention film. Now,
Speaker 1: this type of story had already existed for many decades.
Speaker 1: I'd say probably the first big alien invasion story was H. G.
Speaker 1: Wells War The World's in eight. Yeah, Yeah, that's definitely
Speaker 1: the big one, and it's it That novel is sort
Speaker 1: of the prototype for most of the alien invasion stories
Speaker 1: that followed, of which there were many in written fiction
Speaker 1: throughout the early twentieth century, but it wasn't until the
Speaker 1: early fifties that this became such a common plot structure
Speaker 1: for sci fi movies. And I think there were some
Speaker 1: big early and influential examples. One would be The Thing
Speaker 1: from Another World, which we have an episode on. Another
Speaker 1: would be The Day the Earth Stood Still, both of
Speaker 1: those movies from nineteen fifty one. Though The Day the
Speaker 1: Earth Stood Still is more of an alien intervention than invasion.
Speaker 1: That's the one where the alien shut up and they say,
Speaker 1: now you're you're doing war. You need to stop that
Speaker 1: or we're going to endue all. There was, of course,
Speaker 1: a nineteen fifty three film adaptation of War the World's
Speaker 1: the famous Mercury Theater radio broadcast. I wasn't sure when
Speaker 1: that was. I looked it up the orson Wells one
Speaker 1: and that was in nineteen thirty eight, but that was
Speaker 1: on the radio. Uh. And there would of course go
Speaker 1: on to be a million more alien invasion movies throughout
Speaker 1: the decade where aliens, you know, they come to either
Speaker 1: one destroy us and take our planet for themselves, to
Speaker 1: threaten to destroy us if we don't stop doing something,
Speaker 1: usually war or some times nuclear experiments or something like that.
Speaker 1: And then I'd say the third big category is they
Speaker 1: come here to infiltrate us and indoctrinate us in some way,
Speaker 1: maybe to serve them. So examples there would be invasion
Speaker 1: of the Body Snatchers that was in fifty six. It
Speaker 1: conquered the world on the lower budget side, also fifty six.
Speaker 1: And so the thing is Robot Monster actually comes earlier
Speaker 1: in the decade than I would have guessed. Nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: three is a little ahead of the curve here, And
Speaker 1: I wonder Rob where you think it fits into this
Speaker 1: broader arc. I think the basic idea is that the
Speaker 1: Romans want to destroy all humans and take Earth for themselves.
Speaker 1: But there's also a little bit of that Day the
Speaker 1: Earth Stood Still playing nine from Outer Space kind of
Speaker 1: preachiness about how like the oh the Earthlings, you are
Speaker 1: stupid and you are destroying yourselves. Yeah, yeah, I agree
Speaker 1: this the Roman, the Roman, if you will here, the
Speaker 1: Roman civilization has essentially wiped out all of humanity. And
Speaker 1: then they explain that they have done this because we're
Speaker 1: basically we're getting too technologically advanced, too much of the
Speaker 1: threat to them, and and so we see category one
Speaker 1: and two. Their Category three is not really in play,
Speaker 1: but it does have some connections to this film, as
Speaker 1: we'll discuss, because so much of this infiltration and indoctrinization
Speaker 1: UH fiction of this era, the invasion of the Body Snatchers,
Speaker 1: it conquered the world. A lot of this route lines
Speaker 1: up with UM the UH the Hollywood black List with
Speaker 1: McCarthy is UM and the fear of communism in the
Speaker 1: United States, which I do not detect really as a
Speaker 1: theme in in Robot Monster at all. But no, no,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. But it does have connections to
Speaker 1: several of the individuals involved in the making of the picture. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 1: before we get into the film a bit more here,
Speaker 1: I want to stress that this is a film that
Speaker 1: I've been seeing clips of since I was a child.
Speaker 1: I I I had at least some version of it
Speaker 1: came from Hollywood on a VHS tape, and I would
Speaker 1: see all these clips of monster movies, and they of
Speaker 1: course poked fun of it in that I'd watched the
Speaker 1: season one MST three K episode before, probably more than once,
Speaker 1: but this was the first time that I'd really sat
Speaker 1: down and gave this film a proper viewing, and I
Speaker 1: have to say it's kind of a challenge to make
Speaker 1: sense of everything. Kind of it's like a puzzle box. Um,
Speaker 1: It's like you have to concentrate. It's like in Dungeons
Speaker 1: and Dragons, it's like some sort of concentration spell that
Speaker 1: if someone were to bump into you, you would just
Speaker 1: lose everything and the spell would collapse. Your understanding of
Speaker 1: the film will completely collapse if you're not paying attention
Speaker 1: to it um at all times. And and it can
Speaker 1: also be difficult to because the tone of the movie
Speaker 1: will just turn on a dime. The dialogue is often absurd,
Speaker 1: and the plot at once feels awesomely inspired by you know,
Speaker 1: classic sci fi pulp but also just goofy is all
Speaker 1: get out. Yes, it's a wonderful combination of Like the
Speaker 1: dialogue is for the most part hilarious, but also it
Speaker 1: has a harder edge than a lot of the sci
Speaker 1: fi movies of the time. Like just the kind of
Speaker 1: unforgivingness of the romance plan for Earth and their cruelty
Speaker 1: is is somewhat shocking. Yeah, there's there's something gloriously miscalculated
Speaker 1: and miscalibrated about so much of the film. It's it's
Speaker 1: a mess, but I was thinking it's a lovable mess,
Speaker 1: Like you can't help but feel protective of it. You
Speaker 1: want to wrap a blanket around it and take it
Speaker 1: home with you. Yes, So, um elevator pitch for this film,
Speaker 1: I just had to invoke mad love and say Roman
Speaker 1: has conquered earth, why can't he conquered love? That's it,
Speaker 1: that's it. He and he basically asked that question at
Speaker 1: the end. He's like, why can't the Roman have what
Speaker 1: the human has? Love, feelings, emotions. Yeah, though this kind
Speaker 1: of like this this plot element pokes its head. What
Speaker 1: maybe um, halfway through the film, maybe in the last
Speaker 1: third of the film, and it kind of comes out
Speaker 1: of nowhere as a complication. Yes, when it shows up,
Speaker 1: it is mighty unexpected and uh and a very welcome
Speaker 1: turn because it happens right when the movie starts getting
Speaker 1: kind of repetitive with like these calls back and forth
Speaker 1: with Roman where he just keeps threatening the human's But
Speaker 1: then suddenly he looks on the view screen and he
Speaker 1: just sees Alice, the the young lady in the movie,
Speaker 1: and he's like, Oh, I am in love. What is
Speaker 1: this feeling for a Roman. Yeah, because up to that
Speaker 1: point they've been considering negotiating with with the Roman. They
Speaker 1: have tried and like the most they can get is
Speaker 1: like he's He's like, if you surrender, um, you'll get
Speaker 1: a quick death, and if you don't, unimaginable death. Like
Speaker 1: there's no. It doesn't seem to be all out of
Speaker 1: wiggle room with him, until suddenly he becomes smitten with
Speaker 1: Alice and he's like, wait, I should negotiate with her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he wants to do the face to face with her.
Speaker 1: All right, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and listen to some trailer audio. Here, with the
Speaker 1: swiftness of a deadly cosmic ray, the Earth is invaded
Speaker 1: by indestructible moon monsters, their ghastly mission death for all humans.
Speaker 1: What astounding technical developments are being made to protect mankind?
Speaker 1: Robot Monster brings you an actual preview of the devastating
Speaker 1: forces of our future, unsuspected revelations of incredible horrors that
Speaker 1: will terrify you with their brutal reality. There is no
Speaker 1: escape from me, oh, humans, there is nor escape all right. Now,
Speaker 1: you might be wondering at this point, where can you
Speaker 1: watch Robot Monster, if you want to go ahead and
Speaker 1: pause the episode, watch the movie and come back, or
Speaker 1: you're inspired after you listen to the full episode to
Speaker 1: watch it again. Well, fortunately it is widely available. We
Speaker 1: should note, however, that um Bob Fermanac, a three D
Speaker 1: film archivist, has been heading up a restoration for a
Speaker 1: three D Blu Ray release, so re release of Robot Monster,
Speaker 1: though as of this recording, I don't think they have
Speaker 1: a distributor or a date yet. I could be wrong
Speaker 1: on that, but I don't. I don't think anything's lined
Speaker 1: up officially, but it's still pretty exciting for romance fans
Speaker 1: out there. All that being said, the available film quality
Speaker 1: as of this recording is still very watchable, so I
Speaker 1: don't think you should You shouldn't put off watching Robot Monster.
Speaker 1: Who knows what tomorrow will bring. But once this gets released,
Speaker 1: I think this will be worth checking out because it
Speaker 1: will be in three D uh for those of you
Speaker 1: with the ability to to power up the three D
Speaker 1: and it was originally a three D picture. Gorgeous And
Speaker 1: this makes me realize what the automatic billion bubble machine
Speaker 1: must have been in the movie for, because otherwise I
Speaker 1: was unclear on why Romance cave, his Cave of Slaughter
Speaker 1: has just a bubble machine in it. But that's got
Speaker 1: to give some three D texture, right, I guess. I mean,
Speaker 1: otherwise you've got to wonder, Well, maybe this technology in
Speaker 1: Earth's atmosphere just generates soap bubbles as a byproduct of
Speaker 1: its functionality, or bubbles are key, like somehow it's those
Speaker 1: bubbles all contain nuggets of information then then float up
Speaker 1: through the atmosphere to some sort of Roman satellite. And no,
Speaker 1: it's probably just there because it looks neat, because otherwise
Speaker 1: it's just like, Okay, so Roman just has a fad
Speaker 1: toy of the nineteen fifties in his cave, Like does
Speaker 1: he also have a Mr. Potato Head or a Lincoln
Speaker 1: Logs or something? Yeah? All right, Well let's get into
Speaker 1: the people involved here. Starting at the top, we have
Speaker 1: Phil Tucker, the director of Robot Monster of n Through.
Speaker 1: Now I think right at the top, I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to say I heard some rumors that about this about
Speaker 1: Phil Tucker, that like he the critics savage to this movie,
Speaker 1: and Phil Tucker was so upset by that that it
Speaker 1: destroyed him. But it sounds like you found out maybe
Speaker 1: that's not really true, correct. Yeah, there's an excellent book
Speaker 1: out there titled I Cannot Yet I Must. Let's quote
Speaker 1: from the film The True Story of the Best Bad
Speaker 1: Monster Movie of All Time, Robot Monster, by Anders Runstadt,
Speaker 1: which you can get as a digital book or or
Speaker 1: physical book. And it's a really great, well cited, um
Speaker 1: but very readable and entertaining exploration of this entire film,
Speaker 1: like what it comes out of, who was involved in it,
Speaker 1: its legacy, has a lot of clips from interviews with
Speaker 1: various people involved in the bios of all the people involved.
Speaker 1: So if you leave this episode wanting a much deeper
Speaker 1: dive into uh, into into what Robot Monster is in
Speaker 1: the world it emerged from, highly recommend that book. But yeah,
Speaker 1: Runstad does a great job of of sort of dispelling
Speaker 1: some of the urban legends surrounding this film, because yeah,
Speaker 1: for I think I had heard this as well, but
Speaker 1: like this idea that this was a film that the
Speaker 1: creator held up as a masterpiece and then was just
Speaker 1: broken when he, uh he found out the critics didn't
Speaker 1: like it. So yeah, I'm gonna incorporate some of what
Speaker 1: Romstad has to say, uh into this brief bio of
Speaker 1: Tucker Okay, so American director, former marine, former radio and
Speaker 1: TV guy who had two films out in nine Robot
Speaker 1: Monster obviously, but also a film called Dance Hall Racket,
Speaker 1: a crime movie starring and written by legendary stand up
Speaker 1: comedian Lenny Bruce. What yes, Okay, I I did not
Speaker 1: know this existed. Wow, that's an interesting crossover. Yeah. Bruce's
Speaker 1: wife at the time, dancer Honey Harlow, also acted in it.
Speaker 1: I've not seen it. I have no reason to believe
Speaker 1: it's any good or even worth checking out unless year,
Speaker 1: I guess, like a Lenny Bruce completest. But um but yeah,
Speaker 1: I came out with the same year Robot Monster on
Speaker 1: the and of course would come to define him. And
Speaker 1: uh yeah, the stories you'll find out there are mixed.
Speaker 1: But it does seem like there were issues with the
Speaker 1: studio and he battled depression a bit over all of that. Uh.
Speaker 1: And also he didn't really work anywhere near mainstream Hollywood
Speaker 1: for a long time. Uh. He did a string of
Speaker 1: low budget um l a bur less comedies during the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen fifties, followed by Broadway Jungle about how slimy
Speaker 1: Hollywood uh is from the viewpoint of a young director,
Speaker 1: and then a TV movie, The Cape Caniveral Monsters in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty which is a bad alien invasion film but
Speaker 1: apparently without the lovable um aspects of Robot Monster. And
Speaker 1: that was his last directing credit. But he worked as
Speaker 1: a post production manager on n six is King Kong,
Speaker 1: seven Orca and five episodes of Night The Next Step
Speaker 1: Beyond TV series. He also worked as an editor on
Speaker 1: several episodes of Wonder to Wonder Woman TV series and
Speaker 1: nine eighties The Nude Bomb, which was a Maxwell Smart movie.
Speaker 1: Now in that book, I cannot yet I must by
Speaker 1: Runstad Yeah he he, He points out yet the the
Speaker 1: urban legend of Tucker as a director, we saw himself
Speaker 1: as a genius uh in this film as a master work.
Speaker 1: That that is for the most part false and that
Speaker 1: more or less he was he was shooting for pure
Speaker 1: entertainment on this one. He did not think he was
Speaker 1: creating a masterpiece, but mission accomplished. Yeah, you know, it's
Speaker 1: highly entertaining. Um. Also worth noting public reception to the
Speaker 1: work did not seem to be a big factor on
Speaker 1: his mental health, that he did seem to have some
Speaker 1: struggles and later in life he had some I think
Speaker 1: some some memory related struggles as well. But uh yeah,
Speaker 1: if you want to go all in on this, uh,
Speaker 1: I highly recommend picking up that book. Uh's so many
Speaker 1: interesting tidbits from his life that runs stud Explorers. One
Speaker 1: of which I found pretty interesting is that very late
Speaker 1: in the life and career of Peter Laurie, Tucker was
Speaker 1: involved in the nineteen sixty one pitch for the Peter
Speaker 1: Laurie Playhouse. Uh. This was gonna be like a Twilight
Speaker 1: Zone or Boris Karloff's thriller style anthology show, and the
Speaker 1: host was gonna be Peter Lorii. I can't believe that
Speaker 1: didn't happen. At the sacrilege criminality that this did not happen.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen any footage from Apparently they shot a
Speaker 1: pilot and Laurie was the host of it, and they
Speaker 1: had him like in a bowler hat at a desk
Speaker 1: in front of a spider web. Okay, not to be
Speaker 1: confused with the radio drama of the nineteen forties titled
Speaker 1: Mystery Playhouse that Peter Lorii hosted. Okay, I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: a crossover. I guess we need a time machine to
Speaker 1: make this happen, but crossover of the never realized Peter
Speaker 1: Laurie Playhouse with the Shelley Duval Fairytale Theater. Huh how
Speaker 1: about it? Yeah? Yeah, oh man, Shelley Duval Fat Fairytale
Speaker 1: Theater just looks marvelous every time I look at it again.
Speaker 1: I did not have the uh, the privilege of getting
Speaker 1: to watch this show when it ran. But I was
Speaker 1: talking to some friends and they were like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's interesting anyway. So that's Tucker. But onto
Speaker 1: the writing credit for this picture. Wyatt or Dung, who
Speaker 1: lived nineteen twenty two through two thousand and five American
Speaker 1: actor and writer. Born in Shanghai, China, and served in
Speaker 1: the U. S Army during World War Two. His father
Speaker 1: was a career US military man and his mother a
Speaker 1: Russian immigrant. Runstad writes that or Dung, while not himself Asian,
Speaker 1: learned to speak Chinese in China in addition to English
Speaker 1: and Russian, which was his mother's native tongue. And he
Speaker 1: also had a broad appreciation for Asian culture from a
Speaker 1: young age. So uh, he was influenced by that, and
Speaker 1: this shows up in some of his his his later
Speaker 1: screenplay work. But He was also influenced by his mother's
Speaker 1: interest in spiritualism and the occult, so he was He
Speaker 1: was known to be kind of an odd character in
Speaker 1: these sort of l a Hollywood scene of the day.
Speaker 1: I don't detect any supernaturalism in Robot Monster. I would
Speaker 1: say Robot Monster is hard science fiction. Yeah yeah, um
Speaker 1: that you or dong was? It said that there were
Speaker 1: stories about how he would um. He was always discussing
Speaker 1: the paranormal, proclaiming that he had a great fear of
Speaker 1: predatory or scavenging birds due to a previous life experience.
Speaker 1: Who um And anyway, after the war, he attended an
Speaker 1: acting school in l A. On the g I. Bill
Speaker 1: Tucker met him on the set of some lost or
Speaker 1: unknown TV or exploit exploitation project that he was involved in,
Speaker 1: and perhaps because they both had a military background, uh,
Speaker 1: they kind of hit it off. And then basically Tucker
Speaker 1: came to and said, Hey, I've got this sci fi
Speaker 1: comedy I want to write about the last few people
Speaker 1: on Earth. It's going to be called Googy Eyes, and
Speaker 1: I want you to write it. I'm glad they didn't
Speaker 1: call it Googy Eye is yeah. Um so so a
Speaker 1: lot of space in the in the in the Room
Speaker 1: stat book explores exactly how this seemed to come together.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of confusing because later interviews with or
Speaker 1: Dong and Tucker both had kind of different stories about everything.
Speaker 1: And uh and then and he also spent some time
Speaker 1: talking about how weird it is that, Okay, this idea
Speaker 1: that he wanted to make um a comedy. It seems
Speaker 1: kind of early in the fifties monster movie craze for
Speaker 1: there to be an intentional parody. We talked about how
Speaker 1: kind of ahead of its time this is, so the
Speaker 1: idea that it would have been a comedy seems kind
Speaker 1: of strange. Yeah, I gotta say, while I love it
Speaker 1: and it is very funny, uh, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to be insulting, but it it doesn't read to me
Speaker 1: like intentional comedy. That's not how the movie comes across it.
Speaker 1: It does have a, I would say, and uh, a
Speaker 1: sense of intentional absurdity like that the uh, the director
Speaker 1: and writer were being I don't know, over the top
Speaker 1: in a playful way, But it doesn't strike me as
Speaker 1: like that every line that rings funny to us was
Speaker 1: necessarily supposed to be funny, if that makes any sense. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think there are Yeah, there are definite
Speaker 1: lines in the film that are supposed to be funny,
Speaker 1: especially some of the lines said by the children, um
Speaker 1: are played for laughs. But yeah, it seems like whatever
Speaker 1: the original intention was, they ended up leaning more towards
Speaker 1: uh trauma, sci fi and and a little bit of
Speaker 1: horror um and uh. And you have this idea that
Speaker 1: he might have pitched it as a comedy. It might,
Speaker 1: according to run Stat, have had something to do with
Speaker 1: just his knowledge of their limitations, like knowing that they
Speaker 1: were going to have to make this film for basically nothing,
Speaker 1: and therefore they weren't going to be able to pull
Speaker 1: off some sort of amazing special effect. It might end
Speaker 1: up being some sort of googly eyed uh like cost
Speaker 1: him effect that they were going to have to use
Speaker 1: on the monster. I will say, the more that I
Speaker 1: think about it, I don't know. It's causing me to
Speaker 1: think of like what actually counts as intentional comedy. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff in it that I don't know
Speaker 1: if it was written as a joke, but it comes
Speaker 1: across as funny, and it doesn't feel like there was
Speaker 1: any attempt on the director's part to avoid that if
Speaker 1: that makes sense, Like the guerrilla suit looks funny when
Speaker 1: Roman is walking through the desert and he's just showing
Speaker 1: you like they're they're not. They didn't go like, oh
Speaker 1: that looks funny, better cut that out and obscure it. Yeah, um, well,
Speaker 1: or necessarily that looks funny, let's have more of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah now. Runstad also reveals that Tucker, in later
Speaker 1: uh interviews, claimed that Ordung only typed the script and
Speaker 1: that it was otherwise all his idea, all his his material,
Speaker 1: and that he repaid or done with like a writing
Speaker 1: credit and the prospect of more money. But it also
Speaker 1: seems like Tucker seems to have maybe bent the truth
Speaker 1: about a number of things and or had some problems
Speaker 1: with recall later in life, because apparently like at one
Speaker 1: point he claimed that he had been successful writing science
Speaker 1: fiction under a pen name, but nobody knows what his
Speaker 1: pen name was uh so uh For instance, it's it's possible,
Speaker 1: according to run Stad, that he might have just merely
Speaker 1: um submitted some material and never got published or or something,
Speaker 1: because it seems strange that he would not have wanted
Speaker 1: his actual name out there on science fiction. Um. But anyway,
Speaker 1: run Side says that, Okay, the two men disagreed on
Speaker 1: a lot of the history regarding this script, but three
Speaker 1: things seemed to be agreeable in both of their accounts. One,
Speaker 1: the story was Tuckers and Tuckers alone, uh to Tucker
Speaker 1: wanted a movie about life in the aftermath of nuclear devastation.
Speaker 1: And also three both state that the finished film differed
Speaker 1: from the original script, though they both had different stories
Speaker 1: about who actually wrote the original script. Okay and Rudenstad
Speaker 1: also mentions that blacklisted comedy screenwriter Frederick I. Ronaldo may
Speaker 1: have contributed to the script as well. Um, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what to really make of that, but that could
Speaker 1: I guess possibly the um account for some of these
Speaker 1: moments of comedy that occur. Maybe they're the they're they're
Speaker 1: evidence of some sort of like punch up um edit
Speaker 1: that happened with the script, or some earlier version of
Speaker 1: the script that had a lot of jokes in it. Anyway,
Speaker 1: or Dong's previous acting experience included roles on TVs Dick
Speaker 1: Tracy and some other fifties TV shows you know, small parts,
Speaker 1: as well as an uncredited role in the nineteen one
Speaker 1: film Fixed Bayonets He went on to play small roles
Speaker 1: in n Dragon's Goal nineteen fifty fours, Monster from the
Speaker 1: Ocean Floor in nineteen fifty six is Walk on the
Speaker 1: Dark Street. He followed up his writing credit on Robot
Speaker 1: Monster with writing credits on fifty threes Combat Squad, fifty
Speaker 1: fours Target Earth fifty six is Walk on the Dark Street,
Speaker 1: and nineteen fifty nine First Man into Space. All right,
Speaker 1: let's get into the cast a bit more here. Uh.
Speaker 1: We we have only a handful of human survivors that
Speaker 1: are that are left to contend with the Roman threat.
Speaker 1: The leading man is clearly Roy, played by George Nader.
Speaker 1: This is once again your classic fifties movie rectangle. Yeah
Speaker 1: he is there, he's got a jaw, he's got some hair,
Speaker 1: and he'll say the lines yep, yep. Now. This is
Speaker 1: pretty early in Nader's career, following a fair amount of
Speaker 1: uncredited work and small parts, but he did a lot
Speaker 1: of TV in some films following this movie. This was
Speaker 1: his first starring role. Uh. Some of his bigger subsequent
Speaker 1: pictures included Sins of Jezebel from three, Carnival Story from
Speaker 1: fifty four, The Million Nis of Sumaru from sixty seven
Speaker 1: and nineteen seventy three is Beyond Atlantis. George Nader has
Speaker 1: some excellent scenes where he has to uh flirt with
Speaker 1: his love interest Alice, uh while they're like both soldering
Speaker 1: and electronics board, and it's all in voice over. It's
Speaker 1: very funny. Yeah, it's an extended secret. Yeah. Now, speaking
Speaker 1: of Alice, the love interest of both Roy and ultimately
Speaker 1: the Roman. This character is played by Claudia Barrett. You
Speaker 1: know what, I love Claudia Barrett in Robot Monster. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna say like she shows great acting skill in
Speaker 1: this film, but man, she's given it her all, and
Speaker 1: there there are parts where you just gotta hand it
Speaker 1: to her, like the monologue about after Roman expresses interest
Speaker 1: in her. Yeah, yeah, where she's like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna date Romance. I know you don't want me to,
Speaker 1: but look where are other approaches. I've got us nowhere.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna date the Horrible Monster and we'll just see
Speaker 1: what what happened. Right. It is for the sake of
Speaker 1: future humanity. I will be bride of Roman. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a it's definitely like you said. The performance itself is
Speaker 1: not amazing, but it's you can see the talent shining
Speaker 1: through it with the limitations of this role. So Barrett
Speaker 1: was an actor of TV and screen whose first movie
Speaker 1: appearance was nineteen forty nine White Heat, followed by a
Speaker 1: role in nineteen fifties The Happy Years, which starred Dean
Speaker 1: Stockwell and Leo G. Carroll. She did a lot of
Speaker 1: TV and film work up through I think nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: but White Heat and Robot Monster probably the best remembered
Speaker 1: of the bunch. She gives it her all, she holds
Speaker 1: nothing back, and she also has some great scenes where
Speaker 1: she like has to emotionally turn on the dime because
Speaker 1: it's what the script demands. So she goes from like
Speaker 1: weeping about the fact that, uh that Roy is apparently
Speaker 1: dead to uh just being like, oh, Roy, you're so bossy, alright,
Speaker 1: So that we have our leading man, are leading lady,
Speaker 1: we have to have our older brains of the operation.
Speaker 1: This is, of course, the Professor, played by John Milong,
Speaker 1: who lived through nine. Once again, I'm not gonna try
Speaker 1: to say John Milong is like great in this role,
Speaker 1: but I like John Milong. I just get if this
Speaker 1: makes any sense, Like I get the vibe that I
Speaker 1: would like to hang out with him. I do think
Speaker 1: he's one of the actors in the film that you
Speaker 1: can catch adding in free pathos for various scenes. Like
Speaker 1: the director didn't ask for it, the script didn't demand it,
Speaker 1: but by god, he's a professional and he's going to
Speaker 1: make it as real as possible. Yeah so uh. John
Speaker 1: Milong was born Adolf Heinrich mootz Uh, an Austrian actor
Speaker 1: of Ukrainian Jewish heritage, who, like many other actors and
Speaker 1: filmmakers and many that we've discussed on the show before
Speaker 1: from pictures of this period, fled the rise of the
Speaker 1: Nazis in Europe. He became a U. S citizen in
Speaker 1: nineteen eight. He was a much bigger name actor during
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties in Austria, but then it found solid
Speaker 1: work in the States as well once he relocated. He
Speaker 1: acted in such films as nineteen fifty four is Magnificent Obsession,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty Three's For Whom the Bell Tolls, nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: ones His Kind of Woman, and nineteen forty four is
Speaker 1: The Mask of Demetrios, which has been on my radar
Speaker 1: before because it also features Peter Lori. He was also
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixty two underwater adventure film titled Mermaids
Speaker 1: of Tiburon. I like what you say about him adding
Speaker 1: in free pathos. Yeah, now that you mentioned that, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking back on lines where you know, they didn't really
Speaker 1: ask him to to to struggle while he's delivering, but
Speaker 1: he does. Yeah. Yeah, And I would say there's more
Speaker 1: free pathos from uh Selena Royal who plays mother in
Speaker 1: this it's her only name, she's mother, yeah, professor mother Gilligan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean in the in the post apocalyptic healthscape of Earth,
Speaker 1: what else do you need? You're the only mother on
Speaker 1: the planet. You're just mother, I guess. Yeah. There there's
Speaker 1: a scene where uh John Milong gets on a zoom
Speaker 1: call with Roman and he's like, let me show you
Speaker 1: the members of my family. Surely you won't want to
Speaker 1: destroy them. And he puts up a picture of of
Speaker 1: Selena Royal here and he's like, look, how how could
Speaker 1: you want to hurt my wife here? And Romance is like, oh,
Speaker 1: the mother brings more generations of the human race. She
Speaker 1: must be stopped. Oh, and You're like boo, you just
Speaker 1: want to boo Roman most of the time. So anyway,
Speaker 1: Selena Royal Here American actress of stage, radio, television, and film.
Speaker 1: She was daughter of a Broadway playwright, so unsurprisingly she
Speaker 1: started out as a stage actor. She also did radio
Speaker 1: work and just a little bit of film work in
Speaker 1: the thirties. During the forties she became more active in film,
Speaker 1: mostly with maternal supporting roles, but some notable stuff. She
Speaker 1: played Joan of ARC's mother in Victor Flemings Joan of
Speaker 1: Arc film starring Ingrid Bergmann and um Jose Ferreir. Oh,
Speaker 1: I've never seen that one. Yeah, I haven't either, but
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's it's it's one of the classics.
Speaker 1: Her screen and TV career, however, came to on the
Speaker 1: end not long after Robot Monster, with her last credits
Speaker 1: in the mid fifties. But then she became a writer,
Speaker 1: often covering cooking and culture in Guadalajara. She apparently moved
Speaker 1: to Mexico with her husband after she became blacklisted in
Speaker 1: Hollywood during the McCarthy era. The FBI had her classified
Speaker 1: as a quote unquote concealed Communist, even though it's from
Speaker 1: what I was reading, it seems like there was little
Speaker 1: to no evidence that she was anything of the Sword
Speaker 1: she was I think involved in some progressive and humanitarian causes,
Speaker 1: and she remained involved in humanitarian work in Guadalajara until
Speaker 1: her death. Oh yeah, I think that's often how it went. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now they're children in this as well. There's Johnny and
Speaker 1: there's Carla. Johnny was played by Gregory Moffat, borne various
Speaker 1: fifties TV and film appearances in his filmography, including one
Speaker 1: episode of the Adventures of Superman. I gotta say, I
Speaker 1: don't want to be mean to a child actor, but
Speaker 1: I have to say it. Johnny has bully vibes. Johnny
Speaker 1: seems like the kid who would come on the playground
Speaker 1: and like, I don't know, tell you, like he'd say,
Speaker 1: like your dad's poor or something really vicious. M Well,
Speaker 1: you know, Johnny's been through a lot, so maybe we
Speaker 1: have to cut him a little bit of slack. But um,
Speaker 1: Carla is played by Pamela Paulson. This is her only
Speaker 1: actual film credit, I think, um, as far as I know,
Speaker 1: she was not blacklisted for being a suspected communist. Hey, hey, wait, okay,
Speaker 1: so we we enjoy all the human actors here, but
Speaker 1: the real star of the show, in my book, is
Speaker 1: the voice of Roman. Oh okay, yeah, the voice of Roman. Uh.
Speaker 1: That is John Brown, who have nineteen or fourth through
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty seven is a British actor who appeared in
Speaker 1: such films as Alfred Hitchcock's one movie Strangers on a Train.
Speaker 1: And he was also a victim of the Hollywood Blacklist,
Speaker 1: so his his credits definitely dry up and vanish and
Speaker 1: the mid fifties. Well that's a bummer because I love
Speaker 1: his monotone delivery that the I cannot yet I must.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's what gives the movie the soul it has,
Speaker 1: of course, in addition to the physical performance of Roman,
Speaker 1: which is also wonderful. Oh yes, and this is George
Speaker 1: Barrows who have nineteen fourteen through nineteen um, So this
Speaker 1: is our guerrilla suit guy. I always love focusing on
Speaker 1: guerrilla suit guys, even though I don't know that we've
Speaker 1: watched a lot of like true guerrilla movies, but uh yeah,
Speaker 1: George Barrows certainly played a lot of guerrillas in his time.
Speaker 1: He played some human roles as well. He had to
Speaker 1: kind of look up pictures of me. Had kind of
Speaker 1: a meaty, beefy face that's perfect for like that bit
Speaker 1: part cop or or heavy that shows up in a
Speaker 1: in a picture. But he became a a leading guerrilla man, uh,
Speaker 1: playing guerrillas in such films as nineteen sixties six is
Speaker 1: the Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, nineteen sixty seven Hillbillies
Speaker 1: in a Haunted House. I think I've seen that one,
Speaker 1: and nineteen fifty four is Guerilla at Large. I've seen
Speaker 1: ghost in the Invisible Bikini. It's not what you would
Speaker 1: think it is. Yeah, but there is a guerrilla I
Speaker 1: think so, yeah, okay. Uh. He was also a TV
Speaker 1: guerrilla on such shows as The Adams Family, The Beverly Hillbillies,
Speaker 1: The Incredible Hulk, and The Night Gallery episode Hatred unto Death,
Speaker 1: which I do not remember but definitely has a gorilla
Speaker 1: in it now. Root Stude notes that Barrows was a
Speaker 1: serious guerrilla man. I think it's it's easy to think
Speaker 1: about a gorilla suit man in a movie like this
Speaker 1: and think like, all right, they found a guy that
Speaker 1: paid him. He put on the guerrilla suit and they said, okay,
Speaker 1: let's shoot the picture. But no, no, no no, this is
Speaker 1: a guy who took his role very seriously. He made
Speaker 1: his own suit. He studied guerrillas at the zoo and
Speaker 1: was said to be one of the last like real
Speaker 1: Hollywood guerilla men of his era, like someone who actually
Speaker 1: tried to act like a gorilla in the suit. Now
Speaker 1: that being said, we've as we've already pointed out, this
Speaker 1: is not a true guerrilla role because it's most of
Speaker 1: a gorilla costume. But then with the space helmet, and
Speaker 1: also the Roman is not moving around like a gorilla.
Speaker 1: He's moving more less like a human. But like they're
Speaker 1: definite characteristics to the suit that are undeniable, like the
Speaker 1: their arm extensions to simulate the proportions of an actual guerrilla.
Speaker 1: It's made with yak here, so it looks like some
Speaker 1: sort of a beast um. According to ruin Stad, this
Speaker 1: reportedly cost him a good four hundred dollars to make,
Speaker 1: and even that the mask of his guerrilla suit, which
Speaker 1: again is not in this picture, was made using a
Speaker 1: plaster cast of his own face. If you can show
Speaker 1: me a more lovingly made extraterrestrial ape board costume, I
Speaker 1: would like I would like to see it. Um. He
Speaker 1: also points out that, according to classic horror memorabilia collector
Speaker 1: Rob Burns, Barrows was second only to the legendary Charlie
Speaker 1: Gomera when it came to guerrilla suit men. Now we
Speaker 1: haven't watched a proper Charlie Goamura guerrilla picture, but I
Speaker 1: believe he came up in our episode on Dr Cyclops
Speaker 1: because he did make up on that picture. But he
Speaker 1: played a lot of guerrillas in his time, so he
Speaker 1: took his job seriously. Barrows did, uh, but not so
Speaker 1: seriously that he wouldn't appear in a movie like this.
Speaker 1: He apparently had a very sort of blue collar approach, like,
Speaker 1: if you want a guerilla man, uh, there's a set
Speaker 1: cost and and he'll show up. He'll be your guerilla man.
Speaker 1: Here's my price sheet. Yeah, yeah, finally, real quick. We
Speaker 1: keep mentioning that, of course, this is not a pure
Speaker 1: guerrilla creature. It has the head of a spaceman, a
Speaker 1: space helmet, routes. That also explores this whole decision quite
Speaker 1: a bit. Apparently they knew a guerrilla suit was doable,
Speaker 1: that this is something they could do. There was a
Speaker 1: guy they could hire, and they initially thought about making
Speaker 1: an alien via some horns or something, but then came
Speaker 1: back around to the space helmet idea. But at earlier
Speaker 1: points in the creation of the script. They were also
Speaker 1: talking about the idea of a robot gorilla, So there
Speaker 1: seems to be a lot of back and forth here. Here,
Speaker 1: maybe we should address a question, very important question. Is
Speaker 1: Roman a robot? Ah, this is a tough one. I've
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time in the last twenty four
Speaker 1: hours thinking about this, and and on and off I've
Speaker 1: thought of it over the years. I was lying awake
Speaker 1: all night just thinking about the body of Romance, like,
Speaker 1: is that guerrilla body his body? Is it some sort
Speaker 1: of an organic BioSuit that this alien has grown and
Speaker 1: or or like strapped on like some sort of a
Speaker 1: biomech to use. And then of course what's going on
Speaker 1: with the helmet, right, is that the what's that that
Speaker 1: murky face we see inside? Is that like some sort
Speaker 1: of featurealist flesh mass um or we're just not supposed
Speaker 1: to see anything. Is it indeed a skull? Because the
Speaker 1: poster art for the for the film is pretty great
Speaker 1: as well, and it definitely goes the extra step of
Speaker 1: making the head inside the space mask as a skull,
Speaker 1: which just adds to this ambiguity about what this creature
Speaker 1: really is, and apparently it's it's unsure where this idea
Speaker 1: came from. It might have been the producer saying, hey,
Speaker 1: play up the skull thing, or it might have been
Speaker 1: the poster artist deciding to embellish it with this kind
Speaker 1: of skull motif as well. I perceived the head inside
Speaker 1: the space helmet as more like a it's sort of
Speaker 1: covered in a kind of amorphous putty, kind of like
Speaker 1: when a person's head becomes covered in the blob in
Speaker 1: the blob. Alright, alright, so it's possible that the Roman
Speaker 1: is just a blob piloting there's a weird flesh and
Speaker 1: metal suit. Maybe I don't know, a furry creature who
Speaker 1: they've been wearing space on it so long that they've
Speaker 1: evolved to have like a fleshless putty head. Or maybe
Speaker 1: they just have a fleshless head in general, because there
Speaker 1: was some sort of scavenging creature and their evolutionary history
Speaker 1: and therefore lost here on their head. I don't know
Speaker 1: that you're can go crazy thinking about this. This is
Speaker 1: probably an overly specific reference, but I just realized that
Speaker 1: Roman in a way, especially the helmet, reminds me of
Speaker 1: one of the final enemies that you face in the
Speaker 1: the horror video games. Soma, which is one of the
Speaker 1: last ones is in this base down at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the ocean. It's the one in like the diving
Speaker 1: suit that's got sort of the goop coming out of
Speaker 1: the pressure helmet. Oh yeah, yeah, that's right. They definitely
Speaker 1: had a goop consistency to that that game, some sort
Speaker 1: of like healing goop that went crazy or something. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: The fabulous thing about the romance here is that all
Speaker 1: interpretations are valid. There's no there's no definitive answer, just
Speaker 1: maddening ambiguity. Alright. Finally, a note on the music. Um So,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say that that I love the music in
Speaker 1: this film. It's it's interesting. It has some some neat piano,
Speaker 1: I guess, some perhaps overly whimsical moments for the kids,
Speaker 1: and of course some some pretty fabulous nineteen fifties monster brass.
Speaker 1: You know, the monsters coming at you. You're gonna hear
Speaker 1: that brass blaring. Dun't dunt dunt dunt dunt Uh. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. The score for this film is
Speaker 1: by a pretty legendary individual, Elmer Bernstein, who lived through
Speaker 1: two thousand and four. Uh, highly prolific, highly influential film
Speaker 1: composer and conductor. Something like a hundred and fifty film
Speaker 1: scores during his career, and they cover a fair amount
Speaker 1: of range. So Robot Monster was I think only his
Speaker 1: fourth score, but he went on to compose the scores
Speaker 1: for such films as The Ten Commandments and fifty six,
Speaker 1: The Magnificent Seven, To Kill a mocking Bird, The Great Escape,
Speaker 1: and then on into the seventies and eighties stuff like
Speaker 1: Animal House, Airplane, Heavy Metal, Trading Places, Ghostbusters, and then
Speaker 1: once you get into the nineties, wild Wild West, as
Speaker 1: in we're going straight to yeah. Yeah. Uh. He received
Speaker 1: an Academy Award for a thoroughly modern Millie and Sixties
Speaker 1: seven that was a musical romantic comedy that starred Julie Andrews,
Speaker 1: Mary Tyler Moore, and Carol Channing, directed by George roy
Speaker 1: Hill and um Rensta notes that while he wasn't blacklisted,
Speaker 1: he did have leftist associations that were quotes stalling his
Speaker 1: career at the time. Okay, so at this point in
Speaker 1: the Robot Monster casting crew, how many blacklisted or almost
Speaker 1: blacklisted figures are we at It's several, Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: possible there's sort of two interpretations of this. Apparently, according
Speaker 1: to Rinsta, there's it's on one level, people who are
Speaker 1: having trouble with the with the with being blacklisted, where
Speaker 1: they were just having harder time getting work, and so
Speaker 1: there therefore they might have just been more available to
Speaker 1: a project of this caliber. But then it's also thought
Speaker 1: that the producer might have been sympathetic as well, and
Speaker 1: that could have been a potential in as well, like
Speaker 1: sympathetic to these individuals who were suddenly having a real
Speaker 1: hard time finding any work to sustain themselves. All Right.
Speaker 1: The final thing, I want a rare location note on
Speaker 1: this film because this is another Bronson Canyon film. Wait
Speaker 1: a minute, did ronson Canyon feature in another movie? We didn't? Oh,
Speaker 1: maybe it was Attack of the Crab Monsters I'm thinking of. Well,
Speaker 1: it is definitely a location that was used for Attack
Speaker 1: of the Crab Monsters, but it was also used in
Speaker 1: the Return from nineteen eighty, which we covered on the show. Okay,
Speaker 1: but this is basically this is a section of Griffith
Speaker 1: Park in Los Angeles that it's just been used tons
Speaker 1: of time, including but not limited to White Zombie from
Speaker 1: thirty two, Invasion of the Body Snatchers from fifty six.
Speaker 1: He Conquered the World from fifty six as well, that
Speaker 1: pretty famously includes perhaps the exact same cave that we
Speaker 1: see in this picture. Uh, that's where he learned, only
Speaker 1: too late that man is a feeling creature the very one.
Speaker 1: Um also teenage cave Man from fifty eight. Um, just
Speaker 1: a ton of films. Friday the Thirteenth, Part six, Jason
Speaker 1: Lives Um Star Trek, the Undiscovered Country, Army of Darkness,
Speaker 1: Scorpion King, Hail Caesar. Um. That one probably is a
Speaker 1: nod to this location's importance and in Holly with But yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're filming in l A and you need some
Speaker 1: sort of a desert E canyon, eh cave sort of environment,
Speaker 1: like this is where you went, this is where you
Speaker 1: filmed your scenes. That makes a lot of sense because
Speaker 1: there are scenes at the very beginning where it looks
Speaker 1: like it's about two children playing unsupervised in the middle
Speaker 1: of the Mojave desert. Yeah, Okay, you're ready to talk plot. Yes, Yes,
Speaker 1: let's do it. Wait wait, hold on. Before we get
Speaker 1: into the plot, we have to talk about the credit sequence.
Speaker 1: Because we just did a series of core episodes about
Speaker 1: the idea of horror vakawi, which in art is often
Speaker 1: used to describe an impulse to overly clutter your design,
Speaker 1: to fill it in with too much detail, not leave
Speaker 1: enough blank space. And the credit sequence here, it's got
Speaker 1: a background, so like the credits are appearing as text
Speaker 1: on a background that's a bunch of it looks like
Speaker 1: comic book covers that themselves have text on them, And
Speaker 1: it's a nightmare. Yeah, and now I guess that one
Speaker 1: level we need to remind ourselves this was a three
Speaker 1: D picture or so I'm guessing these these letters were
Speaker 1: jumping out at us off the screen. But still, yes,
Speaker 1: very busy looking. Also, when they showed the Tide I
Speaker 1: don't know if this is something about the transferre to
Speaker 1: home video, but when they showed the title of the movie,
Speaker 1: Robot Monster is not even remotely centered in frame, I'd
Speaker 1: say it's a good thirty percent off. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: hadn't noticed that, but I noticed that, like you basically
Speaker 1: have this pile of comic books in the background, like
Speaker 1: old tiny sci fi comic books, and the wording on
Speaker 1: the comic book covers actually like kind of messes with
Speaker 1: the way you're perceiving the names of the characters because
Speaker 1: they start doing stuff like starring George Nader as Roy.
Speaker 1: But it looks like starting George Nader as Fee Roy
Speaker 1: because there's as it's superimposed over the word fear on
Speaker 1: one of these comic books. Yes, so it's f e
Speaker 1: a and then the name Roy, so it's Fi Roy.
Speaker 1: We get to see Claudia Barrett as Pie Alice. And
Speaker 1: oh and when they introduced these actors, they show like
Speaker 1: they give you a face, so the show you Roy
Speaker 1: and he's that rectangle. He looks like he's sort of
Speaker 1: looking disapprovingly at some neighbors tacky Christmas decorations. But when
Speaker 1: you get to Claudia Barrett, oh, she has this dangerous smirk.
Speaker 1: She looks like she is in possession of your most
Speaker 1: terrible secret and she's just watching you beg her not
Speaker 1: to tell everyone. It's great. But anyway, that's the Alice
Speaker 1: we get. We get fee mother. Selena were recalling her
Speaker 1: royal or royal earlier. I thought it was royal, but
Speaker 1: it could be royal. I'm not whichever it is. She's
Speaker 1: fee mother. Yeah, this is what this is where I
Speaker 1: didn't notice that until just now as we were going
Speaker 1: through the notes. But yeah, she's Selena Royal r O
Speaker 1: y l e um or at least that's the way
Speaker 1: I was pronouncing in my head. But her name in
Speaker 1: the opening credits is Selena Royal r O y A
Speaker 1: l E. So they misspelled it. They misspelled it um
Speaker 1: unless Yeah, I mean, maybe this was a this have
Speaker 1: been another name she used as well. I mean to
Speaker 1: I'll give it the benefit of a doubt and say,
Speaker 1: maybe she was sometimes credited as this, But it's not
Speaker 1: uncommon for pictures of this caliber to sometimes you use
Speaker 1: somebody's name with a inventive spelling. It's true. And I
Speaker 1: love how the credit sequence also gives a credit for
Speaker 1: the automatic billion bubble machine. Oh yeah, well, you gotta
Speaker 1: give credit where credits due. It's an amazing bubble machine.
Speaker 1: So the film opens. The action opens on a bloodthirsty
Speaker 1: alien cyboard clambering over a hilltop in the desert. He's
Speaker 1: wearing a bubbletop helmet affixed with atmosphere hoses, and he's
Speaker 1: got a pistol grip death ray and he's got that
Speaker 1: raised up in one hand. And wait a minute, that
Speaker 1: is not an alien. It is just a child wearing
Speaker 1: a suit he's playing with toys and he's pointing the
Speaker 1: ray gun at his sister, and as he comes up,
Speaker 1: there is Nana Nana Boo boo music playing. It's the
Speaker 1: same song that plays in uh in the Mexican Santa
Speaker 1: clause when the when pitch the demon is doing his antics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an annoying song. And thank god, most of the
Speaker 1: score for this film it does not revolve around this
Speaker 1: little ditty here. Yeah, but so what are the what
Speaker 1: are the opening lines? We get? Oh? Yeah, so Carla
Speaker 1: asked her brother. She says, am I dead? And Johnny says,
Speaker 1: you're disintegrated. I love how morbid. Johnny is, uh, well,
Speaker 1: but anyway, she goes, good, does that mean we can
Speaker 1: play house now? You promised? But Johnny only wants to
Speaker 1: play House of alien slaughter? Uh. And so he's he's
Speaker 1: blowing bubbles and they go around the corner again. It
Speaker 1: looks like they're in the middle of the desert, but
Speaker 1: they end up finding a couple of adults, these two
Speaker 1: men who are standing in a cave under these desert cliffs,
Speaker 1: and the kids come up to them and Johnny says,
Speaker 1: you must die, and the professor, the older guy there's
Speaker 1: an older guy, younger guy, the younger guys, Roy, the
Speaker 1: older guys, the professor, and uh, professor says, wouldn't it
Speaker 1: be nicer if we could live in peace with each other? Uh?
Speaker 1: And uh, So Johnny kind of he seems disappointed by this,
Speaker 1: but he accepts, but he says he still has to
Speaker 1: know who they are and what they're doing there. And
Speaker 1: a bizarre conversation follows. So the older man in the cave,
Speaker 1: this is John Milong is the professor. He has an
Speaker 1: Austrian accent, and he sits the boy on his lap,
Speaker 1: and he explains that he and Roy are archaeologists, and
Speaker 1: he says they try to find out what men were
Speaker 1: like back before they could read or write. He says, quote,
Speaker 1: the only way to pass on what they knew were
Speaker 1: through pictures like this one. And I guess they're referring
Speaker 1: to cave paintings, but you can't really see any in
Speaker 1: the movie. Yeah, there's just some looks like they painted
Speaker 1: some of the rocks in there, right, And so Roy says, Uh,
Speaker 1: Roy's the younger guy. He's in the leather jacket, and
Speaker 1: he says, our job is to chip it out carefully
Speaker 1: and take it to a museum, and then Johnny says, gee,
Speaker 1: are you scientists? And uh, the Roy's like even better
Speaker 1: than being cowboys a professor, but so john he asks
Speaker 1: if the cave painting was a spaceman, and the professor says,
Speaker 1: as far as we know, there were no spacemen at
Speaker 1: those times, and no robots either. So they're having fun.
Speaker 1: But then the fund's over. Here comes Johnny's family. Johnny says,
Speaker 1: here come my mother and my sister, and then he
Speaker 1: turns to Roy and he says, I bet you'd like her,
Speaker 1: I guess, referring to his older sister Alice. Who Uh Alice,
Speaker 1: she comes up and Roy says, no doubt. Uh. So
Speaker 1: Johnny is immediately trying to set his older sister up
Speaker 1: with Roy the archaeologist. But the situation is that Johnny
Speaker 1: and Carla have to go back and take a nap
Speaker 1: after lunch because their family is out here on a picnic.
Speaker 1: And then we see where they have been set up
Speaker 1: for a picnic, and I laughed out loud when I
Speaker 1: saw this. They've got a blanket spread out on the
Speaker 1: like surrounded by jagged rocks, and Johnny says, if we
Speaker 1: ever get a new dad. I hope he's a big
Speaker 1: scientist that makes rocket chips and things like that. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then they I guess, they settled down for a nap,
Speaker 1: which literally means they just lay down on the ground
Speaker 1: around this blanket, surrounded by jagged rocks. And at this
Speaker 1: point in the film you think, all right, I'm following this.
Speaker 1: I know what's going on. And then this film hits
Speaker 1: you with this first major swerve. They're like, yes, the
Speaker 1: action is too clear. Let's let's start getting confusing. So
Speaker 1: Johnny wakes up from the nap, he jogs off. He
Speaker 1: returns to the cave, I guess to hang out with
Speaker 1: his archaeologist buddies, but they're not there, and he is
Speaker 1: knocked over by the shaking of the earth. And then
Speaker 1: we get a cataclysm montage. We see lightning, we see
Speaker 1: balls of fire in the sky burning the atmosphere away.
Speaker 1: Then we see lizards with fins and other things glued
Speaker 1: to them fighting. Uh. To be clear, I'm not positive,
Speaker 1: but it looks like some animals may have been harmed
Speaker 1: in the making of this film. Well, I think these
Speaker 1: these films are this is this is footage from previous films.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of a couple of these are acts,
Speaker 1: so I think they're just reusing something from the films.
Speaker 1: I forget which ones, but they're sided in like Michael
Speaker 1: Welton's book. Okay, well, anyway, there's something that looks like
Speaker 1: two lizards fighting. I can't tell if they're alive or
Speaker 1: if they're like stuffed lizards or whatever, but they've got
Speaker 1: stuff taped to them to make them look like dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: Like one has a dimetridn style finback. Yeah, why are
Speaker 1: there dinosaurs fighting? I still don't know, and I saw
Speaker 1: all right, So Johnny after that wakes up. I don't
Speaker 1: know if he was supposed to have witnessed the dinosaurs
Speaker 1: fighting or something, and he doesn't comment on it. He
Speaker 1: wakes up seemingly from his fall after the Earth's shack,
Speaker 1: and he's still in front of the cave. But now
Speaker 1: things are a little different. We've got a side table
Speaker 1: with some random technology on it. There's like a real
Speaker 1: to real player and something with some antennae coming up
Speaker 1: off of it, and then a bubble machine just blowing bubbles. Also,
Speaker 1: Johnny is dressed differently. Did you notice this? He's wearing
Speaker 1: shorts now, I did not notice the change in vance.
Speaker 1: So Johnny comes to, he looks around, then he hides
Speaker 1: behind a rock, and here comes our Roman reveal. Out
Speaker 1: of the cave comes this thick, awesome, hulking guerrilla suit
Speaker 1: man with a with a space helmet on, and he
Speaker 1: comes out. He looks around, and before we really even
Speaker 1: get a chance to take this in, he's getting onto
Speaker 1: the viewscreen to make a call. So this will be
Speaker 1: our first view screen interface scene, and there are tons
Speaker 1: of them in the movie. Basically, they are zoom calls
Speaker 1: in a bathroom mirror between Roman and his boss, who
Speaker 1: is referred to as the Great One or Great Guidance
Speaker 1: or Guidance Roman, and they will they will recur throughout
Speaker 1: the movie. About half of the run time is Roman
Speaker 1: getting chewed out by his boss for failing to exterminate
Speaker 1: all of the humans. And clearly these scenes were you know,
Speaker 1: they're they were filmed without the voiceover, So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of gesticulating of rilla suits with with space helmets on,
Speaker 1: shaking of hands with fingers outstretched, but it's obvious that
Speaker 1: the hand is not in that hand part of the suit. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because they're again they're extended to give the the original
Speaker 1: costume guerrilla like proportions, so just rubber fingers waggling as
Speaker 1: the handshakes. But the viewscreen comes on, we see some
Speaker 1: chicken nuggets flying around through space. I think they're supposed
Speaker 1: to be asteroids. And then here comes a guy in
Speaker 1: the exact same costume as Roman on the other side.
Speaker 1: So it's just Roman talking to Roman, and it is
Speaker 1: hard to communicate without just playing back a sample. How
Speaker 1: funny the cadence of the Roman on Roman dialogue is
Speaker 1: so like Roman checks in, he says extension Roman x
Speaker 1: J two, reporting to guidance Roman, I salute you and
Speaker 1: the other guy you know, you're late fourteen minutes. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're they're just always. Um. I was trying to think
Speaker 1: of how to describe this, and I did come up
Speaker 1: with a comparison. They have a similar kind of loud,
Speaker 1: stabby but monotonous line delivery to the cone heads. M
Speaker 1: M yeah, yeah, yeah, which I guess, I guess we
Speaker 1: can sort of, I mean, undoubtedly, um Dan Ackroyd was
Speaker 1: familiar with Robot Monster. Yes, maybe it was a direct
Speaker 1: reference there. So we get some backstory about what's going
Speaker 1: on here. We discovered that the guidance Roman, he divulges
Speaker 1: that no life has been discovered on other planets. I
Speaker 1: guess they were looking. So he says Earth is their
Speaker 1: only rival, and then Romance says the human knew of
Speaker 1: atomic energy, but had not mastered the cosmic ray. So
Speaker 1: Roman explains that he used something called the Calcinator ray
Speaker 1: to attack Earth, and then the Earth nations thought the
Speaker 1: attack came from other Earth nations, so they retaliated against
Speaker 1: each other and they all destroyed each other with nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1: And then Romance says after that they tried to band
Speaker 1: together against him. He says, quote, their resistance pattern showed
Speaker 1: some intelligence, but all are gone now. So at this
Speaker 1: point I was Rachel and I were watching this and
Speaker 1: we're like, what what? How much time has elapsed here?
Speaker 1: It just looks like Johnny falls over. Then he gets up,
Speaker 1: and now here's Roman talking about what sounds like something
Speaker 1: you know would have taken months of intervening time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I I had to just quickly abandon the earlier portion
Speaker 1: of the film and be like, this is the reality
Speaker 1: we're in now. I can't I've got enough to contend with.
Speaker 1: I can't try and figure out how the first part
Speaker 1: factors into where we are now. But yeah, because suddenly
Speaker 1: we are in this post apocalyptic hellscape and it's this
Speaker 1: is something that Ringstad discusses a little bit, like this
Speaker 1: is really early for I mean, this isn't the first
Speaker 1: time that in the wake of the close of World
Speaker 1: War two that you had fiction or film dealing with
Speaker 1: like a post apocalypt it setting. But it's pretty early,
Speaker 1: like this is this is not long after the first
Speaker 1: use of nuclear weaponry on Earth. Yeah, and already at
Speaker 1: this point in the movie, all the Earth things are
Speaker 1: gone as far as we know, except for Johnny. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we get it. We hear from the Roman
Speaker 1: himself who's like there are eight survivors or there's some
Speaker 1: disagreement on how many survivors, but it seems to be
Speaker 1: agreed upon that we're not talking about more than eight humans. Yeah.
Speaker 1: First Romance says that he's eliminated all the humans, and
Speaker 1: then the guidance Romance says, I want facts, not words. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're really they're just they're main spirited and severe
Speaker 1: on everything. Like at this point the human species is
Speaker 1: effectively extinct. I mean, there's no coming back from this.
Speaker 1: But they're like no, we must destroy them, all right.
Speaker 1: Roman tries to defend himself. He's like, my scans indicate
Speaker 1: no life life forms above lepidoptera level exists, And I
Speaker 1: was like, what lepidoptera moths and butterflies? Oh man, we
Speaker 1: don't say. I don't remember seeing a mouth or a
Speaker 1: better flying the film, though it's other regions. I guess
Speaker 1: I don't know how he's ranking them though, what is
Speaker 1: above and below leopid optera? Anyway, the boss Roman is like, uh, okay,
Speaker 1: find and destroy the eight remaining humans and then report back.
Speaker 1: So we see Roman, uh, you know, he'd uh, he's
Speaker 1: gonna get to work, and so he sets his bubble
Speaker 1: machine going full blast, and then Johnny runs off to
Speaker 1: somewhere to somewhere, back home, presumably to his family, and
Speaker 1: then just more commenced intense brain pain, Rob, can you
Speaker 1: try to describe what a baffling puzzle box begins to
Speaker 1: emerge in the next scene about like what what the
Speaker 1: time frame of the movie is, What are the family
Speaker 1: relationships the living arrangements? Like yeah, because they're just living
Speaker 1: in straight ruins here, just like direct sunlight ruins. There
Speaker 1: are no roofs that I remember seeing and everything is
Speaker 1: protected by this kind of electromagnetic field or slash VNS
Speaker 1: that the professor has installed, and they're just clearly really
Speaker 1: scraping by. And several times in the film the performances
Speaker 1: really speak to this like they're supposed to be a
Speaker 1: feeling of of desperation here, that this is humanity in
Speaker 1: its final days for real. But there's also stuff that
Speaker 1: doesn't comport with that at all, like Roy and Alice
Speaker 1: having this laugh inducing romance. Uh. But the other thing
Speaker 1: about the family relationships, So the mother and the professor
Speaker 1: are now Ma and pa, and I think maybe we're
Speaker 1: to understand that such time has passed that the two
Speaker 1: archaeologists have been incorporated into Johnny and Carlos family. So
Speaker 1: mother and the professor are now married, and now the
Speaker 1: professor is just Johnny's paw. I guess, yeah, okay, I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what. But they don't explain that any time has passed.
Speaker 1: It's just like that now. So there's that. But then
Speaker 1: also we are told about all of this technology expertise,
Speaker 1: Like we find out from the professor that uh that
Speaker 1: they think the Roman hasn't been able to locate them
Speaker 1: because the professor and Alice were able to rig up
Speaker 1: these deflector beams that are like these electrical wires that
Speaker 1: surround their shelter which protect them from romance scanning rays.
Speaker 1: And wasn't the professor an archaeologist, Yeah, that's what we
Speaker 1: were told earlier. But he's also apparently a like a
Speaker 1: nuclear engineer or whatever. Yeah, I mean maybe he's just
Speaker 1: a quick study and he he got some books. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I had some time to to bone up on
Speaker 1: everything in the days immediately following the apocalypse. So this
Speaker 1: is the thing you were calling a puzzle box. It's
Speaker 1: just like so much is coming out so fast, and
Speaker 1: it's like not what it was in the scene just before,
Speaker 1: with no explanation for why it's different. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: just have to, like moment to moment in this film
Speaker 1: except the change and roll with it or to whatever
Speaker 1: degree is possible, try and stitch together in your mind.
Speaker 1: So again, you either have to be all in on
Speaker 1: following the the meandering plot of this film, or you
Speaker 1: have to just shut off half your brain and take
Speaker 1: it at like drive in value. Yeah. So Johnny reports
Speaker 1: to his family the proximity of Roman. They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: he's just over in the cave. He's really close to
Speaker 1: our house and that's obviously distressing to everyone. And Johnny suggests,
Speaker 1: let's kill him, let's kill Romance. And the Professor says,
Speaker 1: we can't do that. He's impervious to our weapons. And
Speaker 1: then Alice says, unless we find his weak spot. Good thinking,
Speaker 1: they've never had this conversation before. Exactly, Yeah, apparently they've
Speaker 1: been part of a like resistance on Earth that was
Speaker 1: fighting against Roman and they're all but defeated. They're the
Speaker 1: only ones left, and now Alice has the idea, what
Speaker 1: if we try to find his weak spot. We eventually
Speaker 1: learned that, oh, it's not that fence that that they've
Speaker 1: rigged up. There's protecting them. It's because the Professor develops
Speaker 1: some sort of antibiotic to keep them all from catching
Speaker 1: any diseases, and that is protecting them from the Romance
Speaker 1: super weapons. Yes, the professor has developed an antibiotics serum.
Speaker 1: I think the professor and Roy together, so two archaeologists
Speaker 1: can do bioengineering. They can't antibiotics serum that protects them
Speaker 1: against all diseases. Johnny explains that they can take capsules
Speaker 1: that have quote a lot of bad bugs in them
Speaker 1: and then they never get sick. So there you go.
Speaker 1: But it just happens to turn out that this serum
Speaker 1: for some reason protects them against romance scanning devices and weapons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so they eventually put this together and then we
Speaker 1: get this wonderful setup that that they roll out here
Speaker 1: in the film that that I I really loved and
Speaker 1: I got really invested in for the brief period that
Speaker 1: it was explored in the movie. They share that there
Speaker 1: is a battalion of human space marines on an orbiting
Speaker 1: spaceship that survived the all out attack on Earth and
Speaker 1: the you know, the subsequent wars. Uh. We later find
Speaker 1: out that the Romance basically left them alone because they
Speaker 1: were like, well, this could be useful when we come
Speaker 1: to colonize the planet. We'll just leave that up there.
Speaker 1: They're not doing any harm for some reason. They're they're
Speaker 1: forgiving of this, but they can't let eight remaining humans
Speaker 1: die out on the Earth, uh whatever. Fair enough. But
Speaker 1: once our human survivors realize that it's the serum that's
Speaker 1: protecting them, they're like, well, let's let's let's get us.
Speaker 1: Let's get one of these rocket ships is still laying around.
Speaker 1: Let's Let's have a couple of folks hop on a
Speaker 1: V two with this serum, take it up to the
Speaker 1: space Marines. Then they'll be protected and bam, we can
Speaker 1: begin this rebellion in earnest. Okay, good plan, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: it's like that. Let's do that for the next half
Speaker 1: of this film. But then oh, we get a call
Speaker 1: from the Roman overlord here, the Viceroy of Earth, and
Speaker 1: he's like, I figured out your plot. Watch what I'm
Speaker 1: about to do. What does he do, of course, blows
Speaker 1: up the V two rocket ship on its way to
Speaker 1: the to the satellite, and we see what is supposed
Speaker 1: to be like the space station satellite spinning out of
Speaker 1: control and becoming devastated, and it's devastated as well, and
Speaker 1: so and so he's just like, your your brilliant plan
Speaker 1: is nothing, and everybody's really shaken up about it. And
Speaker 1: I was a little shaken up to again trying to
Speaker 1: become as invested as possible and Robot Monster and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, I really thought they had
Speaker 1: a they had a shot there. This seems like a
Speaker 1: really good plan. And Roman is just completely destroyed all
Speaker 1: their hope and they seem utterly hopeless. Now it's a
Speaker 1: tragic setback. But during the scene where we watched the
Speaker 1: space platform being destroyed, you can see somebody with a
Speaker 1: gloved hand holding up the model as they move it around.
Speaker 1: Oh man, oh I love that. But wait, Rob, you
Speaker 1: actually skipped ahead a little bit because there are a
Speaker 1: lot of zoom calls in this movie. Yes, Roman calls
Speaker 1: them once before that call where he shows them that
Speaker 1: he's blowing up the space station. Uh. He first calls
Speaker 1: the family on their view screen, which appears to be
Speaker 1: the only piece of furniture in their home, which, as
Speaker 1: you said, is otherwise just a three wall concrete bunker
Speaker 1: with no roof, exposed to the desert sun. And Romance says,
Speaker 1: humans listen to me. Due to an error in calculation,
Speaker 1: there are still a few of you left. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so he's explaining how he's going to destroy them, and
Speaker 1: he wants them to come surrender themselves to him and
Speaker 1: he'll promise them a quick, painless death. But during this
Speaker 1: conversation there is a bizarre side conversation, just like while
Speaker 1: they're still on the phone with Roman, Romans just standing
Speaker 1: there on the zoom screen, and they start talking about
Speaker 1: how because of the number of humans left alive that
Speaker 1: Roman sites. They assume Roy must be dead because he's
Speaker 1: not there with them, and uh. The professors like, I
Speaker 1: never would have invented the serum without him, so I
Speaker 1: guess he used his archaeology to help invent the serum
Speaker 1: and uh. And Alice is like, oh, he you know,
Speaker 1: we always struggled because he would never admit I was
Speaker 1: good in my field, which is apparently like electrical engineering. Um.
Speaker 1: But but he you know, now she kind of misses him.
Speaker 1: But in the middle of that, Roman interrupts them to say,
Speaker 1: do you wonder what happened to all your fellows east time?
Speaker 1: At other humans my calcinator beam and then he shows
Speaker 1: stock footage of bombs. Uh. And then he tells them
Speaker 1: their deaths will be indescribable and he logs off. And
Speaker 1: after that there's a great conversation where the mother is like, well,
Speaker 1: maybe we should try to negotiate with Roman, but the
Speaker 1: professor says, if he wants us, he should calculate us.
Speaker 1: Rob what do you make of the fact that the
Speaker 1: word calculate is used roughly five hundred times in this movie?
Speaker 1: I have no idea. I mean, it's used correctly in
Speaker 1: some places, but here I'm not sure what the professor
Speaker 1: is saying, Like, wait, like he should negotiate with us. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: negotiations seems like the way to go. He should calculate us,
Speaker 1: like what I count us? I think that means find us.
Speaker 1: In this context, it almost is used to refer to
Speaker 1: any kind of cognitive labor or activity of any kind.
Speaker 1: So they used calculate to mean like think, and they
Speaker 1: use calculate later, I think to mean outsmart so, and
Speaker 1: we're getting a very broad usage of calculate, not not
Speaker 1: usually in the way you would see it. All right,
Speaker 1: but let's check back in with Roy. What's Roy been
Speaker 1: up to? Oh? Roy, turns out he's spying on Romance.
Speaker 1: So you go back to Romance cave and Roy is
Speaker 1: behind a rock watching Roman do his thing. And Roy
Speaker 1: he's got a T shirt on, tucked in T shirt
Speaker 1: with a couple of big holes ripped in it, one
Speaker 1: big nipple hole, one shoulder hole. And he's watching Roman
Speaker 1: and his boss do another zoom call and it's more
Speaker 1: the same stuff that like, the boss is chewing Roman out.
Speaker 1: Roman says, I need guidance, great one. For the first
Speaker 1: time in my life, I am not sure, and the
Speaker 1: great one says, you sound like a human, not a Roman,
Speaker 1: and uh, so Roy he watches all this and he
Speaker 1: he comes back to the family alive, and well, uh
Speaker 1: they're happy to see him, and he spills the beans
Speaker 1: about Roman. He's like, Roman does not know where we are.
Speaker 1: So this is the part where as you were talking about,
Speaker 1: they planned to coordinate with the Space Platform, but in
Speaker 1: order to do so, they have to rewire their view
Speaker 1: screen the zoom call thing to contact the Space Platform.
Speaker 1: And so Alice is an expert at this, but she
Speaker 1: needs Roy to be her assistant, and this is fraught.
Speaker 1: And this is tricky because whenever Roy needs to be
Speaker 1: her assistant with electronics, he gets bossy. He tries to
Speaker 1: be the boss and she tells him this and then
Speaker 1: he's like, I'm bossy, and then this line throws for
Speaker 1: a loop. He says, you're so bossy you ought to
Speaker 1: be milked before you come home at night. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: and I did not understand that. So we stopped and
Speaker 1: looked this up. Apparently some people call their cows or
Speaker 1: call their lead cow bossy. M m hmmm, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah who that's perplexing whatever. I'm not familiar with this whatever,
Speaker 1: but okay, hey, yeah farmers in the audience ship. There
Speaker 1: were a lot of Westerns at this time, so maybe
Speaker 1: this is something you would know if you've watched a
Speaker 1: lot of Westerns, which were extremely popular in the forties
Speaker 1: and fifties. Right, So, Roy and Alice they get together
Speaker 1: for some sassy, flirty electronics repair montages where we're just
Speaker 1: watching like an electronics board and some hands doing things
Speaker 1: on it, and they're doing voice over like, oh, solder,
Speaker 1: my vacuum tube, You're too beautiful to be so smart.
Speaker 1: One wonders if this this section was about stretching out
Speaker 1: the runtime of the film to over an hour. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But then finally they get it working, they get they
Speaker 1: get tuned in, but unfortunately, this is the scene you
Speaker 1: were talking about the Roman attack on the rocket ship
Speaker 1: killing the other humans, and Romance shows them the attack
Speaker 1: on their viewscreen, and Roman ends it by saying, calculate
Speaker 1: your chances negative, negative, negative, absolutely heartbreaking, and then he
Speaker 1: says again that he's like several times now threatened that
Speaker 1: he will destroy them imminently. He says it again, He's like,
Speaker 1: in one hour, I will destroy you all, and the
Speaker 1: kid Carlos says, Mommy, why doesn't he like people? Uh?
Speaker 1: Then we get let's see we get more flirty electronics
Speaker 1: work after this because Alis and Roy have to rewire
Speaker 1: the view screen again so they can call Roman directly.
Speaker 1: This is the scene where the Professor is like, Okay,
Speaker 1: let me show you my fan Emily. Roman, how could
Speaker 1: you want to destroy them? And then Roman like gives
Speaker 1: a reason for destroying each family member. They show mother
Speaker 1: and he's like, the mother is the bringer of human life.
Speaker 1: And then they show the child Carla, and he's like,
Speaker 1: I am programmed to have no emotions. And then they
Speaker 1: show Johnny the boy and Johnny sticks out his tongue
Speaker 1: and Roman just says, the boy is impertinent. Fair Fair,
Speaker 1: He's kind of a Bart Simpsons, this kid. But this
Speaker 1: scene is a turning point in the movie because when
Speaker 1: the Professor shows Roman Alice, something clicks for Roman. Romance
Speaker 1: hard exterior shell breaks and something kind of melts inside.
Speaker 1: He sees Alice and he's like, hubba, hubba. He says,
Speaker 1: there is something I do not understand. I want to
Speaker 1: see the girl Alice again, and it's love at first sight.
Speaker 1: He's immediately saying like, oh, well, wait a minute, Actually,
Speaker 1: I don't have to destroy you. Let me negotiate with
Speaker 1: the girl. Now. To be clear, Alice is very cute,
Speaker 1: but is she really cute to an alien robots sideboard
Speaker 1: gorilla man um? I'm just I'm not sure about that.
Speaker 1: And also I have to question the Roman viceroy here,
Speaker 1: like where does he think this relationship could possibly go?
Speaker 1: Maybe he's not thinking a long term Yeah, but the
Speaker 1: weird thing, like she's weirdly all for it. She's Carlos says,
Speaker 1: is Alice going to go on a date with Roman?
Speaker 1: And Alice's yeah, I must go. She gives this passionate
Speaker 1: monologue about how like humans crawled up from the slime
Speaker 1: of the ocean and evolved to tame the atom and
Speaker 1: it cannot end just because she did not want to
Speaker 1: become bride of Roman. So she she's gonna, She's gonna
Speaker 1: do it. I love this because this this is a
Speaker 1: moment in the film that feels very unexpected, because any
Speaker 1: other film that had this kind of plot, uh, would
Speaker 1: not go in this direction. It would just be like, oh,
Speaker 1: save me from the Roman. I do not want to
Speaker 1: marry the Roman. But no, she goes this movie goes
Speaker 1: in the opposite direct and it and it makes it interesting. However,
Speaker 1: the family, the rest of the family do not agree,
Speaker 1: and they end up restraining Alice to prevent her from
Speaker 1: going to this this Roman rendezvous. But meanwhile, little Johnny
Speaker 1: runs off to meet Roman instead. Uh. And here's where
Speaker 1: we get the first of lots of scenes of Roman
Speaker 1: walking up a hill. Uh. I don't know why they
Speaker 1: chose to include this much footage, if like they were
Speaker 1: embracing how funny it looked, or it's hard for me
Speaker 1: to believe they watched it and did not think it
Speaker 1: was funny. So this is one of those things that
Speaker 1: makes me think, well, yeah, maybe they were sort of
Speaker 1: leaning into the absurd comic aspect of this, but there's
Speaker 1: a lot of it, and we could not stop laughing. Yeah. Again,
Speaker 1: anytime Roman is on the screen, you're entertained. There's not
Speaker 1: a dull moment, as long as you can say there's
Speaker 1: not a dull moment in the movie. But he is.
Speaker 1: He's just such an interesting specimen to look at. So
Speaker 1: Johnny and Roman meet up and Johnny's like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: what do you have against us? And Roman and explains, well,
Speaker 1: you are human and your people were getting too intelligent.
Speaker 1: We could not wait until you were strong enough to
Speaker 1: attack us. We had to attack you first. And then
Speaker 1: there's an amazing exchange. Johnny says, I think you're just
Speaker 1: a big bully picking on those smaller than you are,
Speaker 1: and Romance says, now, I will kill you. So he
Speaker 1: tries to do use the Calcinator death ray, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't work. Johnny's immune. But this encounter, let's slip the
Speaker 1: fact about the sea rum that keeps them safe from Roman,
Speaker 1: and Roman figures out that he can now calculate how
Speaker 1: to destroy them. Oh and meanwhile, in the same part,
Speaker 1: Romance wandering around and Alice and Roy are oft in
Speaker 1: the the desert together and they're hiding from Roman, and
Speaker 1: they like lay down on a bunch of cactuses and
Speaker 1: start kissing. And then they run home after this and
Speaker 1: say that they want to get married, and they have
Speaker 1: a wedding ceremony. Oh my god. So this this is
Speaker 1: probably the dumbest part of the very dumb film. Um.
Speaker 1: I loved every moment of it because, Okay, first of all,
Speaker 1: you mentioned how Roy came back from spying on Roman
Speaker 1: or whatever and his shirt was torn. He quickly became
Speaker 1: obvious that this is the only like medium adult T
Speaker 1: shirt left on the planet because he doesn't get a
Speaker 1: new and he just sticks with this ragged old thing.
Speaker 1: Um a couple of times during the making out and
Speaker 1: the wooing of Alice, um, that shirt comes all the
Speaker 1: way off. And then when they get married, And granted
Speaker 1: it's not a fancy ceremony, it's kind of thrown together
Speaker 1: last minute. There aren't a lot of people to invite
Speaker 1: to it because most of the world is dead and
Speaker 1: it's a dead world. Uh, but Roy is married shirtless.
Speaker 1: This is a shirtless wedding, And I had to I
Speaker 1: had actually did a quick searching around. I'm like, is
Speaker 1: this a thing? Has even the most ridiculous of celebrities
Speaker 1: had a wedding ceremony in which they are completely shirtless,
Speaker 1: And I could find no evidence that this is the case.
Speaker 1: I think you have had some examples of of you know,
Speaker 1: particularly particularly buff dude maybe getting married with just a
Speaker 1: jacket over their buffness. But I think Roy, I correct
Speaker 1: me if I'm wrong, listeners, but I think Roy was
Speaker 1: maybe in a in a category all his own here,
Speaker 1: just the shirtless wedding to Alice when they say they're
Speaker 1: getting married and they asked the professor to perform the ceremony.
Speaker 1: The professors like, it will be the biggest social event
Speaker 1: of the year and depending on how much time has passed.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a very good case to be
Speaker 1: made for that. So they get married and it's just well,
Speaker 1: it's it's heartwarming. Uh. But he does put the shore
Speaker 1: back on though, Oh I forgot about that. Yeah, He's like,
Speaker 1: all right, right, you know, I didn't want to wear
Speaker 1: this awful thing to the wedding, but I will put
Speaker 1: it back on now. Now. After this, we get to
Speaker 1: the part where I started to figure out spoiler spoiler
Speaker 1: for the ending of the film. Uh. I started to realize, Oh,
Speaker 1: this is gonna all be a dream because Romance starts
Speaker 1: killing people. It starts killing the characters, including like the children,
Speaker 1: and oh yeah, and kills the little girl. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: strangles the little girl. And I was like what And
Speaker 1: then I realized, Oh, they would not release this movie
Speaker 1: if that actually just happened. So I just didn't be
Speaker 1: at that moment of clarity. I was like, well, she's dead. Now,
Speaker 1: that's just how totally inconsistent this movie is. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: starts killing all the human characters, and I think he
Speaker 1: basically kills all of them. Uh he kills Roy. Uh
Speaker 1: does he killed both the kids? Oh? I will say
Speaker 1: he does carry Alice around, as depicted on the poster. Finally,
Speaker 1: a movie where the poster is true to life. The
Speaker 1: monster just carries the hell out of a woman, just
Speaker 1: carries her around. We see lots of shots of Roman
Speaker 1: carrying Alice's struggling body across the countryside. Here she's just
Speaker 1: kind of kicking her feet back and forth. He's carrying
Speaker 1: her around. She doesn't actually it doesn't look like she's
Speaker 1: really trying to sell being distressed in these scenes. She's
Speaker 1: just she just looks like this is funny. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that he couldn't really see out of that
Speaker 1: cost him all that well. So these scenes where he's
Speaker 1: some of those scenes, you can kind of you kind
Speaker 1: of get the sense that he's walking gingerly with the
Speaker 1: kind of gorilla arms outstretched in case he falls. So
Speaker 1: perhaps that was part of it. Here, don't kick too
Speaker 1: much or there's gonna be a tumble. But ultimately we
Speaker 1: get some we get some real conflict in the Roman
Speaker 1: character because he kidnaps Alice. He takes her back to
Speaker 1: his cave. Um, I think the professor and mother are
Speaker 1: trying to come rescue her. But he calls into his boss,
Speaker 1: and his boss is like, Okay, you gotta you've gotta
Speaker 1: destroy all the humans, and he's and he's like, no,
Speaker 1: I cannot destroy this human because I love her, And
Speaker 1: his boss is really mad at him. He says, you
Speaker 1: are not like a Roman, You're like a human. Destroy
Speaker 1: them all or I will destroy you. And so Roman
Speaker 1: he gets his final soliloquy. He says, I cannot yet
Speaker 1: I must. Oh, actually I should read this quote directly.
Speaker 1: He says, I cannot, yet I must. How do you
Speaker 1: calculate that at what point on the graph you must
Speaker 1: and cannot meet? Yet? I must, but I cannot pure
Speaker 1: Shakespeare right now anyway, So we get that conflict. He
Speaker 1: he doesn't want, he can't bring himself to kill Alice.
Speaker 1: So then the Great Guidance says, you wish to be
Speaker 1: a human, good, you can die like a human, and
Speaker 1: then he kills He like sends a cosmic ray to
Speaker 1: kill to kill the Roman, and then he again He
Speaker 1: basically he sends dinosaurs to fight again to do the
Speaker 1: same stock footage they did earlier. Yeah, I think so. Again,
Speaker 1: it gets very confusing, and that's gonna destroy the world
Speaker 1: until Johnny wakes up. Johnny wakes up from his dream,
Speaker 1: and of course it was all a dream. Of course
Speaker 1: it was the moment Romance started killing the children. I
Speaker 1: knew that this was gonna happen. I I did not.
Speaker 1: I found it really gut punchy when they did the
Speaker 1: whole It was all a dream thing. And again, I've
Speaker 1: seen this movie for but I guess I forgot about that.
Speaker 1: Maybe my mind rejected it, and I rejected now as well,
Speaker 1: because my my I had to do so so many
Speaker 1: mental gymnastics to try and make sense of the plot
Speaker 1: and and not even able to stitch everything together. And
Speaker 1: then when you get to that, oh, but it was
Speaker 1: all a dream, Like what am I supposed to do
Speaker 1: with that? Right? I mean, then it nothing matters, because
Speaker 1: then it was just it was just all the the
Speaker 1: dreams of a young child. And and that's not interesting.
Speaker 1: What's what's that's supposed to me? Agree, Phil Tucker? That
Speaker 1: was cheap, That was that was that was a fake out.
Speaker 1: You should not have done it. You should have structured
Speaker 1: it in such a way that you could commit to
Speaker 1: your ending and let it be the reality of the
Speaker 1: world you've created. Yeah, yeah, or you know, it's not
Speaker 1: that it was all a dream is always a terrible choice.
Speaker 1: It's often a great choice, especially in films that are
Speaker 1: surreal and fantastic anyway or some sort of you know,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of obviously Wizard of Oz being a great
Speaker 1: example of this, the fact that it was all a
Speaker 1: dream or was maybe a dream. It's a little ambiguous. Uh,
Speaker 1: that just adds to the the fun of the picture,
Speaker 1: and and that's just part of it. But here it's
Speaker 1: just it just feels very cut, punchy. I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: it's writers out there, I would not advise you to
Speaker 1: try it was all a dream. It It works in
Speaker 1: the Wizard of Oz. But I'd say that kind of
Speaker 1: outcome is rare. Most of the time. Audiences are going
Speaker 1: to feel cheated. Yeah, but at least this isn't just
Speaker 1: it was all a dream. This is it was all
Speaker 1: a dream? Or was it? Because when our human characters
Speaker 1: walk away from the cave, outcomes out of the cave
Speaker 1: comes walking the Roman, reaching out towards the view, or
Speaker 1: in fact, they do it like three times, just to
Speaker 1: drive home the uh, the the horror of the picture.
Speaker 1: And I guess also get just a little more juice
Speaker 1: out of the three D because it's like he's coming
Speaker 1: out of the screen at you. People were running screaming
Speaker 1: out of the theaters. I'm sure. But Robot Monster, I
Speaker 1: love you, Robot Monster. What what a film? Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: just noticing that the great one, uh, the Roman Boss. Uh.
Speaker 1: In one of his final lines, he says, next, psychotronic
Speaker 1: vibrations will smash the planet Earth out of the universe.
Speaker 1: That's pretty great because the psychotronic vibrations, all of this film,
Speaker 1: the psychotronic film, Uh, you can pretty much just smash
Speaker 1: the planet out of the universe. It certainly smashes the
Speaker 1: viewer out of the universe, at least for a little
Speaker 1: over an hour, about sixty two minutes. Those were the days,
Speaker 1: all right, I am, I am worn out. We've got
Speaker 1: to stop it there. Yeah, yeah, we've been going longer
Speaker 1: than the film for sure. But yeah, suffice to say,
Speaker 1: there's a lot in the sixty two minutes of runtime
Speaker 1: that's worth worth watching. Yeah that don't go watch a
Speaker 1: three hour picture. Watch Robot Monster three times. In a
Speaker 1: row because there's just so much there. Again, the book
Speaker 1: I cannot yet I must buy Ander's Runstad is definitely
Speaker 1: worth picking up if you want a deeper dive into
Speaker 1: this picture. But yeah, I highly recommend Robot Monster. If
Speaker 1: this is your type of film, this is definitely the
Speaker 1: film for you. Roman commands it all right, We're gonna
Speaker 1: go ahead and close it out here, but we'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from everyone out there if you have thoughts
Speaker 1: on Robot Monster where it fits into your appreciation of
Speaker 1: film and your movie going history. Right in we'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you. Just a reminder that if you
Speaker 1: want to look at all the films that we've consider,
Speaker 1: all the films that we've covered on Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 1: go to letterbox dot com. It's l E T T
Speaker 1: E R b o x d uh. It's a great
Speaker 1: website for charting your own, uh film favorites and films
Speaker 1: you want to see and that sort of thing. But
Speaker 1: we have a user account there. Our user name is
Speaker 1: weird House, and we have a list there of everything
Speaker 1: we've covered and sometimes just a sneak peak of what
Speaker 1: we're covering in the next week. We're primarily a science podcast.
Speaker 1: Here it' Stuff to Blow Your Mind but every Friday
Speaker 1: and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. We
Speaker 1: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
Speaker 1: weird film. Huge thanks to our audio producer J. J. Pauseway.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
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