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