Weirdhouse Cinema: Robot Monster

sixty two minutes long. It was made on a microscopic budget. It makes very close to zero since whatsoever, and ever since I first saw this movie about twenty years ago, now I have probably thought of it at least once every week of my life. It is a fascinating film and I want to throw up. This is this is crazy. We were not aware of this fact until later on in the day, but we both watched this on our

each on our own on January thirty one. January thirty one, as it turns out, is a guerrilla suit day, like national or international. I'm not sure. Maybe there's a different international Guerilla Suit Day. I Either way, uh perfect that we should have watched this film because it does feature most of a guerrilla suit. Uh. And is and it's ultimately, I think an important page in the history of guerilla

suits in cinema. Who establishes that day, is that like the National or the International Guerilla Suit Consortium or something or yeah, yeah, I can imagine their board meetings where everyone, of course is wearing a guerrilla costume. Are you ready to go A four Robot Monster? I think you are, because everybody is, because everybody should be. Yeah. It's Um, it's a nine film, and it's not just a bad B movie. It's a it's legendary slice of American schlock cinema.

The titular monster is essentially an icon of BT cinema. And I mean that in the fully religious sense of the world. Yeah, it is a It's an image that may be venerated, that you may use an act of devotion. Um. All this is to say, this is a film so slapped together and yet unique that it transcends the original picture. And and say what you will about the the Roman Monster, the robot Monster of the movie. It's never boring, uh,

and it certainly leaves an impression. Yes, Robot Monster is schlock, but it is not hack, which I think is a very important distinction, one that this movie really forced me to meditate on. Uh. And, if you'll allow me to elaborate, I would like to explain. Let's have it okay. So, schlock is a term we've used on the show before, but we've never really defined it. I guess it's it's kind of hard to define. It's a slang term that just discovered is derived from a couple of Yiddish root words.

Apparently that has to do with the Yiddish words meaning like a stroke or meaning a person who is sort of unkempt. But it's often used to describe a certain kind of B movie. I think more broadly, you could use schlock to refer to cultural products in general, like you could have a schlock comic book, or maybe even a schlock novel or a schlock sculpture. Uh. And, as I said, the definition is a little fuzzy, but you can kind of build a word cloud around it, like

what are the associations? And in that word cloud, I would say you would find terms like cheap, messy, or clumsy, weird and unsophisticated. So the exact opposite of a schlock movie or cultural product would be one that is expensive or high budget, very skillful, skillfully made down to earth and refined or tasteful sounds dreadful. Meanwhile, Hack, in its usage for cultural products like movies, refers more to things that are executed with a certain baseline of professionalism or

no how but are boring, unoriginal, uninspired, and forgettable. And the annals of monster movie dum especially of the nineteen fifties, are full of both kinds of movies, and sometimes these things can overlap. But I think Robot Monster is special because it is all one and none of the other. This movie is a solid ten point oh on the Schlock scale and a zero point zero on the Hack scale, which makes it, in a strange way, kind of a masterpiece. I would put the Edwood movies like Plan nine from

Outer Space in the same category. It is a bumbling, awkward, nonsensical, almost improvisational hour of of guerrilla suit mayhem, and it's never leaving my brain. This is the opposite of the boring, unoriginal, uninspired, forgettable schlock monster movies that that came out around the same time. I feel like if one day they upload my consciousness into a computer, and like my memories are

lost in the transfer. Robot Monster is going to be one of the few that survives wherever I go, whatever happens, I am taking Roman with me. Yeah. Now, let me describe Roman for anyone who still doesn't know who we're talking about here, um, and you probably just need to be reminded, because again, this is a famous figure from B movie history. It is essentially a gorilla, like a guerrilla costume and uh, kind of chunky looking and in

appropriately long arms. But instead of a guerrilla's head, there's this kind of looks like a robot head, kind of looks like a space helmet with very long, broad antennae on top. And there's this murky face plate through which you can see something like a featureless face or some sort of amorphous mass, or if you're looking at it in just the right way, you might think you see something like a skull. We'll get into the into the different interpretations of it later, but this is the Roman.

This is the Robot Monster, and it it's easy to just look at it. And I've seen, you know, I've heard lots of jokes about how this is really thrown together. Look at that they just they couldn't afford a monster, so they got a guerrilla suit and they just put a robot um head on top of it. Yes, yes that's true, but it also you just can't dismiss how well this works on screen, Like, this creature is interesting.

Throughout the film, there's sometimes where there is I think a legitimate feeling of menace to the creature, and it works. There are plenty of scenes in which it it does feel goofy, but I don't know it, Uh, it works in a weird way. Well, it's so odd. It's such a perverse combination, like the space helmet with the with the Google head inside, with the thick guerrilla body with like it's shaggy butt, but also the way that the person has to walk inside the gorilla suit, because like

the suit is obviously much bigger than the person. So when you see them walking there, it's this big, thick guerrilla body taking these very dainty looking footsteps up the mountain pathways. It's you've never seen anything like it. It's just perfect. Yeah, and it and and I do also need to drive home, Like there's so many worse looking monsters in monster movie history, Like you can't even begin to list the monsters that look dumber or look more

thrown together on the screen. And yet there is something unique about the way this came together, Like there's just, like you said, there's something kind of perverse about it. You can't believe this is what the monster is. And it's on screen for most of the movie. They're not like obscuring it behind fog or in the dark or something. It's just center frame. Half of the movie is the roman doing zoom calls with another romance are just walking

around probably open broad daylight. Yeah. So another thing that I started thinking about with this movie is it's interesting how early it comes in the the fifties uh space invasion movie arc. I would have assumed it came out. I don't know, if you'd asked me, I would have assumed Robot Monster was nineteen fifties seven, you know, same year as uh like Attack of the Crab Monsters or something or move was that fifty seven or fifty eight and I know somewhere in there. But instead it was

sort of an early runner in this arc. So to situate it within the history of sci fi movies, alien invasion movies or alien attack movies, I think really hit their peak in the in the like mid to late nineteen fifties. Before that, if you look at the sci fi movies of the thirties and forties, there are actually very few alien invasion films. There are a few, but not not many. The most common theme of earlier science

fiction films seems to be mad scientists. Like many of the sci fi movies from this period that we've covered on the show fit into that category. So we talked about Doctor X that's the one with synthetic flesh, mad science movie. There's Doctor Cyclops that's the guy who shrinks people and then menaces them with various animals and stuff. There's Mad Love that's about a hand transplant gone horribly wrong. There is Things to Come, which addresses all kinds of

general scientific progress for good and for ill. Yeah. Yeah, we haven't actually covered Things to Come yet properly on Weird House Cinema, but I believe we talked about it, you know, the Time after Time episode, because it's the only H. G. Wells adaptation that Wells actually wrote a screenplay for. Uh. And in fact, you can even think about the big universal monster movies that included science fiction elements from the thirties and forties. You've got Frankenstein, Bride

of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, and so forth. They're all mad scientist movies. Pretty much all of them involve a scientist breaking the boundaries of nature. You're in ordinary life with some kind of experiment or maybe experimental procedure or surgery or something. Everything goes horribly wrong and it leads to murder. And those kind of movies don't go away. Like the mad science breaks nature theme continues in the fifties,

but almost always with atomic themes. Now, so you you know, somebody creates giant bugs with atomic radiation for obvious reasons, And there are a lot of hack movies in this category. But I think it's in the early nineteen fifties that a new type of science fiction movie takes over, and that is the alien invasion or alien intervention film. Now, this type of story had already existed for many decades. I'd say probably the first big alien invasion story was H. G.

Wells War The World's in eight. Yeah, Yeah, that's definitely the big one, and it's it That novel is sort of the prototype for most of the alien invasion stories that followed, of which there were many in written fiction throughout the early twentieth century, but it wasn't until the early fifties that this became such a common plot structure for sci fi movies. And I think there were some big early and influential examples. One would be The Thing

from Another World, which we have an episode on. Another would be The Day the Earth Stood Still, both of those movies from nineteen fifty one. Though The Day the Earth Stood Still is more of an alien intervention than invasion. That's the one where the alien shut up and they say, now you're you're doing war. You need to stop that or we're going to endue all. There was, of course, a nineteen fifty three film adaptation of War the World's

the famous Mercury Theater radio broadcast. I wasn't sure when that was. I looked it up the orson Wells one and that was in nineteen thirty eight, but that was on the radio. Uh. And there would of course go on to be a million more alien invasion movies throughout the decade where aliens, you know, they come to either one destroy us and take our planet for themselves, to threaten to destroy us if we don't stop doing something, usually war or some times nuclear experiments or something like that.

And then I'd say the third big category is they come here to infiltrate us and indoctrinate us in some way, maybe to serve them. So examples there would be invasion of the Body Snatchers that was in fifty six. It conquered the world on the lower budget side, also fifty six. And so the thing is Robot Monster actually comes earlier in the decade than I would have guessed. Nineteen fifty three is a little ahead of the curve here, And I wonder Rob where you think it fits into this

broader arc. I think the basic idea is that the Romans want to destroy all humans and take Earth for themselves. But there's also a little bit of that Day the Earth Stood Still playing nine from Outer Space kind of preachiness about how like the oh the Earthlings, you are stupid and you are destroying yourselves. Yeah, yeah, I agree this the Roman, the Roman, if you will here, the

Roman civilization has essentially wiped out all of humanity. And then they explain that they have done this because we're basically we're getting too technologically advanced, too much of the threat to them, and and so we see category one and two. Their Category three is not really in play, but it does have some connections to this film, as we'll discuss, because so much of this infiltration and indoctrinization UH fiction of this era, the invasion of the Body Snatchers,

it conquered the world. A lot of this route lines up with UM the UH the Hollywood black List with McCarthy is UM and the fear of communism in the United States, which I do not detect really as a theme in in Robot Monster at all. But no, no, I don't think so. But it does have connections to

several of the individuals involved in the making of the picture. Yeah, Now, before we get into the film a bit more here, I want to stress that this is a film that I've been seeing clips of since I was a child.

I I I had at least some version of it came from Hollywood on a VHS tape, and I would see all these clips of monster movies, and they of course poked fun of it in that I'd watched the season one MST three K episode before, probably more than once, but this was the first time that I'd really sat down and gave this film a proper viewing, and I have to say it's kind of a challenge to make sense of everything. Kind of it's like a puzzle box. Um,

It's like you have to concentrate. It's like in Dungeons and Dragons, it's like some sort of concentration spell that if someone were to bump into you, you would just lose everything and the spell would collapse. Your understanding of the film will completely collapse if you're not paying attention to it um at all times. And and it can also be difficult to because the tone of the movie

will just turn on a dime. The dialogue is often absurd, and the plot at once feels awesomely inspired by you know, classic sci fi pulp but also just goofy is all get out. Yes, it's a wonderful combination of Like the dialogue is for the most part hilarious, but also it has a harder edge than a lot of the sci fi movies of the time. Like just the kind of unforgivingness of the romance plan for Earth and their cruelty is is somewhat shocking. Yeah, there's there's something gloriously miscalculated

and miscalibrated about so much of the film. It's it's a mess, but I was thinking it's a lovable mess, Like you can't help but feel protective of it. You want to wrap a blanket around it and take it home with you. Yes, So, um elevator pitch for this film, I just had to invoke mad love and say Roman has conquered earth, why can't he conquered love? That's it, that's it. He and he basically asked that question at the end. He's like, why can't the Roman have what

the human has? Love, feelings, emotions. Yeah, though this kind of like this this plot element pokes its head. What maybe um, halfway through the film, maybe in the last third of the film, and it kind of comes out

of nowhere as a complication. Yes, when it shows up, it is mighty unexpected and uh and a very welcome turn because it happens right when the movie starts getting kind of repetitive with like these calls back and forth with Roman where he just keeps threatening the human's But then suddenly he looks on the view screen and he just sees Alice, the the young lady in the movie, and he's like, Oh, I am in love. What is this feeling for a Roman. Yeah, because up to that

point they've been considering negotiating with with the Roman. They have tried and like the most they can get is like he's He's like, if you surrender, um, you'll get a quick death, and if you don't, unimaginable death. Like there's no. It doesn't seem to be all out of wiggle room with him, until suddenly he becomes smitten with Alice and he's like, wait, I should negotiate with her. Yeah, he wants to do the face to face with her. All right, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's go

ahead and listen to some trailer audio. Here, with the swiftness of a deadly cosmic ray, the Earth is invaded by indestructible moon monsters, their ghastly mission death for all humans. What astounding technical developments are being made to protect mankind? Robot Monster brings you an actual preview of the devastating forces of our future, unsuspected revelations of incredible horrors that will terrify you with their brutal reality. There is no

escape from me, oh, humans, there is nor escape all right. Now, you might be wondering at this point, where can you watch Robot Monster, if you want to go ahead and pause the episode, watch the movie and come back, or you're inspired after you listen to the full episode to

watch it again. Well, fortunately it is widely available. We should note, however, that um Bob Fermanac, a three D film archivist, has been heading up a restoration for a three D Blu Ray release, so re release of Robot Monster, though as of this recording, I don't think they have a distributor or a date yet. I could be wrong on that, but I don't. I don't think anything's lined up officially, but it's still pretty exciting for romance fans

out there. All that being said, the available film quality as of this recording is still very watchable, so I don't think you should You shouldn't put off watching Robot Monster. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. But once this gets released, I think this will be worth checking out because it will be in three D uh for those of you with the ability to to power up the three D

and it was originally a three D picture. Gorgeous And this makes me realize what the automatic billion bubble machine must have been in the movie for, because otherwise I was unclear on why Romance cave, his Cave of Slaughter has just a bubble machine in it. But that's got

to give some three D texture, right, I guess. I mean, otherwise you've got to wonder, Well, maybe this technology in Earth's atmosphere just generates soap bubbles as a byproduct of its functionality, or bubbles are key, like somehow it's those bubbles all contain nuggets of information then then float up

through the atmosphere to some sort of Roman satellite. And no, it's probably just there because it looks neat, because otherwise it's just like, Okay, so Roman just has a fad toy of the nineteen fifties in his cave, Like does he also have a Mr. Potato Head or a Lincoln Logs or something? Yeah? All right, Well let's get into the people involved here. Starting at the top, we have Phil Tucker, the director of Robot Monster of n Through.

Now I think right at the top, I'm gonna have to say I heard some rumors that about this about Phil Tucker, that like he the critics savage to this movie, and Phil Tucker was so upset by that that it destroyed him. But it sounds like you found out maybe that's not really true, correct. Yeah, there's an excellent book

out there titled I Cannot Yet I Must. Let's quote from the film The True Story of the Best Bad Monster Movie of All Time, Robot Monster, by Anders Runstadt, which you can get as a digital book or or physical book. And it's a really great, well cited, um but very readable and entertaining exploration of this entire film, like what it comes out of, who was involved in it, its legacy, has a lot of clips from interviews with various people involved in the bios of all the people involved.

So if you leave this episode wanting a much deeper dive into uh, into into what Robot Monster is in the world it emerged from, highly recommend that book. But yeah, Runstad does a great job of of sort of dispelling some of the urban legends surrounding this film, because yeah, for I think I had heard this as well, but like this idea that this was a film that the creator held up as a masterpiece and then was just broken when he, uh he found out the critics didn't

like it. So yeah, I'm gonna incorporate some of what Romstad has to say, uh into this brief bio of Tucker Okay, so American director, former marine, former radio and TV guy who had two films out in nine Robot Monster obviously, but also a film called Dance Hall Racket, a crime movie starring and written by legendary stand up comedian Lenny Bruce. What yes, Okay, I I did not

know this existed. Wow, that's an interesting crossover. Yeah. Bruce's wife at the time, dancer Honey Harlow, also acted in it. I've not seen it. I have no reason to believe it's any good or even worth checking out unless year, I guess, like a Lenny Bruce completest. But um but yeah, I came out with the same year Robot Monster on the and of course would come to define him. And uh yeah, the stories you'll find out there are mixed. But it does seem like there were issues with the

studio and he battled depression a bit over all of that. Uh. And also he didn't really work anywhere near mainstream Hollywood for a long time. Uh. He did a string of low budget um l a bur less comedies during the mid nineteen fifties, followed by Broadway Jungle about how slimy Hollywood uh is from the viewpoint of a young director, and then a TV movie, The Cape Caniveral Monsters in nineteen sixty which is a bad alien invasion film but

apparently without the lovable um aspects of Robot Monster. And that was his last directing credit. But he worked as a post production manager on n six is King Kong, seven Orca and five episodes of Night The Next Step Beyond TV series. He also worked as an editor on several episodes of Wonder to Wonder Woman TV series and nine eighties The Nude Bomb, which was a Maxwell Smart movie.

Now in that book, I cannot yet I must by Runstad Yeah he he, He points out yet the the urban legend of Tucker as a director, we saw himself as a genius uh in this film as a master work. That that is for the most part false and that more or less he was he was shooting for pure entertainment on this one. He did not think he was creating a masterpiece, but mission accomplished. Yeah, you know, it's

highly entertaining. Um. Also worth noting public reception to the work did not seem to be a big factor on his mental health, that he did seem to have some struggles and later in life he had some I think some some memory related struggles as well. But uh yeah, if you want to go all in on this, uh, I highly recommend picking up that book. Uh's so many

interesting tidbits from his life that runs stud Explorers. One of which I found pretty interesting is that very late in the life and career of Peter Laurie, Tucker was involved in the nineteen sixty one pitch for the Peter Laurie Playhouse. Uh. This was gonna be like a Twilight Zone or Boris Karloff's thriller style anthology show, and the host was gonna be Peter Lorii. I can't believe that didn't happen. At the sacrilege criminality that this did not happen.

I haven't seen any footage from Apparently they shot a pilot and Laurie was the host of it, and they had him like in a bowler hat at a desk in front of a spider web. Okay, not to be confused with the radio drama of the nineteen forties titled Mystery Playhouse that Peter Lorii hosted. Okay, I'm thinking of a crossover. I guess we need a time machine to make this happen, but crossover of the never realized Peter Laurie Playhouse with the Shelley Duval Fairytale Theater. Huh how

about it? Yeah? Yeah, oh man, Shelley Duval Fat Fairytale Theater just looks marvelous every time I look at it again. I did not have the uh, the privilege of getting to watch this show when it ran. But I was talking to some friends and they were like, oh, yeah, it's uh, it's interesting anyway. So that's Tucker. But onto the writing credit for this picture. Wyatt or Dung, who lived nineteen twenty two through two thousand and five American actor and writer. Born in Shanghai, China, and served in

the U. S Army during World War Two. His father was a career US military man and his mother a Russian immigrant. Runstad writes that or Dung, while not himself Asian, learned to speak Chinese in China in addition to English and Russian, which was his mother's native tongue. And he also had a broad appreciation for Asian culture from a young age. So uh, he was influenced by that, and this shows up in some of his his his later

screenplay work. But He was also influenced by his mother's interest in spiritualism and the occult, so he was He was known to be kind of an odd character in these sort of l a Hollywood scene of the day. I don't detect any supernaturalism in Robot Monster. I would say Robot Monster is hard science fiction. Yeah yeah, um that you or dong was? It said that there were

stories about how he would um. He was always discussing the paranormal, proclaiming that he had a great fear of predatory or scavenging birds due to a previous life experience. Who um And anyway, after the war, he attended an acting school in l A. On the g I. Bill Tucker met him on the set of some lost or unknown TV or exploit exploitation project that he was involved in, and perhaps because they both had a military background, uh,

they kind of hit it off. And then basically Tucker came to and said, Hey, I've got this sci fi comedy I want to write about the last few people on Earth. It's going to be called Googy Eyes, and I want you to write it. I'm glad they didn't call it Googy Eye is yeah. Um so so a lot of space in the in the in the Room stat book explores exactly how this seemed to come together.

And it's kind of confusing because later interviews with or Dong and Tucker both had kind of different stories about everything. And uh and then and he also spent some time talking about how weird it is that, Okay, this idea that he wanted to make um a comedy. It seems kind of early in the fifties monster movie craze for there to be an intentional parody. We talked about how kind of ahead of its time this is, so the idea that it would have been a comedy seems kind

of strange. Yeah, I gotta say, while I love it and it is very funny, uh, and I don't want to be insulting, but it it doesn't read to me like intentional comedy. That's not how the movie comes across it. It does have a, I would say, and uh, a sense of intentional absurdity like that the uh, the director and writer were being I don't know, over the top in a playful way, But it doesn't strike me as like that every line that rings funny to us was

necessarily supposed to be funny, if that makes any sense. Yeah, Yeah, I mean I think there are Yeah, there are definite lines in the film that are supposed to be funny, especially some of the lines said by the children, um are played for laughs. But yeah, it seems like whatever the original intention was, they ended up leaning more towards uh trauma, sci fi and and a little bit of horror um and uh. And you have this idea that

he might have pitched it as a comedy. It might, according to run Stat, have had something to do with just his knowledge of their limitations, like knowing that they were going to have to make this film for basically nothing, and therefore they weren't going to be able to pull off some sort of amazing special effect. It might end up being some sort of googly eyed uh like cost him effect that they were going to have to use on the monster. I will say, the more that I

think about it, I don't know. It's causing me to think of like what actually counts as intentional comedy. There's a lot of stuff in it that I don't know if it was written as a joke, but it comes across as funny, and it doesn't feel like there was any attempt on the director's part to avoid that if that makes sense, Like the guerrilla suit looks funny when Roman is walking through the desert and he's just showing you like they're they're not. They didn't go like, oh

that looks funny, better cut that out and obscure it. Yeah, um, well, or necessarily that looks funny, let's have more of that. Yeah yeah now. Runstad also reveals that Tucker, in later uh interviews, claimed that Ordung only typed the script and that it was otherwise all his idea, all his his material, and that he repaid or done with like a writing

credit and the prospect of more money. But it also seems like Tucker seems to have maybe bent the truth about a number of things and or had some problems with recall later in life, because apparently like at one point he claimed that he had been successful writing science fiction under a pen name, but nobody knows what his pen name was uh so uh For instance, it's it's possible, according to run Stad, that he might have just merely

um submitted some material and never got published or or something, because it seems strange that he would not have wanted his actual name out there on science fiction. Um. But anyway, run Side says that, Okay, the two men disagreed on a lot of the history regarding this script, but three things seemed to be agreeable in both of their accounts. One, the story was Tuckers and Tuckers alone, uh to Tucker wanted a movie about life in the aftermath of nuclear devastation.

And also three both state that the finished film differed from the original script, though they both had different stories about who actually wrote the original script. Okay and Rudenstad also mentions that blacklisted comedy screenwriter Frederick I. Ronaldo may have contributed to the script as well. Um, I'm not sure what to really make of that, but that could I guess possibly the um account for some of these

moments of comedy that occur. Maybe they're the they're they're evidence of some sort of like punch up um edit that happened with the script, or some earlier version of

the script that had a lot of jokes in it. Anyway, or Dong's previous acting experience included roles on TVs Dick Tracy and some other fifties TV shows you know, small parts, as well as an uncredited role in the nineteen one film Fixed Bayonets He went on to play small roles in n Dragon's Goal nineteen fifty fours, Monster from the Ocean Floor in nineteen fifty six is Walk on the

Dark Street. He followed up his writing credit on Robot Monster with writing credits on fifty threes Combat Squad, fifty fours Target Earth fifty six is Walk on the Dark Street, and nineteen fifty nine First Man into Space. All right, let's get into the cast a bit more here. Uh. We we have only a handful of human survivors that are that are left to contend with the Roman threat. The leading man is clearly Roy, played by George Nader.

This is once again your classic fifties movie rectangle. Yeah he is there, he's got a jaw, he's got some hair, and he'll say the lines yep, yep. Now. This is pretty early in Nader's career, following a fair amount of uncredited work and small parts, but he did a lot of TV in some films following this movie. This was his first starring role. Uh. Some of his bigger subsequent pictures included Sins of Jezebel from three, Carnival Story from fifty four, The Million Nis of Sumaru from sixty seven

and nineteen seventy three is Beyond Atlantis. George Nader has some excellent scenes where he has to uh flirt with his love interest Alice, uh while they're like both soldering and electronics board, and it's all in voice over. It's very funny. Yeah, it's an extended secret. Yeah. Now, speaking of Alice, the love interest of both Roy and ultimately the Roman. This character is played by Claudia Barrett. You

know what, I love Claudia Barrett in Robot Monster. I'm not gonna say like she shows great acting skill in this film, but man, she's given it her all, and there there are parts where you just gotta hand it to her, like the monologue about after Roman expresses interest in her. Yeah, yeah, where she's like, you know what, I'm gonna date Romance. I know you don't want me to, but look where are other approaches. I've got us nowhere. I'm gonna date the Horrible Monster and we'll just see

what what happened. Right. It is for the sake of future humanity. I will be bride of Roman. Yeah, it's a it's definitely like you said. The performance itself is not amazing, but it's you can see the talent shining through it with the limitations of this role. So Barrett was an actor of TV and screen whose first movie appearance was nineteen forty nine White Heat, followed by a role in nineteen fifties The Happy Years, which starred Dean

Stockwell and Leo G. Carroll. She did a lot of TV and film work up through I think nineteen sixty four, but White Heat and Robot Monster probably the best remembered of the bunch. She gives it her all, she holds nothing back, and she also has some great scenes where she like has to emotionally turn on the dime because

it's what the script demands. So she goes from like weeping about the fact that, uh that Roy is apparently dead to uh just being like, oh, Roy, you're so bossy, alright, So that we have our leading man, are leading lady, we have to have our older brains of the operation. This is, of course, the Professor, played by John Milong, who lived through nine. Once again, I'm not gonna try to say John Milong is like great in this role,

but I like John Milong. I just get if this makes any sense, Like I get the vibe that I would like to hang out with him. I do think he's one of the actors in the film that you can catch adding in free pathos for various scenes. Like the director didn't ask for it, the script didn't demand it, but by god, he's a professional and he's going to

make it as real as possible. Yeah so uh. John Milong was born Adolf Heinrich mootz Uh, an Austrian actor of Ukrainian Jewish heritage, who, like many other actors and filmmakers and many that we've discussed on the show before from pictures of this period, fled the rise of the Nazis in Europe. He became a U. S citizen in nineteen eight. He was a much bigger name actor during the nineteen twenties in Austria, but then it found solid

work in the States as well once he relocated. He acted in such films as nineteen fifty four is Magnificent Obsession, nineteen forty Three's For Whom the Bell Tolls, nineteen fifty ones His Kind of Woman, and nineteen forty four is The Mask of Demetrios, which has been on my radar before because it also features Peter Lori. He was also in the nineteen sixty two underwater adventure film titled Mermaids of Tiburon. I like what you say about him adding

in free pathos. Yeah, now that you mentioned that, I'm thinking back on lines where you know, they didn't really ask him to to to struggle while he's delivering, but he does. Yeah. Yeah, And I would say there's more free pathos from uh Selena Royal who plays mother in this it's her only name, she's mother, yeah, professor mother Gilligan. Yeah, I mean in the in the post apocalyptic healthscape of Earth, what else do you need? You're the only mother on

the planet. You're just mother, I guess. Yeah. There there's a scene where uh John Milong gets on a zoom call with Roman and he's like, let me show you the members of my family. Surely you won't want to destroy them. And he puts up a picture of of Selena Royal here and he's like, look, how how could you want to hurt my wife here? And Romance is like, oh, the mother brings more generations of the human race. She must be stopped. Oh, and You're like boo, you just

want to boo Roman most of the time. So anyway, Selena Royal Here American actress of stage, radio, television, and film. She was daughter of a Broadway playwright, so unsurprisingly she started out as a stage actor. She also did radio work and just a little bit of film work in the thirties. During the forties she became more active in film, mostly with maternal supporting roles, but some notable stuff. She played Joan of ARC's mother in Victor Flemings Joan of

Arc film starring Ingrid Bergmann and um Jose Ferreir. Oh, I've never seen that one. Yeah, I haven't either, but it's you know, it's it's it's one of the classics. Her screen and TV career, however, came to on the end not long after Robot Monster, with her last credits in the mid fifties. But then she became a writer, often covering cooking and culture in Guadalajara. She apparently moved to Mexico with her husband after she became blacklisted in

Hollywood during the McCarthy era. The FBI had her classified as a quote unquote concealed Communist, even though it's from what I was reading, it seems like there was little to no evidence that she was anything of the Sword she was I think involved in some progressive and humanitarian causes, and she remained involved in humanitarian work in Guadalajara until her death. Oh yeah, I think that's often how it went. Yeah. Now they're children in this as well. There's Johnny and

there's Carla. Johnny was played by Gregory Moffat, borne various fifties TV and film appearances in his filmography, including one episode of the Adventures of Superman. I gotta say, I don't want to be mean to a child actor, but I have to say it. Johnny has bully vibes. Johnny seems like the kid who would come on the playground and like, I don't know, tell you, like he'd say, like your dad's poor or something really vicious. M Well, you know, Johnny's been through a lot, so maybe we

have to cut him a little bit of slack. But um, Carla is played by Pamela Paulson. This is her only actual film credit, I think, um, as far as I know, she was not blacklisted for being a suspected communist. Hey, hey, wait, okay, so we we enjoy all the human actors here, but the real star of the show, in my book, is

the voice of Roman. Oh okay, yeah, the voice of Roman. Uh. That is John Brown, who have nineteen or fourth through nineteen fifty seven is a British actor who appeared in such films as Alfred Hitchcock's one movie Strangers on a Train. And he was also a victim of the Hollywood Blacklist, so his his credits definitely dry up and vanish and the mid fifties. Well that's a bummer because I love his monotone delivery that the I cannot yet I must.

It's it's it's what gives the movie the soul it has, of course, in addition to the physical performance of Roman, which is also wonderful. Oh yes, and this is George Barrows who have nineteen fourteen through nineteen um, So this is our guerrilla suit guy. I always love focusing on guerrilla suit guys, even though I don't know that we've watched a lot of like true guerrilla movies, but uh yeah, George Barrows certainly played a lot of guerrillas in his time.

He played some human roles as well. He had to kind of look up pictures of me. Had kind of a meaty, beefy face that's perfect for like that bit part cop or or heavy that shows up in a in a picture. But he became a a leading guerrilla man, uh, playing guerrillas in such films as nineteen sixties six is the Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, nineteen sixty seven Hillbillies in a Haunted House. I think I've seen that one, and nineteen fifty four is Guerilla at Large. I've seen

ghost in the Invisible Bikini. It's not what you would think it is. Yeah, but there is a guerrilla I think so, yeah, okay. Uh. He was also a TV guerrilla on such shows as The Adams Family, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Incredible Hulk, and The Night Gallery episode Hatred unto Death, which I do not remember but definitely has a gorilla in it now. Root Stude notes that Barrows was a

serious guerrilla man. I think it's it's easy to think about a gorilla suit man in a movie like this and think like, all right, they found a guy that paid him. He put on the guerrilla suit and they said, okay, let's shoot the picture. But no, no, no no, this is a guy who took his role very seriously. He made his own suit. He studied guerrillas at the zoo and was said to be one of the last like real Hollywood guerilla men of his era, like someone who actually

tried to act like a gorilla in the suit. Now that being said, we've as we've already pointed out, this is not a true guerrilla role because it's most of a gorilla costume. But then with the space helmet, and also the Roman is not moving around like a gorilla. He's moving more less like a human. But like they're definite characteristics to the suit that are undeniable, like the their arm extensions to simulate the proportions of an actual guerrilla. It's made with yak here, so it looks like some

sort of a beast um. According to ruin Stad, this reportedly cost him a good four hundred dollars to make, and even that the mask of his guerrilla suit, which again is not in this picture, was made using a plaster cast of his own face. If you can show me a more lovingly made extraterrestrial ape board costume, I would like I would like to see it. Um. He also points out that, according to classic horror memorabilia collector Rob Burns, Barrows was second only to the legendary Charlie

Gomera when it came to guerrilla suit men. Now we haven't watched a proper Charlie Goamura guerrilla picture, but I believe he came up in our episode on Dr Cyclops because he did make up on that picture. But he played a lot of guerrillas in his time, so he took his job seriously. Barrows did, uh, but not so seriously that he wouldn't appear in a movie like this. He apparently had a very sort of blue collar approach, like, if you want a guerilla man, uh, there's a set

cost and and he'll show up. He'll be your guerilla man. Here's my price sheet. Yeah, yeah, finally, real quick. We keep mentioning that, of course, this is not a pure guerrilla creature. It has the head of a spaceman, a space helmet, routes. That also explores this whole decision quite a bit. Apparently they knew a guerrilla suit was doable,

that this is something they could do. There was a guy they could hire, and they initially thought about making an alien via some horns or something, but then came back around to the space helmet idea. But at earlier points in the creation of the script. They were also talking about the idea of a robot gorilla, So there seems to be a lot of back and forth here. Here, maybe we should address a question, very important question. Is

Roman a robot? Ah, this is a tough one. I've spent a lot of time in the last twenty four hours thinking about this, and and on and off I've thought of it over the years. I was lying awake all night just thinking about the body of Romance, like, is that guerrilla body his body? Is it some sort of an organic BioSuit that this alien has grown and or or like strapped on like some sort of a biomech to use. And then of course what's going on with the helmet, right, is that the what's that that

murky face we see inside? Is that like some sort of featurealist flesh mass um or we're just not supposed to see anything. Is it indeed a skull? Because the poster art for the for the film is pretty great as well, and it definitely goes the extra step of making the head inside the space mask as a skull, which just adds to this ambiguity about what this creature really is, and apparently it's it's unsure where this idea

came from. It might have been the producer saying, hey, play up the skull thing, or it might have been the poster artist deciding to embellish it with this kind of skull motif as well. I perceived the head inside the space helmet as more like a it's sort of covered in a kind of amorphous putty, kind of like when a person's head becomes covered in the blob in the blob. Alright, alright, so it's possible that the Roman is just a blob piloting there's a weird flesh and

metal suit. Maybe I don't know, a furry creature who they've been wearing space on it so long that they've evolved to have like a fleshless putty head. Or maybe they just have a fleshless head in general, because there was some sort of scavenging creature and their evolutionary history and therefore lost here on their head. I don't know

that you're can go crazy thinking about this. This is probably an overly specific reference, but I just realized that Roman in a way, especially the helmet, reminds me of one of the final enemies that you face in the the horror video games. Soma, which is one of the last ones is in this base down at the bottom of the ocean. It's the one in like the diving suit that's got sort of the goop coming out of

the pressure helmet. Oh yeah, yeah, that's right. They definitely had a goop consistency to that that game, some sort of like healing goop that went crazy or something. Mm hmm. The fabulous thing about the romance here is that all interpretations are valid. There's no there's no definitive answer, just maddening ambiguity. Alright. Finally, a note on the music. Um So, I wouldn't say that that I love the music in

this film. It's it's interesting. It has some some neat piano, I guess, some perhaps overly whimsical moments for the kids, and of course some some pretty fabulous nineteen fifties monster brass. You know, the monsters coming at you. You're gonna hear that brass blaring. Dun't dunt dunt dunt dunt Uh. Yeah, exactly. But here's the thing. The score for this film is by a pretty legendary individual, Elmer Bernstein, who lived through

two thousand and four. Uh, highly prolific, highly influential film composer and conductor. Something like a hundred and fifty film scores during his career, and they cover a fair amount

of range. So Robot Monster was I think only his fourth score, but he went on to compose the scores for such films as The Ten Commandments and fifty six, The Magnificent Seven, To Kill a mocking Bird, The Great Escape, and then on into the seventies and eighties stuff like Animal House, Airplane, Heavy Metal, Trading Places, Ghostbusters, and then once you get into the nineties, wild Wild West, as

in we're going straight to yeah. Yeah. Uh. He received an Academy Award for a thoroughly modern Millie and Sixties seven that was a musical romantic comedy that starred Julie Andrews, Mary Tyler Moore, and Carol Channing, directed by George roy Hill and um Rensta notes that while he wasn't blacklisted, he did have leftist associations that were quotes stalling his

career at the time. Okay, so at this point in the Robot Monster casting crew, how many blacklisted or almost blacklisted figures are we at It's several, Yeah, and it's possible there's sort of two interpretations of this. Apparently, according to Rinsta, there's it's on one level, people who are having trouble with the with the with being blacklisted, where they were just having harder time getting work, and so there therefore they might have just been more available to

a project of this caliber. But then it's also thought that the producer might have been sympathetic as well, and that could have been a potential in as well, like sympathetic to these individuals who were suddenly having a real hard time finding any work to sustain themselves. All Right. The final thing, I want a rare location note on this film because this is another Bronson Canyon film. Wait a minute, did ronson Canyon feature in another movie? We didn't? Oh,

maybe it was Attack of the Crab Monsters I'm thinking of. Well, it is definitely a location that was used for Attack of the Crab Monsters, but it was also used in the Return from nineteen eighty, which we covered on the show. Okay, but this is basically this is a section of Griffith Park in Los Angeles that it's just been used tons of time, including but not limited to White Zombie from thirty two, Invasion of the Body Snatchers from fifty six.

He Conquered the World from fifty six as well, that pretty famously includes perhaps the exact same cave that we see in this picture. Uh, that's where he learned, only too late that man is a feeling creature the very one. Um also teenage cave Man from fifty eight. Um, just a ton of films. Friday the Thirteenth, Part six, Jason Lives Um Star Trek, the Undiscovered Country, Army of Darkness,

Scorpion King, Hail Caesar. Um. That one probably is a nod to this location's importance and in Holly with But yeah, if you're filming in l A and you need some sort of a desert E canyon, eh cave sort of environment, like this is where you went, this is where you filmed your scenes. That makes a lot of sense because there are scenes at the very beginning where it looks like it's about two children playing unsupervised in the middle

of the Mojave desert. Yeah, Okay, you're ready to talk plot. Yes, Yes, let's do it. Wait wait, hold on. Before we get into the plot, we have to talk about the credit sequence. Because we just did a series of core episodes about the idea of horror vakawi, which in art is often used to describe an impulse to overly clutter your design, to fill it in with too much detail, not leave

enough blank space. And the credit sequence here, it's got a background, so like the credits are appearing as text on a background that's a bunch of it looks like comic book covers that themselves have text on them, And it's a nightmare. Yeah, and now I guess that one level we need to remind ourselves this was a three D picture or so I'm guessing these these letters were jumping out at us off the screen. But still, yes,

very busy looking. Also, when they showed the Tide I don't know if this is something about the transferre to home video, but when they showed the title of the movie, Robot Monster is not even remotely centered in frame, I'd

say it's a good thirty percent off. Oh yeah, I hadn't noticed that, but I noticed that, like you basically have this pile of comic books in the background, like old tiny sci fi comic books, and the wording on the comic book covers actually like kind of messes with the way you're perceiving the names of the characters because they start doing stuff like starring George Nader as Roy. But it looks like starting George Nader as Fee Roy because there's as it's superimposed over the word fear on

one of these comic books. Yes, so it's f e a and then the name Roy, so it's Fi Roy. We get to see Claudia Barrett as Pie Alice. And oh and when they introduced these actors, they show like they give you a face, so the show you Roy and he's that rectangle. He looks like he's sort of looking disapprovingly at some neighbors tacky Christmas decorations. But when you get to Claudia Barrett, oh, she has this dangerous smirk.

She looks like she is in possession of your most terrible secret and she's just watching you beg her not to tell everyone. It's great. But anyway, that's the Alice we get. We get fee mother. Selena were recalling her royal or royal earlier. I thought it was royal, but it could be royal. I'm not whichever it is. She's fee mother. Yeah, this is what this is where I didn't notice that until just now as we were going

through the notes. But yeah, she's Selena Royal r O y l e um or at least that's the way I was pronouncing in my head. But her name in the opening credits is Selena Royal r O y A l E. So they misspelled it. They misspelled it um unless Yeah, I mean, maybe this was a this have been another name she used as well. I mean to I'll give it the benefit of a doubt and say, maybe she was sometimes credited as this, But it's not uncommon for pictures of this caliber to sometimes you use

somebody's name with a inventive spelling. It's true. And I love how the credit sequence also gives a credit for the automatic billion bubble machine. Oh yeah, well, you gotta give credit where credits due. It's an amazing bubble machine. So the film opens. The action opens on a bloodthirsty alien cyboard clambering over a hilltop in the desert. He's wearing a bubbletop helmet affixed with atmosphere hoses, and he's got a pistol grip death ray and he's got that

raised up in one hand. And wait a minute, that is not an alien. It is just a child wearing a suit he's playing with toys and he's pointing the ray gun at his sister, and as he comes up, there is Nana Nana Boo boo music playing. It's the same song that plays in uh in the Mexican Santa clause when the when pitch the demon is doing his antics. Yeah, it's an annoying song. And thank god, most of the score for this film it does not revolve around this little ditty here. Yeah, but so what are the what

are the opening lines? We get? Oh? Yeah, so Carla asked her brother. She says, am I dead? And Johnny says, you're disintegrated. I love how morbid. Johnny is, uh, well, but anyway, she goes, good, does that mean we can play house now? You promised? But Johnny only wants to play House of alien slaughter? Uh. And so he's he's

blowing bubbles and they go around the corner again. It looks like they're in the middle of the desert, but they end up finding a couple of adults, these two men who are standing in a cave under these desert cliffs, and the kids come up to them and Johnny says, you must die, and the professor, the older guy there's an older guy, younger guy, the younger guys, Roy, the older guys, the professor, and uh, professor says, wouldn't it be nicer if we could live in peace with each other? Uh?

And uh, So Johnny kind of he seems disappointed by this, but he accepts, but he says he still has to know who they are and what they're doing there. And a bizarre conversation follows. So the older man in the cave, this is John Milong is the professor. He has an Austrian accent, and he sits the boy on his lap, and he explains that he and Roy are archaeologists, and he says they try to find out what men were

like back before they could read or write. He says, quote, the only way to pass on what they knew were through pictures like this one. And I guess they're referring to cave paintings, but you can't really see any in the movie. Yeah, there's just some looks like they painted some of the rocks in there, right, And so Roy says, Uh, Roy's the younger guy. He's in the leather jacket, and he says, our job is to chip it out carefully and take it to a museum, and then Johnny says, gee,

are you scientists? And uh, the Roy's like even better than being cowboys a professor, but so john he asks if the cave painting was a spaceman, and the professor says, as far as we know, there were no spacemen at those times, and no robots either. So they're having fun. But then the fund's over. Here comes Johnny's family. Johnny says, here come my mother and my sister, and then he turns to Roy and he says, I bet you'd like her, I guess, referring to his older sister Alice. Who Uh Alice,

she comes up and Roy says, no doubt. Uh. So Johnny is immediately trying to set his older sister up with Roy the archaeologist. But the situation is that Johnny and Carla have to go back and take a nap after lunch because their family is out here on a picnic. And then we see where they have been set up for a picnic, and I laughed out loud when I saw this. They've got a blanket spread out on the like surrounded by jagged rocks, and Johnny says, if we ever get a new dad. I hope he's a big

scientist that makes rocket chips and things like that. Uh. And then they I guess, they settled down for a nap, which literally means they just lay down on the ground around this blanket, surrounded by jagged rocks. And at this point in the film you think, all right, I'm following this. I know what's going on. And then this film hits you with this first major swerve. They're like, yes, the action is too clear. Let's let's start getting confusing. So

Johnny wakes up from the nap, he jogs off. He returns to the cave, I guess to hang out with his archaeologist buddies, but they're not there, and he is knocked over by the shaking of the earth. And then we get a cataclysm montage. We see lightning, we see balls of fire in the sky burning the atmosphere away. Then we see lizards with fins and other things glued to them fighting. Uh. To be clear, I'm not positive, but it looks like some animals may have been harmed

in the making of this film. Well, I think these these films are this is this is footage from previous films. There are a couple of a couple of these are acts, so I think they're just reusing something from the films. I forget which ones, but they're sided in like Michael Welton's book. Okay, well, anyway, there's something that looks like

two lizards fighting. I can't tell if they're alive or if they're like stuffed lizards or whatever, but they've got stuff taped to them to make them look like dinosaurs, Like one has a dimetridn style finback. Yeah, why are there dinosaurs fighting? I still don't know, and I saw all right, So Johnny after that wakes up. I don't know if he was supposed to have witnessed the dinosaurs fighting or something, and he doesn't comment on it. He wakes up seemingly from his fall after the Earth's shack,

and he's still in front of the cave. But now things are a little different. We've got a side table with some random technology on it. There's like a real to real player and something with some antennae coming up off of it, and then a bubble machine just blowing bubbles. Also, Johnny is dressed differently. Did you notice this? He's wearing shorts now, I did not notice the change in vance. So Johnny comes to, he looks around, then he hides

behind a rock, and here comes our Roman reveal. Out of the cave comes this thick, awesome, hulking guerrilla suit man with a with a space helmet on, and he comes out. He looks around, and before we really even get a chance to take this in, he's getting onto the viewscreen to make a call. So this will be our first view screen interface scene, and there are tons

of them in the movie. Basically, they are zoom calls in a bathroom mirror between Roman and his boss, who is referred to as the Great One or Great Guidance or Guidance Roman, and they will they will recur throughout the movie. About half of the run time is Roman getting chewed out by his boss for failing to exterminate

all of the humans. And clearly these scenes were you know, they're they were filmed without the voiceover, So there's a lot of gesticulating of rilla suits with with space helmets on, shaking of hands with fingers outstretched, but it's obvious that the hand is not in that hand part of the suit. Yeah, yeah, because they're again they're extended to give the the original costume guerrilla like proportions, so just rubber fingers waggling as the handshakes. But the viewscreen comes on, we see some

chicken nuggets flying around through space. I think they're supposed to be asteroids. And then here comes a guy in the exact same costume as Roman on the other side. So it's just Roman talking to Roman, and it is hard to communicate without just playing back a sample. How funny the cadence of the Roman on Roman dialogue is so like Roman checks in, he says extension Roman x J two, reporting to guidance Roman, I salute you and the other guy you know, you're late fourteen minutes. Uh,

they're they're just always. Um. I was trying to think of how to describe this, and I did come up with a comparison. They have a similar kind of loud, stabby but monotonous line delivery to the cone heads. M M yeah, yeah, yeah, which I guess, I guess we can sort of, I mean, undoubtedly, um Dan Ackroyd was familiar with Robot Monster. Yes, maybe it was a direct reference there. So we get some backstory about what's going on here. We discovered that the guidance Roman, he divulges

that no life has been discovered on other planets. I guess they were looking. So he says Earth is their only rival, and then Romance says the human knew of atomic energy, but had not mastered the cosmic ray. So Roman explains that he used something called the Calcinator ray to attack Earth, and then the Earth nations thought the attack came from other Earth nations, so they retaliated against each other and they all destroyed each other with nuclear weapons.

And then Romance says after that they tried to band together against him. He says, quote, their resistance pattern showed some intelligence, but all are gone now. So at this point I was Rachel and I were watching this and we're like, what what? How much time has elapsed here? It just looks like Johnny falls over. Then he gets up, and now here's Roman talking about what sounds like something you know would have taken months of intervening time. Yeah.

I I had to just quickly abandon the earlier portion of the film and be like, this is the reality we're in now. I can't I've got enough to contend with. I can't try and figure out how the first part

factors into where we are now. But yeah, because suddenly we are in this post apocalyptic hellscape and it's this is something that Ringstad discusses a little bit, like this is really early for I mean, this isn't the first time that in the wake of the close of World War two that you had fiction or film dealing with like a post apocalypt it setting. But it's pretty early, like this is this is not long after the first

use of nuclear weaponry on Earth. Yeah, and already at this point in the movie, all the Earth things are gone as far as we know, except for Johnny. Oh yeah, I mean we get it. We hear from the Roman himself who's like there are eight survivors or there's some disagreement on how many survivors, but it seems to be agreed upon that we're not talking about more than eight humans. Yeah. First Romance says that he's eliminated all the humans, and

then the guidance Romance says, I want facts, not words. Yeah, and they're really they're just they're main spirited and severe on everything. Like at this point the human species is effectively extinct. I mean, there's no coming back from this. But they're like no, we must destroy them, all right. Roman tries to defend himself. He's like, my scans indicate no life life forms above lepidoptera level exists, And I was like, what lepidoptera moths and butterflies? Oh man, we

don't say. I don't remember seeing a mouth or a better flying the film, though it's other regions. I guess I don't know how he's ranking them though, what is above and below leopid optera? Anyway, the boss Roman is like, uh, okay, find and destroy the eight remaining humans and then report back.

So we see Roman, uh, you know, he'd uh, he's gonna get to work, and so he sets his bubble machine going full blast, and then Johnny runs off to somewhere to somewhere, back home, presumably to his family, and then just more commenced intense brain pain, Rob, can you try to describe what a baffling puzzle box begins to emerge in the next scene about like what what the time frame of the movie is, What are the family relationships the living arrangements? Like yeah, because they're just living

in straight ruins here, just like direct sunlight ruins. There are no roofs that I remember seeing and everything is protected by this kind of electromagnetic field or slash VNS that the professor has installed, and they're just clearly really scraping by. And several times in the film the performances really speak to this like they're supposed to be a feeling of of desperation here, that this is humanity in

its final days for real. But there's also stuff that doesn't comport with that at all, like Roy and Alice having this laugh inducing romance. Uh. But the other thing about the family relationships, So the mother and the professor are now Ma and pa, and I think maybe we're to understand that such time has passed that the two archaeologists have been incorporated into Johnny and Carlos family. So mother and the professor are now married, and now the

professor is just Johnny's paw. I guess, yeah, okay, I think, yeah, that's what. But they don't explain that any time has passed.

It's just like that now. So there's that. But then also we are told about all of this technology expertise, Like we find out from the professor that uh that they think the Roman hasn't been able to locate them because the professor and Alice were able to rig up these deflector beams that are like these electrical wires that surround their shelter which protect them from romance scanning rays. And wasn't the professor an archaeologist, Yeah, that's what we

were told earlier. But he's also apparently a like a nuclear engineer or whatever. Yeah, I mean maybe he's just a quick study and he he got some books. Uh, and I had some time to to bone up on everything in the days immediately following the apocalypse. So this is the thing you were calling a puzzle box. It's just like so much is coming out so fast, and it's like not what it was in the scene just before,

with no explanation for why it's different. Yeah, and you just have to, like moment to moment in this film except the change and roll with it or to whatever degree is possible, try and stitch together in your mind. So again, you either have to be all in on following the the meandering plot of this film, or you have to just shut off half your brain and take it at like drive in value. Yeah. So Johnny reports to his family the proximity of Roman. They're like, oh,

he's just over in the cave. He's really close to our house and that's obviously distressing to everyone. And Johnny suggests, let's kill him, let's kill Romance. And the Professor says, we can't do that. He's impervious to our weapons. And then Alice says, unless we find his weak spot. Good thinking, they've never had this conversation before. Exactly, Yeah, apparently they've been part of a like resistance on Earth that was

fighting against Roman and they're all but defeated. They're the only ones left, and now Alice has the idea, what if we try to find his weak spot. We eventually learned that, oh, it's not that fence that that they've rigged up. There's protecting them. It's because the Professor develops some sort of antibiotic to keep them all from catching any diseases, and that is protecting them from the Romance super weapons. Yes, the professor has developed an antibiotics serum.

I think the professor and Roy together, so two archaeologists can do bioengineering. They can't antibiotics serum that protects them against all diseases. Johnny explains that they can take capsules that have quote a lot of bad bugs in them and then they never get sick. So there you go. But it just happens to turn out that this serum

for some reason protects them against romance scanning devices and weapons. Yeah, and so they eventually put this together and then we get this wonderful setup that that they roll out here in the film that that I I really loved and I got really invested in for the brief period that it was explored in the movie. They share that there is a battalion of human space marines on an orbiting spaceship that survived the all out attack on Earth and

the you know, the subsequent wars. Uh. We later find out that the Romance basically left them alone because they were like, well, this could be useful when we come to colonize the planet. We'll just leave that up there. They're not doing any harm for some reason. They're they're forgiving of this, but they can't let eight remaining humans

die out on the Earth, uh whatever. Fair enough. But once our human survivors realize that it's the serum that's protecting them, they're like, well, let's let's let's get us. Let's get one of these rocket ships is still laying around. Let's Let's have a couple of folks hop on a V two with this serum, take it up to the space Marines. Then they'll be protected and bam, we can begin this rebellion in earnest. Okay, good plan, right, Yes, it's like that. Let's do that for the next half

of this film. But then oh, we get a call from the Roman overlord here, the Viceroy of Earth, and he's like, I figured out your plot. Watch what I'm about to do. What does he do, of course, blows up the V two rocket ship on its way to the to the satellite, and we see what is supposed to be like the space station satellite spinning out of control and becoming devastated, and it's devastated as well, and so and so he's just like, your your brilliant plan

is nothing, and everybody's really shaken up about it. And I was a little shaken up to again trying to become as invested as possible and Robot Monster and I was like, oh my god, I really thought they had a they had a shot there. This seems like a really good plan. And Roman is just completely destroyed all their hope and they seem utterly hopeless. Now it's a

tragic setback. But during the scene where we watched the space platform being destroyed, you can see somebody with a gloved hand holding up the model as they move it around. Oh man, oh I love that. But wait, Rob, you actually skipped ahead a little bit because there are a lot of zoom calls in this movie. Yes, Roman calls them once before that call where he shows them that

he's blowing up the space station. Uh. He first calls the family on their view screen, which appears to be the only piece of furniture in their home, which, as you said, is otherwise just a three wall concrete bunker with no roof, exposed to the desert sun. And Romance says, humans listen to me. Due to an error in calculation, there are still a few of you left. Uh. And so he's explaining how he's going to destroy them, and he wants them to come surrender themselves to him and

he'll promise them a quick, painless death. But during this conversation there is a bizarre side conversation, just like while they're still on the phone with Roman, Romans just standing there on the zoom screen, and they start talking about how because of the number of humans left alive that Roman sites. They assume Roy must be dead because he's

not there with them, and uh. The professors like, I never would have invented the serum without him, so I guess he used his archaeology to help invent the serum and uh. And Alice is like, oh, he you know, we always struggled because he would never admit I was good in my field, which is apparently like electrical engineering. Um. But but he you know, now she kind of misses him. But in the middle of that, Roman interrupts them to say, do you wonder what happened to all your fellows east time?

At other humans my calcinator beam and then he shows stock footage of bombs. Uh. And then he tells them their deaths will be indescribable and he logs off. And after that there's a great conversation where the mother is like, well, maybe we should try to negotiate with Roman, but the professor says, if he wants us, he should calculate us. Rob what do you make of the fact that the word calculate is used roughly five hundred times in this movie?

I have no idea. I mean, it's used correctly in some places, but here I'm not sure what the professor is saying, Like, wait, like he should negotiate with us. Well, yeah, negotiations seems like the way to go. He should calculate us, like what I count us? I think that means find us. In this context, it almost is used to refer to any kind of cognitive labor or activity of any kind.

So they used calculate to mean like think, and they use calculate later, I think to mean outsmart so, and we're getting a very broad usage of calculate, not not usually in the way you would see it. All right, but let's check back in with Roy. What's Roy been up to? Oh? Roy, turns out he's spying on Romance. So you go back to Romance cave and Roy is behind a rock watching Roman do his thing. And Roy he's got a T shirt on, tucked in T shirt with a couple of big holes ripped in it, one

big nipple hole, one shoulder hole. And he's watching Roman and his boss do another zoom call and it's more the same stuff that like, the boss is chewing Roman out. Roman says, I need guidance, great one. For the first time in my life, I am not sure, and the great one says, you sound like a human, not a Roman, and uh, so Roy he watches all this and he he comes back to the family alive, and well, uh they're happy to see him, and he spills the beans

about Roman. He's like, Roman does not know where we are. So this is the part where as you were talking about, they planned to coordinate with the Space Platform, but in order to do so, they have to rewire their view screen the zoom call thing to contact the Space Platform. And so Alice is an expert at this, but she needs Roy to be her assistant, and this is fraught. And this is tricky because whenever Roy needs to be

her assistant with electronics, he gets bossy. He tries to be the boss and she tells him this and then he's like, I'm bossy, and then this line throws for a loop. He says, you're so bossy you ought to be milked before you come home at night. Yeah, I and I did not understand that. So we stopped and looked this up. Apparently some people call their cows or call their lead cow bossy. M m hmmm, I don't know. Yeah who that's perplexing whatever. I'm not familiar with this whatever,

but okay, hey, yeah farmers in the audience ship. There were a lot of Westerns at this time, so maybe this is something you would know if you've watched a lot of Westerns, which were extremely popular in the forties

and fifties. Right, So, Roy and Alice they get together for some sassy, flirty electronics repair montages where we're just watching like an electronics board and some hands doing things on it, and they're doing voice over like, oh, solder, my vacuum tube, You're too beautiful to be so smart. One wonders if this this section was about stretching out the runtime of the film to over an hour. Yeah.

But then finally they get it working, they get they get tuned in, but unfortunately, this is the scene you were talking about the Roman attack on the rocket ship killing the other humans, and Romance shows them the attack on their viewscreen, and Roman ends it by saying, calculate your chances negative, negative, negative, absolutely heartbreaking, and then he says again that he's like several times now threatened that

he will destroy them imminently. He says it again, He's like, in one hour, I will destroy you all, and the kid Carlos says, Mommy, why doesn't he like people? Uh? Then we get let's see we get more flirty electronics work after this because Alis and Roy have to rewire the view screen again so they can call Roman directly. This is the scene where the Professor is like, Okay, let me show you my fan Emily. Roman, how could you want to destroy them? And then Roman like gives

a reason for destroying each family member. They show mother and he's like, the mother is the bringer of human life. And then they show the child Carla, and he's like, I am programmed to have no emotions. And then they show Johnny the boy and Johnny sticks out his tongue and Roman just says, the boy is impertinent. Fair Fair, He's kind of a Bart Simpsons, this kid. But this scene is a turning point in the movie because when

the Professor shows Roman Alice, something clicks for Roman. Romance hard exterior shell breaks and something kind of melts inside. He sees Alice and he's like, hubba, hubba. He says, there is something I do not understand. I want to see the girl Alice again, and it's love at first sight. He's immediately saying like, oh, well, wait a minute, Actually, I don't have to destroy you. Let me negotiate with

the girl. Now. To be clear, Alice is very cute, but is she really cute to an alien robots sideboard gorilla man um? I'm just I'm not sure about that. And also I have to question the Roman viceroy here, like where does he think this relationship could possibly go? Maybe he's not thinking a long term Yeah, but the weird thing, like she's weirdly all for it. She's Carlos says, is Alice going to go on a date with Roman?

And Alice's yeah, I must go. She gives this passionate monologue about how like humans crawled up from the slime of the ocean and evolved to tame the atom and it cannot end just because she did not want to become bride of Roman. So she she's gonna, She's gonna do it. I love this because this this is a moment in the film that feels very unexpected, because any other film that had this kind of plot, uh, would not go in this direction. It would just be like, oh,

save me from the Roman. I do not want to marry the Roman. But no, she goes this movie goes in the opposite direct and it and it makes it interesting. However, the family, the rest of the family do not agree, and they end up restraining Alice to prevent her from going to this this Roman rendezvous. But meanwhile, little Johnny runs off to meet Roman instead. Uh. And here's where we get the first of lots of scenes of Roman

walking up a hill. Uh. I don't know why they chose to include this much footage, if like they were embracing how funny it looked, or it's hard for me to believe they watched it and did not think it was funny. So this is one of those things that makes me think, well, yeah, maybe they were sort of leaning into the absurd comic aspect of this, but there's a lot of it, and we could not stop laughing. Yeah. Again,

anytime Roman is on the screen, you're entertained. There's not a dull moment, as long as you can say there's not a dull moment in the movie. But he is. He's just such an interesting specimen to look at. So Johnny and Roman meet up and Johnny's like, hey, you know, what do you have against us? And Roman and explains, well, you are human and your people were getting too intelligent. We could not wait until you were strong enough to attack us. We had to attack you first. And then

there's an amazing exchange. Johnny says, I think you're just a big bully picking on those smaller than you are, and Romance says, now, I will kill you. So he tries to do use the Calcinator death ray, but it doesn't work. Johnny's immune. But this encounter, let's slip the fact about the sea rum that keeps them safe from Roman, and Roman figures out that he can now calculate how

to destroy them. Oh and meanwhile, in the same part, Romance wandering around and Alice and Roy are oft in the the desert together and they're hiding from Roman, and they like lay down on a bunch of cactuses and start kissing. And then they run home after this and say that they want to get married, and they have a wedding ceremony. Oh my god. So this this is

probably the dumbest part of the very dumb film. Um. I loved every moment of it because, Okay, first of all, you mentioned how Roy came back from spying on Roman or whatever and his shirt was torn. He quickly became obvious that this is the only like medium adult T shirt left on the planet because he doesn't get a new and he just sticks with this ragged old thing. Um a couple of times during the making out and the wooing of Alice, um, that shirt comes all the

way off. And then when they get married, And granted it's not a fancy ceremony, it's kind of thrown together last minute. There aren't a lot of people to invite to it because most of the world is dead and it's a dead world. Uh, but Roy is married shirtless. This is a shirtless wedding, And I had to I had actually did a quick searching around. I'm like, is

this a thing? Has even the most ridiculous of celebrities had a wedding ceremony in which they are completely shirtless, And I could find no evidence that this is the case. I think you have had some examples of of you know, particularly particularly buff dude maybe getting married with just a

jacket over their buffness. But I think Roy, I correct me if I'm wrong, listeners, but I think Roy was maybe in a in a category all his own here, just the shirtless wedding to Alice when they say they're getting married and they asked the professor to perform the ceremony. The professors like, it will be the biggest social event of the year and depending on how much time has passed. I mean, this is a very good case to be made for that. So they get married and it's just well,

it's it's heartwarming. Uh. But he does put the shore back on though, Oh I forgot about that. Yeah, He's like, all right, right, you know, I didn't want to wear this awful thing to the wedding, but I will put it back on now. Now. After this, we get to the part where I started to figure out spoiler spoiler for the ending of the film. Uh. I started to realize, Oh, this is gonna all be a dream because Romance starts killing people. It starts killing the characters, including like the children,

and oh yeah, and kills the little girl. Yeah, he strangles the little girl. And I was like what And then I realized, Oh, they would not release this movie if that actually just happened. So I just didn't be at that moment of clarity. I was like, well, she's dead. Now, that's just how totally inconsistent this movie is. Yeah, he starts killing all the human characters, and I think he basically kills all of them. Uh he kills Roy. Uh does he killed both the kids? Oh? I will say

he does carry Alice around, as depicted on the poster. Finally, a movie where the poster is true to life. The monster just carries the hell out of a woman, just carries her around. We see lots of shots of Roman carrying Alice's struggling body across the countryside. Here she's just kind of kicking her feet back and forth. He's carrying her around. She doesn't actually it doesn't look like she's really trying to sell being distressed in these scenes. She's

just she just looks like this is funny. Yeah. I mean, I'm guessing that he couldn't really see out of that cost him all that well. So these scenes where he's some of those scenes, you can kind of you kind of get the sense that he's walking gingerly with the kind of gorilla arms outstretched in case he falls. So perhaps that was part of it. Here, don't kick too much or there's gonna be a tumble. But ultimately we get some we get some real conflict in the Roman

character because he kidnaps Alice. He takes her back to his cave. Um, I think the professor and mother are trying to come rescue her. But he calls into his boss, and his boss is like, Okay, you gotta you've gotta destroy all the humans, and he's and he's like, no, I cannot destroy this human because I love her, And his boss is really mad at him. He says, you are not like a Roman, You're like a human. Destroy them all or I will destroy you. And so Roman

he gets his final soliloquy. He says, I cannot yet I must. Oh, actually I should read this quote directly. He says, I cannot, yet I must. How do you calculate that at what point on the graph you must and cannot meet? Yet? I must, but I cannot pure Shakespeare right now anyway, So we get that conflict. He he doesn't want, he can't bring himself to kill Alice.

So then the Great Guidance says, you wish to be a human, good, you can die like a human, and then he kills He like sends a cosmic ray to kill to kill the Roman, and then he again He basically he sends dinosaurs to fight again to do the same stock footage they did earlier. Yeah, I think so. Again, it gets very confusing, and that's gonna destroy the world until Johnny wakes up. Johnny wakes up from his dream, and of course it was all a dream. Of course

it was the moment Romance started killing the children. I knew that this was gonna happen. I I did not. I found it really gut punchy when they did the whole It was all a dream thing. And again, I've seen this movie for but I guess I forgot about that. Maybe my mind rejected it, and I rejected now as well, because my my I had to do so so many mental gymnastics to try and make sense of the plot

and and not even able to stitch everything together. And then when you get to that, oh, but it was all a dream, Like what am I supposed to do with that? Right? I mean, then it nothing matters, because then it was just it was just all the the dreams of a young child. And and that's not interesting. What's what's that's supposed to me? Agree, Phil Tucker? That was cheap, That was that was that was a fake out.

You should not have done it. You should have structured it in such a way that you could commit to your ending and let it be the reality of the world you've created. Yeah, yeah, or you know, it's not that it was all a dream is always a terrible choice. It's often a great choice, especially in films that are surreal and fantastic anyway or some sort of you know, I'm thinking of obviously Wizard of Oz being a great example of this, the fact that it was all a

dream or was maybe a dream. It's a little ambiguous. Uh, that just adds to the the fun of the picture, and and that's just part of it. But here it's just it just feels very cut, punchy. I'm gonna say it's writers out there, I would not advise you to try it was all a dream. It It works in the Wizard of Oz. But I'd say that kind of outcome is rare. Most of the time. Audiences are going to feel cheated. Yeah, but at least this isn't just it was all a dream. This is it was all

a dream? Or was it? Because when our human characters walk away from the cave, outcomes out of the cave comes walking the Roman, reaching out towards the view, or in fact, they do it like three times, just to drive home the uh, the the horror of the picture. And I guess also get just a little more juice out of the three D because it's like he's coming out of the screen at you. People were running screaming out of the theaters. I'm sure. But Robot Monster, I

love you, Robot Monster. What what a film? Yeah, I'm just noticing that the great one, uh, the Roman Boss. Uh. In one of his final lines, he says, next, psychotronic vibrations will smash the planet Earth out of the universe. That's pretty great because the psychotronic vibrations, all of this film, the psychotronic film, Uh, you can pretty much just smash the planet out of the universe. It certainly smashes the viewer out of the universe, at least for a little

over an hour, about sixty two minutes. Those were the days, all right, I am, I am worn out. We've got to stop it there. Yeah, yeah, we've been going longer than the film for sure. But yeah, suffice to say, there's a lot in the sixty two minutes of runtime that's worth worth watching. Yeah that don't go watch a three hour picture. Watch Robot Monster three times. In a

row because there's just so much there. Again, the book I cannot yet I must buy Ander's Runstad is definitely worth picking up if you want a deeper dive into this picture. But yeah, I highly recommend Robot Monster. If this is your type of film, this is definitely the film for you. Roman commands it all right, We're gonna go ahead and close it out here, but we'd love to hear from everyone out there if you have thoughts on Robot Monster where it fits into your appreciation of

film and your movie going history. Right in we'd love to hear from you. Just a reminder that if you want to look at all the films that we've consider, all the films that we've covered on Weird House Cinema, go to letterbox dot com. It's l E T T E R b o x d uh. It's a great website for charting your own, uh film favorites and films you want to see and that sort of thing. But

we have a user account there. Our user name is weird House, and we have a list there of everything we've covered and sometimes just a sneak peak of what we're covering in the next week. We're primarily a science podcast. Here it' Stuff to Blow Your Mind but every Friday and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. We set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film. Huge thanks to our audio producer J. J. Pauseway.

If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.