Ah, I’ve been looking forward to this one! This is the first episode so far that I’m actually familiar with, having seen it several times before. I’ve also seen the movie itself a few times outside of MST3k. Robot Monster is quite simply one of the all-time great bad movies. For far better reviews of the film than I could ever hope to give, check out these sites: http://jabootu.net/?p=622, and http://www.aycyas.com/robotmonster.htm. Both reviews are hilarious and insightful.
For a very quick run-down, though; Robot Monster tells the story of Ro-Man, a (presumed) robot who comes from the planet Ro-Man and basically wipes out all life on Earth except for one human family; The Professor, his wife, their children, Carla, Johnny, and teenager Alice, and Alice’s boyfriend Roy. They survived because the Professor invented a serum which protected them from all diseases, including Ro-Man’s death ray. From there they try to survive and defeat Ro-Man, fail at both, and it all turns out to be Johnny’s dream (which, considering what happens over the course of the film, makes Johnny look like one sick puppy).
The film’s two greatest advantages over other dirt-cheap films of this type, the two things that make it worthy to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space,’ are its hilarious, pretentious script and its monster. He’s described in my thoughts while watching below, but if you really want to get a sense of what we’re dealing with here, scroll all the way down to the bottom to see Ro-Man in all his glory. But really, if you have a chance, pick up or rent a copy of this movie (even without MST3K) and just let its glory wash over you; I guarantee you’ll have never seen anything like it.
The film is proceeded by two shorts this time; they did this occasionally (off hand, I think it was three times in all) when the movie was extra short. This time it’s just two Commando Cody episodes. Nothing really new to say about them.
Thoughts While Watching:
Opening: Joel explains the premise. Pretty thoroughly.
Gypsy! I just noticed the big wires controlling her; they would streamline her later.
Invention exchange: Mads; Methane Whoopee Cushion. Joel’s invention; the cumber-bubble-bund would be one of few inventions which would be repeated down the line.
Discussing the movie, they sell how bad it is (which is certainly true).
Another Commando Cody! Incidentally, isn’t this just the coolest title ever? ‘Commando Cody & the Radar Men from the Moon.’ It doesn’t get much better than that!
Why are the bots surprised when told they have to watch two episodes? They were there when the mads announced it (the first time in a while they’ve been there for the Invention Exchange).
The cliffhanger-solution of the guy just jumping out of the car was probably used more than any other in serials.
Servo: “Upon further review, the refs find that Cody is dead. The play stands. Cody is dead.”
I think this is wishful thinking on Servo’s part.
This one guy looks dead. I’m serious; he has deep, dark shadows under his eyes and looks like a zombie.
I love how the moon-man threatens to report the gangster to the authorities if he disobeys him; I’m sure the testimony of an invading alien would be simply damning.
Random action sequence where bad guys try to rob bank and shoot and get shot a lot.
And I love how the Moon men’s mission is put on hold because they’ve run out of money! You’ve got to love the scripting in these things. And the alien commander suggests kidnapping!
Crow: “Hey, this bra is coming along nicely!” (you just have to see it)
Man, this random scientist kicks ass!
Crow: “I told you once, I told you a thousand times, we’re not rounding off Pi to 4!”
Kidnapped heroine! Now all the most awesome aspects of serials have been accounted for!
Cody shows up JUST as the bad guys drive off with the girl! I’m serious, he pulls in just as they pull out.
Joel: “Be on the look-out for two men and a babe. May be armed with a giant experimental, stainless steel brassiere.”
Servo sneezes! How does he do that? He’s a robot! (I guess Josh Weinstein really sneezed and they try to cover it. They do pretty well)
Another awesome thing about these things; the bad guy and Cody shoot out in MID-AIR! With revolvers! The bad guy just shoots out the plane window! Man, they’d be lucky if the bullets even went in the right cardinal direction!
Bad guy runs out of bullets, just decides to crash the plane. He just points it down and pulls the wheel off. It’s that simple. And jumps out with a parachute! Man, the world is a sadder place for that you don’t see stuff like this in the movies anymore.
Cody, you moron, you’ve got a flying suit! Just grab her and get out!
And another episode already! It’s generally not a good idea to watch serials back-to-back like this, as they weren’t designed for it. Serials were meant to be seen one-a-week and it’s best to stagger then when you watch.
Crow and Servo try to ditch! They’d try the same thing many seasons later for ‘Hobgoblins.’
I like Servo’s repeated assertion “You can’t make me! You can’t make me!”
Joel: “I’m surrounded by idiots of my own design!” That’s a little harsh. He’s kind of mean sometimes.
So, he has to tell her to grab the parachute sitting in plain sight? The heroines in these things weren’t generally known for their independence or pro-activeness. Though they generally were pretty chipper and rebounded wonderfully from near-death experiences, like here.
Now they’re shooting from a moving car at a flying object! And he hit him! God, I love this!
I just noticed that the moon-city looks like it was made entirely with model city-halls!
Even the moon-chief points out that it’s ridiculous that plans to invade the Earth are upset because they’ve run out of money!
Scene fades out in the middle of his sentence! This is the second time this has happened.
Another car chase.
Crow: “Meanwhile, back at the Cody institute for scientists who get pummeled…”
Joel has giant dart! Servo begs him not to throw it, since he’ll ruin the scene. These guys were pretty weird sometimes.
Another mid-sentence fade out.
Crow: “Alright, give me a snow-cone and two bon-bons.” (as bad guy holds up what looks like the good-humor man).
And another car chase!
First Host Segment: The physics of Cody. This reminds me of Mythbusters a bit. They point out the impossibilities of Cody and other sci-fi impossibilities. Joel brings up Bumblebees and the bots break down. They were a lot more like robots in those days; later they basically became little robotic people.
Robot Monster! One of the great films! George Nader later showed up in ‘Human Duplicators,’ but we’ll save that for now.
George Barrows! One of the great Ape-men; he specialized in playing gorillas and the like. He wasn’t as famous as some other gorilla actors, but he did act alongside some of Hollywoods best and brightest (that was not at all sarcastic; check this cast out: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047041/ )
Elmer Bernstein, who composed some of the great film scores (The Magnificent Seven, the Great Escape, and many more), also did the music for this movie!
Joel: “Stop torturing that cat!”
Crow: “It’s the band ‘Stop Us if we Become Annoying’”
Incidentally, this is Bronson Cavern; a perennial favorite of Sci-fi films right up to the present day (it was also the Bat-Cave on the Batman TV Show)
Stock footage of slurpasaur fight! It’s really kind of unpleasant to watch, since, of course, it’s a real caiman and a real monitor lizard thrown together and encouraged to fight. In spite of this, I still kind of enjoy this footage whenever it shows up (and in this kind of movie, it shows up all the time). It just is so indicative of the weird, somewhat unethical processes that went into these things.
Crow: “Ah! I win!”
You have to hear him say it.
The revelation of Ro-Man! One of the great monsters of all time! You see, Phil Tucker, the film’s director/producer couldn’t afford a real robot costume even of the cheapest kind, so he contacted George Barrows, who owned his own ape-suit. So, Ro-Man is an Ape-suit with one of the moon-men’s helmets from ‘Commando Cody’ (which I suspect was stolen). You really have to see him to believe him. Or, as an alternative, check out the screen-shots in the links above.
Naked exposition; shouldn’t they have told Johnny this earlier?
God, this is a great movie!
I wonder what Ro-Man must be thinking during this monologue? “Uh, hello? I’m the destroyer of the world, can we focus on ME now?”
Second Host Segment: Servo and Crow playing Ro-Man and the Great One. It’s great. “Why have you not killed the human?” “Because he gives me crunchy treats.” So many great lines here! It’s one of the best segments of Season 1.
Roy: “Who does he experiment on?”
Joel: “Monkeys?”
Actually, on his family!
Annoying, romantic, pretty sexist montage of working on the viewscreen.
Joel: “You’d think that if he were going to rule the world, he would pick a better spot than the cave.”
Crow: “He could have had a V-8! Joke, Joel! Joke!”
I don’t know why Joel is so angry.
Best. Special Effects. Sequence. EVER! Wait till you see it!
Actually good line (well, I like it anyway); “Out of Two Billion there are Six!”
Yeah, let’s negotiate with the monster that killed practically everyone on Earth.
Another montage of work! These are probably the most hated scenes in the movie.
God, I love Ro-Man! He’s one of the great characters of cinema, and I am not being sarcastic at all.
Servo: “Okay, now tilt the camera down a bit…”
Skipped a few scenes here and there.
Man, Barrows was a great guy; he walks up slag-heaps and hills, in an ape-suit, in the summer, in California, and remember, HE WASN’T PAID! He did it as a favor!
Johnny: “I wanted to find out what you had against me.”
Crow: “Your voice for starters.”
Johnny spills the beans to Ro-Man, basically because the kid’s an idiot.
Johnny’s parents are pretty lenient about how Johnny doomed mankind.
One of the most nauseating romantic scenes ever. Joel is in top form translating their sign-language love.
You know, this movie is pretty explicit for its time, at least in how specific its implications are.
Carla: “Have you been playing house?”
Crow: “In a way, in a way!”
Come on Roy! I know it’s the apocalypse, but at least put your friggin shirt on!
In a different movie with a better script and a better actor, the Professor’s speech here might have been actually quite moving. It’s not, but it might have been. In fact, this whole scene might have been rather poignant; at the end of the world, people trying to keep up faith and traditions. Again, here it’s just lame and ridiculous, but in a different film…
They just let Carla run off in the wrong direction! They just watch her toddle off in the opposite direction of home, and right into Ro-Man! They don’t even care!
And Carla is dead! Again, this movie does things that might surprise you!
Third Host Segment: The movie is getting to them, so Joel discusses surrealism. It’s no match for the last segment, but the simple randomness keeps it amusing.
I love Ro-Man’s conversations with the Great One; here is some of the funniest dialogue ever written.
Ro-Man is totally kicking Roy’s ass! Now he’s strangling him and drops him off a cliff! Man, I love Ro-Man.
Joel: “Beautiful maidens in the hands of hideous beasts; this is my kind of movie.”
You said it!
I have to wonder what filming must have been like; George Barrows and Claudia Barret (Alice) must have had an interesting time together.
Romantic hero is dead.
Joel gets really mad at Ro-Man here (for good-reason; Ro-Man just tore Alice’s dress off. I’m not kidding).
This is one of the most ridiculous scenes in history; Ro-Man keeps trying to molest Alice, but each time gets called back to the view-screen.
By the way, Alice just tied herself up in the mother of all continuity errors.
Ro-Man: “Yes! To be like the Hu-Man! To laugh! Feel! Want! Why are these things not in the plan?” I love Ro-Man with an everlasting love!
Crow: “I’ve hired an idiot!”
And Ro-Man kills our child hero, then gets killed himself.
Stock footage from ‘Lost Continent,’ to be seen next season.
And basically the same stuff we saw at the beginning of the movie.
Crow: “Eyah!”
Again, you have to see it.
And the big twist; IT WAS ALL A DREAM!!
OR WAS IT???
Their Déjà vu bit is good.
By the way, no one I’ve heard talk about this film ever pointed out that it is actually the Great One coming out of the cave, not Ro-Man. You can tell, because the helmets are different.
Final Host Segment: Really bizarre discussion of the film while dressed in trash-bags.
Dr. F: “Could we have sent a stranger man into space?”
Movie Quality Rating:
1. The Crawling Eye
2. Mad Monster
3. The Crawling Hand
4. The Corpse Vanishes
5. Women of the Prehistoric Planet
6. Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy
7. Robot Monster (although it is easily the most entertaining film yet shown)
Conclusion: A great film, decent riffing, and one classic host segment make this a winner for Season 1
Final Rating: 7.5/10
For a very quick run-down, though; Robot Monster tells the story of Ro-Man, a (presumed) robot who comes from the planet Ro-Man and basically wipes out all life on Earth except for one human family; The Professor, his wife, their children, Carla, Johnny, and teenager Alice, and Alice’s boyfriend Roy. They survived because the Professor invented a serum which protected them from all diseases, including Ro-Man’s death ray. From there they try to survive and defeat Ro-Man, fail at both, and it all turns out to be Johnny’s dream (which, considering what happens over the course of the film, makes Johnny look like one sick puppy).
The film’s two greatest advantages over other dirt-cheap films of this type, the two things that make it worthy to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space,’ are its hilarious, pretentious script and its monster. He’s described in my thoughts while watching below, but if you really want to get a sense of what we’re dealing with here, scroll all the way down to the bottom to see Ro-Man in all his glory. But really, if you have a chance, pick up or rent a copy of this movie (even without MST3K) and just let its glory wash over you; I guarantee you’ll have never seen anything like it.
The film is proceeded by two shorts this time; they did this occasionally (off hand, I think it was three times in all) when the movie was extra short. This time it’s just two Commando Cody episodes. Nothing really new to say about them.
Thoughts While Watching:
Opening: Joel explains the premise. Pretty thoroughly.
Gypsy! I just noticed the big wires controlling her; they would streamline her later.
Invention exchange: Mads; Methane Whoopee Cushion. Joel’s invention; the cumber-bubble-bund would be one of few inventions which would be repeated down the line.
Discussing the movie, they sell how bad it is (which is certainly true).
Another Commando Cody! Incidentally, isn’t this just the coolest title ever? ‘Commando Cody & the Radar Men from the Moon.’ It doesn’t get much better than that!
Why are the bots surprised when told they have to watch two episodes? They were there when the mads announced it (the first time in a while they’ve been there for the Invention Exchange).
The cliffhanger-solution of the guy just jumping out of the car was probably used more than any other in serials.
Servo: “Upon further review, the refs find that Cody is dead. The play stands. Cody is dead.”
I think this is wishful thinking on Servo’s part.
This one guy looks dead. I’m serious; he has deep, dark shadows under his eyes and looks like a zombie.
I love how the moon-man threatens to report the gangster to the authorities if he disobeys him; I’m sure the testimony of an invading alien would be simply damning.
Random action sequence where bad guys try to rob bank and shoot and get shot a lot.
And I love how the Moon men’s mission is put on hold because they’ve run out of money! You’ve got to love the scripting in these things. And the alien commander suggests kidnapping!
Crow: “Hey, this bra is coming along nicely!” (you just have to see it)
Man, this random scientist kicks ass!
Crow: “I told you once, I told you a thousand times, we’re not rounding off Pi to 4!”
Kidnapped heroine! Now all the most awesome aspects of serials have been accounted for!
Cody shows up JUST as the bad guys drive off with the girl! I’m serious, he pulls in just as they pull out.
Joel: “Be on the look-out for two men and a babe. May be armed with a giant experimental, stainless steel brassiere.”
Servo sneezes! How does he do that? He’s a robot! (I guess Josh Weinstein really sneezed and they try to cover it. They do pretty well)
Another awesome thing about these things; the bad guy and Cody shoot out in MID-AIR! With revolvers! The bad guy just shoots out the plane window! Man, they’d be lucky if the bullets even went in the right cardinal direction!
Bad guy runs out of bullets, just decides to crash the plane. He just points it down and pulls the wheel off. It’s that simple. And jumps out with a parachute! Man, the world is a sadder place for that you don’t see stuff like this in the movies anymore.
Cody, you moron, you’ve got a flying suit! Just grab her and get out!
And another episode already! It’s generally not a good idea to watch serials back-to-back like this, as they weren’t designed for it. Serials were meant to be seen one-a-week and it’s best to stagger then when you watch.
Crow and Servo try to ditch! They’d try the same thing many seasons later for ‘Hobgoblins.’
I like Servo’s repeated assertion “You can’t make me! You can’t make me!”
Joel: “I’m surrounded by idiots of my own design!” That’s a little harsh. He’s kind of mean sometimes.
So, he has to tell her to grab the parachute sitting in plain sight? The heroines in these things weren’t generally known for their independence or pro-activeness. Though they generally were pretty chipper and rebounded wonderfully from near-death experiences, like here.
Now they’re shooting from a moving car at a flying object! And he hit him! God, I love this!
I just noticed that the moon-city looks like it was made entirely with model city-halls!
Even the moon-chief points out that it’s ridiculous that plans to invade the Earth are upset because they’ve run out of money!
Scene fades out in the middle of his sentence! This is the second time this has happened.
Another car chase.
Crow: “Meanwhile, back at the Cody institute for scientists who get pummeled…”
Joel has giant dart! Servo begs him not to throw it, since he’ll ruin the scene. These guys were pretty weird sometimes.
Another mid-sentence fade out.
Crow: “Alright, give me a snow-cone and two bon-bons.” (as bad guy holds up what looks like the good-humor man).
And another car chase!
First Host Segment: The physics of Cody. This reminds me of Mythbusters a bit. They point out the impossibilities of Cody and other sci-fi impossibilities. Joel brings up Bumblebees and the bots break down. They were a lot more like robots in those days; later they basically became little robotic people.
Robot Monster! One of the great films! George Nader later showed up in ‘Human Duplicators,’ but we’ll save that for now.
George Barrows! One of the great Ape-men; he specialized in playing gorillas and the like. He wasn’t as famous as some other gorilla actors, but he did act alongside some of Hollywoods best and brightest (that was not at all sarcastic; check this cast out: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047041/ )
Elmer Bernstein, who composed some of the great film scores (The Magnificent Seven, the Great Escape, and many more), also did the music for this movie!
Joel: “Stop torturing that cat!”
Crow: “It’s the band ‘Stop Us if we Become Annoying’”
Incidentally, this is Bronson Cavern; a perennial favorite of Sci-fi films right up to the present day (it was also the Bat-Cave on the Batman TV Show)
Stock footage of slurpasaur fight! It’s really kind of unpleasant to watch, since, of course, it’s a real caiman and a real monitor lizard thrown together and encouraged to fight. In spite of this, I still kind of enjoy this footage whenever it shows up (and in this kind of movie, it shows up all the time). It just is so indicative of the weird, somewhat unethical processes that went into these things.
Crow: “Ah! I win!”
You have to hear him say it.
The revelation of Ro-Man! One of the great monsters of all time! You see, Phil Tucker, the film’s director/producer couldn’t afford a real robot costume even of the cheapest kind, so he contacted George Barrows, who owned his own ape-suit. So, Ro-Man is an Ape-suit with one of the moon-men’s helmets from ‘Commando Cody’ (which I suspect was stolen). You really have to see him to believe him. Or, as an alternative, check out the screen-shots in the links above.
Naked exposition; shouldn’t they have told Johnny this earlier?
God, this is a great movie!
I wonder what Ro-Man must be thinking during this monologue? “Uh, hello? I’m the destroyer of the world, can we focus on ME now?”
Second Host Segment: Servo and Crow playing Ro-Man and the Great One. It’s great. “Why have you not killed the human?” “Because he gives me crunchy treats.” So many great lines here! It’s one of the best segments of Season 1.
Roy: “Who does he experiment on?”
Joel: “Monkeys?”
Actually, on his family!
Annoying, romantic, pretty sexist montage of working on the viewscreen.
Joel: “You’d think that if he were going to rule the world, he would pick a better spot than the cave.”
Crow: “He could have had a V-8! Joke, Joel! Joke!”
I don’t know why Joel is so angry.
Best. Special Effects. Sequence. EVER! Wait till you see it!
Actually good line (well, I like it anyway); “Out of Two Billion there are Six!”
Yeah, let’s negotiate with the monster that killed practically everyone on Earth.
Another montage of work! These are probably the most hated scenes in the movie.
God, I love Ro-Man! He’s one of the great characters of cinema, and I am not being sarcastic at all.
Servo: “Okay, now tilt the camera down a bit…”
Skipped a few scenes here and there.
Man, Barrows was a great guy; he walks up slag-heaps and hills, in an ape-suit, in the summer, in California, and remember, HE WASN’T PAID! He did it as a favor!
Johnny: “I wanted to find out what you had against me.”
Crow: “Your voice for starters.”
Johnny spills the beans to Ro-Man, basically because the kid’s an idiot.
Johnny’s parents are pretty lenient about how Johnny doomed mankind.
One of the most nauseating romantic scenes ever. Joel is in top form translating their sign-language love.
You know, this movie is pretty explicit for its time, at least in how specific its implications are.
Carla: “Have you been playing house?”
Crow: “In a way, in a way!”
Come on Roy! I know it’s the apocalypse, but at least put your friggin shirt on!
In a different movie with a better script and a better actor, the Professor’s speech here might have been actually quite moving. It’s not, but it might have been. In fact, this whole scene might have been rather poignant; at the end of the world, people trying to keep up faith and traditions. Again, here it’s just lame and ridiculous, but in a different film…
They just let Carla run off in the wrong direction! They just watch her toddle off in the opposite direction of home, and right into Ro-Man! They don’t even care!
And Carla is dead! Again, this movie does things that might surprise you!
Third Host Segment: The movie is getting to them, so Joel discusses surrealism. It’s no match for the last segment, but the simple randomness keeps it amusing.
I love Ro-Man’s conversations with the Great One; here is some of the funniest dialogue ever written.
Ro-Man is totally kicking Roy’s ass! Now he’s strangling him and drops him off a cliff! Man, I love Ro-Man.
Joel: “Beautiful maidens in the hands of hideous beasts; this is my kind of movie.”
You said it!
I have to wonder what filming must have been like; George Barrows and Claudia Barret (Alice) must have had an interesting time together.
Romantic hero is dead.
Joel gets really mad at Ro-Man here (for good-reason; Ro-Man just tore Alice’s dress off. I’m not kidding).
This is one of the most ridiculous scenes in history; Ro-Man keeps trying to molest Alice, but each time gets called back to the view-screen.
By the way, Alice just tied herself up in the mother of all continuity errors.
Ro-Man: “Yes! To be like the Hu-Man! To laugh! Feel! Want! Why are these things not in the plan?” I love Ro-Man with an everlasting love!
Crow: “I’ve hired an idiot!”
And Ro-Man kills our child hero, then gets killed himself.
Stock footage from ‘Lost Continent,’ to be seen next season.
And basically the same stuff we saw at the beginning of the movie.
Crow: “Eyah!”
Again, you have to see it.
And the big twist; IT WAS ALL A DREAM!!
OR WAS IT???
Their Déjà vu bit is good.
By the way, no one I’ve heard talk about this film ever pointed out that it is actually the Great One coming out of the cave, not Ro-Man. You can tell, because the helmets are different.
Final Host Segment: Really bizarre discussion of the film while dressed in trash-bags.
Dr. F: “Could we have sent a stranger man into space?”
Movie Quality Rating:
1. The Crawling Eye
2. Mad Monster
3. The Crawling Hand
4. The Corpse Vanishes
5. Women of the Prehistoric Planet
6. Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy
7. Robot Monster (although it is easily the most entertaining film yet shown)
Conclusion: A great film, decent riffing, and one classic host segment make this a winner for Season 1
Final Rating: 7.5/10
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