107 – Robot Monster with Shorts:
Commando Cody Parts 4 and 5
éééé (ééééé
if you skip the shorts)
Things I liked about the movie:
The video phone is a mirror.
The bubble machine.
The sham wedding so the teenagers can have legit sex.
Impressions
This would probably be an outstanding episode except the
Commando Cody shorts. I was impatient
for them to get over. One is a
lot. Two is way too much. At least the Commando Cody shorts and the
movie have a common theme. They are
obviously intended to appeal to the 10-year-old boy Saturday matinee
demographic. Lots of action (sort of),
limited dialogue mostly of the “I’ll get you! – Oh yeah, you just try it!”
variety. But as far as MST3K
watchability, the shorts are probably grade 1 out of 5 and the movie itself is
a 5.
I don’t remember what happened in the Commando Cody shorts except that there was a lot of shooting and running around. It is nearly impossible to tell who is who. This is partly because all the characters look and act the same and partly because it’s so dark and the film is so bad that it’s like watching an old black and white show on a 4” TV. I will skip these next time. But I loved Robot Monster and will definitely watch it again.
Robot Monster has everything: ridiculous plot, insultingly stupid ending, incredibly stupid plot devices, garage quality special effects, goofy acting, terrible writing (if there was even writing) and long, slow, boring periods ripe for riffing. This movie is so bad that it’s good. Plan 9, Monster A-Go-Go bad/good. In fact, this is the worst movie panned by the crew yet! Disclaimer.
Synopsis
No discernable plot. Cody shooting moon men or something.
Believe it or not, this is the plot. A robot man, Ro-man for short, (which seems to be a portly 50-year-old man in a gorilla suit with a diving helmet on his head) has killed everyone on Earth to prepare for an alien invasion. Everyone that is, except a family of six. This “family” is an altruistic archeologist who dabbles in medicine, his fifties-style servile wife, a beautiful young adult scientist daughter, a goofy pre-teen boy and a cute little girl. The sixth member is a handsome would-be suitor to the adult daughter, and who is also a scientist. He works for dad. You can see the whole plot coming just from the lineup of characters. Or can you?
Why are they still alive? Dad is an archeologist who developed a new antibiotic that protects people from all diseases. He’s a good man normally, but he forgot his ethics training for a moment to test it on his family. The antibiotic caused them to be immune from Ro-man’s death ray! So Ro-man has to kill them manually. He is so incredibly ineffective at this that his boss calls from his home planet to nag him about it every 10 minutes or so. I’m not even sure he knows how to kill without his death-ray. His feeble attempts seem to be mostly threats and walking miles (all of it filmed) looking for his victims even though they never leave their house and he knows where the house is! Eventually, he somehow grabs the daughter, falls in love with her, and therefore can’t kill her. For this, the boss on the home planet kills him with lightning and abandons the whole invasion. I won’t reveal the twist ending because it would hurt my sensibilities to do so. But lets just say everything turns out happy via a cliché plot device.
Some of the most amazing parts are the behavior of Ro-man as he’s preparing to go after the family and as he talks to the home planet. Let’s explore these.
First of all, as best I can tell, his telecommunication device is a bureau with a mirror on it and when he “calls home” he is just seeing his reflection in the mirror.
He runs a bubble machine for God knows what reason. I mean it’s a terrible movie and everything, but the bubble machine is so outrageously inappropriate that some people can’t get past it. The bubble machine even gets a credit at the end. Maybe this is some sort of product placement, but I can’t imagine why the bubble machine company would put it in this movie. It might be a good masters thesis topic for a film student to explain why the bubble machine was in the movie and why it shouldn’t have been.
Ro-man isn’t in very good shape. He also wanders around a lot. This wandering seems to be like maybe daily constitutionals on the same stretch of trail. This is good, because he seems to need the exercise. The movie is about an hour long and I’d estimate 10 minutes of that is him walking, slowly and purposelessly, along the trail. Joel and the bots make a funny doh-dee-doh doh-dee-doh sound when he does this and you want to sing “I’m bringing home a baby bumble bee.”
As Ro-man conducts his siege, he follows this effective plan:
Run the bubble machine
Take a walk
Call home
Repeat.
The family could just wait him out probably, because the boss is getting angrier every minute, but the idiot boy runs off, which of course makes the others go looking for him. They don’t find him, but the eligible guy and gal find themselves making out in some high grass! Instead of relying on the cliché drivel about “I’ve always loved you” they make primitive sign gestures to communicate their love, which Joel interprets in a very funny way. That 30 seconds or so is one the all-time most precious gems of MST3k in my opinion. If you watch this movie, you’ll want to rewind this part a couple of times.
Even though they are the last six people on Earth, they still can’t have sex without being married. Never mind that there are no clergy or justices of the peace to marry them. But horny people are resourceful, and they talk the archeologist dad into marrying them in a ceremony that is probably legal insofar as there’s no legal system or society, so anything goes. Now it’s honeymoon time!
I’m not 100% sure why the all-powerful Ro-man boss has to have these six ninnies removed before he can invade. They would just starve to death in a month or come out and get clumsily killed by a passer-by Ro-man once the aliens moved in, but for some reason it’s critical. I’m thinking they could just land the ship on top of the family when they come. The antibiotic is so powerful, it would probably allow them to resist being crushed by a spaceship, too, I guess.
Finally, the family has absolutely no weapons, no transportation, no access to food or any way to threaten Ro-man. He has the entire earth at his disposal. But instead of setting up camp in the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton or taking over the White House (remember, this is a guy that single-handedly engineered the destruction of the entire human race minus six), he moves into a cave and runs his bubble machine!!
Oh yeah. Cherry on top. There’s some unexplained stock footage at the beginning and end of the movie that’s a couple of lizards fighting. One of them has a fin glued on. This footage is also seen in King Dinosaur. It’s really the best part of the movie, but no one, not even the director, knows what it’s doing in this film. Maybe he was editing King Dinosaur and accidentally dropped the film into the Robot Monster pile. We really can’t say.
Host Segment information provided by The Amazing Colossal Episode Guide:
The mads’ invention is a flaming whoopee cushion. Joel’s is the cummer-bubble-bund. It makes bubbles come out of his tuxedo, an allusion to the Ro-man bubble machine.
Joel questions the bots about Cody’s flying skills and likens it to the bumble bee who shouldn’t be able to fly. The bots get into a Star Trekkian logic loop.
Crow orders Servo to kill Joel (playing off Ro-man being ordered to kill the girl). Joel hits Servo with a chair.
Joel and the bots pan surrealism.
Joel and the bots dress in garbage bags and stage a play about the paradoxes of the movie. Dr. F asks, “Could we have sent a stranger man into space?”
Ro-man walks up to the bureau mirror and acts like he’s operating the communication device.
Joel as Ro-Man: Calling same guy. (This riff is hilarious in context and almost completely lifeless repeated here)
Servo, during credits: I think I'll cut an apple and watch it brown.
Ro-Man: Show yourselves, and I promise you a painless death.
Crow: Eh, we're looking at a few other offers first.
Crow as one of the kids: Hey great, a picnic at the slag heap. Thanks mom.
Joel as Ro-man: Due to an error, there are still a few of you left alive. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
Joel: That, ladies and gentlemen, is the destroyer of the universe . . . I rest my case.
Joel: You know, you'd think if he was going to rule the world he'd choose a better spot than a cave.