Short 1: (1951) The thugs kidnap Joan and take off with her in a small plane but Cody is in hot pursuit.
Short 2: (1951) Cody saves Joan but is shot down. The thugs blow another heist and are on the run again.
Movie: (1953) After invaders from space wipe out most of humanity, a surviving family confronts their robot nemesis.
First shown: 12/23/89 (unconfirmed)
Opening: Joel explains the premise
Invention exchange: The Mads demonstrate their methane whoopee cushion; Joel has the cumber-bubble-bund
Host segment 1: Reality vs. Commando Cody
Host segment 2: Crow and Tom play Robot Monster, but Joel misunderstands
Host segment 3: Crow and Tom trying to understand surrealism
End: J&tB’s “tribute to Ro-Man” pageant baffles the Mads
(162 votes, average: 4.19 out of 5)
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• It is with this episode, about halfway through the season, that the show really hits its early stride. You can feel them get more comfortable and begin to explore the premise they’ve created. This show has some very funny riffing, decent host segments and, of course, an iconic bad movie (and I don’t like using that word much, but I think it applies here). It’s one of the better episodes of the first season.
• References.
• It’s my theory that, by riffing this movie, the Brains opened themselves up to the endless “When are you going to riff ‘Plan 9’? questions. Somehow, in some people’s minds, those two movies are intertwined (a little like how some people saw riffing “This Island Earth” as an affront to “The Day the Earth Stood Still”).
• Joel is again wearing a robe in the opening segment. Some commenters have suggested that it’s reflecting the show’s time slot, which was being played on Saturday mornings.
• Joel once again explains the premise in the opening segment. I get the feeling that Comedy Channel wanted them to do this for the benefit of new viewers.
• The Bots are present during the invention exchange for the first time.
• Gypsy’s light is still off.
• You know, it’s a little embarrassing to hear Josh say that this movie stars “no one.” Not really true. Maybe George Nader never got from B-list to A-list (due to personal reasons) but he was pretty well known. We’ve already encountered him in episode K18-THE MILLION EYES OF SU-MURU and we’ll meet him again in episode 420-THE HUMAN DUPLICATORS.
• The theater seats are again green.
• Josh sneezes in the theater during the first short. They just keep going. Joel expresses some surprise at this, but Josh covers well. Trace just says “‘zunt!” (Short for “gesundheit,” I guess.)
• When something that looks like a dartboard appears during the short, Joel’s produces a giant dart. Tom Servo, perhaps fearful of what will happen to the screen, pleads with him not to use it.
• Elmer Bernstein, whose name Tom Servo seems to find amusing during the credits, went on to do some great scores (including “The Magnificent Seven” and “The Great Escape” ). This one really isn’t that bad, in fact.
• Yet more jokes at the expense of Isaac Asimov. I’d never noticed how often they do that in this first season.
• Servo’s head explodes for the second time in the national series, during the first host segment, while thinking about bumblebees–followed by Crow and Cambot for the first and only time (I think).
• Segment 3 is a rethink of a segment in episode K11- HUMANOID WOMAN.
• This episode features the first of several references to a supposed movie called “Yards of Leather.” At the second convention, I asked The Brains if that movie actually existed or what? They all looked at me like I was crazy. Google is silent on the title.
• Thanks to the Urban Dictionary, I finally know what “the zacklies” are. Gross.
• Highlight: Joel’s riotous narration of the love scene.
• The cave scenes were filmed on location in California’s Bronson Canyon. That location was also used also in the filming of episodes 210-KING DINOSAUR, 311-IT CONQUERED THE WORLD, 315-TEENAGE CAVEMAN, 317-VIKING WOMEN, 319-WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST, 404-TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE and 701-NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST.
• The house foundation scenes were done at a demolition site near Dodger Stadium.
• The dinosaur scenes are from “One Million B.C.,” and rocket scenes from “Flight to Mars.”
• Producer/director Phil Tucker tried to commit suicide after the film received awful reviews.
• Um, why are J&tB wearing trash bags in the closing segment?
• Stinger suggestion: “I cannot! But I must!”
• Cast and crew roundup: Producer Al Zimbalist also worked on “King Dinosaur.” Cinematographer Jack Greenhalgh also worked on “The Mad Monster” and “Lost Continent.” Editor Bruce Shoengarth was the sound effects editor for “Earth Vs. the Spider.” Special effects guy Jack Rabin also worked on “Rocketship X-M,” “Viking Women and the Sea Serpent” and “Invasion USA.” Special effects guy Roy Seawright also worked on “Teenage Caveman.” Stereo sound director Gordon Avil was the cinematographer for “King Dinosaur.” Sound director Lyle Willey also worked on “Bride of the Monster.” In front of the camera, as already noted, George Nader appeared in “The Million Eyes Of Su-Muru” and “The Human Duplicators.”
• CreditsWatch: Jim Erickson was again the “additional production staff,” and post production audio was again done by Rich Cook of TeleEdit in Minneapolis.
• Fave riff from short 1: “What are the physics of a broken jaw, college boy?”
• Fave riff from short 2: “I think we’ve all reported to the moon at one time or another.” Honorable mention: “I’m surrounded by idiots–of my own design!”
• Fave movie riff: “Okay, now tilt the camera down a little.” Honorable mention: “Mother, keep digging graves. Better do two. This isn’t going well.”
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Nader wasn’t the only one in this film who had a career destroyed. Check out Selena Royle on IMDB sometime – she was caught up in the Red Scare in 1951, and Robot Monster was one of her last appearances, after a long career in radio and stage and a decade of steady movie work.
That Gino Vannelli riff has got to be a callback to an SCTV skit – Eugene Levy played Vannelli performing “I Just Wanna Stop” on Mel’s Rockpile, and every time Levy turned around to deliver the hook, he was a little bit hairier, until he only needed the diving helmet to be a dead ringer for Ro-Man.
BTW, anyone seen the unMSTed version who’s able to tell us if there are any major edits in the MST version? I’m guessing not, since they needed two Cody episodes to pad the length, but I was just curious anyway…
I have an un-MSTed Robot Monster DVD and though it’s been a while since I watched it I don’t remember there being any major edits for MST3K because as you pointed out, it’s quite a short movie. And of course for when it was made there is really nothing in it that they had to edit due to content.
I see some people here didn’t like the Radar Men From The Moon shorts on the show. For me they are some of my fondest early memories of the show. Some of the jokes during those short subjects were so memorable I could quote them years later after very few viewings because I liked them so much. “Hey, Joel, what’s that he’s cranking?”, “Why do they hate trains so much?”, and many others. On watching them again on the new DVDs recently I enjoyed them just as much as I did years ago. “Someone call for a murder car?” and many other great jokes too numerous to mention. Silly, great stuff and I’m very happy Shout! Factory has released so many of these episodes on DVD.
I like the feel of the Commando Cody shorts, they’re prime riffing material, but they’re so repetitive that – to me, anyway – it’s like seeing the same short before several different episodes. (Or after, that one time.) Maybe if they riffed them in later years with a full, seasoned writing staff I’d enjoy them more, but every chapter is virtually identical to the last, so there’s only so much to work with. The Brains seem to have come to the same conclusion I did.
Oh, wait – that was The Phantom Creeps that came after the movie that one time. Different serial, same problem: DULL X REPETITIVE = BLAH
Ro-Man is a classic movie monster. Classic in the sense of being completely ridiculous and utterly unbelievable, but still, classic nonetheless.
I liked this one, continues the upswing of Season One experiments. I like the Commando Cody shorts despite their repetitiveness, and here we get two of ’em.
From 1st short: Joel: “Hey, this isn’t the way to Taco Johns!”
By the way, Robot Monster is a really bad movie, but I still find it charming in it’s ineptitude. It’s like it was MADE for MST3000.
RIFFS:
Not a riff, but Joel and the Bots dance a bit to the theme music of the movie; I thought that was cool.
Joel: “Hahahahaha…….I’ll get the sedatives.”
Servo: “They must be pretty advanced if they have Ataris.”
Crow: “He must be from Texas A&M. . . . Ape and Monster.”
Also, if this the first time that the invention exchange was tied directly into the movie, what with Joel’s cumber-bubble-bund and Ro-Man’s bubble machine? Seems so to me. . . .. . . . .
!
#17, Brandon, yeah, that seeming-to-come-from-nowhere threat on the kid’s life (“You’re just a big bully!” “I Will Kill You Now!”) has been cracking me up since I first saw this in the early 90’s, too. It seems like this one, Catalina Caper, Black Scorpion, and Women Of The Prehistoric Planet I seem to have seen all around the same time, and they all form my first impressions of the show in bits and pieces. Other favorite moments were the long shots of the monster just walking across the screen with one of the riffers singing a doop de doo type ditty, and us laughing at how not scary a guy in a gorilla suit with a diving helmet was. I also seem to remember “I must…but I cannot! I cannot….but I must!!” becoming one of those jokes we’d throw at each other in moments of wit. Sigh. Good times.
ROBOT MONSTER does indeed have this odd feeling of being a hodge-podge of dimly remembered science fiction concepts and images randomly stuck together in a way that is only partially attributable to the concept of it being a child’s dream. I’d have to check the dates but I wonder if they were trying to do THE 5000 FINGERS OF DOCTOR T on a budget…
Actually, the mom and grandma’s dresses struck me as ‘space-girl’ outfits. Because, y’see, it’s THE FUTURE! And I thought the kid’s parents were supposed to be the elderly German scientist and his dowdy wife. Also found it odd the little girl never seems to notice the entire world’s been destroyed around her. She just sees all the devastation and privation –I mean, they’re living in a hole in the desert for some reason– as an annoying barrier to playing house.
Is Netflix ever going to make the disk of this available instead of just the streaming option?
I finally got to watch this episode. I saw it years ago from DAP, but I remembered almost nothing. Then last month I got the Volume XIX for Christmas and finally finished watching it tonight. (I’ve been slow on my DVD watching because I’m writing a dissertation.)
Most of my thoughts have already been voiced by others, but here are a few:
-@17: Not only can you see Josh’s head in the third segment, but you can see his arm for several seconds in the second segment.
-The second segment might be the funniest in season 1.
-I want this episode to be my favorite of season 1, but the Commando Cody shorts just prevent that from happening. I still like “The Crawling Hand” more. But this is better than most of what we’ve seen so far this season.
-@21: The bubbles almost certainly have to be in there for the 3D. I’ve never seen this movie in non-MST3K form, but all accounts are that the 3D is pretty good.
-My theater silhouettes are slightly green… definitely not as green as earlier episodes.
One more thing…
I recognized Bronson Canyon right away. That’s the sort of thing that happens when you’ve watched a lot of “Star Trek.”
As MSTies, we’ve seen it in “Teenagers from Outer Space” and “Eegah.” Appropriately, the Star Trek wiki says that a call sheet for a 1991 episode says, “Dress Appropriatly for bees, rattle snakes and hot sun.” I guess the mysterious voice in “Eegah” was right: Watch out for snakes!
Creeping Terror- I also recognized Bronson Canyon from the old Batman TV series and many episodes of Twilight Zone as well. It’s on my “someday-LA-tour” site list, along with the Griffith Observatory (War Of The Colossal Beast and lots of other stuff) and the Bradbury Building, where The Outer Limits, Blade Runner, and Wolf were all filmed. I’m gonna search now and see if you can climb the “Kirk Rock” at Bronson.
Oh, and the Music Box Steps, hee.
Just a comment about the star rating system for all the episodes so far. If you look at an entire season, they all have the same rating throughout. And season to season, they all pretty much average 4 out of 5 stars. So are people actually putting much thought into what they rate things, or are they just hitting the exact same value every time? Personally, I think any kind of numerical rating for films (or music or books or anything really) is useless beyond marketing to the masses. If anything, it shows that we all love these episodes equally.
Oh, about the whole bleeding-from-the-ear thing… On a bad movie site (I forget which one), I saw some speculation that it might have been a continuity error and that the scene was originally intended to come after the hero is beaten up by the Ro-Man (until the editing process when they realized this made no sense). Well, it’s as plausible as any other explanation…
Josh mentions Robot Monster in a CT/MST3K panel from late 2009 (part 2/9 from ladylindsay416 @ YouTube) in response to a question from the audience: What is your least favorite movie done on MST?
Josh: I don’t know if I have a least favorite… My pool of episodes was smaller. But I remember at the time being upset that we were doing Robot Monster. Because it such a standout horrible movie… it bugged me that we were doing something that seemed sort of self-riffing. Of course none of them are, we found out. But that one, because it was such a famous bad movie, kind of bugged me that we were doing it…
Joel follows up by explaining how the Medved books The Fifty Worst Films of All Time & The Golden Turkey Awards were part of the creation of MST3K, in that the idea of celebrating “bad” movies had become hip in pop culture.
BTW, the other mentions were:
Mary Jo – Overdrawn, Trace – Melting Man, Frank – Fu Manchu, Joel – Manos
@Neal: It is a system of averages so there are always going to be some that love B & W 50’s monster flicks and others that love abandoned TV series mashups. I think it actually is fairly indicative of the overall quality of any particular movie, you just have to basically use a sub-scale to the standard 5 star system, I.e. a 4.37 mov
….dang soft keyboard….
anyway … A 4.37 star mOvie mOst likely WILL be more enjoyable than a 4.12 star movie, not accounting for aforesaid personal preferences… I think that it shows that although not every ep. is everyone’s thing, the Brains did a damn good jOb of keeping things mixed up enough to appeal to a large audience, which of course was a factor in the success a homemade show enjoyed for a decade.
It still surprises me that they didn’t seem to know Elmer Bernstein. Dude did Animal House.
Id argue Robot Monster may be the darkest movie ever done on MST3K. Cause if the death of all humanity isn’t dark enough for you, we can throw in the strangling of small children.
I’m surprised nobody has commented on the absence of anyone saying “McLeod” in the curmudgeonly police chief voice in this episode like they did in many later episodes. Servo even comments that they don’t see Dennis Weaver anywhere but it was odd to me to not hear any riffer constantly saying it. I guess that must have been a Frank thing.
As to the movie, I would disagree with Josh and feel this is prime MST fodder that would have been even better if done in later seasons but this episode is still pretty good, although when I watch it now I skip the Cody shorts and go straight to the movie. So much weirdness, nonsensical dinosaurs, an extremely stupid looking monster, nothing making any sense but the movie had an odd earnestness about it that Joel has said and I agree with is important when selecting a movie for riffing.
A sobering note, the movie said the world population was 2 billion circa 1950 when it came out and latest estimates say the world population is now 7 billion. That’s a lot of people in 60 years.
Favorite riff:
Movie: “What’s he looking through?”
Servo: “A glass darkly.”
This is one of very few MSTed movies for which I also have the original, unaltered version. For that is how much I love Robot Monster. There is literally nothing about this movie that is not entertaining and/or fascinating. As I think about it today, I am drawn to Ro-Man’s wonderfully stilted dialogue, which is perhaps the MOST stilted of all 1950s aliens. I also never tire of examining Ro-Man’s faceplate, trying desperately to make out the contours of what lurks beneath. Finally, the model work…I had seen the movie many times and was always confused at the part where the rocketship is shown zipping back and forth. Confused, that is, until I read somewhere what that’s supposed to be – the spaceship orbiting the space platform! Ah!
As I said, fascinating. I am similarly fascinated by Robot Holocaust, which I also own unMSTed.
I’m just looking up at the list of “most disliked movies” from the Brains posted in #66. Wow, three out of the four of those movies I’d place right up there in my personal top echelon of most enjoyably awful movies.
But then again, I have no patience for Jess Franco movies.
I had no idea the “why haven’t they riffed Plan 9?” thing had been going on that long. I hadn’t started wondering that myself until they did Bride Of The Monster.
The last time I’d seen Robot Monster, it was on the local Saturday night “Creature Feature”, and remembered it as one of those legendary bad sci-fi movies on account of the alien costume consisting of a gorilla suit with a cheesy fake space helmet. I wasn’t thrilled with this Experiment when I first saw it as I never recalled the movie being quite this dull; all I remembered was laughing my ass off at the stupid space alien outfit.
Despite the post-apocalyptic dream premise, I never did think this movie was that much of a downer, because of the alien’s gorilla-suit-with-a-space-helmet outfit. I did, however, think the movie itself was soul-crushingly dull, which contributed to this not being one of my favorite Experiments. I may give it another shot, though, after having read this writeup.
And btw, am I really the only MSTie on Earth who thinks that the Commando Cody serial doesn’t get enough love? I first saw Radar Men From The Moon in its full-length theatrical release version on the Saturday afternoon Chiller Theatre on local TV in the early ’70s and, watching it as a young teenager growing up during the Apollo Era, thought it was one of the flat-out funniest things I’d ever seen.
I never knew what darkness and/or a cave had to do with McCloud, anyway. You can’t “get” them all.
#58:
She’s a small child, to whom everything’s a mystery and to whom everything is equally important or unimportant. She has no power to affect anything happening around her. She eats what’s put before her and goes to sleep at bedtime, whether she has a bed or not. Live in a house, live in a hole, live in a tree, whatever the grown-ups decide to do.
Of course she doesn’t understand what’s going on. She’s neither expected to understand nor qualified to do so. That’s what grown-ups are for. It’s a grown-up’s job to worry and it’s a little kid’s job to be a little kid. Upsetting her by forcing her to comprehend the enormity of the situation would accomplish absolutely nothing. Even Johnny’s subconscious knows that.
As for Ro-Man’s activities, well, he’s an ALIEN. He doesn’t think like us. He doesn’t act like us. He doesn’t REact like us. That’s one of the reasons we call him an alien. ;-)
I always loved those opening host segments where Joel’n’the Bots are still in their Saturday morning just-got-out-of-bed mode. They didn’t look much different than I did when I was a kid on Saturday mornings, just half an hour out of bed, munching Froot Loops while watching the Bugs Bunny-Road Runner Hour.
I don’t know about anybody else here, but I always thought Servo looked cute as hell in that little red buttoned-up bathrobe.
One of my MSTie buddies and I are really huge Roger Corman fans; when ordering tickets for the Cinematic Titanic shows in DC last year, we checked out which movies they were doing, and one of them was Roger Corman’s Wasp Woman. As I read the synopsis to him over the phone and came to the line “directed by Roger Corman” our faces lit up and my buddy goes “Yes! The Cor-Man!” …to which I replied, “…to think like the Cor-Man! To be like the Cor-Man!” in the voice of the alien in Robot Monster.
It’s been one of our long-time inside jokes; we always refer to Roger Corman as “the Cor-Man”.
“I cannot – yet I must. How do you calculate that? At what point on the graph do ‘must’ and ‘cannot’ meet? Yet I must – but I cannot!”
My exact personal dilemma when it comes to watching the Rifftrax treatment of the Twilight films, because that would mean watching the Twilight films.
Just watch them (naturally with Rifftrax). It’s worth it. Trust me.
Line?
There is only one Twilight and it is a Zone… :-)
I actually find the flying effects in Commando Cody somewhat impressive.
The movie is just too depressing for me to watch again.
OTOH, I sometimes watch the two Commando Cody shorts. Then again, I watched those unriffed, I like old serials. Radar Men from the Moon isn’t a very good serial, but it’s not that bad, either.
The Bechdel Test results for Robot Monster are ambiguous. It all comes down to whether you classify Ro-Man as male or uncertain, as the only instance of two females talking to each other is when Martha and Carla talk about Ro-Man’s motivations.
For the stinger, I’d go with Ro-Man carrying off a kicking and screaming Alice.
While I don’t have the issues others have with the Cody shorts, I will admit that these were two of the more blatantly padded installments.
That was a quick thinking on Josh’s part when he sneezed in the theater.
Regarding Joel’s comment on the Bots needing more memory, keep in mind this was back when a gigabyte was more than what a lot of computer users knew what to do with, rather than something you wore on your key chain.
In spite of the presence of the Billion Bubble Machine, there was only one Lawrence Welk riff.
Wonder whose idea it was to have George Nader go around shirtless. As in Boggy Creek 3, it was a bad one.
I agree with Dr. F. What indeed in the name of Jules Bergman was that?
Favorite riffs
Upon further review, the refs find that Cody is dead. The play stands. Cody is dead.
You MIT guys. Think you’re pretty tough.
I’d give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
Just think of it as getting a booster shot twice in the same day, by the same doctor.
Yeah, Dr. Mengele.
Well, there goes the model. What about the real plane?
Right, shoot him. That’s your solution to everything. Something gets in your way, you get out your little gun and you’ve got to shoot him. Well listen, mister. Someday, there’s going to be a flying rocketeer behind you who’s going to shoot back.
George Barrows, too ashamed to show his own face.
Kids, don’t ever sit on an archaeologist’s lap.
“He still doesn’t know about Jason and McCloud.”
Yeah, but you just told him.
While Mommy braided Cindy’s hair, Daddy read from the Home Repair and Improvement Bunker Guide.
Armageddon married in the morning.
I was going to sell it, but everyone else was dead.
“Where are you going on your honeymoon? Niagara Falls?”
No, the Forbidden Zone. We’re just going to monkey around for a while.
Hey, you two. My marriage license has expired. You’re not really married.
Mother, keep digging graves. Better do two. This isn’t going too well.
I remember seeing along time ago a clip of “Robot Monster” in the music video “You Might Think” by The Cars.
Again, top ten in my book. Perfect movie for MST.
I remember I not liking this one the first time I saw it. Now I love it. It’s just so goofy, but with a pretty dark story. It’s like someone wrote a really depressing story, but someone else came along & lightened it up by making it a kid’s dream, changing the evil alien overlord into a goofy gorilla (that gets really good, overly dramatic music just for walking around), and adding bubbles. Lots of bubbles.
Also, a death ray that’s stopped by antibiotics? Generally, death rays are what we would later come to know as lasers, so I’m not sure exactly how that works. Then again, I’m not certain who would think the ultimate life-form was a gorilla with a trash-can on it’s head & the superiority complex of a Dalek.
More Cody! Can’t get enough rock-em-sock-em scientists.
#26 “So, if the movie was SPOILER ALERT all a dream of Johnny’s, that raises some very interesting questions if one is of the Freudian persuasion. Ignoring why Johnny has his mother (and grandmother) wearing identical saucy halter dresses with sheer skirts and heels…He fantasizes about mom flirtatiously bickering with the alpha male scientist he met five minutes ago, mom getting tied up by possible new daddy, mom marrying new daddy in a post-apocalyptic ceremony presided over by grampa, sister and new dad getting murdered by a genocidal robot gorilla, and mom getting tied up (again) and molested by the robot gorilla. Frederic Wertham was right! Johnny needs serious therapy and should probably be in a rubber room. Odd that with all that depravity, his idea of what a young newlywed couple does alone in the woods was so tame. And pantomimed. (?) I don’t see many healthy relationships in Johnny’s future. Their neighbors would be wise to keep him away from their pets.”
I couldn’t put it better myself. This movie is one of the best examples of what I call accidental surrealism which in my opinion is usually more surrealistic than deliberate surrealism like what Dali and Bunuel were doing with Un Cien Andalusian.
Much has already been said about the buckets of WTF this movie sloshes all over the screen. And the fact that it all supposedly takes place in the dream of a pre-adolescent boy just makes it all the weirder. The boy’s dream in Invaders from Mars didn’t have Mom tying up herself in a space age cocktail dress so she can get molested by a gorilla that got its’ head stuck in a metal vase. I have a long history of clinical depressive mental illness, but I never had a dream like this about my Mom.
BTW, when Alice told Ro-Man that she wanted “peace with honor”, was she channeling Nixon before the fact?
You’ve got to feel for Ro-Man a bit when he’s trying to have a moment with his first lady friend/kidnap victim and the only beings in existance with his phone number won’t stop calling.
BTW, has anyone noticed that the fish-henchman in “Megamind” uses a robotic gorilla as a body, complete with fishbowl head? Clearly the creators of that movie were making a little tribute to Robot Monster.
John Carpenter is a Robot Monster fan. Robot Monster appears on a TV in In the Mouth of Madness.
The set has the vacuum flower again from last week in the opening, and as Finnias Jones notes above (#7) Dr F begins with “…Joelita, my little vacuum flower, and seems to pronounce the words a little more clearly than Joel had last week. “Vacuum Flower”, as opposed to “Vacuflower”.
The double dose of CC is hard to take in this one. It is funny during the second CC opening that they basically just ignore it. The movie itself is completely nuts. Of course the monster here is one of the most famous of the MST3K runs. At least as far as imagery used that is. The plot is really weird and contrived. How could it be that the only humans left on the planet are within a square mile of the monster? Also the “twist” ending is blah. The skits are pretty funny in this one and are pretty much the type you would continue to see with Joel throughout his run.