MST3K: 107 - Robot Monster

Joel Robinson is trapped in space and forced to watch bad movies by a pair of mad scientists.  His only companions are the robots he made from some of the spare parts.  A cult classic of the 90's, this is Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Original air date: December 23, 1989

You got your monster on my robot!
No, you got your robot on my monster!

This episode begins with Joel stating the premise (which he also did last week).  It doesn't seem necessary to me, because the lyrics do a perfectly good job of explaining what is going on.  For the invention exchange, we see that the Bots are with Joel for the first time.  The Mads show off their mechanically-inflating  methane whoopie cushion, which they demonstrate with the obvious use of fire.  This is the third time this season the Mads play with fire.  There's something not right about those boys.  Joel, meanwhile, shows his cumber-bubble-bund.  Wear it to your first day of school or job interview (if you want to get instantly laughed at).

This episode, Joel and the Bots are subjected to two episodes of Radar Men from the Moon -- "Chapter 4:  Flight to Destruction", and "Chapter 5:  Murder Car".  Close to the end of Chapter 4, J. Elvis sneezes.  I like how he makes Tom Servo move when he does it, and Joel just goes with it.  This shows that, at least during season 1, they only did one take of riffing the movie.

There are some recurring riffs in the Cody serials, but fortunately they are funny every time, like warning Cody there's a window down the hall, commenting how it looks like he's tweaking his nipples when he turns the knobs on his jacket to fly, and the "Oh, I'd hate to shoot a butt like that joke."

During the 4th chapter, Cody fires at Graber when Graber's flying the plane while Joan is in the backseat.  The writers really didn't think that through.  If Cody manages to hit Graber -- BAM!  down goes the plane.  Servo makes a joke about equal but opposite reactions, but a gun doesn't really provide enough force to force a man in a jetpack backwards.  Servo needs to learn physics.  Also, what kind of plane lets you easily take off the steering wheel?

I'm not entirely sure why they felt it was necessary to go through the entire set of credits for Chapter 5, but at least it provided a funny moment while Joel had to chase the Bots as they were trying to ditch him.  Also, during Chapter 5, there's a poster that looks like a dart board.  Joel grabs a giant dart from under his chair and threatens to throw it at the screen.

The first host segment pokes some holes at the Cody serial, and somehow veered off into a discussion about Isaac Asimovs and bees.  Servo's, Crow's and Cambots heads all explode when Joel says physics can't explain why bumblebees can fly.  Actually, it can.  Also, J. Elvis's puppeteering isn't the best in this scene.  Servo's mouth movements are off.

Robot Monster is a black and white 1953 sci-fi movie in which the Earth is attacked by a drone from a collective called Ro-Man (George Barrows in a costume of his own design), an alien robot man gorilla type thing.  Ro-Man is controlled by his leader, The Great Guidance.  The film starts with Johnny (Gregory Moffett), his younger sister Carla (Pamela Paulson), his hot older sister Alice (Claudia Barrett), and his mother (Selena Royle) out for a picnic in a ... quarry or something.  Johnny and Carla run into The Professor (John Mylong) and Roy (George Nader), two archaeologists working in a cave.

Ugh, change the channel, Dad!  This movie stinks!

After the picnic, the family takes a nap.  Johnny wakes up and wanders back up to the cave.  He is awake to witness the planetary attack of Ro-Man the super space ape cyborg man.  Ro-Man (aka "Those Dirty Red Commie Bastards"... this is 50's sci-fi after all) uses a Calcinator Beam (aka "the Bomb") to start an invasion of Earth. He tricks the world powers into nuking each other and finished off the survivors, killing all but eight people on the planet (aka "The Good Ole USofA!").  Little Johnny awakes to find two different machines in the cave, and that the nuke... I mean the "Calcinator Beam" transformed his jeans into shorts.  He also sees Ro-Man.

Little Johnny runs home, or what's left of it, to find that the Professor is his father.  We also learn that the Professor and Alice were able to rig up some sort of shield to keep them from being seen by Ro-Man.  It's at this point that it becomes fairly obvious that what we have here is a classic Wizard of Oz scenario, only none of it's in color and the monkey... I mean ape ... doesn't fly.

Host segment two is a funny bit which includes a recurring theme -- the Bots think they don't need Joel.  Crow pretends to be the Great Guidance instructing Servo (Ro-Man) to destroy Joel.  You can see the top of J. Elvis's head at certain points.  Joel hits Servo over the head with a breakaway chair, and Crow informs Joel they were just playing around.  Asimov's robot laws are referenced, which we will hear referenced a few more times throughout the series.

As the film continues, we learn the Professor, now a biologist instead of an archeologist, had been working on a serum to inoculate humans against all diseases.  This kept them from being killed by Ro-Man (and nuclear fallout, apparently).  We also learn there is an entire garrison of soldiers on a space platform, and Roy plans on having two surviving pilots, Jason and McCloud, fly up to the space platform and give the serum to the soldiers.  Ro-Man destroys the rocket and the space platform, leaving just Johnny's family and Roy.  Joel has a saucy riff when Roy indicates that Alice is so bossy she should be milked at night.  Joel called dibs.  I don't blame him.

The family contacts Ro-Man in an attempt to broker a piece deal.  Ro-Man gets the hots for Alice and declares that he will only speak to her.  The Professor (now called George) wants to go instead.  Somehow the meeting doesn't happen.  Johnny confronts Ro-Man and leaves unscathed (although he reveals how they survive).  Alice and Roy leave the house, I think to talk to Ro-Man, but end up getting side tracked and make out instead.  They all come back to the ruins and Alice and Roy get married.  Alice and Roy leave the ruins again, and Carla follows them to give Alice flowers.  She is caught by Ro-Man and strangled to death.  Down to five.

During the third host segment, Joel tries to convince Servo and Crow that it's OK the movie doesn't make any sense.  The Bots start acting surreal, including Cambot who messes with visual effects.  At least I hope Cambot was acting silly, because otherwise I was having an acid flashback.

Alice and Roy are confronted by Ro-Man and Ro-Man kills Roy by tossing him off a cliff.  At last, Alice is all his!   Only fourth people left.  This doesn't look good for humanity.  But, Ro-Man defies orders for love (awwww).  The Great Guidance destroys Ro-Man, which seems short sighted -- he should have at least waited until Ro-Man killed Johnny, George, and the mother.  The Great Guidance releases the "Q Ray" to destroy all remaining life.  Johnny wakes up and we discover it was all a hallucinations brought on by a bump to the head (and you were there... and you were there).  Thank goodness!  But wait... who's that coming out of the cave?  It's the Great Guidance (you can tell by the helmet).  And there's three of him!

I always love when Joel and the Bots do pageants in the host segments.  This one, a tribute to Ro-Man, wasn't half bad.

If I told you this movie was filmed for $16,000 over a for day period, would that be enough to let you know how bad this movie is?  Yeah, I thought so.  I think $15,000 of it went to composer Elmer Bernstein, who is actually a very well know and award winning film composer.  The movie contains a good deal of stock footage, including scenes from Lost Continent and Rocketship X-M, both of which are movies shown during season two.

While the movie was bad (real bad), it was silly enough to be funny.  The concept is simple enough, but the dialogue is atrocious, the effects are amateurish, and the errors are just plain lazy.

The movie was shot on location at  Bronson Canyon, an area in California used heavily in movies ans tv series, including every single iteration of Star Trek.  The location has been used in eight other movies shown in the the series (most of them during season three).

A slot set of riffs and host segments.  A bad movie that was silly enough to be funny.  This was a very solid first season episode.  It could even pass for a halfway decent season two episode.

Favorite Riffs:   "If I told you once, I told you a thousand times -- we're not rounding off pi to 4."  "He's switching to the Light Rock station.  The moon rock station."  "When you shoot down a Cody, do you call a ranger or an air traffic controller?", "It's gecko-Roman wrestling.", "This is what comes from teaching apes sign language.", "Hey, look, they have Asteroids.  They must be pretty advanced if they have Atari.", "Johnny, don't be a hero.  Don't be a fool with your life.", "Triceratops.  Ok, but I normally don't like ceratops."

This episode was included in the Vol 19 DVD set, and is also available on Amazon Instant Video, Vimeo, YouTube, and the Digital Archive Project.