Welcome back to my Dark Corner of this Sick World.
'You don't have to waste any tears on me honey, I lead a charmed life.'
Robot Monster is set in a grim post-apocalyptic world in which the population of earth has been annihilated by a single alien.
'I want yoy to know, this is the biggest social event of the year. The whole damn town will turn out'
So let’s meet this terrifying creature.
#Alfred Hitchcock music#
'I shall find a way to rid this planet of humans'
Yes, astonishingly enough the earth has been conquered by a gorilla with its head stuck in a goldfish bowl,
called...
‘Ro-Man’
and assisted by the Automatic Billion Bubble machine.
But there is still hope!
'Hi there, anybody call?'
A small group of humans have survived, despite living just round the corner from Ro-Man’s cave.
'Ro-man, he is in a cave at the end of the ravine.'
Is Ro-Man stupid for failing to notice them?
Or are they stupid for living there?
‘I was as close to him as I am to you but he didn’t know I was there.’
I’d say a little of both.
‘You look like a pooped out pinwheel’
but the next hour is a nail-biting duel in which only the least moronic will survive.
'My daddy won't let you hurt me.'
'We'll see.'
I’m sure her family will miss her.
‘No regrets Johnny, we enjoyed her as long as she was with us’
Pragmatic? or really quite callous?
Somehow we have to find a way to live without her.'
The big question of this film is; who the hell cares?’
There’s only 6 humans left!
'It was a simple matter of strangulation.'
Sorry, five.
Four.
'Even if it means man's millions of years of the struggle out of the sea and the slime...'
'the fight to breathe air, to stand erect, to think, to conquer nature, even when stopped cold by father or jealous suiter...'
All very noble but at this point the human race is clearly doomed.
'Is there a choice between a painless surrender death and the horror of residence death?'
Not least because the emotionless Ro-Man...
'I am built to have no emotions.'
Suddenly develops an interest in Daughter Alice.
‘Is Alice going to have a date with Ro-Man?’
and she doesn’t put up much of a fight.
‘How is it you’re so strong Ro-Man?’
But then, her boyfriend is a jerk,
'You're so bossy, you should be milked before you come home at night.'
and Ro-Man has some great chat up lines.
‘Suppose I were Human, would you treat me like a man?’
This situation throws Ro-Man into a subtly conveyed existential crisis.
‘I cannot, but I must. How do you calculate that?'
To laugh, love want! Why are these things not in the plan?!’
Perhaps the plan was written by the same man who did the script.
‘I want facts, not words’
And forces his boss to destroy the earth remotely by summoning up footage stolen from other films.
'That doesn't make sense.'
Presumably he could have done in the first place and saved us all the pain of watching the movie.
'What else can we do? commit suicide?'
At this point the writer plays his trump card,
'Boy was that a dream?'
Which, assuming the writer is a 7 year old child doing this for school, is very clever.
But assuming they’re a grown-up who got paid for this just confirms the whole thing as a complete waste of time.
'Error, error.'
But is it a dream? The film ends on this unsettling image...
Multiple Ro-Mans what can it mean?
I think it means they just had the one costume.
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