'He believes that humans will never travel in space.'
'No matter what they tell you, man's inadequate body will never be able to leave the earth'
Welcome back to my Dark Corner of this Sick World.
‘Well what a pleasant surprise.’
Sci-fi B Movie Gog opens with a perplexing murder.
Don’t feel sorry for him, minutes before he was freezing a monkey.
Mysterious opening, but after that...
‘Things are a little slow’
Are they ever
‘Can you come back in half an hour’
That’s good advice. Up to then the movie is just the investigator hero,
being given a guided tour of a secret research lab by a girl with big dreams.
‘Mostly about slipping into a cocktail dress and waiting for you to ring the bell’
She shows off their impressive technology.
‘Electronically controlled tuning forks’
What are they for?
‘They pick up any vibration within a hundred miles’
I see.
‘Look! The chair!’
‘Get out of here all of your, at this intensity sound can kill!'
So you have a burglar alarm that sets fire to the furniture, then kills you.
’It’s a work of genius’
As they go on this tour, scientists are killed in various sciencey ways.
'The Chemistry lab.'
‘You’d better let me go first, it’s pretty hot’
Umm… should we be wearing those suits too?
‘I’d better get her out of here before everything is contaminated’
Yes quick get the dead girl to safety, we’ll stay here.
That’s a lot of geigers it’s counting maybe we should...
Okay so we’re staying huh?
‘The doctor says it isn’t serious, just a little too much radiation’
Well no one ever died from that.
‘It doesn’t make sense’
No it does not, but we’re men and men don’t get hysterical.
‘Call control 2. Get some men up here and restore order’
I don’t know why they even allow women in here.
‘Why the girl?’
‘We think women are better suited to space travel than men’
Well that’s progressive; women are better suited to space travel. Why is that?
‘For one thing they take up less room in the rocket’
Okay...
‘In space there’s no such thing as the weaker sex’
‘That’s why I like it here’
Moving on.
‘These are our robots Gog and Magog’
Hopefully they’ll liven up the film.
‘Magog will now move t that work table.’
And he does.
It’s gripping stuff.
Incidentally, Magog should talk to his agent, I’ve no idea why he got left out of the title.
‘How could it happen?’
The thing is, this is a locked room murder mystery in a confined location;
Agatha Christie’s ten little robots...
‘Sounds fantastic’
and yet the whodunit aspect deosn’t seem remotely important to the filmmakers.
‘I’ll decide what’s important’
Remember in the very first scene we saw a man being offed by the machine itself ‘
'He was murdered by his own machine’
Quite the mystery, except...
‘What do you know about the brain machine?’
Brain machine?
‘So this is novac’
‘ Nuclear Operative Variable Automatic Computer’
'Someone that knows everything we do Doctor.'
'I’m beginning to think that Novac’s indeispensible.'
‘The machines took over, people are not important’
Pointing to a solution that’s obvious to anyone except the people in the film.
‘We have in our midst a clever calculating killer’
Like a computer perhaps?
'What do you think?'
I think this is the easiest murder mystery ever!
‘There’s a connection between Novac and the solar mirror right?’
That said, Novac isn’t Hal, it can’t act independently.
‘Novac’s being controlled by an outside force’
But how is that possible?
‘Novac was constructed ina neutral country in Europe.’
Europe? It all falls into place.
‘Enemy agents built into it a powerful transmitter’
That’s the sort of thing you might want to check for.
‘We’ll have to give credit to them, they were devilishly clever’
No, you’ve been appallingly stupid.
You hired an outside contractor to build your top secret computer that controls everything.
That’s like Churchill hiring Adolf Hitler to paint his war room!
‘This could actually happen’
Still the good guys win and launch their new satellite.
‘The station will orbit the earth and through its eye we’ll be able to see everything that takes place on this tired old world.'
'Perhaps bring it new life, new dignity.'
Yes, nothing more dignified than having your every move watched by the government.
Thanks for watching what our cinemas most ludicrous looking robots let us know in the comments below
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