Last night I watched Robot Monster and today I will continue my review of MST3K Season 1 episodes.
But first, this time there were two episodes of Commando Cody and the Radar Men from the Moon. What a gem. In the next episodes, we see that the Radar Men and their henchmen are running low on cash. They try to rob banks, but aren't successful. They try to rob a payroll, and fail at that, too. They try to kidnap Commando Cody at his lab, but he isn't there, so they take the woman that is (after a long fistfight with the scientist-guy that is there—man those 50's scientists really knew how to fight). The evil henchmen drive off with her just as Commando Cody arrives, but suspecting nothing, he goes into the lab and finds the beat-up scientist and he tells Cody what happened. Cody puts two and two together and dons his rocket suit to chase the bad guys. The police call and let him know the henchmen took the woman on a small plane, and Cody chases them down. The bad guy bails out of the plane when he realizes he can't outrun a rocket backpack with a plane and leaves the woman in the plane to crash to the ground. Commando Cody lands on top of the plane, climbs in, tries to steer it, but fails (the henchman threw out the steering wheel—yes wheel in a previous scene). He then puts the other parachute (quick thinking, Cody) on the woman and they both escape from the doomed plane. I don't know what the Radar Men will do for money, especially since they won't sell their moon diamonds unless it's a last resort. Tune in next time, I guess.
On to the movie. Well, movie is stretching it. I'm more on the side of the evil Dr. Forrester in that it's torture. Robot Monster starts slow and never speeds up, but it does get weird. A boy and girl (brother and sister) are playing in some desert canyon and run across some archaeologists poking around in a cave. Two women come to claim the kids for a picnic lunch and a nap. The boy wakes up and runs back to the archaeologists, but they're gone. Some weird lights flash, and suddenly we're in a different story, where the boy is the son of the archaeologist, his mom married to him (the archaeologist, not her son), and the assistant madly in love with the other woman. It's also the future where the entire human race has been destroyed except for eight people (but we only see five at first, that kept confusing me).
Humanity was destroyed by Ro-Man, which was supposed to be scary but looked like a fat guy in a gorilla suit with a diving helmet on his head. I'm not sure where the robot part came from. Ro-Man may have had a robotic pancreas or something, I suppose. Anyway, Ro-Man is in trouble from his superiors for not having cleansed the Earth of all humanity. The last few people left are immune to Ro-Man's death ray thanks to the miracle serum created by the archaeologist (it cured the common cold, too, pretty good for an archaeologist!). Two people we never meet launch a rocket to reach some space platform that hasn't been destroyed yet, but Ro-Man sees the launch and destroys both the rocket and the space platform. Apparently the Ro-Men could have used the space platform themselves, which is why they left it heretofore unmolested. The last couple of humans (including the kids sister who wasn't around at first for some reason) try to understand why Ro-Man wants to kill them. The assistant and other girl (who is now the archaeologist's oldest daughter somehow) run off to "be alone" in the bushes for a while. They come back and ask to be married (hehe, suspicious), they immediately have a ceremony. For some reason, they leave the safety of the compound for a honeymoon, the little girl walks out a ways with them. Ro-Man finds her and strangles her to death. Her parents bury her. Ro-Man finds the newlyweds, too (they weren't paying much attention to their surroundsings, hehe), beats up the assistant, and takes the girl hostage. For some strange reason, Ro-Man won't kill her. He calls back to his supreme commander, who orders him to. Ro-Man has a falling out, wants to be more like us awesome humans. They rescue the girl, and then this weird, second movie is over.
We are now back at the cave where the archaeologists were in the beginning. Somehow this was all a dream the boy had, and he now has a bump on his forehead to prove it. Nobody is related anymore, and they all leave with humanity intact.
Then Ro-Man comes out of the cave, three times, as a stinger for the ending!
I saved the best part for last, though. Ro-Man has an awesome bubble machine in his cave. The beginning credits mention a "billion bubble machine." We have no idea what its purpose is, other than to spit bubbles out at an alarming rate.
One of the funnier observations made by Joel and the bots was the fact that Ro-Man killed all humanity, leaving the cities perfectly intact so the other Ro-Men could use them, yet he lived in a filthy cave…