Weirdhouse Cinema: It Conquered the World

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
today on Weird House Cinema, we are finally going to
be devoting a full episode to a movie that we
have referenced in passing quite a bit over the years.
I don't know if it's come up as often as
Highlander two, but it's got to be close. This is
the subject of a fan favorite episode of Mystery Science

(00:36):
Theater three thousand from season three with Joel and another
example of one of our favorite niche subgenres, low budget
atomic age sci fi horror thrillers, directed by Roger Corman,
which played as part of a double bill at your
local drive in in the fifties. This one. Most of
these movies are great because they're usually less than seventy

(00:57):
minutes long. This one's at the the longer end of
that scale. It's like sixty nine seventy minutes, you know,
they get even shorter. Attack of the Crab Monsters is like,
what sixty two minutes or something, But it's still right
in the zone. And as I've said before, I want
to be on record that I think it's okay for

(01:18):
feature films to be that short. You don't need to
try to stretch it out, as even this short movie
does with all these scenes of driving and parking.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yes, indeed, modern filmmakers, you can make them this short
we approve.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
Oh wait, but I didn't say the name yet. Sorry,
Today we're talking about it Conquered the World from nineteen
fifty six, starring Peter Graves, Beverly Garland, and a devious
Earth betraying Lee Van Cleef, who is redeemed in the end.
You know. So this is a movie I've seen primarily
in the Mystery Science Theater episode, and I guess because

(01:56):
of the MST framing, i'd never really give it a
serious chance on its own terms. I actually had seen
it on its own before, but still just kind of
with the mind of looking for the cheesy bits, and
there are plenty of those, we can talk about them.
But this movie is not bad. This is a pretty
solid scrappy drive in film.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Absolutely. Yeah. This is a film I too, had seen
numerous times in its MST three K format over the decades,
but this was actually my first time watching it straight up.
So yeah, I feel like, as is often the case
with the best MST three K episodes, the underlying movie
is very watchable on its own. You know, it has

(02:39):
some wonky pacing at times, nothing really zings visually, at
least as it's intended to zing.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
I mean, I would say the monster zing's but mostly
because of how funny it looks.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yes, yeah, yeah, it does not inspire terror, but it
is amazing and in a different way. Yeah. It has
a couple of spirited performances that we'll discuss, and it
at least bats around some deeper sci fi concepts as
well as some rather obvious anxieties about communist brainwashing. Now,
this is not a film about communists, but as is

(03:14):
often the case with some of these sci fi films
about alien minutes from this time period, you know, it's
very clear that they're getting into some of the popular
anxieties about communism in the way that they're describing and
dealing with this extraterrestrial threat.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
In most of these movies with alien brainwashing, and it's
the same case in this one. The alien ideology is
less controversial and specific, and this one it's about ridding
human beings of emotion, which At first that sounds like
kind of a placeholder themes, like oh yeah, okay, but
it actually leads to a couple of interesting dialogue scenes,

(03:53):
Like they go deeper with that theme than you would
expect for a movie of this sort.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Yeah. Yeah, And I feel like I've always enjoyed those scenes,
Like this is a film that is sixty percent living
room dialogue scenes in which luckily they do get into
some of these topics. It's like thirty five percent driveways
and then some lab scenes and caves scene sprinkled to
fill out the rest of it. But it moves right along.
I feel like I always end up loving it when

(04:19):
I watch it. Yeah, and it at least bats around
some deeper concepts, even even if the same. At the
same time, you have to acknowledge that this is a
fast film. This is a cheap film. I think they
filmed it in five days. Like all of that taken
into account, it holds up really well.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
I agree, and I think the movie literally I think
actually the weakest element of it is the padding. I
think if you were to edit out about ten to
fifteen minutes of this movie, cut it down to like
a fifty to fifty five minute film, it would be
really solid. Like you just cut out a lot of
the driving and the three point turns, the dramatic three

(04:59):
point turn. I'm sorry, Roger, they're not I'm not buying it.
That's not as great as you think it is.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, A lots of parking scenes. And then
you know, anytime we're outdoors, I feel like it feels
like it's a thousand degrees like direct sunlight a high noon.
It is not a technical masterpiece.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
Another one of the weak points. I would say, no
offense to him personally, nothing against Peter Graves, but Peter
graves performance in this movie I think is quite wooden.
He's like pressure treated Pine in this But it's funny
because they put him opposite actors who I think for
a movie like this, are doing a fantastic job. We've
got Beverly Garland and Lea van Cleef and they are

(05:41):
wonderful in this movie.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Yeah, with Peter Graves, it's interesting because Peter Graves certainly
has has a style, you know, and this is very
much a sort of teeth gritted square kind of performance.
You know, this is Peter Graves and he's here to
it by the books, but at the same time there,
I think there are some very weird choices in his

(06:07):
character that I mean, I don't know what you would
ask God him to do, you know. So we'll get
into that when we get into the plot a bit more.
Because he ultimately his character is ultimately like the champion
of human emotion, and yet his character seems to have
only like maybe two emotions and makes some and engages
in some very cold blooded murder as the plot progresses.

Speaker 3 (06:31):
Yeah, he is the advocate for the benefits of emotion
as a motivating force for humans, and yet he doesn't
really display any Levan Cleef is arguing against us having
emotions and is giving a quite passionate performance.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
Yeah, and is often in the throes of emotion, and
I guess it kind of works with that regard, Like
he he understands the throes of emotion and sees how
this affects other people and has glimpse a path out
of that trap. Peter Grive's character is more like get emotions, good, must,
We've got to keep them. That's what makes it special.

Speaker 3 (07:06):
Now I want to talk briefly about this movie's meta
because there's an interesting contradiction here. I think despite the
fact that this movie has a famously goofy looking monster.
When you actually get to it in the film, it
mostly shows up in the last three minutes or so, well, no,
a little bit before that, mostly in the last ten
minutes or so. When you see the monster, it is

(07:28):
not very convincing, It is not very scary, and in
fact is quite hilarious. But the exact same monster design
when rendered as an illustration gazing into your Soul from
the movie poster rendering is awesome. I think that this
monster looks great on every poster I've seen for It

(07:49):
Conquered the World. In fact, I've got a poster for
this movie framed in my office because it's one of
my favorite fifties movie posters.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
It is indeed a terrific poster, and it's just a
test to the craft that they can make it look
this good when nothing else in the movie really looks
this good.

Speaker 3 (08:05):
But further regarding the meta, oh man, this has some
great taglines. So one of the posters, of course, it
has the title. It's got a screaming Beverly Garland. It's
got people being attacked by these sort of you know,
mind control bats. It's got the creature from Venus, staring
into our souls with red eyes. But then it's got

(08:26):
some some text on it, so it says it conquered
the world. Every man it's prisoner, every woman its slave.
See world conquered by the horrible beast from beyond the stars.
See the hideous flying fingers of the monster. And then
below that, I think we see Leavan Kleef with like
his little blow torch kind of oh yeah, monster like

(08:48):
it's looking in the window of a house. But that
doesn't ever happen in the movie.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah, but certainly the monster the Benefactor looks amazing here.
And yeah, I mean, I guess they couldn't really even
attempt to depict the monster carrying a woman though, because it,
as we see, it's so low to the ground.

Speaker 3 (09:06):
Yes, how would that even work. It's arms are not
long enough to carry a human body. Yeah, well t
rex arms, but they're mounted on the sides.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
No, wait, hold on, I said that, but I take
it back, because actually the weight it's drawn in the
poster here it has short little arms, but in the
movie it does sort of reach out with its arms
and really grab around people. That's how Lee van Cleef
bites it. In the end, the monster just reaches up
and grabs him with the with the claw.

Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah, they kind of reach up, but not so much out.
It would still be hard to imagine this creature carrying
a woman. All Right, we're not going to feature trailer
audio on this one. But instead, Joe, why don't you
just go ahead and recite the film's most famous monologue
for us here.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
Oh, you're putting me on the spot, but I guess
we should. We should do that. Do that near the beginning,
because this is another one of the most famous things
about the movie. I've already praised the scripts, so put
that aside. It is I think, a pretty tight, kind
of scrappy script. It's got some interesting ideas. This ending
monologue is atrocious. Here's how it goes. He learned almost

(10:10):
too late, that man is a feeling creature, and because
of it, the greatest in the universe. He learned too
late for himself that men have to find their own
way to make their own mistakes. There can't be any
gift of perfection from outside ourselves, and when men seek
such perfection they find only death, fire, loss, disillusionment. The

(10:34):
end of everything that's gone forward men have always sought
an end to the toil and misery, but it can't
be given. It has to be achieved. There is hope,
but it has to come from inside, from man himself.
And I like to sometimes. Of course, it is Peter
Graves who says this at the end of the movie,
and it's also a very bloated, wooden kind of delivery.

(10:57):
But I like to imagine this monologue being given by
David Huddleston as the Big Lebowski in The Big Lebowski,
and it has to be achieved.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
Yeah, yeah, it would have taken. It would have had
a different energy certainly, But yeah, this is the ending monologue.
This is ultimately like the the thesis statement for the picture,
I guess.

Speaker 3 (11:19):
I guess so to defend what comes before this monologue,
I think the film makes these points without this hilarious
speech at the end.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
Yeah, just sort of like patting it out a little bit, maybe, yeah,
and trying to punctuate it.

Speaker 3 (11:32):
It's the verbal equivalent of another parking scene.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
All right, Well, if you want to watch it conquered
the world, you can certainly go out and do so.
As of this recording, this one isn't available as a
legit stream anywhere you can find it if you look around,
but couldn't find it on any of the legit streaming platforms.
You're also hard pressed to get a DVD of it,
though there are some for sale and reasonable prices and

(11:58):
some of the familiar websites, but I don't know who
is putting them out, so I don't know what kind
of releases these are. But there is not a Blu
ray release. And while famously featured in that nineteen ninety
one episode of MST three K, I don't think this
episode has ever been made available on disc. So the
rights for this film and a handful of other AIP films,

(12:21):
including the amazing Colossal Man and I Was a Teenage
Werewolf sadly seemed to be held up. And it's a
shame because it conquered the world certainly deserves placement in
a proper physical release of Roger Corman's films.

Speaker 3 (12:35):
Yeah, I got confused because I have a couple of
different Corman box sets and this wasn't in either of them,
so I had to go elsewhere. But yeah, so this
has come up on the show before. There's a number
of films on this list that are apparently being held
up by the same rights holder. And this came up
because we were wondering, why isn't the amazing Colossal Man

(12:56):
viewable at all? Really?

Speaker 2 (12:58):
Yeah, yeah, and this would to be the answer. So
you know, these things tend not to last forever. So
you know, at some point in the future these films
will be released, they'll get some nice physical additions and
become available on streaming. But until that time, we're left
with what we can get.

Speaker 3 (13:16):
But I agree with your statement that it conquered the
world belongs in any proper you know, fifties Corman box set.
It's I would say it is up there with movies
like Not of This Earth, except it's a little bit flabbier.
There's a little more, you know, there's a little more
stuff you could cut out, not if this Earth has
similar strengths, but I think is a little tighter.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah. All right, let's talk about the folks involved in
this production, starting at the top with someone we've talked
about in the show before, and that's Roger Corman, the
director and producer here who lived nineteen twenty six through
twenty twenty four. Corman was, of course the Wizard of

(13:59):
b Movies, and a prolific creator of late fifties drive
in flicks. We've covered numerous Corman produced and or Corman
directed films on Weird House Cinema already, including sixty four's
Mask of the Red Death, which is probably among his
best work, as well as some of his many entertaining
low budget films like nineteen fifty seven's Not of This Earth.

(14:21):
Seth joined me on Weird House for an episode on
the nineteen fifty nine beat Nick horror comedy A Bucket
of Blood, and this is our first episode about a
Corman directed film since his death earlier this year at
the age of ninety eight.

Speaker 3 (14:35):
Though we may come back to Corman's Vincent Price Poe
movies this October.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
Yes, so this was one of four Corman directed films
released in fifty six, but the only sci fi or
horror title. Swamp Woman, which also had Beverly Garland, was
a crime picture, and both Gunslinger with Beverly Garland and
The Oklahoma Woman with Peggy Castle were westerns. This was

(15:00):
the year before Attack of the Crab Monsters, and as
Michael Weldon points out in the Psychotronic Film Guide, this
was only Corman's second sci fi film, which is it's
always interesting to realize this sort of thing when we
think about Roger Corman, who's best remembered for so many
of these sci fi and or horror pictures, but he
also did a lot of westerns and other sorts of

(15:22):
flicks as well.

Speaker 3 (15:23):
It's hard to believe he only did four movies in
this year though. I mean, yeah, pick up the pace, Roger.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
Well, those are just the director's credits. I didn't check production,
but yeah, he was, you know, ratchet it up. I
think the late fifties were really his key years of output. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:39):
Was it fifty seven that he I want to say,
made either eight or eleven movies that year.

Speaker 2 (15:45):
Yeah, I mean he would pump them out. I mean
even this film again shot in apparently five days, shot
in California, with key scenes taking place at Bronson Cave
in Griffith Park, which has come up time and time
again on the show a popular place in California to
shoot your otherworldly or just desolate scenes.

Speaker 3 (16:05):
In this movie, they say that the creature from Venus
is living there because the conditions inside mimic those on Venus.
I don't know about that.

Speaker 2 (16:17):
All right, Let's get into the writing Here. Lou Rusoff
is credited with the screenplay. He Lived nineteen eleven through
nineteen sixty three, screenwriter and producer whose other credits include
fifty Five's Day The World Ended, fifty six is The
She Creature, sixty threes Beach Party, and sixty seven Zontar
The Thing from Venus. I think that's kind of a
reworking of some of the same ideas here. And his

(16:38):
production credits include the US version and or US release
of nineteen sixties Black Sunday.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
You know, I was surprised when watching the credits this time,
and I noticed that the screenplay credit went to Rusof
and not to who I assumed was the writer of
this movie, which is Charles B. Griffith. Charles B. Griffith
wrote Not of This Earth, wrote Attack of the Crab Monster.
Was a common writer in the Corman scene of this time,
and was famous for being able to crank out a

(17:07):
script that was pretty witty and tight and quickly made.
He could make he could write him fast.

Speaker 2 (17:15):
Well, you know, he apparently did some work on the
script anyway. He's listed on IMDb as an uncredited screenwriter
post film, so you know he got in there and
worked on it to some degree anyway. But indeed, you
think of Corman pictures from this area, You think of
Charles B. Griffith, who lived nineteen thirty through two thousand
and seven. You know films like Not of This Earth Attack,

(17:35):
of the Crab Monster. It's a little shop of hors
and bucket of blood. All right, let's get into the
cast here, and I'm going to not go in billing order.
We'll reference the billing order, but we're going to take
it by couple because this film centers mostly around two
married couples, the Nelson's and the Andersons, though I'd argue
that it's chiefly the story of the Andersons.

Speaker 3 (17:57):
That's where the real emotional meat is.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
Yes, all right, so let's start with the Nelson's here,
starting with Doctor Paul Nelson, played by the top Build
Peter Graves. Graves live nineteen twenty six through twenty ten,
best known to many for his long running hosting gig
on A and E's Biography, or at least for some
of us. I don't know if they're still rerunning episodes

(18:20):
that Graves hosted, but he was a longtime host on Biography,
and of course he had a long run on the
original TV series Mission Impossible from sixty seven through seventy three.
I don't think I ever watched any of that, but
I do remember watching some of the late nineteen eighties reboot,
a reboot that I only recently learned resulted from a
Hollywood writers strike. The studio was like, well, we got

(18:42):
to make episodes of something, but we can't use writers.
And they realized, well, let's just go back and get
old Mission Impossible scripts that weren't filmed and just film
them in Australia, and that's what they did. That's where
this show came from. But I remember watching it and
digging it and getting very excited about a Nintendo game

(19:04):
titled Mission Impossible that was some sort of tie in.
I think it was an official tie in, but also
just a legendarily difficult games. It's one of those Nintendo
games that I don't know if anyone ever beat this thing.
It was just so difficult, but also had some interesting
like stealth mechanics that seemed ahead of their time.

Speaker 3 (19:23):
I'm looking it up now. I never played this one.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
Yeah, and nothing in the game really matches up with
what you see in a Mission Impossible TV show, But
I don't know. I was excited for it at the time.

Speaker 3 (19:35):
That was common for video game tie ins to movies
and TV shows at the time. There's almost no resemblance
to the plot of the original thing.

Speaker 2 (19:43):
Yeah, so Graves was a US Air Force vet. He
was also, of course the brother of James Arness. Graves
is his stage name. Arness We talked about in the
past because he was the Thing from Another World and
graves acting credits go back to the early fifth these
including an early starring sci fi role in fifty two's

(20:03):
Red Planet Mars, but he scored much more success when
he appeared in a supporting role in Billy Wilder Stalog
seventeen in nineteen fifty three. He was not nominated, but
the film earned AUSTAR nominations for two of its stars
and its director. Graves went on from here to have
a long career on TV and screen, appearing in the

(20:25):
likes of fifty four's Killers from Space, fifty five's The
Night of the Hunter seventy nine. Yeah, yeah, The Night
of the Hunter not I think there was later a
TV version it's different, but yeah, he was in the picture.
He was in nineteen seventy nine The Clonis horror. Another
MST three K favorite of many.

Speaker 3 (20:45):
Oh, is that the one about Going to America.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
Yes, yeah, it's a you know, it's a dull person
movie about clones. But it's one that is I think,
kind of stupid, but also kind of great and has
been sort of re explored, we should say, I guess
with subsequent clone movies. Yes, he was, of course in
a nineteen eighties Airplane. He was in ninety three's Adams

(21:10):
Family Values and nineteen ninety nine's House on Haunted Hill.
I think he kind of played himself in both of those,
like a TV presenter role, and he also pops up
in two thousand and two's Men in Black two.

Speaker 3 (21:21):
Now we've already talked a bit about the irony of
the casting here, where they have Peter Graves playing the
sort of the earthling hero who stands up for human
emotions and yet is quite stiff and clenched in his performance.
But so he is, in a I think, traditional interpretation,
the hero of the movie.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yes, yeah, yeah, he is, you know, and I guess
he has the look for it right. He plays a
he's a space flight scientist. He runs this satellite command
center that I think is a government operation, or at
least it's protected by government forces.

Speaker 3 (21:57):
Yeah. So, I mean this is from the fifty so,
which remember, like you know, we didn't really have our
full space program yet at the time, you know, the
Apollo program wouldn't until like nineteen sixty one. So they're
imagining a space program that is being run by the military.
And so, yes, Paul Nelson is he's I think the

(22:19):
creator of a satellite that is sort of a first
satellite in orbit sort of thing. And he is also
depicted as great friends with Lee van Cleef's character, who
will get to in a minute.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
All right, So that's doctor Paul Nelson. And doctor Paul
Nelson's wife is Joan Nelson, played by Sally Frasier, who
lived nineteen thirty two through twenty nineteen. I mean, glamorous
b movie star of the nineteen fifties, whose credits include
another couple of notable genre pictures in the late fifties,
nineteen fifty eight's War of the Colossal Beast. Oh, actually

(22:51):
two more, Giant from the Unknown and The Spider Hmmm.

Speaker 3 (22:56):
Trying to think if I've seen any of those.

Speaker 2 (22:58):
I'm not sure I've seen War of I think I've
seen War of Colossal Beasts, but I can never remember
if that is the film that comes before The Amazing
Colossal Man or after, because the films before and after
The Amazing Colossal Man featured the same makeup, this kind
of like scarred faced Cyclops makeup, So I don't remember
off the top of my head.

Speaker 3 (23:17):
Here, I think the Amazing Colossal Man is the first one.
So War of the Colossal Beast has got to be
a sequel or a subsequent film.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
Yeah, but there is. I think there is another Giant
Man picture in the mix.

Speaker 3 (23:31):
There, just looks it up. Yeah, Colossal Man is fifty seven,
War of the Colossal Beast is fifty.

Speaker 2 (23:36):
Eight, and then what year is the Cyclops?

Speaker 3 (23:39):
Oh with Lon Chaney Junior. I think that that's fifty seven.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
Okay, yeah, that is the same makeup as War of
the Colossal Beast, I see.

Speaker 3 (23:46):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
So Joan is Paul's loving wife. This is a very
much supporting role, but she gets to have some fun
moments late in the picture.

Speaker 3 (23:54):
Yeah, she has a wonderful Paul. I have a present
for you've seen? Yes, yeah, thats out. It's an alien
in mind control device.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
All right, let's move on to the Andersons here starting
with doctor Tom Anderson played by the legendary Lee van Kleef,
who lived nineteen twenty five through nineteen eighty nine. It's
old Angelized himself. Now, Van Cleef's career would ultimately really
take off in the mid nineteen sixties. That's when Sergio
Leoni cast him in the Clint Eastwood Western for a

(24:24):
few dollars more, followed by a role as the villain
Angelize and sixty six is The Good, the Bad, and
the Ugly, And this just cemented him as a spaghetti
western superstar. And you know, before and after that too,
he appeared in tons of westerns. Like you look at
his filmography, it's really like mostly westerns and some crime

(24:45):
pictures and that sort of thing. Director John Carpenter, of course,
grew up as a fan of all these westerns and
cast him as police Commissioner Bob Hawk in the nineteen
eighty one classic Escape from New York picture, where I
think Van Cleeve really shines. This is one of my
favorite supporting characters, I think probably of all time, one

(25:06):
of those supporting characters that leaves you wanting more and
has some interesting hooks about where this character has been
and where they might be going, and you want to
know those stories. But of course the film doesn't take
us there. It just teases us with these possibilities.

Speaker 3 (25:20):
Yeah, and of course I love Him. And The Good,
the Bad and the Ugly. The Good, the Bad and
the Ugly is a movie of many villains. Two main
villains sort of alluded to in the title there. One
is played by Eli Wallach, who is the more humorous
and talkative of the sort of villainish characters with kind
of shifting loyalties. But Lee van Kleef's character is the

(25:41):
very straight, hard, bad, mysterious, serious villain. Nice.

Speaker 2 (25:47):
Now, at this point in Lee van Cleef's career fifty six,
he'd already had a few years experience in TV and film,
but with loads of credits as you often see, like
he was working a lot. Let's see, he made his
film debut in the Oscar winning western high Noon from
fifty two, and in fifty three he was in the
Beast from twenty thousand fathoms. He acted in again a

(26:09):
lot of westerns and crime projects throughout his filmography, But
one of the interesting things is that this film The
Beast from twenty thousand Fathoms and Escape from New York.
Those are apparently the only three sci fi or horror
pictures that he ever did, though I believe he did
act in at least one sci fi TV series in
the early fifties, and he played a ninja on TV's

(26:32):
The Master in the mid eighties, but you know that
wasn't sci fi or horror, and so in this picture, yeah,
he is Anderson, a disgruntled physicist whose big ideas about
aliens have pushed him outside of the mainstream. But then,
of course the picture of centers around the fact that
he ends up making actual contact with an alien intelligence

(26:53):
from the planet Venus, and it places him in the
role of well, it could be Earth's savior or perhaps
it's destroyed. For a lot of the picture, it depends
which side of the philosophical debate you're on.

Speaker 3 (27:06):
There are a lot of interesting things about the way
this character is written and the way Van Cleef plays him.
So the character is in some ways portrayed as a crank,
like he has these ideas that are not accepted by
other scientists or by the the you know, the the
civil leadership, and they have to do with aliens of course,

(27:28):
and nobody pays attention to him. They're just like, ah,
he's going off on his favorite subject again, and this
makes him embittered to the fact that nobody's paying attention
to him, which I think is pretty interesting because that is,
you know, it almost makes me think of when when
sun Zoo came up recently in our episodes about the Ninja,
where you know, he's talking about who to find within

(27:50):
the enemy's ranks to recruit to your side, to be it,
to be a secret agent and betray the enemy, and
one of the things he says is look for someone
who has who feels they have been mistreated or unappreciated
by enemy leadership, someone who feels their genius is not
being made use of by the enemy.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
Yeah. Yeah, that matches up.

Speaker 3 (28:11):
So he's portrayed as simultaneously like in some ways an
appreciated scientific genius but also at the same time a
crying who people are dismissive of, at least with his
ideas about aliens. But then he also interestingly, I would say,
he plays this scientist character in a way that's very

(28:31):
textually different than most scientist characters in horror and sci
fi movies of the fifties, who are usually portrayed as
very straight laced and with high social class signifiers in
the way they speak. Van Cleef's character does not come
off that way. He is playing a physicist who has
a more rough, aggressive and kind of sounds like he

(28:57):
has probably working class origins and speaks with a speaks
with a distinctive voice rather than the kind of formal
or or character free way that a lot of scientist
characters in these movies talk.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
Yeah, yeah, you're right. He does stand out in that regard.
And and it's interesting too, like his some of his
ideas that especially the ones we hear about early on,
like you know that they are actual ideas that are
sometimes batted around concerning the possibility of extraterrestrials, like the
idea that they're watching and that they might interfere if
they didn't like some development that was happening here, you know,

(29:34):
Like some of these ideas, you know, they're they're not
they're not out of line with with some of the
speculative notions that are discussed regarding alien intelligence. Uh. And
then of course it ends up taking on this this
higher purpose that he sees the idea that through contact
with aliens we can save ourselves. And of course this

(29:55):
is a common theme in u apology. And and then
I guess in in some like serious contemplations on what
first contact would mean for humans, you know, the possibility
that it could greatly improve life on Earth if we
had outside contacts something some other force that could help
us fix our problems.

Speaker 3 (30:16):
I don't know if we've talked about this recently, maybe
it's come up on the show before, but I noticed
a pretty strong tendency these days for beliefs about UFOs
and alien life to essentially merge with religious thinking, for
it to be actually not really separate propositions at all. Though,
like a lot of people who believe strongly in UFOs

(30:40):
and alien presence on Earth these days, that belief sort
of edges into ideas about them being spiritual or heavenly
beings that are in some way going to save us.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
Yeah, yeah, it is. It is a common theme. I've
seen it in crystal shops too, and actual and actual
crystals for your christ consciousness. And then on the next
table you got crystals for aliens, for extraterrestrial So I
guess you can grab one of each, you know, put
one in each palm, mix them up, mix and match.

Speaker 3 (31:20):
Oh but Lee Van Cleeve's character Tom Anderson, Doctor Tom
Anderson here is the husband of Claire Anderson, who is
also a very interesting character in this movie, played by
Beverly Garland.

Speaker 2 (31:33):
Oh yes, Beverly Garland, who, to be clear, has second
billing in the picture, even though we're discussing her fourth,
I want to stress that she did have second billing.
Her performance here is great. It's spirited, and she plays
she doesn't just play like a damsel or some character
who's just kind of like, oh, honey, I wish you
wouldn't betray humanity to the aliens. Like she is supportive,

(31:56):
like fiercely supportive, but she is also very skeptical, and
she voices her skepticism and in the end she's also
she's more than willing to fight for the man she
loves and the planet she loves in a really inspiring
fashion like this is ultimately, especially for this Ara, this
is pretty strong role and she does a great job
with it, like any she now, to be clear, occasionally

(32:17):
she has some some some maybe not all that thought
out lines she has to work with. But even then,
like Beverly Garland, gives it her all, and she makes
those those lines live on the screen when they should
have been that they shouldn't have have had as much
life to them.

Speaker 3 (32:33):
That's the part where she's talking to leaving Cleef. They're
in the middle of talking about aliens, by the way,
and she says something like, I'll stay with you not
just because you're my husband, but because I love you.

Speaker 2 (32:43):
Yeah, lines like that. She's she'sually fighting for her life
with lines like that. But she does a great job you.

Speaker 3 (32:49):
But yeah, she she has to manage. I think a
difficult character here who's like her motivations shift over the
course of the movies. She's always conflicted. But at the
beginning of the movie, she's conflicted because she loves her husband,
but she thinks he's losing his mind. She thinks that
he is having delusions of contact with alien life. But

(33:13):
then when it becomes clear he is actually talking to
an alien and he was right all along and she
was wrong for doubting him. Then it shifts to her
realizing that his vindication is not a good thing because
it means that he is actually partnering with this alien
to take over the planet and destroy everything that she
holds sacred and so she like makes a case to him.

(33:36):
This movie involves a lot of scenes of people just
like laying out an argument for why Earth should not
be conquered, and she does great in those scenes, Like
she sort of brings things up to Lea Vancleef about
what this alien conquest would mean for their family and
their marriage, and it's like things that he hadn't occurred
to him before.

Speaker 2 (33:57):
Yeah, yeah, so again I love this performents. Beverly Garland
lived nineteen twenty six through two thousand and eight. She'd
been enacting in TV and films since I think nineteen
forty nine at this point, and It Conquered the World
seems to have led to a number of additional low
budget sci fi films, though she'd also act in supporting

(34:17):
roles on bigger pictures and of course on TV. For instance,
I think at least at one point, most people would
be familiar with her from her role on TV's My
Three Sons, but she also appeared in such films as
fifty six's Caruku Beast of the Amazon Not at This
Earth in fifty seven, so we have discussed her on
the show before The Alligator People in fifty nine, Twice,

(34:40):
Told Tales in fifty three, Pretty Poison in sixty eight,
in Airports seventy five, In seventy four.

Speaker 3 (34:46):
Is Alligator People a sci fi horror movie where like
a mad scientist is turning people into alligators and the swamp?

Speaker 2 (34:54):
Yep, that's the one, okay.

Speaker 3 (34:56):
I wonder if is that the movie that is being
referenced in the Rocky Ericsson song It's a Cold Night
for Alligators.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
I believe this is widely accepted, yes, okay, with as
much clarity as we can have regarding what Rocky's singing
about exactly in a number of these songs, but I
think that is often pointed too, is the reference point
for that awesome song.

Speaker 3 (35:19):
If you don't know what we're talking about and you're
in the mood for some B movie themed rock and roll,
go listen to the Rocky ericson album The Evil One,
produced by Stu Cook. Yeah, it has this song on it.
It's a Cold Night for Alligators has the great line
the dogs choke on their barking when they see alligator
persons in the bog and fog.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
Oh yeah, great album, especially for October. I highly recommend
putting that one on.

Speaker 3 (35:42):
I've listened to this one so many times. It's a
personal favorite.

Speaker 2 (35:47):
All right. Getting into some of the bit performers here,
we have to mention Dick Miller is in this, of course,
legendary character actor and Corman mainstay who in nineteen twenty
eight through twenty nineteen. He plays Sergeant Neil here, who
I guess kind of he heads up the X comm
squad of soldiers who are going to help us do
battle with the aliens eventually, but mostly they just wander
through the woods.

Speaker 3 (36:07):
They're primarily comic relief. They wander around in the woods
that they stand guard at gates. They make wise cracks.
Dick Miller makes some very nineteen fifties like my wife jokes.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
Yeah, yeah, there's a He has a lot of interaction
with the private Manuel Ortiz, who is in this picture
played by Jonathan Hayes Bor nineteen twenty nine American actor,
best known for his work in Corman films, especially Little
Shop of Hers, in which he played the main character Seymour.
He was also in fifty seven's Not of This Earth

(36:37):
and pops up in the nineteen eighty two Wings Houser
film Vice Squad. This is a bit comedic role, and
I have to say, not a shining moment in his filmography.
Don't love it. And let's see who else we have. Oh,
we have Russ Bender here playing Brigadier General James Patrick.
He lived nineteen ten through nineteen sixty nine. General American

(36:58):
B movie actor often played these kind of like authority figures.
He was also in fifty seven's The Amazing Colossal Man
and fifty eighth War of the Colossal Beast that plays
a different character in each.

Speaker 3 (37:09):
Now, Rob, I think we've got to talk about the
special effects here, especially the creation of the monster suit,
because I have read some behind the scenes accounts of
even the crew and cast at the time reacting with
disbelief at this monster. I think there's a famous story
of Beverly Garland being like that conquered the world.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
Yeah. Yeah, the benefactor the monster here was designed and
monster suited by Paul Blasdell, who I've talked about on
the show before, because he is responsible for some very
iconic monster designs from this time period, including it the
Terror from Beyond Space that we recently talked about on
the show.

Speaker 3 (37:54):
That was great.

Speaker 2 (37:55):
Yeah. Yeah. He lived nineteen twenty seven through nineteen eighty three,
responsible for Let's see what are some of the other creatures,
The Beast with a Million Eyes and the Day the
World Ended from fifty five not of this Earth, which
I thought those were pretty cool little saucer creatures in there,
Invasion of the Saucer Men Teenagers from Outer Space, which

(38:15):
has a great dog zafting scene in it where the
one of the alien zaps a dog and turns it
to bones. So you know, he's involved in a lot
of stuff in his designs. Have they have a signature
look to them which is great and has and is
you know, kind of worshiped by people who love nineteen
fifties B movies, like they're model kits of the monster

(38:37):
from this picture. But at the end of the day,
it is also ineffective. Is it is a goofy looking
monster that does not inspire terror, That is a great
pains to convincingly interact with human actors. It just ultimately
falls flat. But you can't help but love it at

(38:58):
the same time.

Speaker 3 (38:59):
It's I how did I actually think it is a
kind of great design If you were just going to
say focus on the face and the shape of it
and render it as an illustration or something. And that's
why I think it works quite well on the movie poster.
It just doesn't work as a physically embodied prop moving

(39:21):
and interacting with actors.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
Yeah, it looks and I'm not the first to make
some of these comparisons to it, but it looks like
the mascot, the demonic mascot for an arti Choke Heart company, Like,
it looks like a big artichoke heart with tentacles, tentacle arm,
clawed arm things. And it apparently at one point it
didn't have that conical head. It was like flat because

(39:46):
they were like, well, it's Venus and their head in
their minds, Well, it would be crushed flat by the gravity.
I don't know, we know that's that wouldn't exactly be
the case. It was crushed, It would be by the atmosphere.
But at any rate, they put it on on set
and he realized, no, this thing's way too short. We've
got to make it taller. So let's just make its
head like an inverted ice cream cone. And that's what

(40:07):
they did.

Speaker 3 (40:08):
I think that I've read that the cast were comparing
it to an ice cream cone on the set because
it's got a conical head, no body, and arms coming
out of the side of its head. Uh. There's a
great part in the movie where it's it's got sort
of a little like, you know, a round skirt around
the bottom of it, and it starts just sort of
pooping out these little bats that fly away, the mind

(40:29):
control bats. But as you said, artichoke, I've always thought
of it as an artichoke. It is an art to
choke from hell.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
If you look up images of the original costume, it
was apparently read. Its name on set was Beulah. I
believe Paul Blasdell called it as such himself. Oftentimes these
monster effects have like little pet names behind the scenes,
and this was Beulah. And yeah, I mean it. It's

(41:00):
it's a it's a terrible and amazing design at the
same time, it like it. It has stood the test
of time. People love it. And it looks evil, it
looks like it's up to no good. Yes, yeah, And
I don't want to be too hard on it. There
are maybe a couple of scenes with it that that
do resonate, and it's it's interactions with the human actors

(41:21):
are not entirely unconvincing, but clearly it needed a lot
of help.

Speaker 3 (41:26):
Well, it's one of those things where you know that
scene in ed Wood where Bella Legosi is being attacked
by the octopus, but they don't have the motor to
make its arms move, so he's got to kind of
throw the arms around himself. Yeah, there's a similar thing
happening in this movie where it can't really be made
to in a perspective shot, be made to attack people,

(41:51):
so instead we see people leaping into its claws.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
Yeah, like you run at it, sort of skid into
its claws and then go flat. Yeah. And like there's
one scene in particular where the stunt person or actor
doing this like really goes for it, really eats it
and makes it look good, and I was like, yeah,
all right, it's looking alive now. But like, again, it
takes a lot of help for this thing to look

(42:16):
even halfway believable on the screen.

Speaker 3 (42:18):
Like for the people who get mulled by it are
essentially like a puppy running up to somebody for a hug.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
Yeah. At the same time, I will acknowledge that part
of the plot is that the thing can't move around
all that well, and it's kind of like isolated, so
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (42:34):
Yeah, that's sort of a revelation, right, Like Leavan Kleef
is all about, Oh, it's super powerful, it's perfect, it
can do anything. But Beverly Garland is like, wait a minute,
but it can't leave this cave and it's like stuck
theirs and it needs people to do its dirty work.
That makes it sound like it's not as powerful as
you think. And she's got a point. Yeah, maybe it's

(42:55):
supposed to look somewhat awkward and unable to act very
effectively within Earth's atmosphere because it's not from here and
it needs people to do its job for it.

Speaker 2 (43:07):
Yeah, but it is highly intelligent and highly manipulative, as
we'll get into all right. One final note on the
music for this picture, though the music is nothing really remarkable,
but the music is credited to Ronald Stein, who lived
nineteen thirty through nineteen eighty eight. Composer who worked on
a lot of low budget films, particularly for American international pictures,
the likes of Not of This Earth, Attack of the Crab,

(43:28):
Monster's Queen of Blood, Dementia thirteen, and more, including The
Rain People, Francis Ford Coppola's picture prior to the Godfather.

Speaker 3 (43:36):
I didn't really notice much about the music itself one
of the so the music wasn't bad, it wasn't great.
But one thing I did notice that was quite funny
was the pairing of certain pieces of music with what
was happening on the screen. Rob, did you notice that
some of the most dramatic music in the movie was like,

(43:57):
while we were watching Peter Graves do a three point
turn in the truck.

Speaker 2 (44:01):
I did. I don't think I really made note of that,
but I always think when I think music in this
I think about the musical stinger to the monologue where
he finishes the monologue and then you hear bomb bomb
bomb bomb or something to that effect. You know, just
really just punctuating the whole message.

Speaker 3 (44:19):
Yeah, I agree with that, Uh, but it is it
is funny getting the like the real like the strings
are ascending as they're literally somebody coming out of a driveway.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
Yeah. There are whole scenes in this film where it's like, well,
I drove up all the way, now I've got to
go back, so I'll go back.

Speaker 3 (44:36):
Yeah, let me turn around, go back down this winding
road we sell people go up these s curves. I
don't know, like five or six times.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
Yeah, all right, well let's get into the plot of
it Conquered the World.

Speaker 3 (44:57):
Okay. Well, the action begins with a bunch of scientists
in a lab at what I think is an Air
Force bace. It's a military installation of some kind. You
got technicians in white coats, electronic equipment beeping all over
the place, these big view screens on the walls, and
radar pinging with contacts from the sky. And here in
command of all this is doctor Paul Nelson. That's again

(45:20):
Peter Graves. The people in this lab are preparing for
a satellite launch. And note that this movie was released
in nineteen fifty six, which was a year before the
Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first ever artificial satellite to
achieve orbit. So what is being depicted here was at
the time pure science fiction. Humans had not yet at

(45:41):
the time of this movie put a satellite into orbit.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
Yeah, it's always fun to sort of put these in
the perspective of where we actually were with the space
exploration at the time.

Speaker 3 (45:51):
Yeah. Yeah, So some of the chatter between the scientists
in the room reveals that the satellite program costs nine
million dollars as wow, and it is at moderate risk
of crashing into an unrelated airplane during liftoff. They're like, oh,
I better get that plane out of the way. Peter Graves,

(46:12):
he's got sort of corny, overwrought moments pretty much immediately,
Like in this very first scene, one of one of
the technicians says, you know, all systems are ago, and
Graves looks almost directly into the camera and says, then
man is finally ready to move into space.

Speaker 2 (46:31):
But these lines are perfect for Graves. Yeah, they're over
the top, but like Man, he delivers them like few others.

Speaker 3 (46:38):
Well, I can just imagine, like, you know, Joan, his
wife bakes him a macaroni and cheese TV dinner and
sets it down in front of him, and he looks
up and says, Men is finally ready to achieve sustenance.
So from here we go into a general's office to
meet our next main character, Tom Anderson. That's leave Enkleef.

(46:59):
And in this scene we learned that Tom Anderson is
a highly accomplished and respected physicist with quote every degree imaginable.
So I guess that means he also has an MBA.
He's got a you know, an accounting degree, all that stuff.
He once worked on something called the perpetual missile project.
I was trying to imagine what could that mean. A

(47:21):
missile that is, a missile that lasts forever.

Speaker 2 (47:23):
What I don't know. My best guess is that it
is maybe something like the supersonic low altitude missile or
slam concept in the mid fifties, or just pure technobabble
like it could be. It could be either perpetual missile.

Speaker 3 (47:38):
But anyway, we discover that Tom has lately developed some
fringe ideas that are a cause for concern to the
military leadership and to his colleagues. This has led to
a sort of career exile. The way he explains that,
Van Cleef says, there are a lot of fat heads
who are not ready to hear the truth. And you know,

(47:59):
it's classic rank behavior. People don't accept my ideas because
they are stupid and wicked and want to hide the truth, which,
you know, it's funny. I understand exactly why this is,
because it makes for a better storytelling dynamic. But it
is kind of unfortunate that most of the time in
the movies the people who act like this are proven right. Yeah, yeah,

(48:20):
But anyway, so van Kleef. He's imploring the general to
call off the satellite project before it launches. Why well,
it seems that a smaller satellite that the Space program
tried to launch some time ago exploded before it reached orbit,
and Anderson says that this was no mere accident. It
was a warning from someone out there. Other planets in

(48:43):
our Solar system are watching us closely every minute of
every day to make sure that we don't put anything
into space, because if we do, that means we're a
threat to them, and if we're a threat to them,
they may choose to destroy us. So for the sake
of all humankind, we've got to stock this whole project.

Speaker 2 (49:01):
Yeah, and as I alluded to earlier, this is not
a crazy concept in and of itself. In the nineteen eighties,
for example, cosmologist Edward Harrison argued that the first life
form to achieve a certain level of interstellar technology at
least within you know, certain distances, because of course the
universe is so vast, but the first civilization to achieve

(49:23):
a certain level of interstellar technology would essentially become a
super predator intent on preventing other civilizations from advancing sufficiently.
In their technology, you know, because it's like, well we
have achieved it, anybody else achieving it, they could be
as bad as us or worse. So we've got to
prevent them. We've got to blow out their satellites, we've

(49:43):
got to interfere with their launches. This is also a
concept that is explored in the Three Body Problem.

Speaker 3 (49:50):
Yeah. Yeah, do you want to make a sound in
a dark forest if you don't know what else is
out there? And the idea that there's sort of a
game theory logic at work within the dark forest, where
it's in anybody's interests there to destroy anything else that
makes a sound. Yeah, But in this case, the general
is not dissuaded. He ignores Anderson's warnings, and the satellite

(50:10):
launches into space. Now, the movie, as we've said, does
not have a lot of visual excitement, but here there
is some good use of downward facing blast off footage
stock footage, I assume, but I don't really know what
it would be from. I think that's kind of interesting.

Speaker 2 (50:24):
Yeah, this is not one like there are certain bits
of stock footage you see a lot in movies from
this period, or you feel like you've seen some repetition
and that might just be similarity between different bits of footage,
but yeah, this one felt new to me anyway.

Speaker 3 (50:38):
We cut from here to a dinner party three months later,
so we're told some time has passed and here there
are four characters, so we have Tom Anderson this leave
Enkleef and his wife Claire played by Beverly Garland, and
they are hosting at their house Paul Nelson as Peter
Graves and his wife Joan played by Sally Fraser. And

(50:58):
so this is where we learned that and Tom are
actually good buddies. I don't know exactly how far back
they go, but they've been friends for a while. Apparently
they have a tendency to geek out about rocket science
at the dinner table, and Joan has to beg them
to stop talking about conical graduations, and there is in
the scene something there's kind of a tension because there

(51:19):
is clearly something Tom wants to bring up with Paul,
but Claire is distressed. She is like, please do not
start talking about this in front of company. They're gonna
think you're insane. So whatever it is, it's something he's
been champing at the bit to talk about, and she
does not want him to bring.

Speaker 2 (51:36):
Up did we see what they were eating? I can't.
I don't recall how they finished eating or hadn't started
eating yet. And we're just doing drinks. There are a
lot of drinks in this movie.

Speaker 3 (51:44):
They're talking about a pie, I think because Beverly Garland
makes that quip. Somebody's like, ooh, this pie is so good.
Did you make it? And Beverly Garland says, oh, yeah,
it's an old family recipe that my grandmother sold to
the bakery. So Anywaym's not going to be able to
resist sharing whatever it is he's not supposed to be

(52:04):
talking about. So Tom takes Paul from the dining room
into the living room and he pulls back a curtain
to reveal this huge recess in the wall which is
full of radio and stereo equipment, and then Tom tunes
into some kind of signal on the dial which plays
through the speakers. It is an eerie, hollow, humming sound,

(52:26):
and Tom asks Paul, do you have any idea what
you're listening to? Paul is flippant. He's like, is it
the London Philharmonic? But Tom says no, it's Venus, And
so at first Paul is like, oh, okay, so you're
saying we're bouncing signals off of venus or something, or
maybe it's radiating impulses geomagnetically or something. And Tom says, no, no, no,

(52:50):
I don't mean the static. Can't you hear it the
other thing. Listen to the voice. Listen to the voice, Paul.
But Paul does not initially hear anything, and we don't
hear to be clear, we don't hear an explicit voice either.
We just hear the humming.

Speaker 2 (53:05):
Yeah, it's I guess it's to leave a little room
open for the possibility early in the picture that he
isn't hearing anybody that this is, you know, some unhinged
behavior here or hallucination or something. Yes, but it also
I have to It's also kind of similar to say,
anytime a character has a conversation with a Wookie or
a droid in the Star Wars universe, you know, where

(53:27):
it's like, we don't understand what's being said, that there's
some sort of conversation going on here.

Speaker 3 (53:32):
Yeah where. When these conversations happen later in the movie,
Tom will often have to like repeat back what he
has just heard from the other side. So it's those
classic Wookie conversations. Yeah, what do you mean the hyperdrives broken? Yeah. Anyway,
while they're listening to the humming trying to hear the voice,
the phone rings. It's for Paul. It's the Rocket Lab.
They inform him that just this very moment, the satellite

(53:55):
that they put into orbit three months ago has disappeared.
It darted out of its bit and off into space.
So Paul and Joan have to leave Claire in Tom's
house in a hurry so Paul can deal with the satellite.
And as they're going out and getting into the car
to drive away, Joan says, I've always thought Tom was
a little off tonight. He went too far. So anyway,

(54:16):
they drive to the installation, but by the time they
get there, the satellite is already back wherever it went.
That was pretty quick, and Paul decides they're going to
have to bring the satellite down for inspection. Is that
a thing in reality with satellites? I don't know about that.

Speaker 2 (54:32):
Yeah. Yeah, this is again it's a moment where you
have to remind ourselves that the thing that they are
depicting is near future science fiction and reality went a
slightly different way with all of this.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
Yeah. So, meanwhile, back at Tom and Claire's house, Claire
is walking around fiddling with things nervously. She's in a
state of anxiety. She is obviously unhappy that Tom started
talking about the messages from Venus, even though he promised
her that he wouldn't. So Tom goes to his covert
Venus radio and he tunes in, but then, to our shock,

(55:05):
he begins speaking to someone. Now, once again, we don't
hear a voice on the other side. We just hear
the spooky humming. It kind of oscillates at different frequencies.
But Tom hears something because he responds to what the
present says. He says, this is Anderson Acknowledge. Where are you? Yes, yes,
it's true. I am your only friend. Nobody else even

(55:26):
knows you exist, but they will and it will be
the greatest day in the history of mankind. Now, at
some point in this conversation, Beverly Garland comes out of
the bedroom and like a big puffy nightgown with a caller.
I love these old movie nightgowns. So she asks Tom
to come to bed, but he is not ready. He says,
he's here, darling. He drew the satellite to his world,

(55:47):
to Venus, and now he's back. Within an hour, he's
in the circling laboratory, just waiting to come down to
us to save us. And Claire is obviously disturbed. She
thinks he's going mad. But Tom is just a big
ball of excitement. He says he's finally proven right. All
of his theories about alien observers from other planets in

(56:08):
the Solar System, they were all correct. He was right
all along. But while in the past he didn't know
if their intentions would be good or evil, he now
knows that they're good. That this intelligence from Venus has
returned with the goal of helping our planet to ascend
and thrive. So later Tom falls asleep on the couch
by his radio kit, and Claire comes out and lays

(56:30):
a blanket over him, and it's a tender moment because
she is frightened and bewildered by his behavior, but she
still loves him and she wants him to be well.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
Yeah, it is a nice little scene.

Speaker 3 (56:41):
So the next day there's a scene where the scientists
are bringing down the satellite and it is not responding
to their remote controls the way it's supposed to it
eventually crashes somewhere near the base. In some ways, I
think this is supposed to be one of the quote
exciting scenes. It's creating a type of suspense, what's going
to happen to the satellite? I don't think it works
super well. I think they could have trimmed stuff like this.

Speaker 2 (57:05):
Not that there's a lot of space to trim.

Speaker 3 (57:07):
Yeah, well this could have gone in the pile with
all of the parking scenes and the driving scenes.

Speaker 2 (57:11):
Yeah stuff, thin you risk cutting it down to like
a nice lean forty minutes.

Speaker 3 (57:16):
Well yeah, but as we were saying earlier, I mean
I think this movie could work as a good, like
forty five minute you know, philosophical sci fi story.

Speaker 2 (57:24):
Yeah, like basically like an Outer Limits episode.

Speaker 3 (57:27):
Yeah, yes, yeah. So Tom learns from his radio that
the presence from Venus survived the crash and is now
hiding in the mountains about ten miles south of the installation,
And here we get our very first glimpse of the alien,
moving slowly through the thick brush of a forest. We
do not see its whole body. We see the conical
tip of its head with some little antennae poking out

(57:50):
and then it stops and reaches up and waves these
clawed hands around. This part is already pretty funny.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
Yeah, it's probably a bad sign when you're in the
right thing, you're not showing your full monster. And it's
already ridiculous because we've talked about other films where at
least the first like in Mortal Kombat, the first little
glimpse you get a goro, it worked really well. Yes,
it's only as you reveal more that the problems become obvious. Here,
it's a little hilarious from the get go.

Speaker 3 (58:19):
Oh you know what, I realized the static design of
the monster face and it conquered the world is basically
in the same zone as the goro punched in the
groin face.

Speaker 2 (58:31):
Yeah, yeah, okay.

Speaker 3 (58:33):
Anyway, next we get a montage of all machinery coming
to a halt. There's some clever use of stock footage
played in reverse here to achieve a stopping effect on
things like So the idea is the alien has managed
to shut off every machine in the area. I think
I saw some plot summary that said it managed to

(58:55):
stop every machine in the whole world. I don't recall
if they actually say that in the movie. I don't
think they do well.

Speaker 2 (59:00):
The title of the movie is it conquered the World,
And there's maybe like some brief mention of that, but
the whole film feels very regional.

Speaker 3 (59:09):
Yes, the action is quite local. Yeah, so I don't
know whatever's going on far away, at least within this talent.
Around the military installation, all machines stop, and that's all
machines of every kind, electrical gas combustion, all the cars
come to a stop in the road. We see airplanes
falling out of the sky. A train stops, we see
I think a printing press stop printing, and it even

(59:31):
stops just purely mechanical machines like Jones wind up watch
stops working.

Speaker 2 (59:37):
This is like the same level of logic that you
get in maximum Overdrive, where whatever is controlling all the
machines controls everything from like a high tech vehicle to
a toaster. Yeah, like whatever the alien is doing, it
can stop a power plant, it can stop a wristwatch.
Presumably like the drinking birds are no longer working.

Speaker 3 (01:00:00):
Yeah, that's right, it stops dipping.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
Yeah, wind up toys are totally non functional.

Speaker 3 (01:00:06):
Yeah, that monkey is not clapping symbols anymore so, that's
phase one of the takeover plan. Turn off all the
machines begin phase two. Tom is on the radio with
an alien. Now, why does his radio still work? Because
the alien can specifically target certain machines to still function.
They're the machines that belong to the alien's allies, and

(01:00:28):
right now I think Tom is the only ally and
Tom and Claire's household, so their stuff still works.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
Yeah, which again speaks to this being a very local invasion. Yes,
maybe like maybe limited to a single California county. Yes,
maybe not even municipal regions yet.

Speaker 3 (01:00:47):
So Tom's on the radio with the alien and he's
reading off a list that he has created of control personnel.
This includes the mayor of the town, the chief of police,
the commander of the air Force base, and also his
friend Paul Nelson. They say that these four men, along
with their wives, will be the targets of the eight
control devices that the Presence has brought with them from Venus,

(01:01:11):
and it will take time on the scale of weeks
to create more control devices. So this is all they've
got right now. And then in a hilarious cutaway, we
see these little mineoch type creatures, nasty little winged beasts
scooting out from under the alien's costume and flying away.
Now Here we begin a number of scenes that are

(01:01:33):
the mind control attacks. So these flying creatures, they spread
out all over the place, They swoop down on their targets,
latch briefly onto the back of the neck, and then
once they do and it only takes a few seconds,
the target is fully obedient to the will of the
benefactor from Venus, I think, in a seemingly psychic sense,
like they automatically into it their orders. They don't have

(01:01:55):
to check in via radio like Tom does.

Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
I guess there are a few moments in the in
the in the plot though, where you're like, well, maybe
it's not instant communication. Maybe they get like an update
every few hours. I don't know. Yeah, but I'm going
to try not to be too pedantic about it. Overall,
pretty cool little mind control concept, I.

Speaker 3 (01:02:16):
Guess, yes. And then once they bite you and mind
control you, they just fall off and die immediately. They
say it's.

Speaker 2 (01:02:23):
Like a b sting, yeah, kind of like a face hugger,
you know, yes, face hug Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:02:37):
Now we learn that in this early phase of the
plan that they're targeting these key leadership figures in the
immediate vicinity of the crash site set where the satellite
came down. But ultimately we learned that the way the
being from Venus intends to help or save humanity is
by subjecting all of us to a mind altering procedure

(01:03:00):
which will leave us with no emotions, only logic. And
Tom explains the rationale here, emotions are the source of
everything bad in human society, all war, hate, stupidity, unnecessary strife.
This purging of emotions will purge humankind of these evils

(01:03:21):
and elevate us to a state of utopian rationality. Now,
ultimately this plan comes under some serious interrogation by various
characters in later scenes. But I first wanted to ask,
so this is Tom's understanding of the alien's plan. We
hear it explained in Tom's words, what the alien is
going to do purge us of emotions and elevate us

(01:03:43):
to a better existence. But I had a serious question,
do we ever find out if the alien itself actually
believes this? Like, from the alien's perspective, is it really
trying to help us at least what it would consider help,
or in the alien's own mind, is this just a
mission of conquest and exploitation, and the emotion purging Utopia

(01:04:07):
story is a way of manipulating Tom into helping it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:10):
Yeah. I don't know. There are various ways to sort
of interpret this because on one level, I was thinking
earlier about the earlier satellites that had failed gone missing,
and Anderson's theory that this was due to alien interference.
Perhaps those were different aliens, you know, the idea that

(01:04:31):
there are different intelligence is in the Solar System that
don't want Earth to advance too much. But then you
have a few bad players on Venus who realize, actually,
we can make this work for us. We need to
get off Venus. We would love to manipulate these people
and make them work for us, conquering their world.

Speaker 3 (01:04:53):
Because later we do learn that these creatures from Venus
they have severe limitations their own environment, like they we
sort of get the idea that Venus is lacking in
the resources they need to achieve their ultimate goals.

Speaker 2 (01:05:09):
Yeah, And it's also later discussed that the Venusians themselves
lack emotion. Yeah, but at the same time, we've seen
this creature's face. Its face is clearly evil, it's full
of emotion. Yeah, so I don't know, the message is
a little skewed here, like is it evil and I'm
looking to manipulate our desire for betterment and Anderson's desire

(01:05:33):
for human advancement? Or is this all just perfectly logical
to it, like, of course I'm going to you know,
take over key leaders and overthrow the government because these
are all necessary logical steps that need to take place
in order to bring about this new utopia. We don't
really know. It's kind of the movie seems to have
it both ways.

Speaker 3 (01:05:53):
Yeah. Yeah, So I've got my own thoughts about the
sort of emotion logic divide here that we can get
into after we talk about some of the scenes where
they discussed this. But before we get to that, in
the middle of the movie, there are a lot of
scenes of like Paul riding around on a bicycle to
different locations trying to figure out what's going on. Paul
sort of slowly gets wise to the fact that something

(01:06:15):
is really wrong. But I had a question, if a
wind up watch stops working, why would a bicycle work?

Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, because it's It's likewise the same question
with maximum overdrive. Did the bicycles take off and if
they didn't, why not Why is the bicycle immune to
being maximum overdrived? Yeah, or maximum overdriven if you will.
I'm not sure which term is preferred.

Speaker 3 (01:06:41):
Yeah, I don't know the answer to that. But anyway,
So in this middle, I'd say a big part of
the middle of the movie is characters such as Tom's
wife Claire and Paul becoming convinced that Tom is not
hallucinating and that the plans of the benefactor from Venus
are real. And so this leads to scenes where these

(01:07:04):
characters are trying to talk since into Tom.

Speaker 2 (01:07:07):
And these scenes are really the meat of the movie. Yeah,
And I say that in a good way because they're
generally entertaining scenes.

Speaker 3 (01:07:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:07:14):
If they weren't, the entire film would be a watch.

Speaker 3 (01:07:17):
Yeah. So there's one scene between Tom and Claire that's
leev Ncleeve in Beverly, Garland, and he's trying to sell
her on the benefits of being part of the alien's
plan and purging all emotion. But she's like, if we
have no emotion, will we won't we have no love
for one another? And Tom is he's not dissuaded, but

(01:07:39):
it seems like he doesn't really have a very good
answer for this. He says something like, well, even if
there are no emotions, they'll still need you. But Claire
presses him on this. She's like, okay, but if you
need me but you don't love me, what does that mean?
So would I just basically work for you? And it
seems that this kind of gets through. Tom doesn't really

(01:07:59):
have a good answer, but he just kind of like
is like, well, I can't think about that right now. Yeah,
somewhere also in here, we've got the I've got a
present for you scene, which is great but also a
huge WTF scene, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:08:13):
Because because earlier we get a scene where Paul leaves
Joan to go off on one of his bike rides
to try and figure out the mystery, and he's like,
don't you know, don't leave the window open, make sure
you're inside, and like the door's open for a second,
and we give you in like one of the flying
bat creatures swoops in and we presume that it gets her.

Speaker 3 (01:08:32):
Yes, So Paul comes home and Joan is in. She's
very much in Stepford wife mode. She's like, honey, welcome home.
I love you. I have a present for you. Why
don't you sit down? Right there, and I'll show you,
you know, show you what I'm holding behind my back.
And of course, what do you know, it's a mind
control bat. Beautiful, thank you, thank you, Happy birthday. She

(01:08:55):
releases it, and she's while it's attacking Paul. She's like,
I'm going to go out for a while. I'll be
back when you're feeling better, And so she goes out
for a walk, but Paul bests the mind control bad.
He kills it with a fire poker.

Speaker 2 (01:09:09):
And I rather like the scene where he kills it
with the fire poker. It had some some oomph to it.

Speaker 3 (01:09:14):
Yeah, yeah, it's good. Uh. And then when she comes back,
she thinks he has been turned. So these the people
who have been turned by the mind control devices are
not like omnipotent, like they don't fully understand everything. Uh
So I guess that comes back somewhat on my guess
about them being sort of psychic. She doesn't know he

(01:09:34):
hasn't been turned. He's faking it, and he's like, will
we ever go back to how we were? And she
says no, the change is irreversible, and then Paul shoots
her yes what yes, Like what if she was wrong
about the fact that they couldn't go back.

Speaker 2 (01:09:51):
Yeah, yeah, what if there was some sort of cure? Yeah,
so many questions here. So yeah, this is like really shocking.
I mean, I think part of it is most of
us at this point we've seen enough vampire and zombie
films to be very well acquainted with the my beloved
is no longer my beloved. They're a monster. Now I'm
going to have to kill them. Seen. You know, he
usually comes with a great deal of emotional anguish, and

(01:10:15):
sometimes you know, it's it's the individual facing this choice,
can't do it, you know, like their emotions are too strong.
They're like, I know you're a zombie now, but I
can't kill you. I'm gonna have to lock you in
the basement instead, that sort of thing.

Speaker 3 (01:10:30):
And most of the time in those scenes, there's like
a lot of also just esthetic work being done to
fully convince you like it's not the person anymore. They
are not in there. It's a difference, it's just their
body being controlled by a demonic entity or.

Speaker 2 (01:10:43):
So yeah, they want it. They have to drive home
a very black and white scenario while also driving home
that this is a terrible choice that is having to
be made. Yes, but Paul does not hesitate. He just
shoots her down in cold blood, then presumably has a
smoke and finishes reading the newspaper. I don't know. Yeah,
there's no exploration of the parameters here, no consideration of
how much of her is truly in there anymore. And

(01:11:06):
it's even weirder when you drag in the whole sort
of like cold War anxiety aspects of this film, because
it's kind of like, no, sir, I found out my
wife was a secret Communist, and I did what any
red blooded American would do, and it just comes off
like darn. But Paul is a cold guy. Again. This
is our champion of emotion in the film, and he

(01:11:29):
shows very little emotion in making this fatal choice.

Speaker 3 (01:11:33):
Yeah, that's right. So that is a real tension and
how these themes are realized within the movie because of
how cold Paul is. But so later we get these
scenes where Tom and Paul are themselves arguing about the
plans of the benefactor from Venus. Paul is convinced basically
of what's going on. He goes to talk to Tom

(01:11:55):
about the merits of the plan. I think there are
various they're planning to kill each other. Also in these scenes,
because Tom has received orders from the alien that he
has to kill Paul. I think Paul has plans of
his own, but they're arguing it out, and so we
get some speeches. One thing is that Tom says, you know,
first of all, he tries to convince Paul to join him.

(01:12:16):
He's like, he wants you on his side, next to me.
He wants you so like, you know, come be, Come
be the lieutenant of the Venus invasion plan. And Paul says,
you want me to condone this reign of terror, to
swear allegiance to this monstrous king of yours, to kill
my own soul and all within reach. Well I won't, Anderson.
I'll fight it till the last of breath in my body.

(01:12:38):
And I'll fight you too, because you're part of it,
the worst part, because you belong to a living race,
not a dying one. This is your land, your world.
Your hands are human, but your mind is enemy. You're
a trader, Anderson, the greatest trader of all time. And
you know why, because you're not betraying part of mankind,
you're betraying all of it. That's a Peter Graves speech.

(01:13:01):
That's pretty great.

Speaker 2 (01:13:02):
I mean, and you know, I have to say I'm
glad they're doing this in person, because if this film
we're set today, this whole conversation would take place on
Facebook and it would just be super awful, and half
of it would be in memes. Half of it would
be memes.

Speaker 3 (01:13:15):
You know. Yeah, it's a comment. He's got a lot
of little the mad face emoji reactions. Yeah, So he
makes the case that he's being a trader. But they
also have a conversation where Paul explains why the why
he thinks that the emotion purging plan won't work. He's like,
I think Earth is actually going to defeat these you know,

(01:13:37):
these supposedly purely logical, mind controlled beings from Venus, because
he says, for example, humans will feel emotional solidarity for
one another, and their emotions will cause them to cooperate
together and to sacrifice their own personal interests in you know,

(01:13:58):
in the interest of better protect humanity as a whole,
so they can coordinate and cooperate and make sacrifices in
a way that these purely logical, rational, individualistic beings controlled
by the aliens will not. Now I sort of get
what they're going for there. I don't know if that's
exactly the way I would frame it, but I think

(01:14:19):
it raises a lot of interesting questions. I think the
way I would think about it more is that the
way Tom is thinking about logic versus emotion is just
a little bit miscalibrated as to the roles these things
actually play in how we act. Like, logic is a
good way of formulating plans of action, right, It's better

(01:14:41):
to think logically about what to do than to just
act emotionally to try to figure out what you should do.
But emotions generate all of the motivation states for action.
So if you have a very logical plan about how
to achieve a goal, the way you decide what your
goal is as usually emotion like. You have emotional motivations

(01:15:03):
that tell you what you want and what you think
is good, and then you have logic to help you
decide best how to achieve that thing.

Speaker 2 (01:15:11):
Yeah, and of course logic can be flawed. Logic can
lead to incorrect answers like it's interesting to think about
you Anderson here, like he has been he has followed
a path that is both logical and emotional to reach
this point where he risks dooming the planet, you know, yes,
so yeah, it is hard to sort of tease tease

(01:15:32):
these apart. You know, you get into the whole vulcan
territory right of trying to figure out what a what
a people would be like if they purge themselves of
emotion and followed pure logic, you know, what what would
that look like and what would be what kind of
pitfalls would still be possible.

Speaker 3 (01:15:49):
But there's a great twist here because in one of
these scenes where Paul comes over and he's arguing with
Tom about what they should do, Claire actually sneaks out,
like she she comes to hate this alien presence and
she's like, you know what, I'm going to deal with
this issue myself. So Beverly Garland steals Tom's rifle that

(01:16:09):
he was going to use to kill Paul and then
goes and gets in the car and drives away to
find the alien. And she at one point, she I think,
gets on the radio and says like I'm coming for you, yeah, yeah,
and I love this. Like Claire, she gets in the car,
arms herself, gets in the car and goes to find
the cave where the alien lives, and she's like, I'm

(01:16:31):
going to destroy it.

Speaker 2 (01:16:32):
Yeah. She's a woman of action, and Beverly Garland really
brings a lot of energy to this role. Is great
in this role, So like this alone is a breath
of fresh air for movies of this time period.

Speaker 3 (01:16:44):
Yeah, and she has some great lines too. I think
when she's going to kill it in the cave, she says,
you think you're going to make a slave of the world,
I'll see you in hell first.

Speaker 2 (01:16:54):
Yeah, and she sells it.

Speaker 3 (01:16:56):
She also tells it that it's ugly.

Speaker 2 (01:17:00):
It is ugly, Yeah, And I think that's one thing
they were trying to sort of drive, like they're trying
to like hold off this is one of the tricky
things of having seen this picture so many times and
or having seen that face on the poster. You know,
the menace, the alien menace is ugly, and I think
the film is crafted in a sense where they wanted
that to be a big reveal and it you know

(01:17:22):
that this would be a realization. Oh, the thing that
we thought was a benefactor really as a hideous monster.
And there's something about its appearance that cluses into this
even more. But you know, what can you do? You
got to put a monster on the poster.

Speaker 3 (01:17:35):
That's right. So eventually Tom is convinced. He's sort of
he's talked down out of cooperating with the alien, which
is pretty interesting. I don't know if I would normally
expect the plot to work that way in a movie
like this. I would normally expect some kind of I
don't know, like sight or plot twist to change Tom's allegiance. Instead,

(01:18:00):
he's just sort of convinced through argumentation.

Speaker 2 (01:18:03):
Yeah, and well, and I think the fact too that
his wife is in peril now, Like he realizes that
she is in danger, right, and he has to go
attempt to save her, but also rectify this problem that
he is doomed that he's potentially brought to the planet.

Speaker 3 (01:18:19):
That's right. So Claire has run off to fight the
alien herself. Tom is on Paul's side now, He's like, okay,
we got to stop it. So Paul and Tom both
run off to enact various parts of the plan. Tom
arms himself with like a little flamethrower of some kind,
like a it's not a huge flamethrower. What do you
call this thing? It's like a little tiny, sort of
kettle sized flamethrower.

Speaker 2 (01:18:41):
Yeah, like some sort of like little blowtorch sized flamer device. Yeah,
but I really like this division in weapons because obviously
Paul will shoot anything that moves, so he needs a
handgun that fits his character. But Anderson. Anderson's more of
a you know, a thinker. You know. It's like he
had that rifle earlier and the rifle's gone now. I
don't know, it feels appropriate that he's using something a

(01:19:03):
little more sciency, a little more sci fi, you know,
this little flamethrower device.

Speaker 3 (01:19:09):
There is some more brutal violence in this movie. Shocking violence,
I would say for a movie from fifty six where
the mind controlled police chief that is working for the
alien he tries to stop Tom from getting to the cave,
and he's like shooting at Tom and Tom just burns
him yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:19:27):
Yeah, yeah, flames him up. Yeah, and he runs a
little bit and falls over on fire. Yeah. So yeah, pretty.

Speaker 3 (01:19:33):
Harsh, But eventually they get to the cave. Oh and
this intersects with a fairly consistently grown inducing subplot where
some soldiers are wandering around in the woods and they're like, oh,
we're hungry, where can we get food? They are not
mine controlled, and they're wandering around but they eventually hear
the violence in the commotion at the cave, so they

(01:19:53):
go there with all their weapons, and so we end
up with a bunch of soldiers going into the cave
confronting the monster, and the monster attacks them. I think
it kills some of them, and ultimately, in the final showdown,
Tom himself has to go up against the creature that
he invited from Venus.

Speaker 2 (01:20:10):
Yeah, and this is a this is a pretty satisfying showdown.
I mean, again, the blocking of it, what is possible
with interactions between the monster and human actors aside? Uh,
it plays out rather well, I think.

Speaker 3 (01:20:24):
Yeah, the broad payoff in terms of what the characters do,
at least maybe as described on paper works pretty well.
So Paul, sorry, Tom does run up and he like
burns one of the alien's eyes with the blowtorch.

Speaker 2 (01:20:38):
Oh, he like just like sticks that sucker into the
eye socket. I mean it's it's great and and it's
made even better because Lee van Kleef delivers like just
this awesome line line that has a lot of like
venom in it, you know, like he's finally seen through
the to the menace here and he's like, I'm gonna
like this is what you get for messing with Earth.

Speaker 3 (01:20:59):
Yeah yeah. But then, of course he is killed in
the scuffle as well, so he's laying there next to
the dead overturned ice cream cone or artichoke, however you
think of it. And then finally, so all of the
characters except Paul are dead. Basically he's the only one
left standing. And then he gives the monologue the one
I delivered earlier. I'm not going to say it again,

(01:21:20):
but he does explain that, referring to Tom, he learned
almost too late, that man is a feeling creature. Well wait, no, actually,
hold on a second. I always assumed in this monologue
he's talking about Tom. Do you think he could be
talking about the alien from Venus or is he definitely
talking about Tom, who.

Speaker 2 (01:21:38):
Let's see, let's think about it, and for himself. That
men have to find their own way, to make their
own mistakes. There can't be any gift of perfection from
outside ourselves. I think he's probably talking about Tom.

Speaker 3 (01:21:54):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:21:55):
Because you know Tom is looking for that outside fix.
It's going to help humanity, something that will help us advance,
like we're struggling to advance on our own. We need
salvation to come from above.

Speaker 3 (01:22:09):
Yeah, this monologue assumes it was a good faith desire
to get perfection from the outside. And I don't know
if Paul would assume that about the alien from Venus,
that it was actually trying to help us. Yeah, so
there is hope, but it has to come from inside,
from man himself.

Speaker 2 (01:22:27):
Of course, they don't get into this, and of course
there was never a sequel or anything to this film.
But you know, there are still other members of the
Benefactor race on Venus. I forget what the head count was.
They said they're like nine of them.

Speaker 3 (01:22:38):
I think, yeah, it's only eight or nine or something,
and this is just one of them.

Speaker 2 (01:22:42):
Yeah, there's still eight super intelligent Venusians out there who
may or may not be reaching out to humans via
their radar. There may be other alien players in the
Solar System who have a vested interest in keeping humanity
from advance beyond a certain technological level. So I don't know.

(01:23:03):
It's kind of commendable that a film like this, this
does ultimately introduce those kinds of concepts, you know, where
you can leave the theater thinking about all of these
things and wondering, well, how would this how would the
characters from this film, how would the world from this
film progress?

Speaker 3 (01:23:19):
Yeah? What if the benefactors from Mars come to purgase
of all logic and leave us with only emotion?

Speaker 2 (01:23:24):
Oh wow, there you go. Now there's an interesting sequel
idea for it conquered the World. Like this time they
promise pure emotion, pure ecstasy, they come in peace.

Speaker 3 (01:23:38):
Yeah, okay, well I think that's all I've got on
It Conquered the World.

Speaker 2 (01:23:42):
All right. Well, yeah, it's a fun one. Highly recommend
it to anyone who's never seen it, and if you've
seen it before, watch it again. It's Yeah, it's a hoot.
That MST three K episode is, of course rightfully considered
one of the best as well.

Speaker 3 (01:23:55):
If I recall correctly, by the time that episode is over,
they've played the end monologue by Peter Graves at least
three times, maybe four.

Speaker 2 (01:24:04):
You have.

Speaker 3 (01:24:06):
Good choice.

Speaker 2 (01:24:07):
All right, We're going to gohea and close out here,
but we'd love to hear from everyone out there. Misty's
if you want to write in about this one. Old
school science fiction fans, Roger Korman fans write in as well,
Western fans. You may have some thoughts here as well.
Especially as it relates to Lee van Cleef. But yeah,
this was film number one hundred and seventy five for

(01:24:28):
Weird House Cinema. If you want to see the full
list of films we've covered over the years and sometimes
get a peek ahead at what's coming up next, go
to letterbox dot com. That's l E T E r
box d dot com. Our user name there is weird
House and you can find that list. Let's see. If
you're on Instagram, follow us. We are st b ym
podcast and that way you can keep up with everything

(01:24:48):
we're doing in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast space.

Speaker 3 (01:24:51):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:25:12):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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