November 11, 2024 • 58 mins
Are you ready for a 1960 Mexican sci-fi comedy involving multiple alien monsters, space vampires, interplanetary politics and several música norteña songs? Also a robot falls in love with a jukebox. Rob and Joe discuss it all in this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema. (originally published 9/3/2021)
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob
Lamb and oh we have a fun one for you today.
This is our discussion of the nineteen sixty Mexican sci
fi comedy musical Ship of Monsters. So I hope you
enjoyed this one. This one originally published nine three, twenty
twenty one.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
And I'm Joe McCormick and Rob. I am so thrilled
to be talking about the movie that we've selected for today.
Lea Nave de los monstros or The Ship of Monsters,
an astoundingly, shockingly devastatingly awesome Mexican film from nineteen sixty
in the exquisite genre of science fiction, horror, romantic comedy,
(00:59):
music goal. This is a movie about women from the
planet Venus who are roaming deep space on a quest
for the hunkiest aliens in the galaxy and skip from
planet to planet collecting reptile cyclops hunks, kissy face brain
mutant hunks, fang head skeleton hunks until they finally meet
(01:20):
the hunkiest hunk of all a rascal writer of the
Chihuahua Planes, played by the incomparable Lallo Gonzalez aka l Pipoorro.
More on him later. This movie is so much fun.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, this was a real pleasant surprise when you brought
this title to our attention. I did like some preliminary research.
I looked it up in the Psychotronic Video Guide and
I was like, all right, it's listed there. Sounds like
it might be good. So I went into it expecting
there to be something awesome about it. You know, i'd
find a monster I liked or a performance I liked.
(01:55):
I was also expecting a certain amount of dead space
in there is sometimes the case with films from this
time period of this caliber, but this one is just
wall to wall excellence.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Yes, totally. They're not a dull moment. I mean, we've
we've watched some sci fi horror movies from the fifties that,
you know, they might have a really fun, goofy looking monster,
or they might have elements that work really well, not
of this Earth comes to mind. But then there'll be
other moments that are kind of some dead space, yeah,
or kind of dull square lug dude, it's just standing
(02:27):
around delivering dry dialogue. This movie has essentially none of that.
It's all killer, no filler exactly.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Oh man, Yeah, this one's This one's great.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Would this count as our first science fiction, horror, romantic
comedy musical.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yes, it definitely would, and it I guess you could.
You could rank it as one of our first true musicals.
Or it's as close to a true musical as we've covered. Certainly,
some of the movies we've looked at have complete songs
within them, but this one has multiple musical numbers. I
mean they're not I mean they're very they're definitely lip SYNCD. Yeah,
(03:04):
there's there's maybe only a limited amount of dance choreography
going on, but still there's enough music in this film
that it feels like a musical.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Oh no, I would defend the dance sequences. There's one
dance scene in this movie that is just divine. It's
the one later on where Lalo Gonzalez is dancing and
singing to the to the Vampire Queen. Spoiler we'll get
to some twists about this later on. But he's also
trying to steal her, like her technology, her space weapon,
and so they're dancing around and she's making eyes at him,
(03:34):
and he's singing a song about the seasons.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yeah, true, okay, but that that felt also very organic.
It felt like organic dancing that just came out of
the music in the moment.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Yeah. So of course, folks out there, you know, we
love our unlikely genre mashups. We've talked about supernatural wrestling movies,
supernatural biker movies, but this has got to be one
of the biggest like you know, suicide soft drink kind
ofups of all time. It's got really almost every movie
(04:03):
genre in the same thing. I think it is most
often referred to as a science fiction comedy, but it's
also definitely got horror elements. Like some of the things
about the monsters in this movie gets surprisingly dark in
a way that you would not expect for a light comedy.
And the musical numbers are just just wonderful.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yeah. Like when we say they're alien monsters and they're
hunks or males, you might think of' what's that movie
the Head Jeff Goldblum in it where they were all
alien hunks?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Oh? Is that Earth Girls or easy?
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah, you might be thinking of Earth Girls are easy,
but no, these are entirely non human aliens. Some of
them are not even remotely human, So just go ahead
and exercise that image from your mind.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
This movie might be called earth males or liars, but
lovable liars. But so anyway, having read about this movie
before I watched it, I expected the plot to be bonkers,
which it absolutely It is just like Goober's Inside Out.
This movie will give you hard boiled egg eyes. But
also the musical numbers are charming, the comedy scenes are
(05:10):
really funny. It just works on almost every level. It
pretty much rules. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, the humor I found held up pretty well. I
was laughing at some of the intentional humor in this picture.
I also have to throw in that, oh man, I
love a good movie poster, and if you look around
for movie posters for this film, you'll find some kind
of boring images. But there's also a terrific image of
(05:36):
the sort of lizard cyclops monster, way bigger in the
poster than he is in the film, and he's holding
a woman in one hand like palm, like a baseball,
and it's got this wonderful orange and red look going on.
It's absolutely beautiful. And in fact I showed this to
my wife, and she has agreed that if we can
(05:57):
find this, we are going to put it on a
wall in our house. It's just that lovely.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Godspeed on your quest. I hope you do find it now.
You've been having trouble, right, it seems like merch for
this movie is rather scarce on the ground.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yeah. Yeah, so far, all I've seen is somebody in
Italy selling this poster on eBay. So I'm going to
continue to look around a little bit.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Now. I think this poster is the Italian poster for
the movie, right, because it's the title is a little
bit different. It's Lenave del Monstrim.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Yes, that would be it. Yeah, that now I think. Yeah,
I think I've also seen maybe the Italian DVD has
this art on it. So yes, I highly recommend looking
this up. It's just gorgeous.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Maybe we can hit a little montage of some audio
from the films Bigle and Our Well.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
I hope that conveyed at least some of the magic
of this of this this film, because there's a lot
visually going on here.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Are Are you ready to talk about some of the
people involved.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Yeah, let's get into it.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Okay. So the director of this movie was named Rogalio A. Gonsalez,
and I was looking around for good biographical info about him.
I couldn't find much in English, but I found a
biography in Spanish on the website of the National Autonomous
University of Mexico website, and I had to run this
through Google Translate. So I hope nothing significant is getting lost,
(07:58):
but just to summarize some of the stuff that covered
in there. Gonzalez was a Mexican actor, director, radio host,
radio producer, film producer, and screenwriter who worked throughout the
Golden age of Mexican cinema. He was born on January
twenty seventh, nineteen twenty two, in Monterey, Nuevo Leon as
(08:18):
Antonio Rogalio Gonzalez Villarial, and apparently in his younger years,
Gonzalez was preparing for a career in medicine, but at
some point he got that movie bug. He quit his
studies and he went into the film industry, first as
an actor and a screenwriter in the forties, and then
as a director beginning in the fifties. And he directed
(08:39):
a ton of movies in the fifties through the early eighties,
though I don't think I have seen any of them.
Other than this one.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Now, yeah, I agree. I don't think I've seen anything
on this list, though there's some interesting looking titles. I
noticed that his last picture in eighty three was Mexico
two thousand, which, yes, some sort of a sci fi
political commentary, sad attire sort of a thing.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Yeah, And there was one title of his I came
across that I don't remember if he wrote this one
or directed it. What was called like the Skeleton of
Missus so and so, I don't.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Know, Missus Morales. Oh, yeah, okay, Yeah, And I've also
heard that Conquistador di la Luna is also supposed to
be rather weird.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Oh, Conqueror of the Moon. Yeah, Actually, Michael Weldon mentions
that one.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Yeah, he mentions that as being a stand out weird
as well.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
I was trying to find a copy of this that
could be watched. The only thing I can find is
it's on a DVD that you can get somewhere that
I think does not have dubbing or English subtitles as
far as I can tell, so, but I don't know.
It looks so visually strange that it might be worth it.
Even if you don't speak Spanish, you can probably kind
of suss out the plot. Yeah, But anyway, a little
(09:47):
more about Gonzalez's Regalio Gonzalez's biography. There are actually two
major Gunzaleses in this movie, but Rogalio Gonzalez the director.
He was also a union leader in the Director's Division
of the Mexican Union of Cinema Production Workers, and he
passed away due to a tragic highway accident in nineteen
eighty four. But as for personal descriptions of his sort
(10:09):
of you know, his presence and personality, the website I
mentioned cites a description of Gonzalez from a magazine called
Cinevos in the year nineteen forty nine, so this would
have been before he started directing, back when he was
just an actor and a writer. But the description through
translation goes like this, He has a clear intelligence and
(10:31):
his sentences are logical and precise, despite the passion he
puts into them. He is tall, with blue eyes, thin,
almost transparent. Sometimes he hunches over as if overwhelmed by
excessive work, since he writes at all hours, sometimes living
exclusively at night. Oh wow, Now this profile was written
(10:51):
many years before he made Ship of Monsters. Ship of
Monsters came out in nineteen sixty. Again, I think this
was in nineteen forty nine, but I like to imagine
that it was this nocturnal consciousness that birthed the physical
forms of the eye popping monsters in this movie, the
furry Spider Beetle, the irritable Lizard Cyclops, the Kissy Face
brain Mutant, and the wonderful Bone Boy. So, like I said,
(11:16):
I have not seen any of Gonsalez's other movies, but
given this, he's got a real talent for extremely visually charming,
tight well paced cinema.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Yes, yeah, absolutely. Now a quick note about the individuals
with writing credits on this film. First of all, the
story credit goes to Jose Maria Fernandez Unsein, who lived
nineteen twenty one through two thousand and three, an Argentinian
film director, screenwriter, and playwright who was exiled to Mexico
(11:47):
after the overthrow of Juan Toon. This was because Unsan
had connections to Eva Peron, so very prolific. He has
I think one hundred and twenty two writing credits on IMDb.
But then adaptation writing credit goes to Alfredo Verrella, who
lived nineteen twelve through nineteen eighty six. This is a
guy who wrote various westerns and now according to IMDb,
(12:11):
this is definitely the Mexican born Alfredo Verrella. But there's
also an Argentinian novelist and communist journalist named Alfredo Verrella
who lived at the same time, like with birth and
death dates just like two years off. So I was
a little confused by that at first. I was trying
to figure out could this be given the Argentina connection here,
but it seems to be two different people.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Okay, Now coming to the cast, this movie again just
has a wonderful cast, and we should start with the
lead actor Ulalio Gonzalez, also known as Lalo Gonzalez, also
known by the nickname El Pipouro. And I was trying
to look it up. What does that really mean? I
don't know if it means something different in the context
(12:53):
of his nickname. But the only thing I could really
find is a translation is that this word means bassoonist,
like the player of a bassoon. I'm not sure what
to make of that. But Lalo Gonzalez was a musician.
He was widely known as a comic, actor and a singer.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah, Gonzalez was a musician, comedian, actor, director and producer.
And in this film, yeah, he's playing this Pipooro character,
a kind of stereotypical North Mexican rancher. This was an
immensely popular character. It was central to his musical identity
and it helped make him the face of Musica Nortegna
(13:31):
during the Golden Age of Mexican cinema. Now, Musica at
Nortegna is the regional music of Northern Mexico. That's essentially
what it means, traditionalized, traditionally utilizing the accordion the bajo
sexto guitar, and it apparently emerged in the nineteenth century
(13:51):
out of elements of traditional Mexican music along with German,
Austrian and Czech folk music, very popular in Northern Mexican
and also among many Mexican Americans. So within this genre
and within Mexican cinema all this period, Pipporo Here Gonzalez
is a legend. I think it's important to realize, like
(14:12):
this is this is a film that is showcasing somebody
that was already at or near the peak of their
their initial popularity. Though this is a guy that would
remain important throughout his life.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Right and so as we're saying so much about this
movie is great, but a lot of it really rests
on the incredible star power of La Lo Gonzalez. He
is a I would say like he has a once
in a generation kind of star presence. His screen charisma
is overwhelming. He is just an absolutely lovable liar rascal,
(14:47):
and the personality it just sort of like drips out
of the TV screen, like fifteen minutes into the movie.
Rachel and Rachel and I watched it together and she
adored the movie as well, but we were immediate just
like googling other La Low Gonzales movies, we wanted to
see everything he was in. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything
else he did involving monsters. So this might be the apex,
(15:11):
but we'll see.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, his humor really translates even without
an actual like I mean, with translation. Obviously we had subtitles.
I think we each had slightly different subtitles, as is
kind of becoming a tradition here, but you still it
still oozes through, you know. Like you say, he's very charismatic,
he's very funny. I think you would find him humorous
(15:34):
even if you didn't know what he was saying.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
I'm not aware that this movie has ever been dubbed
into English, but it's the kind of performance where I
would recommend watching it with the Spanish audio with subtitles,
just because, like the line delivery is so funny. It's
like you can hear that. It's funny even if you
don't speak Spanish, right, right.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
And then also the songs that he's singing there, I
think always part of the plot, so you need to
know what he's singing as well well.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Right, So, if anyone.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Out there wants to learn more about Nortegna, then there
are various sources you can go to. But I was
looking around and there's actually a book by Catherine Ragland
titled Musica Nortegna Mexican Americans Creating a Nation between Nations.
This came out in two thousand and nine. In this book,
she explores the topic in depth, but I found this
(16:24):
particular summary rather interesting. Quote. Musical Nortaigna, a musical genre
with its roots in the folk ballad traditions of northern
Mexico and the Texas Mexican border region, has become a
hugely popular musical style in the US, particularly among Mexican immigrants,
featuring evocative songs about undocumented border crossings, drug traffickers, and
(16:46):
the plight of immigrant workers. Musical no'artagna has become the
music of a quote nation between nations, and she also
points out that it's sometimes seen this particular genre as
being maybe less technically refined compared to other genres of
Mexican of like folk music, but it is seen as
often seen as being imbued with more feeling, And a
(17:07):
lot of this seems to come from the idea that
this was the music of working people who had to
make time for music in the evenings and then put
all their passion into that.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
That's true, and a lot of the greatest folk music
traditions do have origins like this. They're not from people
who were, you know, full time professional musicians, but you know,
consists of songs and structures and elements created by people
who were, you know, just like regular working people who
were playing music for entertainment in the evenings. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Yeah, So anyway, I was very interested to learn this.
So if anyone out there, if you know a great
deal more about Nortaigna and you have some experience with it,
do write in let us know. I'd love to know
more about this interesting genre of music.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
But the excellent cast does not stop there. So Lolo
Gonzalez is playing our main earthling for the movie. He
is Loreano is his character's name. But there are also
a couple of other major characters who are Aliens, these
Ladies from Beyond, and they are played by Anna Bertha
Leppe and Loraina of Alaskez.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Yes. Lepe plays Gamma and Velasquez plays Beta. Both of
our Venusians are played by former Miss Mexicos.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Now, I know you could easily make this mistake, but
I want to be very pedantic about this. Lorain of
Alaskaz's character Beta, though she initially starts the movie on
the planet Venus, she is not a Venusian.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
That's true.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
That's true, they say. They say she is a daughter
of or the planet of Shadows, and so she's an
alien on Venus at the beginning of the movie and
then travels with the Venusian Gamma on her mission.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Yeah. One of the really delectable things about this film
is that there seems to be so much world building
going on in it that, on the surface would be
completely unnecessary for a dumb monster movie that is basically
just a vehicle for a popular musician, and you know,
in a couple of very attractive actors.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
This is a light, romantic musical comedy with killer monsters
in it.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Yeah, and yet you get a sense that somebody puts
some thought into this about like, Okay, what is Venus's
role in the Solar system and realms beyond the Solar System?
How is their power arrived? Yeah, because we ultimately have
an interplanetary civilization outlined within this film. Yeah, all right,
well let's talk about these these two individuals. First of all,
(19:32):
Lepe who again plays Gama. She lived nineteen thirty four
through twenty thirteen, and she was a big deal. She
was a stunning star of Mexico's Golden Age of cinema
and a runner up representing Mexico in the nineteen fifty
three Miss Universe pageant. Other credits of hers include Renee
Cardona's Neutron Traps The Invisible Killers from nineteen sixty five
(19:55):
that stars also stars a guy by the name of
Jorge Riviero, who is in a film called Where Wolf
that I think you're familiar with.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Oh Jorge Rivero. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yeah. She was also in three Santo movies Santo Versus
The Diabolical Brain from sixty three, Santo in The Hotel
of Death from sixty three, and Santo Versus The King
of Crime from sixty two.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Okay, gotta put those on the list. Which one are
we doing first? Diabolical Brain? That sounds good.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
I don't know. I was looking. I think these all
sound like maybe they're more crime based Santo movies. You know.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Oh, diabolical brain isn't like a huge alien brain. It
might be like a smart criminal.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Yeah. Now, Velasquez, who again plays Beta. She was born
in nineteen thirty seven. I think as of this recording
is still around. She was also a big deal during
Mexico's Golden Age of cinema. She was in two different
Santo movies, both in sixty two, Santo Versus the Zombies
and Santo Versus The Vampire Women, and in that she
(20:57):
plays Zorina, Queen of the Vampires.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Oh, okay, there's gonna be some crossover here. Warning, I
think I already said something to this effect. We will
be spoiling some minor twists in this film. I hope
you're okay with that. And so here's the spoiler. There
is just a delightful twist about halfway through this movie
where Lorain of Alaskaz's character is revealed to be a
space vampire from the planet of the Vampires. In fact,
(21:23):
she's going to become the Queen of the Vampires by
h I don't recall the exact plan, suck in everybody's
blood and kidnapping Lolo Gonzalez, I think.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Right, And there's some politics in there, you know, like
marrying the Prince of Mars and so forth.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Oh yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Yeah, but yeah, she's a natural to play a vampire queen.
You know, she's got the look, she's got the charisma.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
And she I gotta say she is so good in
this movie and in a comedy performance, because even in
moments where she doesn't have any lines, she's really funny.
She's often the funniest actor in a scene just by
doing hilarious things with her face, Like she does these
weird I want that eyes at things, you know, like
(22:04):
at weapons, or at monsters, or at a jukebox or
at Pipoo when he's dancing and singing a song about
the seasons. She just does these eyes that had Rachel
and I shrieking with laughter.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Yeah, she's really good. And you know, sometimes in films
of this caliber, you have a role like this, go
to somebody who just kind of stands there. But no,
she's never still, if not physically, at least like energy wise,
there's always something going on in her head. She was
also in Renee Cardona's nineteen sixty three non Santo wrestling
picture Doctor of Doom, in which she stars as female
(22:40):
wrestler or luchadora Gloria Venus, who has to stop an evil,
mad scientist with an ape named Gomar from carrying out
sadistic brain transplant experiments.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
What yeah, well, and she's Gloria Venus and in this
movie she's on a mission sponsored by the planet Venus.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
It makes me think that this film was a big
hit or at least impressed enough people where they're like this,
this guy's great. We need a we're gonna make a movie.
We need a vampire queen. Bam, she's in. Or hey,
we're thinking about having a Venusian, let's put her in.
She has some sort of tie to Venus because she
went on to play that Glory of Venus character again
in nineteen sixty four as wrestling women versus the Aztec Mummy.
(23:20):
So yeah, a number of interesting films are coming up
with these two.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Beta is a queen, Loraina Velasquez rocks the screen in
this film.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Now we also have an actual queen in this we
have the Queen of Venus. Oh, and she is played
by Quinzuelo Frank who lived nineteen twelve through nineteen ninety one.
And she has two Santo credits as well, sixty seven
Santo versus the Martian Invasion in sixty eight Santo's versus
the Villains of the Ring. I haven't seen that one,
(23:51):
but that one sounds like the most obvious title. Of course,
Santo is going to fight villains of the Ring.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
I don't know. I'd also want to fight them.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Yeah, she was also she was active much earlier. She
was in I think two different nineteen forty two Mexican
adaptations of first The Three Musketeers but then also The
Count of Money Cristo. Now, another great thing about this
(24:18):
film is that has wonderful costumes, has wonderful monster effects.
So I had to look up, well, who's behind this?
And I'm not sure exactly. Sometimes the monster credits are
kind of lost, especially in limited credits for a film
like this, But Julio Chavez is credited for costumes, and
I noticed that, among many other credits, they did costumes
(24:39):
and wardrobe on nineteen sixty nine's Santo w and the
Treasure of Dracula, which was covered several months back.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
So this is a Santo heavy connection section.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Yeah. Yeah, And when it comes to the music, we
have another direct reference to Santo and the Treasure of
Dracula because Sergio Guerrero, who lived nineteen twenty one through
two thousand and eight, he did the music in this
which has some neat sci fi sounds in there in
places which I liked. But this is a guy with
two hundred and fifty two composer credits on IMDb, including
(25:10):
such Mexican films as Neutron Traps, The Invisible Killers, Le Sombra, Viingadora,
and again Santo in the Treasure of Dracula. So yes,
lots of Santo connections here.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Now, if Guerrero here did the music, I don't know
if that necessarily would include other types of sound design,
but I did want to highlight that this movie has
some really good sound design, Like there are moments where
the monsters are speaking, and it's not necessarily music, though
I do love the music in this movie. But it's
like the way the vocal effects they've done on the voiceovers,
(25:42):
for when the puppets are talking, giving them these raspy
voices as if they're emanating from the caves of Hades.
You know, just great monster voices.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Yeah, some wonderful Spanish monster voices in this it's pretty great. Well,
should we get into the plot a little bit here?
We've been talking it up. Let's tell folks what this
movie is about.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Okay, Now, we're not going to do a full scene
by scene on this one. We might go a little
more detail early on and then later for the later
parts of the movie, just talk about some highlights and ideas.
But I do want to get very granular with the
introduction because I think the very intro of the movie
really sets the move fast and break things tone. I
would say, in the much better sense of that phrase,
(26:25):
that's the attitude this film has toward plotting. So the
very first thing we see is an atom, you see,
like the old school representation of the atomic nucleus with
all of its orbitals, and the narrator says, this is
an atom, then it shows us a planet. At first
I thought it was the Moon, but I think it's
supposed to be planet Earth. And then it says, this
(26:46):
is the universe. Then it goes on and atom is
infinitely small, the universe is infinitely large. However, everything is
ruled by the same laws. Man has learned to release
the power of the atom, and with it wants to
conquer the universe. Some really elegant symmetry in this opening narration.
(27:06):
This is almost a strange poem of sorts. And then
the narration goes on it says, but he dreams of
leaving the Earth and leaving his seed on a distant planet,
perhaps with the subconscious desire of starting a new race,
one that will remain ignorant of atomic power and warfare. Right,
so the idea is that, okay, all species maybe that
(27:29):
discover atomic energy and atomic weapons, eventually we'll want to
go sort of create a new version of themselves on
a planet that is blissfully free of this terrible knowledge.
And of course, throughout the well this we're getting a
lot of we're getting stock footage of mushroom clouds from
atomic tests. But then it goes on to say, and
(27:49):
that is a planet known to us. So here we
cut to Venus. It says, let's go on a characteristically
dark night to Venus, and we see the these creepy
images of lights with a hazy four ground, so they're
just kind of these very fuzzily defined lights in the
background and mist and darkness with these figures and cloaks
(28:13):
wandering into the frame, and it's actually quite creepy. It is.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
I found this quite evocative early on. Now I understand
some of these space scenes we see early in the
film or are taken from nineteen fifty seven's Road to
the Star as a Soviet film about the possible future
of spaceflight. But I'm not sure about these kind of dark,
hooded figures here with the cosmic backdrop.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Yeah, I don't know about those. I do think, yeah,
I think you're right. I was also reading that some
of these early scenes are just lifted from other films.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
One thing I want to add is that you could
easily you could be watching this and think, all right,
here's our sort of out there's introduction, but then we're
going to go onto another movie and this will have
little more nothing to do with where we're going. But
it does come back up again. It seems to be
in you know, it seems to be stitched into the
plot itself, and it's not just some thing that's just
tacked on the front to keep us in our seats
(29:03):
for a few minutes.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
That's right. I would say that actually this is this
is pretty coherent. As as bonkers as the plot of
this movie is, it all kind of ties together, like
it makes sense even though it's nuts. So, okay, we
learned that the planet Venus is preparing for the most
important interplanetary space flight in their history, and then we
get shots of the surface of Venus where we see
(29:25):
a bunch of women lining up in military formations outside
of a rocket ship and there is nary a man
in sight. So what's going on here? Well, we get
some exposition. The region to Venus comes out. I think
she's the queen of the planet and she's addressing two women.
So you have Annabertha Leppe and Lorraine of Alaskas as
the characters Gamma and Beta, respectively, and they are being
(29:48):
given a mission. Gamma is the commander in chief of
the interplanetary spacecraft. So the region of Venus explains the situation,
and the situation is dire. She says, Okay, the last
male on our planet is dead. They're all gone. They
are dead due to an atomic scourge. And so she
is giving a mission to these two brave space pilots.
(30:10):
They're going to fly around and go to all the
planets and collect the most perfect male specimens to bring
back to Venus. And then Gamma says, I will bring
you the most beautiful male specimens. The most perfect of
them will sire the new generations of Venus. And then
we get the part I alluded to earlier where the
regent says that Beta, played by Lorrain of Alaskaz, she's
(30:35):
a foreigner to Venus. She's the daughter of or the
planet of shadows, and she has been assigned to travel
alongside Gamma on her mission because she's the greatest space
navigator on the planet. And then the last thing she
says to them is in you we trust. Question about
Gamma's outfit. Did you ever figure out what the thing
on her shoulder is? Oh?
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Yeah, it kind of has this kind of tassly feathery thing,
but also might be an antenna. I'm not sure. Maybe
she has like wireless in the suit. I'm not sure.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
I couldn't tell if it was supposed to be decorative
or supposed to be technology. But yeah, she has this
array of sprigs of something coming off of her left
shoulder and I don't know what they are, and they're
there like the whole movie. She changes outfits, but that's
always there. It looks kind of like she had some
of those like wire fairy wings, but somebody crumpled them
up and moved them all to one shoulder. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's stylish. I mean that seems
to have been the main intent here is that these
women should look extremely stylish. As they travel through space.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
They look super cool. And it is announced via footage
from another movie that the orbits have aligned and so
it is time for them to depart. So we see
Gamma and Beta. They enter the interior of their spaceship,
which maybe we should describe because a lot of the
action of the film will take place here. So there
are like two pilot seats where they're operating these big
control panels. I guess Beta is the nownavigator and Gammas
(32:01):
the commander, and then behind them there is all this
heavy machinery which looked like real heavy machinery, not just
like something on the set. I don't know what they
were filming. Maybe they were generators of some kind, like
these big years working back and forth.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Yeah, the set is great, it definitely. They do a
great job establishing it as the command center of the spaceship.
I got kind of tones of observatory from parts of it,
but I'm not really sure, because clearly huge parts of
it are an actual set, so it's not just that
they went into an observatory or into a factory and
started filming there. There's also some really elaborate stuff they constructed,
(32:39):
so I don't know.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Yeah, there are these big clusters of balls up on
the ceiling, like gigantic grapes. I don't know what those
are supposed to be. And then there is a big
platform looking out over the rest of the set like
a preacher's pulpit, and there's I don't know, various weird
glass bulbs and files in the background, and just rivets
(33:00):
and metal everywhere. It's cool. And then while the credits play,
we see them setting down on strange worlds, including this
one world that's full of crooked spires of rock that
are sort of the same size and shape as the
rocket that lands, except you know, they're stony and jagged,
and I guess this must be happening off screen. But
during this credit sequence we're to understand that they're out
(33:22):
there collecting all of the mails along their journey, which
they tend to keep frozen in giant cubes of ice.
And they accomplish this by operating a camera flash at them.
And it made me wonder which of the male monsters
comes from the spike rock planet.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
I don't know, it could be home to. Well, we
know this is not the surface of Mars because we
know what Mars looks.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Like, so right, that's where brain Boy comes from.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Yeah, yeah, it's not the Prince of Mars, so it
must be. It must be one of the others. This
would be a suitable planet, and perhaps for the skeletal,
fleshless being.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Yeah Billy Bones.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Yeah, but we'll get him in a minute now.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
Another major devil on the initial premise is that somewhere
along the way, Gamma and Beta acquire an alien robot
called Tor, and Tor is a major helper of their
mission as they go along. He wasn't theirs originally, but
they say that they again in a strange bit of
just just ever so briefly alluded to world building. They
say that they collected him from a dead planet where
(34:21):
all of the humans had annihilated themselves with atomic war.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Yeah. He's key to the whole operation though, because he
has the ability to freeze the monsters in blocks of
some sort of ice. Otherwise, I mean, they could still
handle the monsters. They prove that later on they have
space flamethrowers, but this is a huge help.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
Well, now I think they can also freeze the monsters
with their little camera flashbox.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
I think, oh, can they?
Speaker 3 (34:46):
Okay, But he's very helpful for he's very helpful because
he contains these encyclopedias of knowledge about all the planets.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Right, yeah, that's right, And these are often really funny
sometimes with some you know, kind of I guess political
satire thrown in there, right when they like asking about
Mexico and stuff.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Right, yes, So, so eventually the robot tells them their
spacecraft is suffering mechanical trouble and they got to set
down on the nearest planet for repairs. Well, what's the
nearest planet? The robot says, it is Intarsis one thirty
five sub two planetoid of the fourth order. And so
how does the robot know what this planet is? Well,
(35:27):
he says, you know, before the men of his planet
all destroyed themselves with nuclear war, they left these encyclopedias
of knowledge inside his computer brain. And the men of
his planet had originally wanted to explore this planetoid Intarsis
one thirty five sub two. They wanted to explore it,
but then they learned a bit of bit more about
it and ultimately decided it was not worth it because quote,
(35:51):
it is inhabited by beings that seemed to be intelligent,
but they do not know what they want and enjoy
destroying each other. And of course what planets he talking.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
About, it's us and it's pretty spot on.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
Yeah. So Gamma and Beta perform a perilous emergency landing
and they set down in the Mexican state of Chihuahua,
which is in the central north. It's along the border
with Texas and New Mexico, and so they're setting down
their spaceship and as that's happening, we get our first
meeting with La Loo Gonzales as a character named Loreano.
(36:25):
What's he doing? Well, of course he is out riding
his horse and singing a love song to nobody in particular.
And the first scene where we meet him, you just
kind of instantly fall in love with this g Like
he sees the rocket ship, he thinks it's a shooting star,
and he makes a wish and his wish is for
is for quote, I hope for a pretty girl, but
one who loves me. And then he sings a song
(36:48):
about wishing on this star to find a woman to
fall in love with. In my translation, he kept saying
he was searching for a divine love. But then the
other half of the song is about how everybody incorrectly
believes that he is no good. So the lyrics include
things like they say, I'm a crook and a liar
and I chicken out in the end, but it's not true.
(37:09):
And then you get you remember when when he gives
the horse guarantee, he's like, if you don't believe me,
ask my horse. My horse will tell you I never
tell a lie. And then the horse starts like bucking
and neighing.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
Oh yeah, yeah. There's some fun stuff, like when you
first see this character, there might be a temptation to think, Okay,
this is going to be just a shining White Night.
You know that he's going to be a pure hero,
but then you quickly realize, no, he's a bard, if
not an actual rogue, but a very funny one. Like
he's the comedy begins to shine through, and there's some
(37:41):
stuff with him, like the way he's riding his horse,
either intentionally or accidentally, but I believe it must be
part of the character. You get the idea that he's
not that good at riding the horse. There's some awkward dismounts,
which adds to the comedic nature of this character.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
You know. I was trying They may have said it
in the movie and it went past me. Was trying
to figure out what does Loreano do. I was thinking,
maybe he's supposed to be a rancher, but you don't
really see much about that. Is he just a professional liar?
Speaker 1 (38:08):
He has a cow, and we spend a lot of
time with that cow. Yeah, so I think he's technically
a rancher. Maybe that's part of the joke, is that
he's because the character, I'm to understand his performance character
is supposed to be a North Mexican rancher. But maybe
the joke is okay, he only has this one cow
and it may or might not even be that good
(38:30):
of a milk producer, depending on the joke.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
But basically all he does is like ride around singing
and then go into town and tell awesome lies. Yes,
so we see him go into a bar and everybody's
drinking and he's telling these tall tales about like how
he foiled a robbery with a bunch of bandits and
he killed two bandits with one bullet left in his
gun by holding a knife in front of the barrel
(38:54):
and splitting the bullet in half so it hit them both.
And then he starts shifting from here to the increasingly
bizarre stories about unusual bears and then dinosaurs. Did your
translation include dinosaurs?
Speaker 1 (39:07):
It did? Yes, Okay. I wasn't entirely sure what to
make of that. At first, I thought maybe it was
a joke about chickens, and I was thinking, oh, this
is actually scientifically accurate in some respects. But then there's
the thing about dinosaurs without bones, and I'm not sure,
so maybe something's something is ultimately lost in translation. But
it still came off as very fun and funny.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
It seems like normally he just he is wont to
tell stories about dinosaurs out by the sawmill, dinosaurs without bones,
boneless boneless buffalo dinosaurs.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
But in this whole situation, he almost sort of gets
into a duel. Yeah yeah, like a shootout, shootout a scenarios.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
Name Rubiano or something, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Yeah, but then kind of talks his way, jokes his
way out of it. So they do a great job
of establishing his character, like, no, you know, everybody loves him,
but also everybody's a little sick of him. You know,
he's he's a likable guy, but maybe he's not really
doing the most important job in town, whatever it may be.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
You almost get the impression that if he were to
encounter real monsters later, nobody would believe him because he
has cried dinosaur too many times.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
True.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
Meanwhile, after Gamma and Beta land on Earth, they come
out to explore their surroundings and there is this hilarious
scene where they just appear to get extreme pleasure from
the discovery of breathable atmosphere.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Yes, yep, this is a great part. My wife actually
walked in the room and saw this part and she
was laughing as well. They're just totally turned on by
this planet's atmosphere and they do a great job of
playing this up.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
Yeah, and so the two aliens come across Loreano on
the road while he's out wandering, and they are just
immediately smitten, right, as I guess nearly anyone would be.
But so there are some jokes about them trying to
find a language where they can both communicate, but it
turns out the aliens do speak Spanish. I think they've
got sort of encyclopedic knowledge of all languages in the
(40:57):
Solar System and a radio uplink to their robot Tour.
They like they look things up. They like, in the
middle of the conversation, freeze Loriano and then look up
like Mexico to learn things about it. And then also
when he asks are you two from the circus? I
assume because of the strange way they're dressed, they have
(41:19):
to look up what a circus is, and this was
really funny. Tour gets back to them and says, well,
a circus is where animals do human jobs and humans
do animal jobs.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
I love that part.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
Yeah, yeah, but so oh, and then they're also like,
soh hey, Loriano, are all earthmen as gorgeous as you?
And he's like, no, I admit it. No, they're not,
because it should be stressed.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
All the males that they have kidnapped thus far are
literal monsters. Yeah, they're not even remotely human. They're big,
like scaly or shaggy or pulsating monsters, and so yeah,
like it makes sense that they see this guy and
they're like, well, well, heck, we can stop the project
right here.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
Right, So they split. They tell him they'll meet him later,
and then they go to their ship to phone home.
They're like, Commander, we have hunks and they're going to
bring him back to Venus, And so I think some
other stuff happens here. But then eventually we get back
to the home of Loreano, where he also he lives
with his little brother who he takes care of named Chewy,
(42:23):
and Chewey plays a decisive role in the climax of
the film in a big violent showdown with some monsters.
But eventually Gamma and Beta come by Loreano and Chewy's
house where they want to learn about love. Like they
show up at the door and they're like, hey, we
don't have love on our planet. Can you explain to
us what love is? And he explains love by singing
a song accompanied by a jukebox that's in his house.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
Yeah, I didn't know what to make of this. I mean,
it certainly pays off in the plot, but I was
asking myself, why would there be a jukebox in the house,
not only a jukebox, but a jukebox they have to
use a quarter on so they're having to pay to
use it. And I don't I'd never heard of this
(43:07):
being a thing, and maybe it wasn't. Maybe it just
makes sense in this film.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
Who would come and collect the quarters for the jukebox
inside your house?
Speaker 1 (43:15):
I don't know. But this man loves music, so maybe
it's a good investment.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
But I think here actually is where we start to
get a taste of conflict between the visiting aliens, because
because it starts to become clear that maybe both Gamma
and Beta want Loreano for themselves, but Loriano seems to
only love Gamma. He's just like not into Beta.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
Right, He's just not into her. And you know, he's
very upfront, you know, he's he's very clear that he's
not French. Yeah, he's not interested in two women. He
wants one woman and there has to be this mutual
attraction there. So yeah, he's just not feeling it with Beta.
Speaker 3 (43:59):
It's literally in the song, he's like singing lyrics about
how he says love is when two people love each other.
If there were three, that would be French.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
Yes, there are at least a couple of digs at
France in the picture, and also a really awesome dig
at Texas at one point.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
So the comedy's pretty much I forgot that part.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
It's something about, oh, they like big things in Texas,
what would they think of this? But I can't remember
what they were referencing.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
Oh, okay, was it a monster?
Speaker 1 (44:25):
Probably a monster, yeah, or spaceship or something.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
Loriano is also so lovable in the gentlemanly way. He
sort of explains things to Beta, so she also wants
him for herself, but he's like, hey, you know, you
can't make somebody love you. Look I like this other lady.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
Yeah, And luckily he has some songs prepared about the
nature of love, right, he sings them for us, and
so that's very They're great.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
Yeah, Now we haven't really gotten into the monsters yet,
so maybe we should explain the monster subplot and then
how that links up with what's going on with Loreano
and Gamma and Beta.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
Yeah, let's let's dive into these monsters and certainly jump
in if I if you have a different name than
I have, because I think the name did differ slightly.
So first of all, let's talk about this big reptilian
cyclops character. He's the one on that Italian movie poster
that I that I described earlier. This creature's name is
Uk spelled uk, and he is the King of the
(45:23):
Fire Planet.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
Yeah, and so he was also called Uk in mind.
And he speaks in a kind of brutish way. He
says like me king fire Planet.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
Yeah, and he's all actually, he's like, we're gonna fight,
you know. That's that's he's he's a very brutal kind
of an alien. But then we also have a cerebral alien.
And when I mean cerebril, I mean he's got a
big old brain, a big pulsating brain. This is the
Prince of Mars. This is in my version Tagoul.
Speaker 3 (45:52):
In mind, he I think he was Tao waal Okay.
But yeah, so he's the Prince of Mars. Yeah. I
think you only maybe find that out late. I'm not sure,
But at first he just looks kind of like a
I mean, I will say again, the monster design is great.
He's got these kind of translucent layers over his eyeballs
and you can see these obscure pupils moving around back
(46:15):
behind the translucent layer. It's a very creepy effect. I
want to just emphasize yet again, sometimes how strangely scary
the monsters are for this light musical, romantic comedy.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
Yeah, a lot of love went into the craft of
making these monsters. And yeah, you're not going to watch
this and think, oh my goodness, real monsters. You know,
they look like movie monsters of this time period, but
they're they're really good. I loved watching them do their thing.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
But he's kind of like the brain mutant from This
Island Earth, except maybe actually even more more lovely. He's
got the big brain head, the creepy eyes, and he's
got this this fish like kissy mouth, the kind of
trumpet lips that work back and forth in a disgusting manner.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
Yeah, all of these, you know, all of you can
certainly connect to other monster traditions and other films of
the time period. But I love how the stinct they
are in the stuff to blow your mind. Discord. Somebody
had shared a video about the sameness of monsters in
modern pictures, which is an interesting argument that maybe I
have some critiques on. But you can't. You cannot say
(47:21):
that these monsters are all the same in this picture.
They all feel distinct. They feel like they definitely arise
from different planets, from different different evolutionary paths, and you
get a taste of their culture as well.
Speaker 3 (47:35):
That's right. Yeah, so we had the brain mutant, he's
the Prince of Mars. But then there is also this
furry spider beetle. He's like a cross between a giant
killer insect and a squatch.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Yeah, this is outr of the Red Planet, and he's
ravenous and warlike, but plotting, not just brutal violence like
the King of the Fire Planet. No, he's more like,
you know, he's sneaky. He has some wonderful lines to
his this bit where he's speaking in this creepy voice,
and the translation I had was, I am Utyr of
(48:08):
the Red Planet, and I will devour your entrails by
the light of Utar and its seven moons. So good.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
Yeah, like I was saying, strangely dark and good like
creepy imagery. In my version, I think he was actually
called Crassus, which is the most different of names we've
reviewed so far. I'm not sure what explains that difference.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
Now, the other male alien in this picture is this
fleshless creature that kind of looks like a bear skeleton
that's kind of floating there. He has no name as
far as I can tell, and all we know is
that is his homeworld is a place where the people
gave up their material form ages ago, and now they're
(48:54):
just animate beast bones floating around and talking and laughing creepily.
Speaker 3 (48:59):
Yeah, they're rasping phantoms from beyond. Who are just who
are just pure embodied hate? And our fang bone buddy here, Yeah,
he's a mockery of life itself. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
The one thing they all have in common, aside from
being males, is that they all detest the fact that
they have been kidnapped. They do not like it at all.
But they're powerless against the superior technology of.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
Venus, Right, Gamma and Beta have it locked down, because
as powerful as these monsters are, they cannot overpower science,
which Gamma and Beta have on their side. They've got
some powerful technology that even a real, real strong, beefy
reptile cyclops can't overcome.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
But of course, as the plot develops, like we said,
love tears this duo apart. You know, Gamma is thirst
for blood. Yeah, love and thirst for blood. Beta gets
fed up and she resorts to her old ways. We
get this big reveal, which I think is an ideal
reveal for any movie. This is a great plot twist
(50:02):
for any film. Suddenly reveal that one of your main
characters is a space vampire. She gives into her dark
thirst is essentially you know, cursed by Gamma for her
for giving into this thirst. And then Betas basically decides, well, heck,
I'm just gonna let the males loose. I'm going to
(50:24):
strike a bargain with the males, and we're just going
to rampage over this planet and we're going to do
what we like with Earth.
Speaker 3 (50:31):
Yes, that's right. So Beta vamps a guy she like,
you know, there's some rancher guy, and she drinks his
blood and then when Gamma finds out, it's like, oh no,
that's a death sentence. Back on Venus again. Politics like
a vamporism is a political issue in the interplanetary politics
of this movie, where it's like a known crime that
(50:53):
has been observed and dealt with in the past, and
if you drink the blood of a human you will
face the death penalty on v.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
Yeah, it raises a lot of questions, Like I was wondering,
what is it like on the shadow planet? Is everyone
a vampire there? Or are these like former Venusians who
had to acquire some sort of vampiric infection in order
to survive on a shadow world? Like what's going on here?
There's something there, There's something under the surface. And it's
so tantalizing because it feels thought out, it feels whole.
(51:23):
It doesn't feel like just a you know, just a
scrap of sci fi thrown into this romance.
Speaker 3 (51:28):
Yeah. Again the movie, it's catching you off guard. Every
single twist and turn. We were screaming at this, just
an amazing twist.
Speaker 1 (51:36):
And when we say space vampire, she can turn into
a bat and it looks pretty good, looks pretty good
a big.
Speaker 3 (51:42):
Bat at one point. At one point, Lolo Gonzalez like
points at it because it's swooping down to attack Gamma
and he's like, look a vulture. But so yeah, from
here we get moving into the third act.
Speaker 1 (51:54):
Oh wait, wait, There's one more important bit here, and
that is that Beta has also a lot with the
Prince of Mars. So I don't know if they're going
to be married and rule over Mars. There's some talk
of this, though it's also pointed out by the Prince
of Mars that he doesn't particularly find her attractive. But
it seems like they're willing to work through this.
Speaker 3 (52:14):
Oh yeah, there's a great part where he's like, you
are very ugly, but I what does he say? He's like,
you are extremely ugly to me, but I admire your
dedication to hatred or something. Yes, And she's like, oh,
Like she's really excited by this observation.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
Yeah. Her plan now is so with the loose Males,
they're going to destroy the initial settlement of Earthlings and
then they're going to spread out and just take out
the rest of the planet. But she realizes if she's
going to lead this, she needs to she needs to
assign tasks to the different monsters, so she divides humanity
up among the loose males. So Utr gets the children,
(52:55):
that's the spider monster uk or Uk. He gets the animals,
and he seems fine with this. He's like, yes, let
me at those cows.
Speaker 3 (53:03):
I will eat cows.
Speaker 1 (53:04):
Yeah, and Beta and the Prince of Mars they're going
to I think they're just going to get the blood
of humanity. They they bond over their thirst for blood,
and they're like, let's do it. They seem to leave
the Bone Guy out of this entirely. He shows up,
lad does he? He disappears from the movie at one point.
He is in the scene where all the aliens, all
(53:25):
the loose males attack our hero, but he's not very
obvious in that scene. You kind of see clattering bones
in the background, like maybe they couldn't figure out how
to properly bring that to life on screen. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (53:36):
I really thought that the Bone Guy disappeared from the movie,
but yeah, he could be wrong, so I don't recall
him in the conclusion. Does anybody defeat him in the
final battle?
Speaker 1 (53:46):
No? No, he does kind of vanish at that point
because all the other monsters get some sort of a
cool death. So Ouk's face is burned off by I
think by the robot. They're kind of wrestling.
Speaker 3 (53:57):
There's a robot or burns in my thing? Yeah, m hm.
Speaker 1 (54:01):
The brainiac guy, the big brain guy is shot in
the eye by the boy with like a slingshot I think, right, yeah, yeah,
with a slingshot, and then his brain deflates like a
punctured volleyball. Yeah, that's a nice grizzly scene. Utyr the
spider Beast is forced to bite himself and kill himself
with his own venom brutal. Oh, and then Beta has
(54:23):
a pretty awesome death scene as well.
Speaker 3 (54:25):
Yeah, she goes to attack Gamma, and Gamma sort of
like dodges out of the way at the right time,
and then Beta gets staked with like vampire staked with
a branch that's sticking up.
Speaker 1 (54:36):
Yeah, and then all that, the Fleshless One is never defeated,
So I don't know, maybe he we don't know what
part of humanity was given over to him. Perhaps he
just went out and claimed it and he's the one
who wins the day.
Speaker 3 (54:49):
Oh but there's one last thing I almost don't want
to say because I don't want to spoil it because
it's so good. But there's a stinger right at the
end of the movie. If you don't want to hear it,
if you don't want to be spoiled, you want to
see the movie for yourself, maybe you should stop right here,
but if you're okay with it. The surprise at the
end where Tor and the jukebox fall in love. Yes,
amazing reveal.
Speaker 1 (55:09):
Yeah, because Tour makes eyes at the jukebox pretty early.
He's like hey uh. And then at the end they're
happy together. They're leaving the planet, they have found each other,
and they're flying away in a spaceship.
Speaker 3 (55:21):
Yeah. He like compliments the jukebox. He's like going up
to the glass saying, like, what beautiful bulbs you have?
Speaker 1 (55:26):
Yes. So at the end, everybody's happy, everyone's in love.
Monsters and the forces of evil have been defeated, and
it seems like political stability has been maintained for the
interplanetary community.
Speaker 3 (55:41):
Gamma in the end learns that it was wrong to
kidnap males from all the planets to take them back
to Venus. Instead, she's like, hey, look, I'm not going
back to Venus. I found a man on Earth i'm
in love with, so we're just going to hang out
here in Mexico.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
Yeah, though he no longer has a cow, so I'm
not sure what he's going to do. Oh yeah, you
know a cow, you know, and stripped to bones by.
Speaker 3 (56:02):
To bones with a stand. So yo. Yeah, the cyclops
reptile comes in and like bites the cow and then
the cow is just clean, like a bone model of
a cow on a stand with like bars.
Speaker 1 (56:15):
Yeah, they did a great job.
Speaker 3 (56:18):
But anyway, I was gonna say, Loriano, he's always going
to find a way to get by.
Speaker 1 (56:21):
It's true. Yeah, he's a survivor.
Speaker 3 (56:23):
So ship of monsters what a delight.
Speaker 1 (56:26):
Yeah, this one really is a delight. I highly recommend
viewing this now. I think I should also add that
all versions of this are apparently in black and white.
I don't think there's any evidence of an actual color
cut of the film. If you think back to our
Santo and the Tomb of Dracula episode, we discussed how
at least later, at least, you know, close to a
(56:48):
decade later, you had this tradition of shooting in black
and white and in color for different markets. I don't
think that was the case here. I ran across some
color images of the film, but I think these were
just colored stills that were used to promote it.
Speaker 3 (57:03):
Oh that would make sense.
Speaker 1 (57:04):
Yeah, but still, even in black and white, this film
is just it's so alive you'll just be drawn right now.
Speaker 3 (57:10):
People, or oh forever?
Speaker 1 (57:12):
All right? Well, if you would like to check out
additional episodes of Weird House Cinema, you can find it
in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. You'll
find that wherever you get your podcasts. Weird House Cinema
publishes on Friday. We're primarily a science podcast, and you'll
find our core episodes of the show Stuff to Blow
your Mind on Tuesdays and Thursdays, an Artifact episode on Wednesdays,
(57:37):
listener mail on Mondays, and Vault Entry over the weekend.
That's a rerun.
Speaker 3 (57:43):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. 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, just to sayalo,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (58:04):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob
Lamb and oh we have a fun one for you today.
This is our discussion of the nineteen sixty Mexican sci
fi comedy musical Ship of Monsters. So I hope you
enjoyed this one. This one originally published nine three, twenty
twenty one.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
And I'm Joe McCormick and Rob. I am so thrilled
to be talking about the movie that we've selected for today.
Lea Nave de los monstros or The Ship of Monsters,
an astoundingly, shockingly devastatingly awesome Mexican film from nineteen sixty
in the exquisite genre of science fiction, horror, romantic comedy,
(00:59):
music goal. This is a movie about women from the
planet Venus who are roaming deep space on a quest
for the hunkiest aliens in the galaxy and skip from
planet to planet collecting reptile cyclops hunks, kissy face brain
mutant hunks, fang head skeleton hunks until they finally meet
(01:20):
the hunkiest hunk of all a rascal writer of the
Chihuahua Planes, played by the incomparable Lallo Gonzalez aka l Pipoorro.
More on him later. This movie is so much fun.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, this was a real pleasant surprise when you brought
this title to our attention. I did like some preliminary research.
I looked it up in the Psychotronic Video Guide and
I was like, all right, it's listed there. Sounds like
it might be good. So I went into it expecting
there to be something awesome about it. You know, i'd
find a monster I liked or a performance I liked.
(01:55):
I was also expecting a certain amount of dead space
in there is sometimes the case with films from this
time period of this caliber, but this one is just
wall to wall excellence.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Yes, totally. They're not a dull moment. I mean, we've
we've watched some sci fi horror movies from the fifties that,
you know, they might have a really fun, goofy looking monster,
or they might have elements that work really well, not
of this Earth comes to mind. But then there'll be
other moments that are kind of some dead space, yeah,
or kind of dull square lug dude, it's just standing
(02:27):
around delivering dry dialogue. This movie has essentially none of that.
It's all killer, no filler exactly.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Oh man, Yeah, this one's This one's great.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Would this count as our first science fiction, horror, romantic
comedy musical.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yes, it definitely would, and it I guess you could.
You could rank it as one of our first true musicals.
Or it's as close to a true musical as we've covered. Certainly,
some of the movies we've looked at have complete songs
within them, but this one has multiple musical numbers. I
mean they're not I mean they're very they're definitely lip SYNCD. Yeah,
(03:04):
there's there's maybe only a limited amount of dance choreography
going on, but still there's enough music in this film
that it feels like a musical.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Oh no, I would defend the dance sequences. There's one
dance scene in this movie that is just divine. It's
the one later on where Lalo Gonzalez is dancing and
singing to the to the Vampire Queen. Spoiler we'll get
to some twists about this later on. But he's also
trying to steal her, like her technology, her space weapon,
and so they're dancing around and she's making eyes at him,
(03:34):
and he's singing a song about the seasons.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yeah, true, okay, but that that felt also very organic.
It felt like organic dancing that just came out of
the music in the moment.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Yeah. So of course, folks out there, you know, we
love our unlikely genre mashups. We've talked about supernatural wrestling movies,
supernatural biker movies, but this has got to be one
of the biggest like you know, suicide soft drink kind
ofups of all time. It's got really almost every movie
(04:03):
genre in the same thing. I think it is most
often referred to as a science fiction comedy, but it's
also definitely got horror elements. Like some of the things
about the monsters in this movie gets surprisingly dark in
a way that you would not expect for a light comedy.
And the musical numbers are just just wonderful.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yeah. Like when we say they're alien monsters and they're
hunks or males, you might think of' what's that movie
the Head Jeff Goldblum in it where they were all
alien hunks?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Oh? Is that Earth Girls or easy?
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah, you might be thinking of Earth Girls are easy,
but no, these are entirely non human aliens. Some of
them are not even remotely human, So just go ahead
and exercise that image from your mind.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
This movie might be called earth males or liars, but
lovable liars. But so anyway, having read about this movie
before I watched it, I expected the plot to be bonkers,
which it absolutely It is just like Goober's Inside Out.
This movie will give you hard boiled egg eyes. But
also the musical numbers are charming, the comedy scenes are
(05:10):
really funny. It just works on almost every level. It
pretty much rules. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, the humor I found held up pretty well. I
was laughing at some of the intentional humor in this picture.
I also have to throw in that, oh man, I
love a good movie poster, and if you look around
for movie posters for this film, you'll find some kind
of boring images. But there's also a terrific image of
(05:36):
the sort of lizard cyclops monster, way bigger in the
poster than he is in the film, and he's holding
a woman in one hand like palm, like a baseball,
and it's got this wonderful orange and red look going on.
It's absolutely beautiful. And in fact I showed this to
my wife, and she has agreed that if we can
(05:57):
find this, we are going to put it on a
wall in our house. It's just that lovely.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Godspeed on your quest. I hope you do find it now.
You've been having trouble, right, it seems like merch for
this movie is rather scarce on the ground.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yeah. Yeah, so far, all I've seen is somebody in
Italy selling this poster on eBay. So I'm going to
continue to look around a little bit.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Now. I think this poster is the Italian poster for
the movie, right, because it's the title is a little
bit different. It's Lenave del Monstrim.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Yes, that would be it. Yeah, that now I think. Yeah,
I think I've also seen maybe the Italian DVD has
this art on it. So yes, I highly recommend looking
this up. It's just gorgeous.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Maybe we can hit a little montage of some audio
from the films Bigle and Our Well.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
I hope that conveyed at least some of the magic
of this of this this film, because there's a lot
visually going on here.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Are Are you ready to talk about some of the
people involved.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Yeah, let's get into it.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Okay. So the director of this movie was named Rogalio A. Gonsalez,
and I was looking around for good biographical info about him.
I couldn't find much in English, but I found a
biography in Spanish on the website of the National Autonomous
University of Mexico website, and I had to run this
through Google Translate. So I hope nothing significant is getting lost,
(07:58):
but just to summarize some of the stuff that covered
in there. Gonzalez was a Mexican actor, director, radio host,
radio producer, film producer, and screenwriter who worked throughout the
Golden age of Mexican cinema. He was born on January
twenty seventh, nineteen twenty two, in Monterey, Nuevo Leon as
(08:18):
Antonio Rogalio Gonzalez Villarial, and apparently in his younger years,
Gonzalez was preparing for a career in medicine, but at
some point he got that movie bug. He quit his
studies and he went into the film industry, first as
an actor and a screenwriter in the forties, and then
as a director beginning in the fifties. And he directed
(08:39):
a ton of movies in the fifties through the early eighties,
though I don't think I have seen any of them.
Other than this one.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Now, yeah, I agree. I don't think I've seen anything
on this list, though there's some interesting looking titles. I
noticed that his last picture in eighty three was Mexico
two thousand, which, yes, some sort of a sci fi
political commentary, sad attire sort of a thing.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Yeah, And there was one title of his I came
across that I don't remember if he wrote this one
or directed it. What was called like the Skeleton of
Missus so and so, I don't.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Know, Missus Morales. Oh, yeah, okay, Yeah, And I've also
heard that Conquistador di la Luna is also supposed to
be rather weird.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Oh, Conqueror of the Moon. Yeah, Actually, Michael Weldon mentions
that one.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Yeah, he mentions that as being a stand out weird
as well.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
I was trying to find a copy of this that
could be watched. The only thing I can find is
it's on a DVD that you can get somewhere that
I think does not have dubbing or English subtitles as
far as I can tell, so, but I don't know.
It looks so visually strange that it might be worth it.
Even if you don't speak Spanish, you can probably kind
of suss out the plot. Yeah, But anyway, a little
(09:47):
more about Gonzalez's Regalio Gonzalez's biography. There are actually two
major Gunzaleses in this movie, but Rogalio Gonzalez the director.
He was also a union leader in the Director's Division
of the Mexican Union of Cinema Production Workers, and he
passed away due to a tragic highway accident in nineteen
eighty four. But as for personal descriptions of his sort
(10:09):
of you know, his presence and personality, the website I
mentioned cites a description of Gonzalez from a magazine called
Cinevos in the year nineteen forty nine, so this would
have been before he started directing, back when he was
just an actor and a writer. But the description through
translation goes like this, He has a clear intelligence and
(10:31):
his sentences are logical and precise, despite the passion he
puts into them. He is tall, with blue eyes, thin,
almost transparent. Sometimes he hunches over as if overwhelmed by
excessive work, since he writes at all hours, sometimes living
exclusively at night. Oh wow, Now this profile was written
(10:51):
many years before he made Ship of Monsters. Ship of
Monsters came out in nineteen sixty. Again, I think this
was in nineteen forty nine, but I like to imagine
that it was this nocturnal consciousness that birthed the physical
forms of the eye popping monsters in this movie, the
furry Spider Beetle, the irritable Lizard Cyclops, the Kissy Face
brain Mutant, and the wonderful Bone Boy. So, like I said,
(11:16):
I have not seen any of Gonsalez's other movies, but
given this, he's got a real talent for extremely visually charming,
tight well paced cinema.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Yes, yeah, absolutely. Now a quick note about the individuals
with writing credits on this film. First of all, the
story credit goes to Jose Maria Fernandez Unsein, who lived
nineteen twenty one through two thousand and three, an Argentinian
film director, screenwriter, and playwright who was exiled to Mexico
(11:47):
after the overthrow of Juan Toon. This was because Unsan
had connections to Eva Peron, so very prolific. He has
I think one hundred and twenty two writing credits on IMDb.
But then adaptation writing credit goes to Alfredo Verrella, who
lived nineteen twelve through nineteen eighty six. This is a
guy who wrote various westerns and now according to IMDb,
(12:11):
this is definitely the Mexican born Alfredo Verrella. But there's
also an Argentinian novelist and communist journalist named Alfredo Verrella
who lived at the same time, like with birth and
death dates just like two years off. So I was
a little confused by that at first. I was trying
to figure out could this be given the Argentina connection here,
but it seems to be two different people.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Okay, Now coming to the cast, this movie again just
has a wonderful cast, and we should start with the
lead actor Ulalio Gonzalez, also known as Lalo Gonzalez, also
known by the nickname El Pipouro. And I was trying
to look it up. What does that really mean? I
don't know if it means something different in the context
(12:53):
of his nickname. But the only thing I could really
find is a translation is that this word means bassoonist,
like the player of a bassoon. I'm not sure what
to make of that. But Lalo Gonzalez was a musician.
He was widely known as a comic, actor and a singer.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah, Gonzalez was a musician, comedian, actor, director and producer.
And in this film, yeah, he's playing this Pipooro character,
a kind of stereotypical North Mexican rancher. This was an
immensely popular character. It was central to his musical identity
and it helped make him the face of Musica Nortegna
(13:31):
during the Golden Age of Mexican cinema. Now, Musica at
Nortegna is the regional music of Northern Mexico. That's essentially
what it means, traditionalized, traditionally utilizing the accordion the bajo
sexto guitar, and it apparently emerged in the nineteenth century
(13:51):
out of elements of traditional Mexican music along with German,
Austrian and Czech folk music, very popular in Northern Mexican
and also among many Mexican Americans. So within this genre
and within Mexican cinema all this period, Pipporo Here Gonzalez
is a legend. I think it's important to realize, like
(14:12):
this is this is a film that is showcasing somebody
that was already at or near the peak of their
their initial popularity. Though this is a guy that would
remain important throughout his life.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Right and so as we're saying so much about this
movie is great, but a lot of it really rests
on the incredible star power of La Lo Gonzalez. He
is a I would say like he has a once
in a generation kind of star presence. His screen charisma
is overwhelming. He is just an absolutely lovable liar rascal,
(14:47):
and the personality it just sort of like drips out
of the TV screen, like fifteen minutes into the movie.
Rachel and Rachel and I watched it together and she
adored the movie as well, but we were immediate just
like googling other La Low Gonzales movies, we wanted to
see everything he was in. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything
else he did involving monsters. So this might be the apex,
(15:11):
but we'll see.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, his humor really translates even without
an actual like I mean, with translation. Obviously we had subtitles.
I think we each had slightly different subtitles, as is
kind of becoming a tradition here, but you still it
still oozes through, you know. Like you say, he's very charismatic,
he's very funny. I think you would find him humorous
(15:34):
even if you didn't know what he was saying.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
I'm not aware that this movie has ever been dubbed
into English, but it's the kind of performance where I
would recommend watching it with the Spanish audio with subtitles,
just because, like the line delivery is so funny. It's
like you can hear that. It's funny even if you
don't speak Spanish, right, right.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
And then also the songs that he's singing there, I
think always part of the plot, so you need to
know what he's singing as well well.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Right, So, if anyone.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Out there wants to learn more about Nortegna, then there
are various sources you can go to. But I was
looking around and there's actually a book by Catherine Ragland
titled Musica Nortegna Mexican Americans Creating a Nation between Nations.
This came out in two thousand and nine. In this book,
she explores the topic in depth, but I found this
(16:24):
particular summary rather interesting. Quote. Musical Nortaigna, a musical genre
with its roots in the folk ballad traditions of northern
Mexico and the Texas Mexican border region, has become a
hugely popular musical style in the US, particularly among Mexican immigrants,
featuring evocative songs about undocumented border crossings, drug traffickers, and
(16:46):
the plight of immigrant workers. Musical no'artagna has become the
music of a quote nation between nations, and she also
points out that it's sometimes seen this particular genre as
being maybe less technically refined compared to other genres of
Mexican of like folk music, but it is seen as
often seen as being imbued with more feeling, And a
(17:07):
lot of this seems to come from the idea that
this was the music of working people who had to
make time for music in the evenings and then put
all their passion into that.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
That's true, and a lot of the greatest folk music
traditions do have origins like this. They're not from people
who were, you know, full time professional musicians, but you know,
consists of songs and structures and elements created by people
who were, you know, just like regular working people who
were playing music for entertainment in the evenings. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Yeah, So anyway, I was very interested to learn this.
So if anyone out there, if you know a great
deal more about Nortaigna and you have some experience with it,
do write in let us know. I'd love to know
more about this interesting genre of music.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
But the excellent cast does not stop there. So Lolo
Gonzalez is playing our main earthling for the movie. He
is Loreano is his character's name. But there are also
a couple of other major characters who are Aliens, these
Ladies from Beyond, and they are played by Anna Bertha
Leppe and Loraina of Alaskez.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Yes. Lepe plays Gamma and Velasquez plays Beta. Both of
our Venusians are played by former Miss Mexicos.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Now, I know you could easily make this mistake, but
I want to be very pedantic about this. Lorain of
Alaskaz's character Beta, though she initially starts the movie on
the planet Venus, she is not a Venusian.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
That's true.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
That's true, they say. They say she is a daughter
of or the planet of Shadows, and so she's an
alien on Venus at the beginning of the movie and
then travels with the Venusian Gamma on her mission.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Yeah. One of the really delectable things about this film
is that there seems to be so much world building
going on in it that, on the surface would be
completely unnecessary for a dumb monster movie that is basically
just a vehicle for a popular musician, and you know,
in a couple of very attractive actors.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
This is a light, romantic musical comedy with killer monsters
in it.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Yeah, and yet you get a sense that somebody puts
some thought into this about like, Okay, what is Venus's
role in the Solar system and realms beyond the Solar System?
How is their power arrived? Yeah, because we ultimately have
an interplanetary civilization outlined within this film. Yeah, all right,
well let's talk about these these two individuals. First of all,
(19:32):
Lepe who again plays Gama. She lived nineteen thirty four
through twenty thirteen, and she was a big deal. She
was a stunning star of Mexico's Golden Age of cinema
and a runner up representing Mexico in the nineteen fifty
three Miss Universe pageant. Other credits of hers include Renee
Cardona's Neutron Traps The Invisible Killers from nineteen sixty five
(19:55):
that stars also stars a guy by the name of
Jorge Riviero, who is in a film called Where Wolf
that I think you're familiar with.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Oh Jorge Rivero. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Yeah. She was also in three Santo movies Santo Versus
The Diabolical Brain from sixty three, Santo in The Hotel
of Death from sixty three, and Santo Versus The King
of Crime from sixty two.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Okay, gotta put those on the list. Which one are
we doing first? Diabolical Brain? That sounds good.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
I don't know. I was looking. I think these all
sound like maybe they're more crime based Santo movies. You know.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Oh, diabolical brain isn't like a huge alien brain. It
might be like a smart criminal.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Yeah. Now, Velasquez, who again plays Beta. She was born
in nineteen thirty seven. I think as of this recording
is still around. She was also a big deal during
Mexico's Golden Age of cinema. She was in two different
Santo movies, both in sixty two, Santo Versus the Zombies
and Santo Versus The Vampire Women, and in that she
(20:57):
plays Zorina, Queen of the Vampires.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Oh, okay, there's gonna be some crossover here. Warning, I
think I already said something to this effect. We will
be spoiling some minor twists in this film. I hope
you're okay with that. And so here's the spoiler. There
is just a delightful twist about halfway through this movie
where Lorain of Alaskaz's character is revealed to be a
space vampire from the planet of the Vampires. In fact,
(21:23):
she's going to become the Queen of the Vampires by
h I don't recall the exact plan, suck in everybody's
blood and kidnapping Lolo Gonzalez, I think.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Right, And there's some politics in there, you know, like
marrying the Prince of Mars and so forth.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Oh yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Yeah, but yeah, she's a natural to play a vampire queen.
You know, she's got the look, she's got the charisma.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
And she I gotta say she is so good in
this movie and in a comedy performance, because even in
moments where she doesn't have any lines, she's really funny.
She's often the funniest actor in a scene just by
doing hilarious things with her face, Like she does these
weird I want that eyes at things, you know, like
(22:04):
at weapons, or at monsters, or at a jukebox or
at Pipoo when he's dancing and singing a song about
the seasons. She just does these eyes that had Rachel
and I shrieking with laughter.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Yeah, she's really good. And you know, sometimes in films
of this caliber, you have a role like this, go
to somebody who just kind of stands there. But no,
she's never still, if not physically, at least like energy wise,
there's always something going on in her head. She was
also in Renee Cardona's nineteen sixty three non Santo wrestling
picture Doctor of Doom, in which she stars as female
(22:40):
wrestler or luchadora Gloria Venus, who has to stop an evil,
mad scientist with an ape named Gomar from carrying out
sadistic brain transplant experiments.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
What yeah, well, and she's Gloria Venus and in this
movie she's on a mission sponsored by the planet Venus.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
It makes me think that this film was a big
hit or at least impressed enough people where they're like this,
this guy's great. We need a we're gonna make a movie.
We need a vampire queen. Bam, she's in. Or hey,
we're thinking about having a Venusian, let's put her in.
She has some sort of tie to Venus because she
went on to play that Glory of Venus character again
in nineteen sixty four as wrestling women versus the Aztec Mummy.
(23:20):
So yeah, a number of interesting films are coming up
with these two.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Beta is a queen, Loraina Velasquez rocks the screen in
this film.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Now we also have an actual queen in this we
have the Queen of Venus. Oh, and she is played
by Quinzuelo Frank who lived nineteen twelve through nineteen ninety one.
And she has two Santo credits as well, sixty seven
Santo versus the Martian Invasion in sixty eight Santo's versus
the Villains of the Ring. I haven't seen that one,
(23:51):
but that one sounds like the most obvious title. Of course,
Santo is going to fight villains of the Ring.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
I don't know. I'd also want to fight them.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Yeah, she was also she was active much earlier. She
was in I think two different nineteen forty two Mexican
adaptations of first The Three Musketeers but then also The
Count of Money Cristo. Now, another great thing about this
(24:18):
film is that has wonderful costumes, has wonderful monster effects.
So I had to look up, well, who's behind this?
And I'm not sure exactly. Sometimes the monster credits are
kind of lost, especially in limited credits for a film
like this, But Julio Chavez is credited for costumes, and
I noticed that, among many other credits, they did costumes
(24:39):
and wardrobe on nineteen sixty nine's Santo w and the
Treasure of Dracula, which was covered several months back.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
So this is a Santo heavy connection section.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Yeah. Yeah, And when it comes to the music, we
have another direct reference to Santo and the Treasure of
Dracula because Sergio Guerrero, who lived nineteen twenty one through
two thousand and eight, he did the music in this
which has some neat sci fi sounds in there in
places which I liked. But this is a guy with
two hundred and fifty two composer credits on IMDb, including
(25:10):
such Mexican films as Neutron Traps, The Invisible Killers, Le Sombra, Viingadora,
and again Santo in the Treasure of Dracula. So yes,
lots of Santo connections here.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Now, if Guerrero here did the music, I don't know
if that necessarily would include other types of sound design,
but I did want to highlight that this movie has
some really good sound design, Like there are moments where
the monsters are speaking, and it's not necessarily music, though
I do love the music in this movie. But it's
like the way the vocal effects they've done on the voiceovers,
(25:42):
for when the puppets are talking, giving them these raspy
voices as if they're emanating from the caves of Hades.
You know, just great monster voices.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Yeah, some wonderful Spanish monster voices in this it's pretty great. Well,
should we get into the plot a little bit here?
We've been talking it up. Let's tell folks what this
movie is about.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Okay, Now, we're not going to do a full scene
by scene on this one. We might go a little
more detail early on and then later for the later
parts of the movie, just talk about some highlights and ideas.
But I do want to get very granular with the
introduction because I think the very intro of the movie
really sets the move fast and break things tone. I
would say, in the much better sense of that phrase,
(26:25):
that's the attitude this film has toward plotting. So the
very first thing we see is an atom, you see,
like the old school representation of the atomic nucleus with
all of its orbitals, and the narrator says, this is
an atom, then it shows us a planet. At first
I thought it was the Moon, but I think it's
supposed to be planet Earth. And then it says, this
(26:46):
is the universe. Then it goes on and atom is
infinitely small, the universe is infinitely large. However, everything is
ruled by the same laws. Man has learned to release
the power of the atom, and with it wants to
conquer the universe. Some really elegant symmetry in this opening narration.
(27:06):
This is almost a strange poem of sorts. And then
the narration goes on it says, but he dreams of
leaving the Earth and leaving his seed on a distant planet,
perhaps with the subconscious desire of starting a new race,
one that will remain ignorant of atomic power and warfare. Right,
so the idea is that, okay, all species maybe that
(27:29):
discover atomic energy and atomic weapons, eventually we'll want to
go sort of create a new version of themselves on
a planet that is blissfully free of this terrible knowledge.
And of course, throughout the well this we're getting a
lot of we're getting stock footage of mushroom clouds from
atomic tests. But then it goes on to say, and
(27:49):
that is a planet known to us. So here we
cut to Venus. It says, let's go on a characteristically
dark night to Venus, and we see the these creepy
images of lights with a hazy four ground, so they're
just kind of these very fuzzily defined lights in the
background and mist and darkness with these figures and cloaks
(28:13):
wandering into the frame, and it's actually quite creepy. It is.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
I found this quite evocative early on. Now I understand
some of these space scenes we see early in the
film or are taken from nineteen fifty seven's Road to
the Star as a Soviet film about the possible future
of spaceflight. But I'm not sure about these kind of dark,
hooded figures here with the cosmic backdrop.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Yeah, I don't know about those. I do think, yeah,
I think you're right. I was also reading that some
of these early scenes are just lifted from other films.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
One thing I want to add is that you could
easily you could be watching this and think, all right,
here's our sort of out there's introduction, but then we're
going to go onto another movie and this will have
little more nothing to do with where we're going. But
it does come back up again. It seems to be
in you know, it seems to be stitched into the
plot itself, and it's not just some thing that's just
tacked on the front to keep us in our seats
(29:03):
for a few minutes.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
That's right. I would say that actually this is this
is pretty coherent. As as bonkers as the plot of
this movie is, it all kind of ties together, like
it makes sense even though it's nuts. So, okay, we
learned that the planet Venus is preparing for the most
important interplanetary space flight in their history, and then we
get shots of the surface of Venus where we see
(29:25):
a bunch of women lining up in military formations outside
of a rocket ship and there is nary a man
in sight. So what's going on here? Well, we get
some exposition. The region to Venus comes out. I think
she's the queen of the planet and she's addressing two women.
So you have Annabertha Leppe and Lorraine of Alaskas as
the characters Gamma and Beta, respectively, and they are being
(29:48):
given a mission. Gamma is the commander in chief of
the interplanetary spacecraft. So the region of Venus explains the situation,
and the situation is dire. She says, Okay, the last
male on our planet is dead. They're all gone. They
are dead due to an atomic scourge. And so she
is giving a mission to these two brave space pilots.
(30:10):
They're going to fly around and go to all the
planets and collect the most perfect male specimens to bring
back to Venus. And then Gamma says, I will bring
you the most beautiful male specimens. The most perfect of
them will sire the new generations of Venus. And then
we get the part I alluded to earlier where the
regent says that Beta, played by Lorrain of Alaskaz, she's
(30:35):
a foreigner to Venus. She's the daughter of or the
planet of shadows, and she has been assigned to travel
alongside Gamma on her mission because she's the greatest space
navigator on the planet. And then the last thing she
says to them is in you we trust. Question about
Gamma's outfit. Did you ever figure out what the thing
on her shoulder is? Oh?
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Yeah, it kind of has this kind of tassly feathery thing,
but also might be an antenna. I'm not sure. Maybe
she has like wireless in the suit. I'm not sure.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
I couldn't tell if it was supposed to be decorative
or supposed to be technology. But yeah, she has this
array of sprigs of something coming off of her left
shoulder and I don't know what they are, and they're
there like the whole movie. She changes outfits, but that's
always there. It looks kind of like she had some
of those like wire fairy wings, but somebody crumpled them
up and moved them all to one shoulder. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's stylish. I mean that seems
to have been the main intent here is that these
women should look extremely stylish. As they travel through space.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
They look super cool. And it is announced via footage
from another movie that the orbits have aligned and so
it is time for them to depart. So we see
Gamma and Beta. They enter the interior of their spaceship,
which maybe we should describe because a lot of the
action of the film will take place here. So there
are like two pilot seats where they're operating these big
control panels. I guess Beta is the nownavigator and Gammas
(32:01):
the commander, and then behind them there is all this
heavy machinery which looked like real heavy machinery, not just
like something on the set. I don't know what they
were filming. Maybe they were generators of some kind, like
these big years working back and forth.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Yeah, the set is great, it definitely. They do a
great job establishing it as the command center of the spaceship.
I got kind of tones of observatory from parts of it,
but I'm not really sure, because clearly huge parts of
it are an actual set, so it's not just that
they went into an observatory or into a factory and
started filming there. There's also some really elaborate stuff they constructed,
(32:39):
so I don't know.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Yeah, there are these big clusters of balls up on
the ceiling, like gigantic grapes. I don't know what those
are supposed to be. And then there is a big
platform looking out over the rest of the set like
a preacher's pulpit, and there's I don't know, various weird
glass bulbs and files in the background, and just rivets
(33:00):
and metal everywhere. It's cool. And then while the credits play,
we see them setting down on strange worlds, including this
one world that's full of crooked spires of rock that
are sort of the same size and shape as the
rocket that lands, except you know, they're stony and jagged,
and I guess this must be happening off screen. But
during this credit sequence we're to understand that they're out
(33:22):
there collecting all of the mails along their journey, which
they tend to keep frozen in giant cubes of ice.
And they accomplish this by operating a camera flash at them.
And it made me wonder which of the male monsters
comes from the spike rock planet.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
I don't know, it could be home to. Well, we
know this is not the surface of Mars because we
know what Mars looks.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Like, so right, that's where brain Boy comes from.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Yeah, yeah, it's not the Prince of Mars, so it
must be. It must be one of the others. This
would be a suitable planet, and perhaps for the skeletal,
fleshless being.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
Yeah Billy Bones.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Yeah, but we'll get him in a minute now.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
Another major devil on the initial premise is that somewhere
along the way, Gamma and Beta acquire an alien robot
called Tor, and Tor is a major helper of their
mission as they go along. He wasn't theirs originally, but
they say that they again in a strange bit of
just just ever so briefly alluded to world building. They
say that they collected him from a dead planet where
(34:21):
all of the humans had annihilated themselves with atomic war.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Yeah. He's key to the whole operation though, because he
has the ability to freeze the monsters in blocks of
some sort of ice. Otherwise, I mean, they could still
handle the monsters. They prove that later on they have
space flamethrowers, but this is a huge help.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
Well, now I think they can also freeze the monsters
with their little camera flashbox.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
I think, oh, can they?
Speaker 3 (34:46):
Okay, But he's very helpful for he's very helpful because
he contains these encyclopedias of knowledge about all the planets.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
Right, yeah, that's right, And these are often really funny
sometimes with some you know, kind of I guess political
satire thrown in there, right when they like asking about
Mexico and stuff.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
Right, yes, So, so eventually the robot tells them their
spacecraft is suffering mechanical trouble and they got to set
down on the nearest planet for repairs. Well, what's the
nearest planet? The robot says, it is Intarsis one thirty
five sub two planetoid of the fourth order. And so
how does the robot know what this planet is? Well,
(35:27):
he says, you know, before the men of his planet
all destroyed themselves with nuclear war, they left these encyclopedias
of knowledge inside his computer brain. And the men of
his planet had originally wanted to explore this planetoid Intarsis
one thirty five sub two. They wanted to explore it,
but then they learned a bit of bit more about
it and ultimately decided it was not worth it because quote,
(35:51):
it is inhabited by beings that seemed to be intelligent,
but they do not know what they want and enjoy
destroying each other. And of course what planets he talking.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
About, it's us and it's pretty spot on.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
Yeah. So Gamma and Beta perform a perilous emergency landing
and they set down in the Mexican state of Chihuahua,
which is in the central north. It's along the border
with Texas and New Mexico, and so they're setting down
their spaceship and as that's happening, we get our first
meeting with La Loo Gonzales as a character named Loreano.
(36:25):
What's he doing? Well, of course he is out riding
his horse and singing a love song to nobody in particular.
And the first scene where we meet him, you just
kind of instantly fall in love with this g Like
he sees the rocket ship, he thinks it's a shooting star,
and he makes a wish and his wish is for
is for quote, I hope for a pretty girl, but
one who loves me. And then he sings a song
(36:48):
about wishing on this star to find a woman to
fall in love with. In my translation, he kept saying
he was searching for a divine love. But then the
other half of the song is about how everybody incorrectly
believes that he is no good. So the lyrics include
things like they say, I'm a crook and a liar
and I chicken out in the end, but it's not true.
(37:09):
And then you get you remember when when he gives
the horse guarantee, he's like, if you don't believe me,
ask my horse. My horse will tell you I never
tell a lie. And then the horse starts like bucking
and neighing.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
Oh yeah, yeah. There's some fun stuff, like when you
first see this character, there might be a temptation to think, Okay,
this is going to be just a shining White Night.
You know that he's going to be a pure hero,
but then you quickly realize, no, he's a bard, if
not an actual rogue, but a very funny one. Like
he's the comedy begins to shine through, and there's some
(37:41):
stuff with him, like the way he's riding his horse,
either intentionally or accidentally, but I believe it must be
part of the character. You get the idea that he's
not that good at riding the horse. There's some awkward dismounts,
which adds to the comedic nature of this character.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
You know. I was trying They may have said it
in the movie and it went past me. Was trying
to figure out what does Loreano do. I was thinking,
maybe he's supposed to be a rancher, but you don't
really see much about that. Is he just a professional liar?
Speaker 1 (38:08):
He has a cow, and we spend a lot of
time with that cow. Yeah, so I think he's technically
a rancher. Maybe that's part of the joke, is that
he's because the character, I'm to understand his performance character
is supposed to be a North Mexican rancher. But maybe
the joke is okay, he only has this one cow
and it may or might not even be that good
(38:30):
of a milk producer, depending on the joke.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
But basically all he does is like ride around singing
and then go into town and tell awesome lies. Yes,
so we see him go into a bar and everybody's
drinking and he's telling these tall tales about like how
he foiled a robbery with a bunch of bandits and
he killed two bandits with one bullet left in his
gun by holding a knife in front of the barrel
(38:54):
and splitting the bullet in half so it hit them both.
And then he starts shifting from here to the increasingly
bizarre stories about unusual bears and then dinosaurs. Did your
translation include dinosaurs?
Speaker 1 (39:07):
It did? Yes, Okay. I wasn't entirely sure what to
make of that. At first, I thought maybe it was
a joke about chickens, and I was thinking, oh, this
is actually scientifically accurate in some respects. But then there's
the thing about dinosaurs without bones, and I'm not sure,
so maybe something's something is ultimately lost in translation. But
it still came off as very fun and funny.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
It seems like normally he just he is wont to
tell stories about dinosaurs out by the sawmill, dinosaurs without bones,
boneless boneless buffalo dinosaurs.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
But in this whole situation, he almost sort of gets
into a duel. Yeah yeah, like a shootout, shootout a scenarios.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
Name Rubiano or something, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Yeah, but then kind of talks his way, jokes his
way out of it. So they do a great job
of establishing his character, like, no, you know, everybody loves him,
but also everybody's a little sick of him. You know,
he's he's a likable guy, but maybe he's not really
doing the most important job in town, whatever it may be.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
You almost get the impression that if he were to
encounter real monsters later, nobody would believe him because he
has cried dinosaur too many times.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
True.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
Meanwhile, after Gamma and Beta land on Earth, they come
out to explore their surroundings and there is this hilarious
scene where they just appear to get extreme pleasure from
the discovery of breathable atmosphere.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Yes, yep, this is a great part. My wife actually
walked in the room and saw this part and she
was laughing as well. They're just totally turned on by
this planet's atmosphere and they do a great job of
playing this up.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
Yeah, and so the two aliens come across Loreano on
the road while he's out wandering, and they are just
immediately smitten, right, as I guess nearly anyone would be.
But so there are some jokes about them trying to
find a language where they can both communicate, but it
turns out the aliens do speak Spanish. I think they've
got sort of encyclopedic knowledge of all languages in the
(40:57):
Solar System and a radio uplink to their robot Tour.
They like they look things up. They like, in the
middle of the conversation, freeze Loriano and then look up
like Mexico to learn things about it. And then also
when he asks are you two from the circus? I
assume because of the strange way they're dressed, they have
(41:19):
to look up what a circus is, and this was
really funny. Tour gets back to them and says, well,
a circus is where animals do human jobs and humans
do animal jobs.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
I love that part.
Speaker 3 (41:30):
Yeah, yeah, but so oh, and then they're also like,
soh hey, Loriano, are all earthmen as gorgeous as you?
And he's like, no, I admit it. No, they're not,
because it should be stressed.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
All the males that they have kidnapped thus far are
literal monsters. Yeah, they're not even remotely human. They're big,
like scaly or shaggy or pulsating monsters, and so yeah,
like it makes sense that they see this guy and
they're like, well, well, heck, we can stop the project
right here.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
Right, So they split. They tell him they'll meet him later,
and then they go to their ship to phone home.
They're like, Commander, we have hunks and they're going to
bring him back to Venus, And so I think some
other stuff happens here. But then eventually we get back
to the home of Loreano, where he also he lives
with his little brother who he takes care of named Chewy,
(42:23):
and Chewey plays a decisive role in the climax of
the film in a big violent showdown with some monsters.
But eventually Gamma and Beta come by Loreano and Chewy's
house where they want to learn about love. Like they
show up at the door and they're like, hey, we
don't have love on our planet. Can you explain to
us what love is? And he explains love by singing
a song accompanied by a jukebox that's in his house.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
Yeah, I didn't know what to make of this. I mean,
it certainly pays off in the plot, but I was
asking myself, why would there be a jukebox in the house,
not only a jukebox, but a jukebox they have to
use a quarter on so they're having to pay to
use it. And I don't I'd never heard of this
(43:07):
being a thing, and maybe it wasn't. Maybe it just
makes sense in this film.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
Who would come and collect the quarters for the jukebox
inside your house?
Speaker 1 (43:15):
I don't know. But this man loves music, so maybe
it's a good investment.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
But I think here actually is where we start to
get a taste of conflict between the visiting aliens, because
because it starts to become clear that maybe both Gamma
and Beta want Loreano for themselves, but Loriano seems to
only love Gamma. He's just like not into Beta.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
Right, He's just not into her. And you know, he's
very upfront, you know, he's he's very clear that he's
not French. Yeah, he's not interested in two women. He
wants one woman and there has to be this mutual
attraction there. So yeah, he's just not feeling it with Beta.
Speaker 3 (43:59):
It's literally in the song, he's like singing lyrics about
how he says love is when two people love each other.
If there were three, that would be French.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
Yes, there are at least a couple of digs at
France in the picture, and also a really awesome dig
at Texas at one point.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
So the comedy's pretty much I forgot that part.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
It's something about, oh, they like big things in Texas,
what would they think of this? But I can't remember
what they were referencing.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
Oh, okay, was it a monster?
Speaker 1 (44:25):
Probably a monster, yeah, or spaceship or something.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
Loriano is also so lovable in the gentlemanly way. He
sort of explains things to Beta, so she also wants
him for herself, but he's like, hey, you know, you
can't make somebody love you. Look I like this other lady.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
Yeah, And luckily he has some songs prepared about the
nature of love, right, he sings them for us, and
so that's very They're great.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
Yeah, Now we haven't really gotten into the monsters yet,
so maybe we should explain the monster subplot and then
how that links up with what's going on with Loreano
and Gamma and Beta.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
Yeah, let's let's dive into these monsters and certainly jump
in if I if you have a different name than
I have, because I think the name did differ slightly.
So first of all, let's talk about this big reptilian
cyclops character. He's the one on that Italian movie poster
that I that I described earlier. This creature's name is
Uk spelled uk, and he is the King of the
(45:23):
Fire Planet.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
Yeah, and so he was also called Uk in mind.
And he speaks in a kind of brutish way. He
says like me king fire Planet.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
Yeah, and he's all actually, he's like, we're gonna fight,
you know. That's that's he's he's a very brutal kind
of an alien. But then we also have a cerebral alien.
And when I mean cerebril, I mean he's got a
big old brain, a big pulsating brain. This is the
Prince of Mars. This is in my version Tagoul.
Speaker 3 (45:52):
In mind, he I think he was Tao waal Okay.
But yeah, so he's the Prince of Mars. Yeah. I
think you only maybe find that out late. I'm not sure,
But at first he just looks kind of like a
I mean, I will say again, the monster design is great.
He's got these kind of translucent layers over his eyeballs
and you can see these obscure pupils moving around back
(46:15):
behind the translucent layer. It's a very creepy effect. I
want to just emphasize yet again, sometimes how strangely scary
the monsters are for this light musical, romantic comedy.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
Yeah, a lot of love went into the craft of
making these monsters. And yeah, you're not going to watch
this and think, oh my goodness, real monsters. You know,
they look like movie monsters of this time period, but
they're they're really good. I loved watching them do their thing.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
But he's kind of like the brain mutant from This
Island Earth, except maybe actually even more more lovely. He's
got the big brain head, the creepy eyes, and he's
got this this fish like kissy mouth, the kind of
trumpet lips that work back and forth in a disgusting manner.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
Yeah, all of these, you know, all of you can
certainly connect to other monster traditions and other films of
the time period. But I love how the stinct they
are in the stuff to blow your mind. Discord. Somebody
had shared a video about the sameness of monsters in
modern pictures, which is an interesting argument that maybe I
have some critiques on. But you can't. You cannot say
(47:21):
that these monsters are all the same in this picture.
They all feel distinct. They feel like they definitely arise
from different planets, from different different evolutionary paths, and you
get a taste of their culture as well.
Speaker 3 (47:35):
That's right. Yeah, so we had the brain mutant, he's
the Prince of Mars. But then there is also this
furry spider beetle. He's like a cross between a giant
killer insect and a squatch.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
Yeah, this is outr of the Red Planet, and he's
ravenous and warlike, but plotting, not just brutal violence like
the King of the Fire Planet. No, he's more like,
you know, he's sneaky. He has some wonderful lines to
his this bit where he's speaking in this creepy voice,
and the translation I had was, I am Utyr of
(48:08):
the Red Planet, and I will devour your entrails by
the light of Utar and its seven moons. So good.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
Yeah, like I was saying, strangely dark and good like
creepy imagery. In my version, I think he was actually
called Crassus, which is the most different of names we've
reviewed so far. I'm not sure what explains that difference.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
Now, the other male alien in this picture is this
fleshless creature that kind of looks like a bear skeleton
that's kind of floating there. He has no name as
far as I can tell, and all we know is
that is his homeworld is a place where the people
gave up their material form ages ago, and now they're
(48:54):
just animate beast bones floating around and talking and laughing creepily.
Speaker 3 (48:59):
Yeah, they're rasping phantoms from beyond. Who are just who
are just pure embodied hate? And our fang bone buddy here, Yeah,
he's a mockery of life itself. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
The one thing they all have in common, aside from
being males, is that they all detest the fact that
they have been kidnapped. They do not like it at all.
But they're powerless against the superior technology of.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
Venus, Right, Gamma and Beta have it locked down, because
as powerful as these monsters are, they cannot overpower science,
which Gamma and Beta have on their side. They've got
some powerful technology that even a real, real strong, beefy
reptile cyclops can't overcome.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
But of course, as the plot develops, like we said,
love tears this duo apart. You know, Gamma is thirst
for blood. Yeah, love and thirst for blood. Beta gets
fed up and she resorts to her old ways. We
get this big reveal, which I think is an ideal
reveal for any movie. This is a great plot twist
(50:02):
for any film. Suddenly reveal that one of your main
characters is a space vampire. She gives into her dark
thirst is essentially you know, cursed by Gamma for her
for giving into this thirst. And then Betas basically decides, well, heck,
I'm just gonna let the males loose. I'm going to
(50:24):
strike a bargain with the males, and we're just going
to rampage over this planet and we're going to do
what we like with Earth.
Speaker 3 (50:31):
Yes, that's right. So Beta vamps a guy she like,
you know, there's some rancher guy, and she drinks his
blood and then when Gamma finds out, it's like, oh no,
that's a death sentence. Back on Venus again. Politics like
a vamporism is a political issue in the interplanetary politics
of this movie, where it's like a known crime that
(50:53):
has been observed and dealt with in the past, and
if you drink the blood of a human you will
face the death penalty on v.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
Yeah, it raises a lot of questions, Like I was wondering,
what is it like on the shadow planet? Is everyone
a vampire there? Or are these like former Venusians who
had to acquire some sort of vampiric infection in order
to survive on a shadow world? Like what's going on here?
There's something there, There's something under the surface. And it's
so tantalizing because it feels thought out, it feels whole.
(51:23):
It doesn't feel like just a you know, just a
scrap of sci fi thrown into this romance.
Speaker 3 (51:28):
Yeah. Again the movie, it's catching you off guard. Every
single twist and turn. We were screaming at this, just
an amazing twist.
Speaker 1 (51:36):
And when we say space vampire, she can turn into
a bat and it looks pretty good, looks pretty good
a big.
Speaker 3 (51:42):
Bat at one point. At one point, Lolo Gonzalez like
points at it because it's swooping down to attack Gamma
and he's like, look a vulture. But so yeah, from
here we get moving into the third act.
Speaker 1 (51:54):
Oh wait, wait, There's one more important bit here, and
that is that Beta has also a lot with the
Prince of Mars. So I don't know if they're going
to be married and rule over Mars. There's some talk
of this, though it's also pointed out by the Prince
of Mars that he doesn't particularly find her attractive. But
it seems like they're willing to work through this.
Speaker 3 (52:14):
Oh yeah, there's a great part where he's like, you
are very ugly, but I what does he say? He's like,
you are extremely ugly to me, but I admire your
dedication to hatred or something. Yes, And she's like, oh,
Like she's really excited by this observation.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
Yeah. Her plan now is so with the loose Males,
they're going to destroy the initial settlement of Earthlings and
then they're going to spread out and just take out
the rest of the planet. But she realizes if she's
going to lead this, she needs to she needs to
assign tasks to the different monsters, so she divides humanity
up among the loose males. So Utr gets the children,
(52:55):
that's the spider monster uk or Uk. He gets the animals,
and he seems fine with this. He's like, yes, let
me at those cows.
Speaker 3 (53:03):
I will eat cows.
Speaker 1 (53:04):
Yeah, and Beta and the Prince of Mars they're going
to I think they're just going to get the blood
of humanity. They they bond over their thirst for blood,
and they're like, let's do it. They seem to leave
the Bone Guy out of this entirely. He shows up,
lad does he? He disappears from the movie at one point.
He is in the scene where all the aliens, all
(53:25):
the loose males attack our hero, but he's not very
obvious in that scene. You kind of see clattering bones
in the background, like maybe they couldn't figure out how
to properly bring that to life on screen. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (53:36):
I really thought that the Bone Guy disappeared from the movie,
but yeah, he could be wrong, so I don't recall
him in the conclusion. Does anybody defeat him in the
final battle?
Speaker 1 (53:46):
No? No, he does kind of vanish at that point
because all the other monsters get some sort of a
cool death. So Ouk's face is burned off by I
think by the robot. They're kind of wrestling.
Speaker 3 (53:57):
There's a robot or burns in my thing? Yeah, m hm.
Speaker 1 (54:01):
The brainiac guy, the big brain guy is shot in
the eye by the boy with like a slingshot I think, right, yeah, yeah,
with a slingshot, and then his brain deflates like a
punctured volleyball. Yeah, that's a nice grizzly scene. Utyr the
spider Beast is forced to bite himself and kill himself
with his own venom brutal. Oh, and then Beta has
(54:23):
a pretty awesome death scene as well.
Speaker 3 (54:25):
Yeah, she goes to attack Gamma, and Gamma sort of
like dodges out of the way at the right time,
and then Beta gets staked with like vampire staked with
a branch that's sticking up.
Speaker 1 (54:36):
Yeah, and then all that, the Fleshless One is never defeated,
So I don't know, maybe he we don't know what
part of humanity was given over to him. Perhaps he
just went out and claimed it and he's the one
who wins the day.
Speaker 3 (54:49):
Oh but there's one last thing I almost don't want
to say because I don't want to spoil it because
it's so good. But there's a stinger right at the
end of the movie. If you don't want to hear it,
if you don't want to be spoiled, you want to
see the movie for yourself, maybe you should stop right here,
but if you're okay with it. The surprise at the
end where Tor and the jukebox fall in love. Yes,
amazing reveal.
Speaker 1 (55:09):
Yeah, because Tour makes eyes at the jukebox pretty early.
He's like hey uh. And then at the end they're
happy together. They're leaving the planet, they have found each other,
and they're flying away in a spaceship.
Speaker 3 (55:21):
Yeah. He like compliments the jukebox. He's like going up
to the glass saying, like, what beautiful bulbs you have?
Speaker 1 (55:26):
Yes. So at the end, everybody's happy, everyone's in love.
Monsters and the forces of evil have been defeated, and
it seems like political stability has been maintained for the
interplanetary community.
Speaker 3 (55:41):
Gamma in the end learns that it was wrong to
kidnap males from all the planets to take them back
to Venus. Instead, she's like, hey, look, I'm not going
back to Venus. I found a man on Earth i'm
in love with, so we're just going to hang out
here in Mexico.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
Yeah, though he no longer has a cow, so I'm
not sure what he's going to do. Oh yeah, you
know a cow, you know, and stripped to bones by.
Speaker 3 (56:02):
To bones with a stand. So yo. Yeah, the cyclops
reptile comes in and like bites the cow and then
the cow is just clean, like a bone model of
a cow on a stand with like bars.
Speaker 1 (56:15):
Yeah, they did a great job.
Speaker 3 (56:18):
But anyway, I was gonna say, Loriano, he's always going
to find a way to get by.
Speaker 1 (56:21):
It's true. Yeah, he's a survivor.
Speaker 3 (56:23):
So ship of monsters what a delight.
Speaker 1 (56:26):
Yeah, this one really is a delight. I highly recommend
viewing this now. I think I should also add that
all versions of this are apparently in black and white.
I don't think there's any evidence of an actual color
cut of the film. If you think back to our
Santo and the Tomb of Dracula episode, we discussed how
at least later, at least, you know, close to a
(56:48):
decade later, you had this tradition of shooting in black
and white and in color for different markets. I don't
think that was the case here. I ran across some
color images of the film, but I think these were
just colored stills that were used to promote it.
Speaker 3 (57:03):
Oh that would make sense.
Speaker 1 (57:04):
Yeah, but still, even in black and white, this film
is just it's so alive you'll just be drawn right now.
Speaker 3 (57:10):
People, or oh forever?
Speaker 1 (57:12):
All right? Well, if you would like to check out
additional episodes of Weird House Cinema, you can find it
in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. You'll
find that wherever you get your podcasts. Weird House Cinema
publishes on Friday. We're primarily a science podcast, and you'll
find our core episodes of the show Stuff to Blow
your Mind on Tuesdays and Thursdays, an Artifact episode on Wednesdays,
(57:37):
listener mail on Mondays, and Vault Entry over the weekend.
That's a rerun.
Speaker 3 (57:43):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. 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, just to sayalo,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (58:04):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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