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[00:00:00] The battle for the mind of North America will be fought in the video arena.
[00:00:09] The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye.
[00:00:13] Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain.
[00:00:28] Okay, welcome back to episode 29 of The Outer Reels. We're still in Italy. Jason's here.
[00:00:35] Yeah, dude.
[00:00:37] Jason, this is not a good movie.
[00:00:41] We are watching War of the Robots from 1978.
[00:00:47] Yeah, true to the sense that we watch these so you don't have to because like a lot of the time I think, yeah, go ahead and watch it anyway.
[00:00:54] But it's like, no, don't bother. You can skim through this movie.
[00:00:59] Like we watched this on Tubi.
[00:01:01] I was actively looking as like, yes, there it is.
[00:01:04] I was actively looking to see a service or anywhere that I can play this back at like 1.5 or maybe maybe 3.5.
[00:01:12] I would never do that to be no, no, I would never do that.
[00:01:15] But I understand because there were multiple times when I was watching this movie that I would just bump the control the remote just to see how many minutes were left.
[00:01:28] Just so I could see the timeline, the playback on it.
[00:01:31] And they go, oh my God, there's an hour and a half still left.
[00:01:35] Yeah, because it's not even short either.
[00:01:37] I mean, it's 10, 15 minutes longer than we usually like on any movie.
[00:01:41] But the movie, for the sake of it now that we're talking about, is War of the Robots from 1978.
[00:01:48] There's no robots in it except for one shot.
[00:01:51] Well, no, there is.
[00:01:53] You only see it as a robot in one shot.
[00:01:55] But yeah, all the guys who look like they're grown up versions of the kids from Village of the Dams turns out to be robots.
[00:02:02] Dude, I thought they all looked like Prince Adam from He-Man.
[00:02:07] That too.
[00:02:09] But I mean, yeah, it's, yeah.
[00:02:12] Yeah, I don't know how to, yeah.
[00:02:15] Dude, I just saw this movie and I thought this looks cool.
[00:02:17] It has a great poster.
[00:02:19] This is something we hadn't heard of.
[00:02:20] It was Italian.
[00:02:21] I saw the poster.
[00:02:22] I thought this was a kid's movie.
[00:02:24] It looks like a poster for a movie that should be from the 60s.
[00:02:27] Again, these are just behind the times, you know.
[00:02:30] Very much so.
[00:02:31] Thanks, Italy.
[00:02:31] And I've said that before on other movies where I'd be like, I'd be more, you know, accepting of this if this was a 10-year-old or film.
[00:02:39] But, you know, the big problem here is that Star Wars is already out.
[00:02:43] And.
[00:02:43] I was going to say, this is a year after Star Wars.
[00:02:47] This is the same year as Starship Invasions, is it not?
[00:02:50] Yeah, so 77.
[00:02:51] So.
[00:02:52] Or 77, okay.
[00:02:53] Yeah, and I have a lot of comparisons to Starship Invasions because the way that I, and you know I'm going to say this, but Starship Invasions is a better movie because it has style and it knows what it is and it has a look.
[00:03:06] And it has that, that smooth, kill me out soundtrack because, because this soundtrack is awful.
[00:03:14] I do like the main theme.
[00:03:15] Awful.
[00:03:16] It's not very good.
[00:03:16] Well, it's not really music.
[00:03:18] It's, it's like somebody with a sequencer and it just replays.
[00:03:22] There's not, there's not a score to be here.
[00:03:24] Well, there, there are some bizarre music choices every now and then though, because there, there is definitely some music through this.
[00:03:30] For the most part, you're right.
[00:03:32] There is a lot where it just, there isn't.
[00:03:33] But there's that one scene where they're like, when they're trying to leave the planet and I'm jumping way ahead.
[00:03:38] I'm probably, you know, in the last 20 minutes of the movie or no, we're halfway through.
[00:03:43] It should be the last 20 minutes.
[00:03:45] They're escaping.
[00:03:45] Yeah, it should be, but we're not.
[00:03:47] We're halfway through, but they're escaping the planet and it jumps to this music that you probably hear at a wedding.
[00:03:54] Like it's just weird.
[00:03:56] Yeah.
[00:03:57] It's, it's all over the map in a lot of ways and, and look and everything else.
[00:04:01] And if most importantly, story and characters are basically non-existent and there's some good actors.
[00:04:08] I mean, we can get into it, but first and foremost, you know, we should just talk about that.
[00:04:13] This is directed by Alfonso Brescio.
[00:04:15] He has 75 credits of directing, assistant directing and writing.
[00:04:20] And when I say writing anything he wrote, he also directed.
[00:04:25] And 1956 was his first assistant director gig.
[00:04:28] He ran all the way up to 95.
[00:04:30] So that's a 50 year career span.
[00:04:31] I'm not going to go in here and say this guy's a bad director or anything.
[00:04:36] He's just a dude for hire and he's trying to make movies and he's banging them out.
[00:04:40] And for the most part, these movies made money and that's why they exist on top of each other.
[00:04:45] And especially on the heels of Star Wars, because this is right in that prime era of spaghetti space wars really is where it all happened.
[00:04:57] Yeah.
[00:04:57] Because, you know, we've talked about Luigi Cosi before, who is our man who directed Contamination with the Cyclopes.
[00:05:05] What did you call it?
[00:05:06] Cyclopes?
[00:05:08] Cyclopes.
[00:05:09] Cyclopes.
[00:05:09] So, and of course, two years.
[00:05:12] And that was 1980.
[00:05:13] Now, two years before that, Luigi Cosi did Star Crash, as we all know and we've talked about.
[00:05:18] You know, that's so far not an hour of real, but it's still awesome.
[00:05:21] But we'll definitely cover it someday.
[00:05:23] So I found this really good article because I was just sort of looking into the spaghetti space war stuff.
[00:05:29] It was an interview on Salon.com.
[00:05:33] And it was from 2002.
[00:05:35] So, you know, 22 years ago, I guess.
[00:05:38] They interviewed Luigi Cosi.
[00:05:40] And I don't know, I just ate up the interview because he is, it describes him as now, Luigi, now 54, works the cash register at Profondo Rosso, which is a famous horror movie shop in Rome, downtown.
[00:05:56] And it's still there, by the way.
[00:05:58] I looked it up.
[00:05:59] Was he just working there or was it his shop?
[00:06:02] This is what's great.
[00:06:03] It's there.
[00:06:03] It's open still today.
[00:06:06] It's open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day other than Sundays, classic Italian form.
[00:06:11] But it's this like cool horror nerd store in Rome.
[00:06:14] And I don't know if he's there now anymore.
[00:06:17] I hope he is.
[00:06:17] I would love to go and see.
[00:06:19] But there's a little bit of humbleness there.
[00:06:22] I think it's really cool.
[00:06:23] But he sort of talks about that era of making movies.
[00:06:27] And the reason I wanted to bring it up is because anytime we're talking about one of these movies around, we seem to watch a lot of movies from the late 70s.
[00:06:35] And we always say, oh, you know, Star Wars, it just came out or whatever.
[00:06:38] And so there's an inspiration there.
[00:06:41] But I won't say.
[00:06:43] Sorry to interrupt you, but I feel like we forget that Star Wars was a game changer.
[00:06:48] And like no one had ever seen anything like that before.
[00:06:52] And so it would take everyone several years to catch up.
[00:06:55] So it's really unfair to say this is a year after Star Wars.
[00:06:59] Exactly.
[00:07:00] But I'm going to say it anyway.
[00:07:01] Well, I think you're right on the point, though, too, because, you know, we've discussed it before where people were just making movies and they didn't know Star Wars was being made.
[00:07:10] And then it came out.
[00:07:11] And as you said, it changed everything.
[00:07:14] But without Star Wars, this movie would almost track as expected, like it wouldn't be compared.
[00:07:20] Or if it was in 76 before Star Wars came out, be like, yeah, whatever, you know, I mean, it's not great, but.
[00:07:27] Maybe.
[00:07:28] I mean, this movie feels like it's from like 1962.
[00:07:30] Yeah.
[00:07:31] It is a lot older in effects.
[00:07:34] Yeah.
[00:07:34] You know.
[00:07:35] Yeah.
[00:07:35] But the interesting thing that Luigi Cosi was saying in this interview, and he was saying, you know, like when I was making these movies, when I was trying to make Star Crash, he said, you know, at the time, everybody was crazy about Star Wars.
[00:07:50] And he said that he'd written an outline of this space epic and he hadn't had any luck.
[00:07:56] And he actually sold it in May of 1977.
[00:07:59] What was interesting is that he was like, I want to model a movie after Ray Harryhausen Sinbad.
[00:08:04] Like that was his big inspiration.
[00:08:06] Right.
[00:08:06] And like fantasy films, you wanted a fantasy film in space.
[00:08:09] But all the producers, as we know, were like, no, no, no.
[00:08:13] We want a Star Wars clone.
[00:08:14] Like they just weren't like, they're like, if you're making a space movie right now, it needs to be exactly like Star Wars because we need to get on the coattails of it and ride it for the money.
[00:08:24] And so he said that he really had to fight hard to keep his movie more original to that, which, as we know, it didn't end up being that way.
[00:08:32] But the interviewer goes on, it's a great interview, but he sort of mentions that, you know, Italians weren't the only people, you know, wanting like Star Wars movies and making money with Star Wars.
[00:08:44] Like, and he actually mentions Message from Space, which we covered in episode 18 from Japan.
[00:08:50] And it's kind of like, he's just saying that that was, it was Star Wars fever all over the world.
[00:08:54] If you were a filmmaker and you were trying to make a sci-fi movie post Star Wars, the pressure was on to make it exactly like Star Wars in every which way, just so they could just cash in on it.
[00:09:05] Yeah.
[00:09:06] It's, it's like, yeah, I guess it's, I can see at the time because it was like Lord of the Rings.
[00:09:11] I don't mean the movies.
[00:09:12] I mean the books, you have fantasy that is either, that is either intentionally Lord of the Rings like or intentionally not Lord of the Rings like, and there is no in between.
[00:09:22] No.
[00:09:22] It's, it's one or the other.
[00:09:23] That's all that, that's, that thing just dominated the entire genre.
[00:09:26] You know, basically semi created it, cemented it, and that was it.
[00:09:31] Everything centered around it now.
[00:09:32] And Star Wars for a while was just like that.
[00:09:34] Yeah.
[00:09:35] Well, everything.
[00:09:36] I mean, America even had its problems.
[00:09:37] Like your favorite TV show, Battlestar Galactico.
[00:09:40] They actually got sued by 20th Century Fox.
[00:09:44] And Lucas was like, said, oh yeah, that was like, there, there was an actual quote in there that said, a looming space cruiser and cocky starfighter jocks.
[00:09:53] It was like the actual grounds for suing them of like ripping them off.
[00:09:58] Yeah.
[00:09:58] And all they did was rip off some archetypes and stuff.
[00:10:01] So.
[00:10:01] Yeah.
[00:10:02] It's, uh, the story is very different.
[00:10:04] Battlestar Galactica is very heavily based off of, I think it's the Jehovah Witnesses or, uh, no, or is it?
[00:10:09] No, sorry.
[00:10:10] Not the show.
[00:10:10] It was the Mormons.
[00:10:11] Really?
[00:10:11] It's heavily based off.
[00:10:12] Yeah.
[00:10:12] The Mormon religion.
[00:10:13] I think they're drinking Mountain Dew.
[00:10:16] I don't know.
[00:10:17] It's one of those.
[00:10:17] I think it's just funny that he's this, at this point in time, Luigi, cause he was working this cash register in this horror story and had a great interview.
[00:10:26] But to what we're saying.
[00:10:27] And so this movie, War of the Robots, this was released on April 21st, 1978.
[00:10:35] And when we talk about these are like, again, being made like post star Wars and everything else, you know, you, when you look at, uh, the other movies, this was one of four of our director.
[00:10:47] The guy who directed this movie, Alfonso.
[00:10:49] So this is one of four movies he made within a year.
[00:10:52] This is the third.
[00:10:53] Wow.
[00:10:54] This is the third sci-fi one that he made.
[00:10:56] There was War of the Planets, Battle of the Stars, Star Odyssey, and this movie, War of the Robots, just cranking them out.
[00:11:04] And like, you know, if you're a director for hire and you're working, like, you're not going to say no.
[00:11:08] Right.
[00:11:08] So I get why there's a flood of this.
[00:11:10] Yes.
[00:11:11] But, um, what's great though is War of the Planets, Battle of the Stars, and Star Odyssey also shared props and costumes with this movie.
[00:11:21] It's just all the same stuff.
[00:11:22] I'm looking at his, his credits now.
[00:11:26] And it's, uh, it's funny because he did a bunch of others too.
[00:11:30] Like he's got between 1977 and 19 before pre 1980.
[00:11:35] So 77 to 79, one, two, three, four, five, six, eight, nine, 10, 10 credits.
[00:11:43] He did 10 movies in two years.
[00:11:45] Call it two and a half probably.
[00:11:47] So they shot this movie in December 77 and wrapped in 70, January of 78.
[00:11:53] So if you want to talk like, you know, on the heels of Star Wars, just trying to crank this out as quick as you can strike while all the iron's hot.
[00:12:01] Everybody.
[00:12:01] I bet you they took a week and a half off for Christmas and New Year's too.
[00:12:04] Just like we're going to do.
[00:12:06] And I'm taking two weeks, dude.
[00:12:08] Yeah.
[00:12:08] It, that, that's just, that's just wild.
[00:12:10] That, that borders on a lot of the MOWs and stuff I've worked on that are like 13 to 16 day shoots.
[00:12:16] I know.
[00:12:16] And it's, but it also brings my defense again to Starship Invasions, which was filmed and made before Star Wars actually came out.
[00:12:28] That's the perfect side by side example of Starship Invasions was what low budget sci-fi movies were.
[00:12:35] And Star Wars came out and it's an indie sci-fi, much better budget.
[00:12:39] As you said, it changed everything because without it, nobody would have thought of sci-fi movies as serious.
[00:12:45] Before that they were all, you know, I mean like early ones like Forbidden Planet, like classics.
[00:12:50] But there was this run up through the 70s, especially of just.
[00:12:54] We did still get some 70s sort of classic kind of stuff like Silent Runnings later.
[00:13:01] Was that earlier?
[00:13:02] Silent Running was 72.
[00:13:03] But, but you do have Close Encounters in 80, so which, which is again, sort of a remnant of a thinking man's kind of 70s American cinema.
[00:13:13] Right.
[00:13:13] Because it was like, that's, that's like the golden age of, of American cinema.
[00:13:17] Even if it's not, it's just like that.
[00:13:19] That's the height of American cinema.
[00:13:20] In my opinion is the 70s for the most part.
[00:13:23] There you go.
[00:13:24] And then, yeah, I mean, Star Wars, Star Wars and Jaws basically created the blockbuster.
[00:13:28] So.
[00:13:29] Yeah, that's fair.
[00:13:30] You're forgetting the other blockbuster that actually did better on its opening weekends, which of 77, which was Smoking the Bandit.
[00:13:40] True.
[00:13:41] The, the movie going populist and audience, like this is also peak when people wanted to go to the theater.
[00:13:47] I mean, they still did through the 90s, of course, like big blockbusters.
[00:13:50] But this was the beginning of that.
[00:13:52] Like, as we know, the lines around the block for Star Wars and four months theater runs, you know?
[00:13:57] Well, this is it.
[00:13:59] And Star Wars was all word of mouth, too.
[00:14:01] It was one of those, it took a bit to grow.
[00:14:03] But then it just destroyed that summer.
[00:14:05] Yeah.
[00:14:06] So, things that didn't destroy was this movie.
[00:14:10] And, you know.
[00:14:11] There's, there's just so much of this movie that is just, well, there's, there's a lot of people just walking around.
[00:14:18] There's lots of, I actually have a note at some point, which is like, I think these scenes are supposed to be cool.
[00:14:24] Because there's nothing else to them and no other point to them, other than the fact that I think they're supposed to be cool.
[00:14:28] Except they're, they're very much not.
[00:14:30] It feels like a rush job in so many ways.
[00:14:32] Did you notice there's a part where the sound effects track just drops out?
[00:14:35] Now, I can't comment if this is the final or if this is just from the tape.
[00:14:40] Because there's been no restoration of this movie, let's be clear.
[00:14:43] But there's a moment where they're in a shootout and there's no gun sound effects and it's just footsteps.
[00:14:49] And it's like, either they lost the effects track off it or it was never laid in there.
[00:14:54] Because.
[00:14:54] I didn't even notice.
[00:14:57] So, I had a hard time maintaining my focus on this movie.
[00:15:02] Yeah.
[00:15:03] I mean.
[00:15:03] I'll be honest.
[00:15:04] As we said, like, you know, when I sit down and watch these things, I give it my all.
[00:15:08] And I focus and I actually just sit and watch the whole thing as much as I can and give it everything.
[00:15:14] And, you know, I'm expecting some redeeming component or whatever.
[00:15:17] But I give the movie respect that it's a thing that's being created by people who made it.
[00:15:22] And even if they were all just there for a job, you know, it's still like, okay, this is something, you know.
[00:15:27] This one was a little rough to get through.
[00:15:29] And it's because there's truly no engagement in characters or plot or there's no hook.
[00:15:36] There's just not really any.
[00:15:37] I mean, we're talking about it, but like, please pitch me this movie.
[00:15:41] What is this movie about?
[00:15:43] Well, I don't know.
[00:15:45] That's the thing.
[00:15:46] Like, I was so lost through a lot of this.
[00:15:48] Okay.
[00:15:49] So, we take grown up kids from Village of the Damned, abduct a couple of geneticists to take them back to their planet so that they can take them back to their planet to save the planet, I guess.
[00:16:02] We're going to call it War of the Robots.
[00:16:04] And guess what?
[00:16:05] All those people are actually robots.
[00:16:07] That'll come up eventually.
[00:16:10] And, oh, also for whatever reason, one of the scientists they abduct, they make their empress.
[00:16:15] No idea why.
[00:16:16] Couldn't know you that either.
[00:16:17] That was a confusing moment.
[00:16:19] No idea why the scientist and her just immediately turn on Earth.
[00:16:24] Yeah.
[00:16:25] It's just, yeah.
[00:16:26] There's a lot of missing things.
[00:16:27] I think.
[00:16:28] We should point out, though, is that it does star Antonio Sabato Sr.
[00:16:32] Yes.
[00:16:33] And he has a lot of, like, what I could only describe as trash face in this, which is the sort of looks that trash gives in the Bronx movies.
[00:16:46] Doublown from Escape from the Bronx.
[00:16:48] But he's making a lot of these, like, same sort of looks that trash makes in the Bronx movies.
[00:16:54] I thought when you were saying trash was when trash looks at him in Escape from the Bronx.
[00:16:59] No, I mean, like, the sort of faces that trash makes when trash is trying to act.
[00:17:04] Yeah.
[00:17:05] And he does a lot of the same thing.
[00:17:07] If somebody asked me what this movie is about, I would say it's about alien race.
[00:17:14] And when I say alien, I mean just not from human, you know, not from human civilization.
[00:17:19] Earth is being able to.
[00:17:19] They look human, though.
[00:17:20] Let's never forget that.
[00:17:21] Yeah, they look like Prince Adam from He-Man.
[00:17:24] Yes.
[00:17:24] They live on this planet that's riddled with radiation.
[00:17:28] And they can no longer reproduce.
[00:17:30] And therefore, their only way to stay alive is for them to harvest younger organs from other people and surgically replace them.
[00:17:41] And this is the spiel that we get when we go in the underground and we meet Cuba.
[00:17:50] And he tells the whole tale of what's going on here.
[00:17:54] But essentially.
[00:17:55] Well, because Cuba's actually of another race.
[00:17:57] Yes.
[00:17:57] But he shares the planet with these people.
[00:18:00] Yeah.
[00:18:01] So I think for whatever reason, I managed to pick up a little bit more than you did on that.
[00:18:05] Because aliens with the Empress, they have actually perfected themselves so much is what the scientist says.
[00:18:13] And they're not on the same planet as Cuba.
[00:18:16] They're on a different planet.
[00:18:17] So they've enslaved Cuba's people.
[00:18:20] And that's what they use to work in their minds as well as to harvest them for organs.
[00:18:26] Oh, I didn't realize they were harvesting Cuba's people.
[00:18:29] People.
[00:18:29] What they and it was because they have perfected their genetics so much, but at the same and allowing them to live for like centuries.
[00:18:39] But the flip side of that is it's made them all sterile apparently.
[00:18:42] So they need a geneticist.
[00:18:44] That's why they have got to help fix this because I guess they want to start getting it on again.
[00:18:50] Yeah.
[00:18:50] And to be clear, the geneticist is Professor Carr, who is the beginning of this movie.
[00:18:56] And he's a human and he's a really smart scientist.
[00:18:59] And he's had a breakthrough where he can create life, essentially, is what they're saying.
[00:19:03] So for some reason, the alien race figured this out and they want him because they want him to create life.
[00:19:09] So they capture him.
[00:19:11] And that sets off the story where we're essentially having Captain John Boyd, who is Antonio Sabato, the blown from Escape from the Bronx.
[00:19:21] He sets on a mission.
[00:19:23] He's sent on a mission to chase them down and get the professor back.
[00:19:27] And that's kind of where the space chase happens.
[00:19:31] But they land on this planet and it's, you know, there's so much spoon feeding in this movie where they tell you the problem and then tell you how they're going to resolve it.
[00:19:45] It's because it's cheaper and easier to tell you than it is to show you.
[00:19:50] And it's like, I mean, the very beginning of the movie, it shows them, you know, an army of Prince Adams, a group of them come in.
[00:19:58] They take the two scientists and then they just like, people are like being blasted away left and right in this movie.
[00:20:04] But then they get away.
[00:20:06] And then, was it John Boyd?
[00:20:08] Is he the one that's like goes in to investigate afterwards?
[00:20:12] And then he gets into like a futuristic Sid Mead looking car.
[00:20:16] Yes.
[00:20:16] And drives away.
[00:20:17] So, no, that's Captain King because he's on Earth.
[00:20:20] That's Captain King.
[00:20:21] Right.
[00:20:21] Okay.
[00:20:22] Captain King is, or Commander King, sorry, is the one who looks.
[00:20:26] I thought it was Burt Reynolds at first until he turned.
[00:20:30] It's that mustache, man.
[00:20:31] I, essentially, Professor is kidnapped, Professor Carr.
[00:20:35] And then there's Captain King who runs, Commander King who runs Earth and everything or the station that they're on.
[00:20:43] And we follow Boyd in the ship this whole movie, essentially.
[00:20:47] And he talks to King, but it's through a radio.
[00:20:49] But for the most part, we're with Boyd.
[00:20:50] We're with his crew.
[00:20:51] Are we ever?
[00:20:53] Oh, boy.
[00:20:53] Yeah.
[00:20:53] Yeah.
[00:20:54] Because, so they go on this, like, there's this space battle, you know, like 15 minutes into the movie.
[00:21:00] And it's so underwhelming.
[00:21:02] And it's not even like model ships, like banking.
[00:21:04] It's like flat, still images, optical printed with matte lines being scaled down as a planet on a split comp comes closer.
[00:21:14] There's nothing here that looks cool or sounds cool.
[00:21:18] It's just, it looks like, again, it looks like a 60s sci-fi gag.
[00:21:23] Like there's nothing here that's groundbreaking at all.
[00:21:25] This is, of course, where we get our first countdown.
[00:21:28] First of, I don't know, 30 in this movie.
[00:21:31] They're always counting down to stuff and they're always counting down from 10.
[00:21:35] It's not even a 3, 2, 1.
[00:21:37] It's a 10.
[00:21:38] 9.
[00:21:40] And it's like, they're just counting down to when they can push a button to fire.
[00:21:44] There's a component to this movie where I really feel like they were trying to go for screen time.
[00:21:49] Because when you think the movie is over, there's 40 minutes to go.
[00:21:54] And it's just an end battle.
[00:21:56] And that would typically sound awesome to me, a 40-minute end battle.
[00:22:00] But it's not good.
[00:22:03] And so I feel like everything, we'll get there.
[00:22:05] But everything in this movie is stretched out just to try and get screen time.
[00:22:09] There's 35 minutes, 40 minutes of actual movie and dialogue in this movie.
[00:22:14] And then everything else is pushed to try and just turn it into a feature length.
[00:22:19] Yeah, because right after this battle, the ship takes damage.
[00:22:22] They have to land on a planet for repairs.
[00:22:24] And man, it must take them five minutes to walk everybody down the staircase out of the ship.
[00:22:30] But they also check out the atmosphere of the planet.
[00:22:36] And this is where a lot of the spoon feeding goes, where they're just like,
[00:22:40] okay, well, give me the stats of the planet.
[00:22:41] And they're like, they rattle off all these CO2 levels and radiation levels.
[00:22:47] The various gases saying it's Earth-like,
[00:22:48] but they spend the time to tell you what the percentages of oxygen and nitrogen.
[00:22:52] And it's just like, okay.
[00:22:54] And then they say it's Earth-like.
[00:22:56] At the very end, the computer says, like, yeah.
[00:22:59] Very similar to Earth.
[00:23:01] Yeah.
[00:23:01] And then they said, like, there's nominal radiation for short, you know,
[00:23:07] which is fine for short exposures.
[00:23:09] But then he makes a point of saying, everyone in your radiation suit.
[00:23:12] So it's like, okay.
[00:23:15] But the best part about it is that computer tells you it's like three degrees above freezing.
[00:23:19] And at no point does anyone cold?
[00:23:22] Do we see anyone's breath?
[00:23:25] Three degrees Celsius, for those of you in America who are listening,
[00:23:28] that is literally like three degrees above freezing.
[00:23:31] So what is that like?
[00:23:32] What's that like 47 or something?
[00:23:34] I'd probably say it's probably like 38 or 40, yeah, something.
[00:23:39] Yeah, it makes no sense whatsoever, whatever your Fahrenheit is.
[00:23:43] Well, no, your metric system is the problem here.
[00:23:46] We know that.
[00:23:46] No, no.
[00:23:48] Zero is where water freezes and 100 is where it boils.
[00:23:51] It's pretty easy to understand.
[00:23:52] You don't need to have this conversation again,
[00:23:53] but I'll just tell you that you can't run with the metric system when you're base 10,
[00:23:59] when you're only divisible by 2 and 5.
[00:24:01] It is a useless, broken system.
[00:24:03] It's only for unintelligent people.
[00:24:05] I just, I'm speechless.
[00:24:07] It's like, oh, wow.
[00:24:12] And 99% of the world uses it.
[00:24:14] Yeah, that's right.
[00:24:14] That's why planes fall out of the sky.
[00:24:18] And it's Boeing planes that are falling out of the sky.
[00:24:21] Yeah, because they're stupid engineers have run up on the metric system.
[00:24:24] They're going to need to only divide by 2 and 5.
[00:24:26] Anyway, 3 degrees above freezing is actually quite cold, as you can imagine.
[00:24:31] And you don't see anyone's breath because they're all in the studio.
[00:24:35] And none of them appear to be cold, even though they're wearing like really thin, plasticky, rubbery.
[00:24:41] Yeah, they have to, they're told by the computer to change into their radiation suits.
[00:24:46] And the computer says, put on your radiation suits.
[00:24:48] And they come out and they're just wearing latex, but they have no gloves and no helmets.
[00:24:52] So there's like, well, if there's radiation, you're still going to absorb it somehow.
[00:24:56] But it's for the sake of a costume change, I guess.
[00:24:59] Because they have their adventure suits and then they're on ships.
[00:25:02] Yeah, they do.
[00:25:03] And that's where they run into Koopa's people.
[00:25:07] Boyd tells them like, hey, we're here in peace, basically.
[00:25:11] We just want to repair our ship.
[00:25:12] We're after these other aliens.
[00:25:14] And Koopa's like, I don't believe you.
[00:25:15] And then attacks them.
[00:25:16] And Koopa's people have like these like raggy capes and these like kind of iron dome helmets.
[00:25:22] And...
[00:25:22] Yeah, and it's because it's covering up their, they got this gelatinous stuff over their eyes
[00:25:27] because that's what protects them.
[00:25:29] Yeah.
[00:25:29] Yeah, sorry, because Koopa comes out after all of this.
[00:25:31] Yeah, and he breaks up the fight.
[00:25:32] Yeah, and Koopa is a normal looking person and he has normal eyes.
[00:25:36] And this is kind of interesting because Koopa's played by Aldo Canty and he's a bit part guy.
[00:25:44] He's done a lot of stuff.
[00:25:45] But he did a movie in 1979 called Three Superman Contro.
[00:25:49] And it's a sci-fi comedy about stealing heroin from the mob with a Turkish time machine.
[00:25:55] And it looks like a great movie.
[00:25:58] Oh, we're running out of Italy movies too.
[00:26:01] And now I want to watch this.
[00:26:02] But I already have my next two picks done.
[00:26:05] It looks insane.
[00:26:07] It looks absolutely insane.
[00:26:09] Oh, man.
[00:26:09] Check out the trailer.
[00:26:11] It's pretty fun.
[00:26:11] It's pretty wild.
[00:26:12] And it's actually listed as a sci-fi comedy, which is kind of funny.
[00:26:15] He looked familiar to me and I couldn't figure out why.
[00:26:17] It's because he's in, what's it?
[00:26:21] Sabata with Lee Van Cleef.
[00:26:24] He died in 1990.
[00:26:27] Rumor has it he had ties to the mafia and he was executed.
[00:26:31] Wow.
[00:26:31] I don't know too much more than that, but I just thought this because he was found murdered.
[00:26:35] I did not know.
[00:26:36] That's amazing.
[00:26:37] I love Sabata though.
[00:26:38] I didn't recognize him from it.
[00:26:40] So what's interesting about Kuba is when he breaks up the fight between these cave, his cave dwellers and he says, do you understand me?
[00:26:49] It's like, yes, I understand you.
[00:26:52] And he holds his arm up and it has like a calculator.
[00:26:58] It's like, because of this electronic translator, a great example of the whole movie of how they do this and how they spell out this movie.
[00:27:06] Like they'll rattle off something and it'll say, because I've got to do this or because I've got to go here or, and this is, you know, I've referenced it many times, but it's like lobster man from Mars.
[00:27:17] And the scientist is like, you know, we figured out how to defeat the creature and we've taken H2O.
[00:27:23] And he like leans over to the woman.
[00:27:25] He's like, which you know is water.
[00:27:28] It's that it's kind of, but they kind of become friends, I guess.
[00:27:32] Cause like, but Kuba tries to curb stuff one of Captain Boyd's like guys.
[00:27:38] And well, they, they, they become friends because the, uh, the He-Man guys show up and then they have to fight them together.
[00:27:45] So that's, that's when they realized they have that they have a mutual.
[00:27:48] And when we say guys, it's, they're just humans, people, actors in silver suits and these bob cut wigs later, there's like a twist and we learn that they're robots.
[00:27:58] But the movie calls them, the poster calls them robots.
[00:28:01] It's really weird.
[00:28:02] I don't know if it's meant to be a surprise that they're robots.
[00:28:04] Cause they certainly don't act and look like, well, I mean, yeah, they're, it's called war of the robots.
[00:28:08] Now I know there's like 16,000 other titles for this movie that I'm sure you'll get to.
[00:28:13] It's called war of the robots guys.
[00:28:15] Like the original, the original title is la guerra de robot.
[00:28:19] So yeah.
[00:28:20] Based off that name, this movie was actually internationally released as reactor.
[00:28:24] I was about to say, I've seen, I've seen reactor bounced around too.
[00:28:28] That's important because that's our return ticking clock that happens in this movie.
[00:28:32] Cause there's this whole subplot back at the main base where the reactor is going into meltdown and it's going to explode and it's going to kill everybody.
[00:28:42] And the only person who knows how to fix it or stop it is the professor who's being kidnapped by the human alien robot guys.
[00:28:50] And so they keep putting the pressure on it's, it's, well, it's very thin because like how, how rough is your society that you only have one guy who knows how to fix, you know, the thing that powers everything.
[00:29:02] Do you notice who the professor is?
[00:29:04] It's, it's a stretch, but a professor car, uh, play Yach Herlin.
[00:29:09] He is the hotel desk clerk in national lampoons, European vacation.
[00:29:16] Oh man.
[00:29:17] It's the only Western connection I can find out of all of his credits, but look, kids, big Ben parliament, but back on the ship while they're in the cave, Herb, the Texan takes over.
[00:29:30] Yes.
[00:29:31] Cause he's got his, he's got his boots and he's shining up.
[00:29:34] And I got to say, uh, kudos to the guy who dubbed Herb because I, I don't know what accent that is, but it's like, it's obviously, I gotta wonder, like the, I guess they didn't use Americans to, to translate and dub this.
[00:29:51] They had to turn Italians because this guy had no idea how to do a Texan.
[00:29:56] And he's putting on his cowboy boots and one of the girls on the bridge says, oh, look, he's putting his boots on.
[00:30:04] He's always puts his boots on when he becomes the commander.
[00:30:08] And she's like, he's like a real Texan.
[00:30:10] Like they're just joking.
[00:30:11] He's so Texan.
[00:30:12] He puts his cowboy boots on and then he starts talking.
[00:30:16] And I was just thinking his accent, his accent sounds like a South park episode of an Italian doing a Texan accent.
[00:30:24] I was going to say, it sounds not that far off from you, but, um, it's pretty broken.
[00:30:29] Yeah, I agree.
[00:30:30] This is sort of the first sort of fight between, cause the robots come in and trying to mess with Kuba and his people.
[00:30:36] And this is a horrible laser gun battle because they have these little props.
[00:30:39] Yeah.
[00:30:40] I should explain that there's, there's no lasers.
[00:30:42] No.
[00:30:43] So it's, uh, they, they point to gun.
[00:30:46] There's a sound effect and the bad guys fall down.
[00:30:49] And if you're lucky, there's an interactive light flash that they do on set where they'll flash an environment light, like a bulb.
[00:30:56] So it feels like their gun is firing, but that's few and far between as well.
[00:31:00] Cause it's not always constant.
[00:31:02] Yeah.
[00:31:02] Again, if you're lucky, it'll have sound effects.
[00:31:04] Cause like I said, later, there's a whole shootout scene where it's just footsteps and there's no sound effects.
[00:31:09] And I'm going to say that that is more of a product of laying this to tape at some point and it missed the track or something.
[00:31:18] Cause I don't think the finished movie would be that bad.
[00:31:21] Yeah.
[00:31:22] Cause I mean, what we watched on Tubi was four by three and I thought at first, maybe it was supposed to be four by three, but there's a handful of shot of like two shots where we see two people sitting side by side.
[00:31:33] And you're only seeing half of each other, each face.
[00:31:36] That was when I made the decision to, you're right.
[00:31:39] Yeah.
[00:31:39] It's, it's not even a pan and scan.
[00:31:41] It's like, you know, cause at least back then they would like kind of look, Oh, we got to pan that over.
[00:31:46] But nope, it's just, just straight four by three.
[00:31:49] I think I've mentioned this before, but that was like, you know, growing up only ever seeing Ghostbusters or VHS.
[00:31:56] And then finally getting the two, three, five DVD.
[00:31:59] It's not in the theater, baby.
[00:32:01] Jealous.
[00:32:01] Seeing it in the proper format, the shot where they're walking through the library.
[00:32:06] I didn't know even Egon was in the shot.
[00:32:10] And it's really funny.
[00:32:12] Cause like, he's just like, he's way off deep screen, right?
[00:32:16] And in the four, three version, they just cut that whole section.
[00:32:18] And you're just like, Whoa, he's there.
[00:32:21] And that was the biggest eye opener for me is like, as a teenager, like getting a DVD and being like, there's so much missing stuff.
[00:32:28] Even pan and scan saved a little bit.
[00:32:30] I mean, it was something.
[00:32:31] It wasn't great, but it.
[00:32:33] No, it was, uh, the advent of letterboxing was a good thing.
[00:32:36] So I got to talk about Cuba and his race of weird minor people, because he explains what his people are.
[00:32:43] Cause one of the helmets falls off one of his guys and they have these like iron helmets on.
[00:32:48] And these, like, like I said, these grassy kind of capes and they all live in this cave.
[00:32:51] One of the helmets falls off and the guy has these weird looking eyes.
[00:32:55] Like it looks like, um, latex or, and it looks like their eyes are like bugging out of their head.
[00:33:01] Like, it's kind of weird looking.
[00:33:02] It's very much a 60s sci-fi gag.
[00:33:04] It's kind of a gelatinous look too.
[00:33:06] Yeah.
[00:33:06] It's, uh, yeah.
[00:33:07] And the idea is that there's the radiation on the planet is leaking through.
[00:33:13] So this protects their eyes.
[00:33:14] Right.
[00:33:15] Um, cause Cuba says, because he, you know, the aliens, um, surgically removed his because they needed, um, they needed serve, you know,
[00:33:25] basically slaves that could see he's now that he's home again, he is destined to go blind.
[00:33:30] Yeah.
[00:33:30] He basically had his eye protection cut off because he was a blue collar worker on another planet, the aliens.
[00:33:37] And now he's returned.
[00:33:38] He's going to have a hard time there.
[00:33:40] And he explains that they have a, uh, thick cartilaginous layer over their eyes that protects them from dangerous radiation in the caverns.
[00:33:50] He says, and that's like, where he's like, not me.
[00:33:52] I went to where we need, I went to a planet.
[00:33:54] Where they need to work a slave for an old vision.
[00:33:56] So I had an operation.
[00:33:57] Like, it's just like the, Oh, this electronic translator device.
[00:34:01] Like it explains, like, why do you look different than everybody?
[00:34:04] Yeah.
[00:34:05] But in no time at all, they're just like, okay.
[00:34:08] And they're back on the ship and then Cuba's there and he's got his own outfit.
[00:34:12] And now he's part of the crew.
[00:34:13] And like, not only that, he's just like, he's like their, their gunner at the end.
[00:34:17] Yeah.
[00:34:18] It's just like, it's, it's just so weird.
[00:34:20] Cause there's, there's people that don't trust him initially and stuff.
[00:34:24] And he's like, no, no, he saved her.
[00:34:25] He's, he's good.
[00:34:26] And like, Oh, okay.
[00:34:27] But there's, there's a few times in here where I wonder if the translation is just wrong.
[00:34:32] But then I think about it and like, Oh no, I'm sure it's, I'm sure it's just this dumb
[00:34:35] in Italian too.
[00:34:36] Yeah.
[00:34:37] It's, they try and move it for, for a movie that's so slow, really quick in the sense of
[00:34:43] why they go to different locations and how they get there.
[00:34:46] Because as soon as Cuba gets on their ship, they're like, we got to go to this city on
[00:34:50] this other planet.
[00:34:51] Professor Carr is being captive and Cuba knows.
[00:34:54] So it's kind of, it's the same shot they had before when they landed on Cuba's planet,
[00:34:59] you see the shot again.
[00:35:00] And then they're standing there out of the deck of the ship and they're in their latex
[00:35:04] again.
[00:35:05] And he's like, you see that city over there?
[00:35:08] And then we actually don't get a shot of the city over there.
[00:35:12] No, we don't.
[00:35:13] And he says, well, we can't go through.
[00:35:16] Fuck you last chase.
[00:35:19] Actually a better city.
[00:35:21] Yep.
[00:35:22] Yeah.
[00:35:23] Well, they actually gave us the city.
[00:35:25] And then he says the way they spin it is he said, well, we can't go through the city.
[00:35:30] We got to go through the tunnels and then it cuts and they're in a tunnel and they're in
[00:35:34] a tunnel for one shot.
[00:35:35] And then they appear in this giant like mainframe room with professor Carr.
[00:35:39] It's so quick.
[00:35:41] Like again, for this is what I would call something that moves.
[00:35:44] I'm like, Hey, we're moving.
[00:35:45] We're getting through stuff, but we're moving to get to other slow nothing.
[00:35:50] Yes.
[00:35:51] And then we're not again.
[00:35:51] Yeah.
[00:35:52] Except in this scene is great because they see the professor.
[00:35:56] And for whatever reason he is, I guess there's a component where, cause he's, he's good at
[00:36:02] doing experiments and stuff.
[00:36:03] He wants to stay with these aliens is the way I read it because they'll allow him to do his
[00:36:09] crazy experiments.
[00:36:10] At least that's, that's the only thing I can cling on to why he wants to be there.
[00:36:13] Cause that, that's the only thing I can think of too, is he's happy.
[00:36:17] Like he stops and he's just kind of, what he's doing is he's looking at his slides, which is,
[00:36:21] it turns out are basically his notes.
[00:36:23] And he's just kind of looking at him cause he's losing his mind apparently.
[00:36:26] And that could be another reason why he wants to stay is because he's, he's turning bad
[00:36:30] shit crazy.
[00:36:30] Crazy.
[00:36:31] But, um, he just turns like, Oh, hello, Captain Boyd.
[00:36:35] Like no surprise at all.
[00:36:37] And he's in this weird, like he's wearing this like puffy shower curtain for like a cape.
[00:36:41] Yes.
[00:36:42] And then, then the He-Man guys find him and there's a lightsaber fight.
[00:36:47] Yes.
[00:36:48] But you can't really call these lightsabers.
[00:36:50] There, there are pieces of plastic that are lit up inside that are, um, sort of shape
[00:36:58] sword shaped, but they're not really, they're almost triangular and yeah.
[00:37:02] And then they just sort of, this goes on way too long.
[00:37:06] And what they're doing is they're showing these wide shots of people fighting and they're
[00:37:10] fighting the, the He-Man robots and then they cut to.
[00:37:14] Oh, right.
[00:37:15] Yeah.
[00:37:15] Cause the, cause the professor has like disabled their guns somehow too.
[00:37:19] Right.
[00:37:19] Didn't even know.
[00:37:20] Yeah.
[00:37:20] Yeah.
[00:37:20] Yeah.
[00:37:20] He did something to disable their guns.
[00:37:22] So now they, they have to fight hand to hand.
[00:37:25] And then with, with these, they get their, they get the swords.
[00:37:29] The sword fights is going on.
[00:37:31] Alexa, it goes on for a while, but they have, they're swinging and they're jumping around and
[00:37:36] they're all these two shots and they're up and down.
[00:37:38] And then every now and then it'll cut back to Boyd.
[00:37:42] And it's a closeup of him against a wall, which isn't in the set of the wide shot.
[00:37:46] And it's like, they shot a bunch of B roll of him as a mid shot swinging his sword.
[00:37:51] And they keep cutting back to these wides of maybe a stuntman or stand in or something.
[00:37:56] I wouldn't say it's probably a stuntman because there's not really any stunts.
[00:37:59] It's not even that spectacular, but they keep cutting back to Boyd and he's standing there
[00:38:04] in this mid shot, like just waving his sword around.
[00:38:06] And then they cut back to these wides and the back and forth and they use that background.
[00:38:11] It's definitely almost like a reshoot or something.
[00:38:13] It's, it's not good.
[00:38:14] There's a moment where they start attacking the He-Man guys and one of them falls on the
[00:38:20] ground and his torso is cut open and you see a bunch of wire.
[00:38:23] Like it's, it's, it's not a very high tech robot, Jason.
[00:38:27] It looks, it, I mean, I want to compare it to C-3PO's mid riff.
[00:38:31] That actually looks like it's got more technology.
[00:38:34] This looks like somebody cut open the Energizer bunny.
[00:38:39] There's like four wires in there and then they just keep falling on the ground.
[00:38:45] It's, it's so weird.
[00:38:46] And then it goes on.
[00:38:47] It's like later on, it's like, did you know there are robots?
[00:38:49] Yeah.
[00:38:50] It's like, that's what I was trying to figure out.
[00:38:52] Was this the surprise where you're like, oh my God, they're robots.
[00:38:55] It didn't make a lot of sense, but whatever.
[00:38:58] They just, they fought for a while and then they stopped and then they fight again.
[00:39:02] Yes.
[00:39:03] On the way out.
[00:39:03] Cause they're trying to escape the city now.
[00:39:06] That's right.
[00:39:06] They're trying to escape.
[00:39:07] And then, um, yeah.
[00:39:08] Oh yeah.
[00:39:09] Cause we're, we're mentioning, we're dropping a large thing.
[00:39:12] So Lois, who's the professor's assistant, he's like, yeah.
[00:39:17] Cause they, they managed to capture Don Boyd and his other guys.
[00:39:21] Basically John brings in our Texan and, uh, Julie, who is the short haired girl.
[00:39:27] Who's got a thing for John.
[00:39:28] John for Unboyd.
[00:39:30] Yeah.
[00:39:30] In the crew brings those two in.
[00:39:32] It's like, stop or I will kill them.
[00:39:34] Um, so they all, they all get taken prisoner.
[00:39:37] So then Lois, who is John's like girlfriend, basically her ex or something.
[00:39:44] Who was kidnapped with the professor at the beginning.
[00:39:47] Who was kidnapped with the professor at the beginning and has since been made empress.
[00:39:50] I don't understand why.
[00:39:51] Nope.
[00:39:52] And she's in a big throne.
[00:39:53] It's a big ordeal.
[00:39:54] Apparently she only agreed to it so that she could help her friends is what she says, but it's just, it makes no sense.
[00:40:01] So yeah, there's a horrible part where she's back and forth pretending to be a lover for the professor or pretending to be.
[00:40:08] Yeah.
[00:40:09] It's such a.
[00:40:09] They try to make her this femme fatale and it's just like too little, too late.
[00:40:13] It doesn't work.
[00:40:14] And then she comes back.
[00:40:15] None of these, I care.
[00:40:16] I just care about nobody here.
[00:40:18] Like I don't care how they feel or anything.
[00:40:21] There's another fight.
[00:40:22] And then you see the same shot of the robot cut open land on the ground again.
[00:40:27] Like they reuse the footage again.
[00:40:29] Like this is Ed Wood level sort of.
[00:40:31] So this is plan nine from outer space is really what I'm thinking here at this point.
[00:40:36] Yeah.
[00:40:36] Prop wise and design wise, this is marginally above that.
[00:40:40] You know, you're not getting a shower curtain divider in an airplane in this, but our spaceship or whatever it was, but you, you are getting everything is like plywood and MDF.
[00:40:52] The part I don't get was they landed on the planet in the first place because they had to repair the ship.
[00:40:57] They've never repaired the ship and now they have to leave.
[00:41:00] And now as they're leaving, the aliens are like shooting at it and destroying things.
[00:41:05] And one says, well, you can, if we just push the manual button, it actually said manual button.
[00:41:13] And I was like, wow.
[00:41:15] That's, and then they, and then they asked, yeah, I guess we could do that.
[00:41:18] And then off they go.
[00:41:19] There's there's, yeah, that's another one of those over explaining things.
[00:41:23] And they come up one after the other on top of each other.
[00:41:28] And it's funny because when they get into space, like you have to remember the reason they're trying to get the professor is because the home base reactor is still melting down.
[00:41:36] And the professor again is the one who can stop it, which I mentioned before, but just trying, cause this is very convoluted for you guys listening.
[00:41:43] But the point is, is now the ticking clock has shifted to, we've got the professor.
[00:41:49] We've got to get him back.
[00:41:50] We only have three hours before this thing's a meltdown.
[00:41:52] It's, it's really thin, but somewhere around here is, is where Lois has flip flopped again.
[00:42:03] And she leaves their ship in a space suit and swims through space.
[00:42:08] And how I much prefer the space swimming and message from space.
[00:42:12] Yes.
[00:42:12] Although this movie is, uh, shows us like every time you're in zero gravity, you have to move in slow motion.
[00:42:19] Yeah.
[00:42:19] So it's just like, okay.
[00:42:21] I actually didn't want the space suit, the helmet.
[00:42:24] Like it had that, it had a cool sixties retro sci-fi vibe.
[00:42:27] Did not have a motorcycle helmet inside of it.
[00:42:32] Yeah.
[00:42:32] Yeah.
[00:42:33] They're not going to Mars and that thing.
[00:42:34] That's for sure.
[00:42:35] No.
[00:42:36] And so they, she goes back to one of the, uh, T-Man robot spaceships in space and then turns on Boyd, Captain Boyd and everybody again.
[00:42:47] And this begins this massive space battle that is so horrendously long and shows nothing.
[00:42:57] It's gotta be 20 minutes.
[00:42:59] It's, I think it's even more.
[00:43:01] I think I'm thinking it's like 30.
[00:43:02] Yeah.
[00:43:03] Yeah.
[00:43:03] It's gotta be.
[00:43:04] Cause I'm watching it going, Oh my God.
[00:43:06] Like to the point of where I was debating skipping.
[00:43:08] I thought, no, if I do that, I know I'm just going to miss something.
[00:43:11] And when I say space battle, it's, you know, let's say, let's say it is 20 minutes.
[00:43:15] I'm going to say there's two minutes of exterior shots of models and there's maybe four to five minutes of actors running around on the bridge.
[00:43:26] Yeah.
[00:43:26] And then I'm going to say there's another 15 minutes of a radar screen.
[00:43:30] We, we get at least three countdowns from 10.
[00:43:35] Yep.
[00:43:36] Um, one of them where every number gives us the face of a different person on the bridge.
[00:43:43] And, uh, for, for no reason whatsoever.
[00:43:46] And again, these countdowns are literally just counting down to when they can push a button.
[00:43:51] The, the radar simulations that are trying to build tension to show where the other ships and how close they are look worse than Blair's assimilation simulation in the thing.
[00:44:04] When he's like looking at the Petri dish, taking over the dog of this digital display that shows the, the assimilation simulation program.
[00:44:13] Yeah.
[00:44:14] In defense of the thing that was modern day is supposed to taking place in modern day.
[00:44:18] And it was true, true to the day.
[00:44:21] I'm not saying it's bad.
[00:44:22] I'm just saying for a movie that set way in the future.
[00:44:25] Yes.
[00:44:25] But there's a great one.
[00:44:27] Think about over explaining.
[00:44:30] So Kubo's is now like the gunman, like he's handling all the munitions and all the stuff on the ship, as you said.
[00:44:36] Well, and there's, there's several scenes where he can't shoot anything, right?
[00:44:39] He can't, can't, can't line it all up.
[00:44:41] And they tell him like, just line it up in front and shoot.
[00:44:43] And then move back or something like, like, it's just like this really dumb advice.
[00:44:47] Yeah.
[00:44:47] Yeah.
[00:44:47] It's, it's exactly the way that they tell, the way they train him on how to do it is sub common sense.
[00:44:55] It's not.
[00:44:56] Yeah.
[00:44:57] But they finally shed and he's finally like things are happening and he's starting to shoot down all of these UFOs.
[00:45:04] And I want to point out, it's like the insanity of Kubo, even on this bridge or part of this crew.
[00:45:10] It's like, it's like, um, we found a Neanderthal in a cave and thought him out and he just happens to understand English and we just like make him vice president of the U S it's like.
[00:45:22] Well, it's actually not bad because I really liked that version in battlefield earth where they find the caveman and then they teach him how to fly the fighter jets.
[00:45:33] Yeah.
[00:45:33] I've never seen it.
[00:45:35] It's a great movie.
[00:45:36] Oh my God.
[00:46:05] No.
[00:46:07] No.
[00:46:08] No.
[00:46:08] Well, number one, no, I'm sure it's not.
[00:46:10] And the fact that you say it's a good movie tells me it probably isn't.
[00:46:12] So I will watch it eventually.
[00:46:14] I've always wanted to see it just because I need to see if it's as bad as everyone tells me it is.
[00:46:19] I don't get the hate.
[00:46:21] I hear, I hear the whole thing is nothing but Dutch angles for no reason whatsoever.
[00:46:25] Oh, there's a lot of that.
[00:46:26] Yeah.
[00:46:27] Yeah.
[00:46:28] And, uh, so I, I will watch his Barry Pepper and John Travolta, right?
[00:46:32] Yeah.
[00:46:33] Trying to go for style over substance, but only ending up with not so much style, but no substance.
[00:46:40] But you, you always appreciate style over substance.
[00:46:43] So that's all we got, man.
[00:46:45] He's finally figured it out.
[00:46:47] Like I said, he, he's on, I'll be on board for a long enough for a few minutes and now he knows how to run the ship.
[00:46:52] But everybody's cheering Kuma on and he clears the last ship.
[00:46:56] And one of the guys stands up in the bridge and he's like, wow, Kuma, he saved the day.
[00:47:02] And he looks around at all the other guys.
[00:47:04] He's like, we should take up a collection and build him a monument.
[00:47:10] It's so stupid.
[00:47:12] Yes.
[00:47:12] The basis of that is just, Kuma's like, obviously like a capable character and pretty decent.
[00:47:20] He's like the leader of his people and stuff, but he's basically treated like the special needs kid in the corner.
[00:47:26] It's like, it's just.
[00:47:28] They're all just like clapping and cheering him on.
[00:47:31] And God, yeah, it's just brutal.
[00:47:33] I mean, I thought the sexism was offensive, but yeah.
[00:47:37] You find everything offensive.
[00:47:38] Well, no, but there is a fair bit of sexism in this, which again, it's Italian and it's the seventies.
[00:47:44] So you got to expect it.
[00:47:46] I didn't notice it.
[00:47:47] Of course you didn't.
[00:47:49] But so the final scene here is that they send out some actual fighter jets, which, you know, this is the Battlestar Galactica style bit where they scramble some fighter jets out of their ship to try and take down Lois.
[00:48:03] And all we ever see is them in their cockpits and they're them in their cockpits is just them sitting with a black background.
[00:48:10] Yeah.
[00:48:10] And they've got a little bit of warped plexiglass in front of their face to make it look like lighting is wrapping around the cockpit.
[00:48:16] It's not good at all, but there's this weird thing where they're trying to take him out and he goes on and on forever.
[00:48:23] And it's interior cockpits back and forth, but there's no, it's not exciting action and it, but it is very long.
[00:48:29] And then they come up with this idea to use some torpedoes.
[00:48:33] The Texas guy.
[00:48:34] Well, no, Cuba says, says this thing.
[00:48:37] This is Cuba's idea.
[00:48:38] It's like we need, we need our multi-head missiles.
[00:48:41] Yes.
[00:48:41] And we could take them all out in one fell swoop.
[00:48:43] Like this would never be a concept that anyone else could ever think.
[00:48:47] No.
[00:48:49] And then that's.
[00:48:50] Yeah.
[00:48:52] We've got these things, but they're like, and he says, well, why haven't we used the Cuba's like, why haven't we used those before?
[00:48:57] And he's like, well, they're designed for atmosphere.
[00:48:59] Right.
[00:48:59] That's it.
[00:49:00] Yeah.
[00:49:00] They're not for space.
[00:49:01] And then Cuba's like, we'll do something about it.
[00:49:03] And he's like, I'll go rewire the, the warhead.
[00:49:06] Like he just wants.
[00:49:09] I forgot to check if he's still wearing his boots or not.
[00:49:11] Yeah, he is.
[00:49:13] Even though he's not in command anymore.
[00:49:15] They destroy the UFOs.
[00:49:17] Lois ones blows up.
[00:49:18] The, the, the, the exciting part at the end, which is where Lois locks,
[00:49:22] like Julie sneaks out and gets into a ship as well.
[00:49:25] And now Julie boy, a Boyd are out there fighting and Lois is in her ship.
[00:49:31] And Lois has locked on to Julie's ship.
[00:49:35] And gives like Boyd an ultimatum.
[00:49:38] It's me.
[00:49:39] You got to choose between Lois or Julie.
[00:49:42] And she's like, I know I always knew you.
[00:49:44] I knew you love, you know, I always loved you, even though you used to.
[00:49:47] And I know you used to love me.
[00:49:48] And it's like, and she says to Boyd, you got to make a choice.
[00:49:52] And Boyd's like, Julie, what do you think?
[00:49:54] Oh, you got to make this choice, Boyd.
[00:49:58] And Boyd's like, I guess I gotta.
[00:50:00] Cause you know, he's the man.
[00:50:01] And, uh, yeah.
[00:50:03] So he fires and it's like, I guess we're supposed to be surprised that he blows up Lois.
[00:50:09] Who was like turned on everybody left and right.
[00:50:11] How is this supposed to be a surprise?
[00:50:15] How is, how is any of this?
[00:50:18] Yeah.
[00:50:18] But, uh, and, and with Lois's death, the, the, the battle is over because they have taken
[00:50:23] them all out.
[00:50:25] And this is where I cannot, I cannot get over the end of this movie.
[00:50:31] So, uh, Julie's like, uh, you know, wow.
[00:50:35] I just, I just, you know, it makes me realize that life is fantastic.
[00:50:38] And Boyd's like, yeah, I mean, you really realize now that the war fights over that, that life
[00:50:44] is, I know he doesn't say life is beautiful, but that would be great if he did.
[00:50:47] Cause it'd be like a precursor to Benini film.
[00:50:50] But, uh, um, it would be like, uh, I saw that in the theaters too.
[00:50:56] Um, yeah, that, that's a, that's a beautiful movie.
[00:50:58] Life is beautiful.
[00:50:59] It's a beautiful movie.
[00:51:00] And, but yeah, it's just like, you know, yeah, I guess life is really good.
[00:51:03] Roll credits.
[00:51:05] It's like the end.
[00:51:06] The line specifically though, she says, it's so wonderful to be alive after being so near
[00:51:13] to death.
[00:51:14] Yes.
[00:51:14] Then the credits roll.
[00:51:18] It's like so much of this movie has been long and drawn out and it's just like villains
[00:51:22] dead, monsters dead.
[00:51:24] Boom.
[00:51:24] Roll credits.
[00:51:25] Sam must love it.
[00:51:27] I do like that component that I was, it should have happened about 40 minutes earlier, but
[00:51:33] I like that there was like, once the ship blew up, we're out of there.
[00:51:37] It should have happened when they got their ship away off the planet.
[00:51:41] Exactly.
[00:51:43] And left with Cuba.
[00:51:44] That was it.
[00:51:44] Yeah.
[00:51:45] I think, you know, after talking about it over again, you can really feel that this is
[00:51:51] one of four of these movies that was made inside of a year and just cranking them out, doing
[00:51:59] what they got to do.
[00:52:00] It's a sausage factory, which is like what I used to call when I worked with a front street
[00:52:04] pumping out 26 Hallmark movies in a year because yeah, you just got to get it.
[00:52:09] And I'm sure all of these movies made money too, you know?
[00:52:14] Yeah.
[00:52:14] And it would have back then.
[00:52:15] I'm sure.
[00:52:16] Exactly.
[00:52:16] And cause this is just the peak where if you had something and it went into the theater,
[00:52:21] it was destined to make money because people just were eating stuff up.
[00:52:25] Yep.
[00:52:26] And it had no other way of consuming anything, right?
[00:52:28] It was the, this stuff wasn't really even, well, I mean, you could hope for a secondary
[00:52:33] market and get it on TV afterwards.
[00:52:34] And that was it.
[00:52:35] No home fit.
[00:52:36] Home video did not exist yet.
[00:52:37] That's still a year or two away.
[00:52:38] Exactly.
[00:52:39] And maybe a year away, I guess.
[00:52:41] Like the late seventies, we had Betamax and the early eighties, we had VHS, but
[00:52:45] the superior format.
[00:52:46] Betamax or VHS.
[00:52:48] Betamax.
[00:52:48] Well, Betamax was definitely a superior format.
[00:52:50] We were talking about this in our group chat earlier.
[00:52:52] You're wrong about HD DVD.
[00:52:54] HD DVD was so much better than Blu-ray.
[00:52:57] No, it was not.
[00:52:58] It had a better UI.
[00:52:59] It looked better.
[00:53:00] The sound was so much better.
[00:53:02] It's just.
[00:53:03] The only advantage that HD DVD had was it was similar to, to DVDs, but a Blu-ray, you
[00:53:11] could cram more onto it.
[00:53:12] You had a better data perspective.
[00:53:15] Like you could layer a Blu-ray disc, which you couldn't do with an HD DVD.
[00:53:18] Yeah, but you don't need to cram stuff up.
[00:53:19] My original standard deaf copy of the rock DVD was double-sided.
[00:53:25] And when they dive down to Alcatraz and find the gate under the water, the movie would stop
[00:53:31] and a black card would come up with a drawing of a hand touching the disc and a red arrow.
[00:53:39] And you'd have to get up, you'd eject the disc, you turn the disc over, you close the player,
[00:53:44] you hit play.
[00:53:45] Yeah, we had that on a laser disc, Sam.
[00:53:47] It was blame then.
[00:53:50] I'm just saying, we'd just be able to do it.
[00:53:53] Again, wrong take.
[00:53:55] There was the laser disc with the conveyor that would flip the laser and it was on a track.
[00:54:01] So you never had to turn the disc and the laser would run on a track and go down under the disc.
[00:54:07] And then it would flip back up on top.
[00:54:08] It was pretty slick.
[00:54:09] Do you remember the early DVDs players that there would be like, um, because you'd get the
[00:54:14] double layer DVDs.
[00:54:15] What it would do is it would refocus and then work its way back in to do the other side.
[00:54:20] And the early DVD players, there'd be like this pause.
[00:54:24] The pause, yeah.
[00:54:24] Just for, it'd be like a second.
[00:54:27] Everything would freeze for like a second and then it would come up and they, they,
[00:54:30] it blew my mind when they were able to get rid of that.
[00:54:32] Yeah.
[00:54:32] The layer change.
[00:54:33] And it was like, that was a big, that was a big deal.
[00:54:36] But also there was a while too, where we started seeing discs and there would be four,
[00:54:40] three on one side and 16, nine on the other side too.
[00:54:43] Got a bunch of those too.
[00:54:45] I have a Farscape on DVD and it's dual.
[00:54:49] It's double sided, uh, just because that way they could create, they could cram more
[00:54:53] onto less discs.
[00:54:55] Yeah.
[00:54:55] Yeah.
[00:54:55] That's a good one.
[00:54:56] So I think the biggest problem with this movie for me is that there's not even anything
[00:55:02] like that I even want to put on our Instagram.
[00:55:04] Like there's nothing that's actually cool.
[00:55:07] I'm probably going to put the lightsaber fight where the robot falls apart.
[00:55:11] That's probably it.
[00:55:12] But all these other movies, we always have like a good couple of fun clips to use, but
[00:55:16] this movie is underwhelming in so many ways.
[00:55:20] And so did you know that the name of their ship is the Trissy?
[00:55:24] Well, they're all wearing patches that say Trissy.
[00:55:27] So, but, but I didn't, I thought that was the name of their like military or their space
[00:55:32] agency or something is, I didn't realize that was the name of the ship.
[00:55:36] So I'm glad you mentioned that Jason, because did you know that the space suits in this movie,
[00:55:43] which all have Trissy written on them, actually Trissy sport ski wear.
[00:55:48] So the brand that they wore placement.
[00:55:53] Yeah.
[00:55:54] It's not even product.
[00:55:55] It's just that they use these because they wanted things that look like space suits.
[00:55:59] So they use them.
[00:56:00] They had Trissy sport wear written all over them.
[00:56:03] And because that's why they look like sexy Ned Flanders, stupid, sexy Flanders.
[00:56:14] So because they were made by Trissy, the reverse of that ended up happening.
[00:56:20] Trissy sport gear.
[00:56:25] So they were like, Oh yeah, this is just the crew gear, but it's actually gear.
[00:56:31] It's, it's the most ass backwards way to name a spaceship of all time.
[00:56:37] It's like, and they probably didn't even get any money for it.
[00:56:40] They probably had to go buy all of those.
[00:56:42] They had to buy it.
[00:56:43] And then it would have cost them money to unpick the stitching and cover it up.
[00:56:46] So they were just like, why don't we just call the ship the Trissy?
[00:56:48] And that's it.
[00:56:49] So I know.
[00:56:53] Yeah.
[00:56:53] Yeah.
[00:56:53] That, that summarizes this movie.
[00:56:56] Well, it's better.
[00:56:58] Cause if they had done that nowadays, I would have had to have like gotten someone to paint
[00:57:02] all that out.
[00:57:03] So could you guess what the IMDB rating is of this movie or what?
[00:57:08] I had already seen it.
[00:57:09] So point seven.
[00:57:12] Yeah.
[00:57:13] This is our lowest yet.
[00:57:15] Yeah.
[00:57:15] And, and I got to go with, that's about right.
[00:57:18] So I, I think it should be lower.
[00:57:21] And again, the reason I think it's lower because this movie is not two thirds of the value of
[00:57:29] starship invasions at 3.7.
[00:57:32] I love how everything is, is on a scale is on a starship invasion scale for you.
[00:57:37] This is, this is my new standard.
[00:57:40] Um, so I should let everyone know.
[00:57:41] Um, so Sam and I who have been friends for how long would you say?
[00:57:47] Well, over a decade now anyway.
[00:57:49] Right.
[00:57:49] Yeah.
[00:57:49] We've known each other.
[00:57:50] Um, we've actually only met in person once.
[00:57:53] Yeah.
[00:57:53] Which is crazy.
[00:57:55] Uh, when you think about it.
[00:57:56] Over this time it's crazy.
[00:57:58] Yeah, I know.
[00:57:59] Um, but I am heading to his place in a couple of weeks.
[00:58:01] This, this is also, um, this is going to be our last episode before Christmas.
[00:58:08] We're going to take a two week break.
[00:58:09] Yep.
[00:58:09] So I believe this is, we're of course recording this slightly in advance, but not, not by that
[00:58:14] much to be honest.
[00:58:16] No.
[00:58:16] Um, and, and generally we're recording these things a few days in advance and that's it.
[00:58:20] But, uh, on the 26th, cause it works.
[00:58:23] So we're going to take off the 26th and the second, uh, we're going to take two weeks off
[00:58:27] for Christmas on the 26th.
[00:58:29] I am flying down to San Francisco.
[00:58:31] Uh, Sam and I are going to hang out for longer than we've ever hung out in our lives.
[00:58:36] Um, because I think the only time we've ever met in person was,
[00:58:39] and you were here in Vancouver after your Europe trip.
[00:58:41] Yep.
[00:58:42] And you're getting ready to ride your bike back down to San Francisco.
[00:58:46] Yeah.
[00:58:47] After, uh, yeah, we, and we went and met at the Sunshine Diner.
[00:58:49] Sunshine Diner.
[00:58:50] The best eggs Benny sauce on earth.
[00:58:53] Still the best Benedict I've ever had in my life.
[00:58:56] Cool, man.
[00:58:57] Well, thanks again.
[00:58:57] And we will see you in January.
[00:59:01] See you in two weeks.
[00:59:02] Yep.
[00:59:02] Thank you.
[00:59:03] And have a good Christmas, everybody.
[00:59:05] And we'll see you then.
[00:59:06] Merry Christmas.
[00:59:07] Happy New Year.
[00:59:07] Cheers.
[00:59:08] Take care.
[00:59:11] Therefore, whatever appears on a television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it.
[00:59:20] Therefore, television is reality.
[00:59:24] And reality is less than television.
[00:59:28] Thank you.
[00:59:28] Thank you.