Weirdhouse Cinema: It Conquered the World

Published Sep 20, 2024, 7:53 PM

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe learn almost too late that man is a feeling creature... and because of it, the greatest in the universe. Tune in as they discuss Roger Corman’s 1956 sci-fi horror thriller “It Conquered the World” starring Peter Graves, Beverly Garland and Lee Van Cleef. 

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema, we are finally going to be devoting a full episode to a movie that we have referenced in passing quite a bit over the years. I don't know if it's come up as often as Highlander two, but it's got to be close. This is the subject of a fan favorite episode of Mystery Science Theater three thousand from season three with Joel and another example of one of our favorite niche subgenres, low budget atomic age sci fi horror thrillers, directed by Roger Corman, which played as part of a double bill at your local drive in in the fifties. This one. Most of these movies are great because they're usually less than seventy minutes long. This one's at the the longer end of that scale. It's like sixty nine seventy minutes, you know, they get even shorter. Attack of the Crab Monsters is like, what sixty two minutes or something, But it's still right in the zone. And as I've said before, I want to be on record that I think it's okay for feature films to be that short. You don't need to try to stretch it out, as even this short movie does with all these scenes of driving and parking.

Yes, indeed, modern filmmakers, you can make them this short we approve.

Oh wait, but I didn't say the name yet. Sorry, Today we're talking about it Conquered the World from nineteen fifty six, starring Peter Graves, Beverly Garland, and a devious Earth betraying Lee Van Cleef, who is redeemed in the end. You know. So this is a movie I've seen primarily in the Mystery Science Theater episode, and I guess because of the MST framing, i'd never really give it a serious chance on its own terms. I actually had seen it on its own before, but still just kind of with the mind of looking for the cheesy bits, and there are plenty of those, we can talk about them. But this movie is not bad. This is a pretty solid scrappy drive in film.

Absolutely. Yeah. This is a film I too, had seen numerous times in its MST three K format over the decades, but this was actually my first time watching it straight up. So yeah, I feel like, as is often the case with the best MST three K episodes, the underlying movie is very watchable on its own. You know, it has some wonky pacing at times, nothing really zings visually, at least as it's intended to zing.

I mean, I would say the monster zing's but mostly because of how funny it looks.

Yes, yeah, yeah, it does not inspire terror, but it is amazing and in a different way. Yeah. It has a couple of spirited performances that we'll discuss, and it at least bats around some deeper sci fi concepts as well as some rather obvious anxieties about communist brainwashing. Now, this is not a film about communists, but as is often the case with some of these sci fi films about alien minutes from this time period, you know, it's very clear that they're getting into some of the popular anxieties about communism in the way that they're describing and dealing with this extraterrestrial threat.

In most of these movies with alien brainwashing, and it's the same case in this one. The alien ideology is less controversial and specific, and this one it's about ridding human beings of emotion, which At first that sounds like kind of a placeholder themes, like oh yeah, okay, but it actually leads to a couple of interesting dialogue scenes, Like they go deeper with that theme than you would expect for a movie of this sort.

Yeah. Yeah, And I feel like I've always enjoyed those scenes, Like this is a film that is sixty percent living room dialogue scenes in which luckily they do get into some of these topics. It's like thirty five percent driveways and then some lab scenes and caves scene sprinkled to fill out the rest of it. But it moves right along. I feel like I always end up loving it when I watch it. Yeah, and it at least bats around some deeper concepts, even even if the same. At the same time, you have to acknowledge that this is a fast film. This is a cheap film. I think they filmed it in five days. Like all of that taken into account, it holds up really well.

I agree, and I think the movie literally I think actually the weakest element of it is the padding. I think if you were to edit out about ten to fifteen minutes of this movie, cut it down to like a fifty to fifty five minute film, it would be really solid. Like you just cut out a lot of the driving and the three point turns, the dramatic three point turn. I'm sorry, Roger, they're not I'm not buying it. That's not as great as you think it is.

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

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

Yeah, with Peter Graves, it's interesting because Peter Graves certainly has has a style, you know, and this is very much a sort of teeth gritted square kind of performance. You know, this is Peter Graves and he's here to it by the books, but at the same time there, I think there are some very weird choices in his character that I mean, I don't know what you would ask God him to do, you know. So we'll get into that when we get into the plot a bit more. Because he ultimately his character is ultimately like the champion of human emotion, and yet his character seems to have only like maybe two emotions and makes some and engages in some very cold blooded murder as the plot progresses.

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

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

Now I want to talk briefly about this movie's meta because there's an interesting contradiction here. I think despite the fact that this movie has a famously goofy looking monster. When you actually get to it in the film, it mostly shows up in the last three minutes or so, well, no, a little bit before that, mostly in the last ten minutes or so. When you see the monster, it is not very convincing, It is not very scary, and in fact is quite hilarious. But the exact same monster design when rendered as an illustration gazing into your Soul from the movie poster rendering is awesome. I think that this monster looks great on every poster I've seen for It Conquered the World. In fact, I've got a poster for this movie framed in my office because it's one of my favorite fifties movie posters.

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

But further regarding the meta, oh man, this has some great taglines. So one of the posters, of course, it has the title. It's got a screaming Beverly Garland. It's got people being attacked by these sort of you know, mind control bats. It's got the creature from Venus, staring into our souls with red eyes. But then it's got some some text on it, so it says it conquered the world. Every man it's prisoner, every woman its slave. See world conquered by the horrible beast from beyond the stars. See the hideous flying fingers of the monster. And then below that, I think we see Leavan Kleef with like his little blow torch kind of oh yeah, monster like it's looking in the window of a house. But that doesn't ever happen in the movie.

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

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

Yes.

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

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

Oh, you're putting me on the spot, but I guess we should. We should do that. Do that near the beginning, because this is another one of the most famous things about the movie. I've already praised the scripts, so put that aside. It is I think, a pretty tight, kind of scrappy script. It's got some interesting ideas. This ending monologue is atrocious. Here's how it goes. He learned almost too late, that man is a feeling creature, and because of it, the greatest in the universe. He learned too late for himself that men have to find their own way to make their own mistakes. There can't be any gift of perfection from outside ourselves, and when men seek such perfection they find only death, fire, loss, disillusionment. The end of everything that's gone forward men have always sought an end to the toil and misery, but it can't be given. It has to be achieved. There is hope, but it has to come from inside, from man himself. And I like to sometimes. Of course, it is Peter Graves who says this at the end of the movie, and it's also a very bloated, wooden kind of delivery. But I like to imagine this monologue being given by David Huddleston as the Big Lebowski in The Big Lebowski, and it has to be achieved.

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

I guess so to defend what comes before this monologue, I think the film makes these points without this hilarious speech at the end.

Yeah, just sort of like patting it out a little bit, maybe, yeah, and trying to punctuate it.

It's the verbal equivalent of another parking scene.

All right, Well, if you want to watch it conquered the world, you can certainly go out and do so. As of this recording, this one isn't available as a legit stream anywhere you can find it if you look around, but couldn't find it on any of the legit streaming platforms. You're also hard pressed to get a DVD of it, though there are some for sale and reasonable prices and some of the familiar websites, but I don't know who is putting them out, so I don't know what kind of releases these are. But there is not a Blu ray release. And while famously featured in that nineteen ninety one episode of MST three K, I don't think this episode has ever been made available on disc. So the rights for this film and a handful of other AIP films, including the amazing Colossal Man and I Was a Teenage Werewolf sadly seemed to be held up. And it's a shame because it conquered the world certainly deserves placement in a proper physical release of Roger Corman's films.

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

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

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

Yeah. All right, let's talk about the folks involved in this production, starting at the top with someone we've talked about in the show before, and that's Roger Corman, the director and producer here who lived nineteen twenty six through twenty twenty four. Corman was, of course the Wizard of b Movies, and a prolific creator of late fifties drive in flicks. We've covered numerous Corman produced and or Corman directed films on Weird House Cinema already, including sixty four's Mask of the Red Death, which is probably among his best work, as well as some of his many entertaining low budget films like nineteen fifty seven's Not of This Earth. Seth joined me on Weird House for an episode on the nineteen fifty nine beat Nick horror comedy A Bucket of Blood, and this is our first episode about a Corman directed film since his death earlier this year at the age of ninety eight.

Though we may come back to Corman's Vincent Price Poe movies this October.

Yes, so this was one of four Corman directed films released in fifty six, but the only sci fi or horror title. Swamp Woman, which also had Beverly Garland, was a crime picture, and both Gunslinger with Beverly Garland and The Oklahoma Woman with Peggy Castle were westerns. This was the year before Attack of the Crab Monsters, and as Michael Weldon points out in the Psychotronic Film Guide, this was only Corman's second sci fi film, which is it's always interesting to realize this sort of thing when we think about Roger Corman, who's best remembered for so many of these sci fi and or horror pictures, but he also did a lot of westerns and other sorts of flicks as well.

It's hard to believe he only did four movies in this year though. I mean, yeah, pick up the pace, Roger.

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

Was it fifty seven that he I want to say, made either eight or eleven movies that year.

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

In this movie, they say that the creature from Venus is living there because the conditions inside mimic those on Venus. I don't know about that.

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

You know, I was surprised when watching the credits this time, and I noticed that the screenplay credit went to Rusof and not to who I assumed was the writer of this movie, which is Charles B. Griffith. Charles B. Griffith wrote Not of This Earth, wrote Attack of the Crab Monster. Was a common writer in the Corman scene of this time, and was famous for being able to crank out a script that was pretty witty and tight and quickly made. He could make he could write him fast.

Well, you know, he apparently did some work on the script anyway. He's listed on IMDb as an uncredited screenwriter post film, so you know he got in there and worked on it to some degree anyway. But indeed, you think of Corman pictures from this area, You think of Charles B. Griffith, who lived nineteen thirty through two thousand and seven. You know films like Not of This Earth Attack, of the Crab Monster. It's a little shop of hors and bucket of blood. All right, let's get into the cast here, and I'm going to not go in billing order. We'll reference the billing order, but we're going to take it by couple because this film centers mostly around two married couples, the Nelson's and the Andersons, though I'd argue that it's chiefly the story of the Andersons.

That's where the real emotional meat is.

Yes, all right, so let's start with the Nelson's here, starting with Doctor Paul Nelson, played by the top Build Peter Graves. Graves live nineteen twenty six through twenty ten, best known to many for his long running hosting gig on A and E's Biography, or at least for some of us. I don't know if they're still rerunning episodes that Graves hosted, but he was a longtime host on Biography, and of course he had a long run on the original TV series Mission Impossible from sixty seven through seventy three. I don't think I ever watched any of that, but I do remember watching some of the late nineteen eighties reboot, a reboot that I only recently learned resulted from a Hollywood writers strike. The studio was like, well, we got to make episodes of something, but we can't use writers. And they realized, well, let's just go back and get old Mission Impossible scripts that weren't filmed and just film them in Australia, and that's what they did. That's where this show came from. But I remember watching it and digging it and getting very excited about a Nintendo game titled Mission Impossible that was some sort of tie in. I think it was an official tie in, but also just a legendarily difficult games. It's one of those Nintendo games that I don't know if anyone ever beat this thing. It was just so difficult, but also had some interesting like stealth mechanics that seemed ahead of their time.

I'm looking it up now. I never played this one.

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

That was common for video game tie ins to movies and TV shows at the time. There's almost no resemblance to the plot of the original thing.

Yeah, so Graves was a US Air Force vet. He was also, of course the brother of James Arness. Graves is his stage name. Arness We talked about in the past because he was the Thing from Another World and graves acting credits go back to the early fifth these including an early starring sci fi role in fifty two's Red Planet Mars, but he scored much more success when he appeared in a supporting role in Billy Wilder Stalog seventeen in nineteen fifty three. He was not nominated, but the film earned AUSTAR nominations for two of its stars and its director. Graves went on from here to have a long career on TV and screen, appearing in the likes of fifty four's Killers from Space, fifty five's The Night of the Hunter seventy nine. Yeah, yeah, The Night of the Hunter not I think there was later a TV version it's different, but yeah, he was in the picture. He was in nineteen seventy nine The Clonis horror. Another MST three K favorite of many.

Oh, is that the one about Going to America.

Yes, yeah, it's a you know, it's a dull person movie about clones. But it's one that is I think, kind of stupid, but also kind of great and has been sort of re explored, we should say, I guess with subsequent clone movies. Yes, he was, of course in a nineteen eighties Airplane. He was in ninety three's Adams Family Values and nineteen ninety nine's House on Haunted Hill. I think he kind of played himself in both of those, like a TV presenter role, and he also pops up in two thousand and two's Men in Black two.

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

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

Yeah. So, I mean this is from the fifty so, which remember, like you know, we didn't really have our full space program yet at the time, you know, the Apollo program wouldn't until like nineteen sixty one. So they're imagining a space program that is being run by the military. And so, yes, Paul Nelson is he's I think the creator of a satellite that is sort of a first satellite in orbit sort of thing. And he is also depicted as great friends with Lee van Cleef's character, who will get to in a minute.

All right, So that's doctor Paul Nelson. And doctor Paul Nelson's wife is Joan Nelson, played by Sally Frasier, who lived nineteen thirty two through twenty nineteen. I mean, glamorous b movie star of the nineteen fifties, whose credits include another couple of notable genre pictures in the late fifties, nineteen fifty eight's War of the Colossal Beast. Oh, actually two more, Giant from the Unknown and The Spider Hmmm.

Trying to think if I've seen any of those.

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

Here, I think the Amazing Colossal Man is the first one. So War of the Colossal Beast has got to be a sequel or a subsequent film.

Yeah, but there is. I think there is another Giant Man picture in the mix.

There, just looks it up. Yeah, Colossal Man is fifty seven, War of the Colossal Beast is fifty.

Eight, and then what year is the Cyclops?

Oh with Lon Chaney Junior. I think that that's fifty seven.

Okay, yeah, that is the same makeup as War of the Colossal Beast, I see.

Okay.

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

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

All right, let's move on to the Andersons here starting with doctor Tom Anderson played by the legendary Lee van Kleef, who lived nineteen twenty five through nineteen eighty nine. It's old Angelized himself. Now, Van Cleef's career would ultimately really take off in the mid nineteen sixties. That's when Sergio Leoni cast him in the Clint Eastwood Western for a few dollars more, followed by a role as the villain Angelize and sixty six is The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, And this just cemented him as a spaghetti western superstar. And you know, before and after that too, he appeared in tons of westerns. Like you look at his filmography, it's really like mostly westerns and some crime pictures and that sort of thing. Director John Carpenter, of course, grew up as a fan of all these westerns and cast him as police Commissioner Bob Hawk in the nineteen eighty one classic Escape from New York picture, where I think Van Cleeve really shines. This is one of my favorite supporting characters, I think probably of all time, one of those supporting characters that leaves you wanting more and has some interesting hooks about where this character has been and where they might be going, and you want to know those stories. But of course the film doesn't take us there. It just teases us with these possibilities.

Yeah, and of course I love Him. And The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is a movie of many villains. Two main villains sort of alluded to in the title there. One is played by Eli Wallach, who is the more humorous and talkative of the sort of villainish characters with kind of shifting loyalties. But Lee van Kleef's character is the very straight, hard, bad, mysterious, serious villain. Nice.

Now, at this point in Lee van Cleef's career fifty six, he'd already had a few years experience in TV and film, but with loads of credits as you often see, like he was working a lot. Let's see, he made his film debut in the Oscar winning western high Noon from fifty two, and in fifty three he was in the Beast from twenty thousand fathoms. He acted in again a lot of westerns and crime projects throughout his filmography, But one of the interesting things is that this film The Beast from twenty thousand Fathoms and Escape from New York. Those are apparently the only three sci fi or horror pictures that he ever did, though I believe he did act in at least one sci fi TV series in the early fifties, and he played a ninja on TV's The Master in the mid eighties, but you know that wasn't sci fi or horror, and so in this picture, yeah, he is Anderson, a disgruntled physicist whose big ideas about aliens have pushed him outside of the mainstream. But then, of course the picture of centers around the fact that he ends up making actual contact with an alien intelligence from the planet Venus, and it places him in the role of well, it could be Earth's savior or perhaps it's destroyed. For a lot of the picture, it depends which side of the philosophical debate you're on.

There are a lot of interesting things about the way this character is written and the way Van Cleef plays him. So the character is in some ways portrayed as a crank, like he has these ideas that are not accepted by other scientists or by the the you know, the the civil leadership, and they have to do with aliens of course, and nobody pays attention to him. They're just like, ah, he's going off on his favorite subject again, and this makes him embittered to the fact that nobody's paying attention to him, which I think is pretty interesting because that is, you know, it almost makes me think of when when sun Zoo came up recently in our episodes about the Ninja, where you know, he's talking about who to find within the enemy's ranks to recruit to your side, to be it, to be a secret agent and betray the enemy, and one of the things he says is look for someone who has who feels they have been mistreated or unappreciated by enemy leadership, someone who feels their genius is not being made use of by the enemy.

Yeah. Yeah, that matches up.

So he's portrayed as simultaneously like in some ways an appreciated scientific genius but also at the same time a crying who people are dismissive of, at least with his ideas about aliens. But then he also interestingly, I would say, he plays this scientist character in a way that's very textually different than most scientist characters in horror and sci fi movies of the fifties, who are usually portrayed as very straight laced and with high social class signifiers in the way they speak. Van Cleef's character does not come off that way. He is playing a physicist who has a more rough, aggressive and kind of sounds like he has probably working class origins and speaks with a speaks with a distinctive voice rather than the kind of formal or or character free way that a lot of scientist characters in these movies talk.

Yeah, yeah, you're right. He does stand out in that regard. And and it's interesting too, like his some of his ideas that especially the ones we hear about early on, like you know that they are actual ideas that are sometimes batted around concerning the possibility of extraterrestrials, like the idea that they're watching and that they might interfere if they didn't like some development that was happening here, you know, Like some of these ideas, you know, they're they're not they're not out of line with with some of the speculative notions that are discussed regarding alien intelligence. Uh. And then of course it ends up taking on this this higher purpose that he sees the idea that through contact with aliens we can save ourselves. And of course this is a common theme in u apology. And and then I guess in in some like serious contemplations on what first contact would mean for humans, you know, the possibility that it could greatly improve life on Earth if we had outside contacts something some other force that could help us fix our problems.

I don't know if we've talked about this recently, maybe it's come up on the show before, but I noticed a pretty strong tendency these days for beliefs about UFOs and alien life to essentially merge with religious thinking, for it to be actually not really separate propositions at all. Though, like a lot of people who believe strongly in UFOs and alien presence on Earth these days, that belief sort of edges into ideas about them being spiritual or heavenly beings that are in some way going to save us.

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

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

Oh yes, Beverly Garland, who, to be clear, has second billing in the picture, even though we're discussing her fourth, I want to stress that she did have second billing. Her performance here is great. It's spirited, and she plays she doesn't just play like a damsel or some character who's just kind of like, oh, honey, I wish you wouldn't betray humanity to the aliens. Like she is supportive, like fiercely supportive, but she is also very skeptical, and she voices her skepticism and in the end she's also she's more than willing to fight for the man she loves and the planet she loves in a really inspiring fashion like this is ultimately, especially for this Ara, this is pretty strong role and she does a great job with it, like any she now, to be clear, occasionally she has some some some maybe not all that thought out lines she has to work with. But even then, like Beverly Garland, gives it her all, and she makes those those lines live on the screen when they should have been that they shouldn't have have had as much life to them.

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

Yeah, lines like that. She's she'sually fighting for her life with lines like that. But she does a great job you.

But yeah, she she has to manage. I think a difficult character here who's like her motivations shift over the course of the movies. She's always conflicted. But at the beginning of the movie, she's conflicted because she loves her husband, but she thinks he's losing his mind. She thinks that he is having delusions of contact with alien life. But then when it becomes clear he is actually talking to an alien and he was right all along and she was wrong for doubting him. Then it shifts to her realizing that his vindication is not a good thing because it means that he is actually partnering with this alien to take over the planet and destroy everything that she holds sacred and so she like makes a case to him. This movie involves a lot of scenes of people just like laying out an argument for why Earth should not be conquered, and she does great in those scenes, Like she sort of brings things up to Lea Vancleef about what this alien conquest would mean for their family and their marriage, and it's like things that he hadn't occurred to him before.

Yeah, yeah, so again I love this performents. Beverly Garland lived nineteen twenty six through two thousand and eight. She'd been enacting in TV and films since I think nineteen forty nine at this point, and It Conquered the World seems to have led to a number of additional low budget sci fi films, though she'd also act in supporting roles on bigger pictures and of course on TV. For instance, I think at least at one point, most people would be familiar with her from her role on TV's My Three Sons, but she also appeared in such films as fifty six's Caruku Beast of the Amazon Not at This Earth in fifty seven, so we have discussed her on the show before The Alligator People in fifty nine, Twice, Told Tales in fifty three, Pretty Poison in sixty eight, in Airports seventy five, In seventy four.

Is Alligator People a sci fi horror movie where like a mad scientist is turning people into alligators and the swamp?

Yep, that's the one, okay.

I wonder if is that the movie that is being referenced in the Rocky Ericsson song It's a Cold Night for Alligators.

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

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

Oh yeah, great album, especially for October. I highly recommend putting that one on.

I've listened to this one so many times. It's a personal favorite.

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

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

Yeah, yeah, there's a He has a lot of interaction with the private Manuel Ortiz, who is in this picture played by Jonathan Hayes Bor nineteen twenty nine American actor, best known for his work in Corman films, especially Little Shop of Hers, in which he played the main character Seymour. He was also in fifty seven's Not of This Earth and pops up in the nineteen eighty two Wings Houser film Vice Squad. This is a bit comedic role, and I have to say, not a shining moment in his filmography. Don't love it. And let's see who else we have. Oh, we have Russ Bender here playing Brigadier General James Patrick. He lived nineteen ten through nineteen sixty nine. General American B movie actor often played these kind of like authority figures. He was also in fifty seven's The Amazing Colossal Man and fifty eighth War of the Colossal Beast that plays a different character in each.

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

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

That was great.

Yeah. Yeah. He lived nineteen twenty seven through nineteen eighty three, responsible for Let's see what are some of the other creatures, The Beast with a Million Eyes and the Day the World Ended from fifty five not of this Earth, which I thought those were pretty cool little saucer creatures in there, Invasion of the Saucer Men Teenagers from Outer Space, which has a great dog zafting scene in it where the one of the alien zaps a dog and turns it to bones. So you know, he's involved in a lot of stuff in his designs. Have they have a signature look to them which is great and has and is you know, kind of worshiped by people who love nineteen fifties B movies, like they're model kits of the monster from this picture. But at the end of the day, it is also ineffective. Is it is a goofy looking monster that does not inspire terror, That is a great pains to convincingly interact with human actors. It just ultimately falls flat. But you can't help but love it at the same time.

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

Yeah, it looks and I'm not the first to make some of these comparisons to it, but it looks like the mascot, the demonic mascot for an arti Choke Heart company, Like, it looks like a big artichoke heart with tentacles, tentacle arm, clawed arm things. And it apparently at one point it didn't have that conical head. It was like flat because they were like, well, it's Venus and their head in their minds, Well, it would be crushed flat by the gravity. I don't know, we know that's that wouldn't exactly be the case. It was crushed, It would be by the atmosphere. But at any rate, they put it on on set and he realized, no, this thing's way too short. We've got to make it taller. So let's just make its head like an inverted ice cream cone. And that's what they did.

I think that I've read that the cast were comparing it to an ice cream cone on the set because it's got a conical head, no body, and arms coming out of the side of its head. Uh. There's a great part in the movie where it's it's got sort of a little like, you know, a round skirt around the bottom of it, and it starts just sort of pooping out these little bats that fly away, the mind control bats. But as you said, artichoke, I've always thought of it as an artichoke. It is an art to choke from hell.

If you look up images of the original costume, it was apparently read. Its name on set was Beulah. I believe Paul Blasdell called it as such himself. Oftentimes these monster effects have like little pet names behind the scenes, and this was Beulah. And yeah, I mean it. It's it's a it's a terrible and amazing design at the same time, it like it. It has stood the test of time. People love it. And it looks evil, it looks like it's up to no good. Yes, yeah, And I don't want to be too hard on it. There are maybe a couple of scenes with it that that do resonate, and it's it's interactions with the human actors are not entirely unconvincing, but clearly it needed a lot of help.

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

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

Like for the people who get mulled by it are essentially like a puppy running up to somebody for a hug.

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

Yeah, that's sort of a revelation, right, Like Leavan Kleef is all about, Oh, it's super powerful, it's perfect, it can do anything. But Beverly Garland is like, wait a minute, but it can't leave this cave and it's like stuck theirs and it needs people to do its dirty work. That makes it sound like it's not as powerful as you think. And she's got a point. Yeah, maybe it's supposed to look somewhat awkward and unable to act very effectively within Earth's atmosphere because it's not from here and it needs people to do its job for it.

Yeah, but it is highly intelligent and highly manipulative, as we'll get into all right. One final note on the music for this picture, though the music is nothing really remarkable, but the music is credited to Ronald Stein, who lived nineteen thirty through nineteen eighty eight. Composer who worked on a lot of low budget films, particularly for American international pictures, the likes of Not of This Earth, Attack of the Crab, Monster's Queen of Blood, Dementia thirteen, and more, including The Rain People, Francis Ford Coppola's picture prior to the Godfather.

I didn't really notice much about the music itself one of the so the music wasn't bad, it wasn't great. But one thing I did notice that was quite funny was the pairing of certain pieces of music with what was happening on the screen. Rob, did you notice that some of the most dramatic music in the movie was like, while we were watching Peter Graves do a three point turn in the truck.

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

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

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

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

Yeah, all right, well let's get into the plot of it Conquered the World.

Okay. Well, the action begins with a bunch of scientists in a lab at what I think is an Air Force bace. It's a military installation of some kind. You got technicians in white coats, electronic equipment beeping all over the place, these big view screens on the walls, and radar pinging with contacts from the sky. And here in command of all this is doctor Paul Nelson. That's again Peter Graves. The people in this lab are preparing for a satellite launch. And note that this movie was released in nineteen fifty six, which was a year before the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first ever artificial satellite to achieve orbit. So what is being depicted here was at the time pure science fiction. Humans had not yet at the time of this movie put a satellite into orbit.

Yeah, it's always fun to sort of put these in the perspective of where we actually were with the space exploration at the time.

Yeah. Yeah, So some of the chatter between the scientists in the room reveals that the satellite program costs nine million dollars as wow, and it is at moderate risk of crashing into an unrelated airplane during liftoff. They're like, oh, I better get that plane out of the way. Peter Graves, he's got sort of corny, overwrought moments pretty much immediately, Like in this very first scene, one of one of the technicians says, you know, all systems are ago, and Graves looks almost directly into the camera and says, then man is finally ready to move into space.

But these lines are perfect for Graves. Yeah, they're over the top, but like Man, he delivers them like few others.

Well, I can just imagine, like, you know, Joan, his wife bakes him a macaroni and cheese TV dinner and sets it down in front of him, and he looks up and says, Men is finally ready to achieve sustenance. So from here we go into a general's office to meet our next main character, Tom Anderson. That's leave Enkleef. And in this scene we learned that Tom Anderson is a highly accomplished and respected physicist with quote every degree imaginable. So I guess that means he also has an MBA. He's got a you know, an accounting degree, all that stuff. He once worked on something called the perpetual missile project. I was trying to imagine what could that mean. A missile that is, a missile that lasts forever.

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

But anyway, we discover that Tom has lately developed some fringe ideas that are a cause for concern to the military leadership and to his colleagues. This has led to a sort of career exile. The way he explains that, Van Cleef says, there are a lot of fat heads who are not ready to hear the truth. And you know, it's classic rank behavior. People don't accept my ideas because they are stupid and wicked and want to hide the truth, which, you know, it's funny. I understand exactly why this is, because it makes for a better storytelling dynamic. But it is kind of unfortunate that most of the time in the movies the people who act like this are proven right. Yeah, yeah, But anyway, so van Kleef. He's imploring the general to call off the satellite project before it launches. Why well, it seems that a smaller satellite that the Space program tried to launch some time ago exploded before it reached orbit, and Anderson says that this was no mere accident. It was a warning from someone out there. Other planets in our Solar system are watching us closely every minute of every day to make sure that we don't put anything into space, because if we do, that means we're a threat to them, and if we're a threat to them, they may choose to destroy us. So for the sake of all humankind, we've got to stock this whole project.

Yeah, and as I alluded to earlier, this is not a crazy concept in and of itself. In the nineteen eighties, for example, cosmologist Edward Harrison argued that the first life form to achieve a certain level of interstellar technology at least within you know, certain distances, because of course the universe is so vast, but the first civilization to achieve a certain level of interstellar technology would essentially become a super predator intent on preventing other civilizations from advancing sufficiently. In their technology, you know, because it's like, well we have achieved it, anybody else achieving it, they could be as bad as us or worse. So we've got to prevent them. We've got to blow out their satellites, we've got to interfere with their launches. This is also a concept that is explored in the Three Body Problem.

Yeah. Yeah, do you want to make a sound in a dark forest if you don't know what else is out there? And the idea that there's sort of a game theory logic at work within the dark forest, where it's in anybody's interests there to destroy anything else that makes a sound. Yeah, But in this case, the general is not dissuaded. He ignores Anderson's warnings, and the satellite launches into space. Now, the movie, as we've said, does not have a lot of visual excitement, but here there is some good use of downward facing blast off footage stock footage, I assume, but I don't really know what it would be from. I think that's kind of interesting.

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

We cut from here to a dinner party three months later, so we're told some time has passed and here there are four characters, so we have Tom Anderson this leave Enkleef and his wife Claire played by Beverly Garland, and they are hosting at their house Paul Nelson as Peter Graves and his wife Joan played by Sally Fraser. And so this is where we learned that and Tom are actually good buddies. I don't know exactly how far back they go, but they've been friends for a while. Apparently they have a tendency to geek out about rocket science at the dinner table, and Joan has to beg them to stop talking about conical graduations, and there is in the scene something there's kind of a tension because there is clearly something Tom wants to bring up with Paul, but Claire is distressed. She is like, please do not start talking about this in front of company. They're gonna think you're insane. So whatever it is, it's something he's been champing at the bit to talk about, and she does not want him to bring.

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

They're talking about a pie, I think because Beverly Garland makes that quip. Somebody's like, ooh, this pie is so good. Did you make it? And Beverly Garland says, oh, yeah, it's an old family recipe that my grandmother sold to the bakery. So Anywaym's not going to be able to resist sharing whatever it is he's not supposed to be talking about. So Tom takes Paul from the dining room into the living room and he pulls back a curtain to reveal this huge recess in the wall which is full of radio and stereo equipment, and then Tom tunes into some kind of signal on the dial which plays through the speakers. It is an eerie, hollow, humming sound, and Tom asks Paul, do you have any idea what you're listening to? Paul is flippant. He's like, is it the London Philharmonic? But Tom says no, it's Venus, And so at first Paul is like, oh, okay, so you're saying we're bouncing signals off of venus or something, or maybe it's radiating impulses geomagnetically or something. And Tom says, no, no, no, I don't mean the static. Can't you hear it the other thing. Listen to the voice. Listen to the voice, Paul. But Paul does not initially hear anything, and we don't hear to be clear, we don't hear an explicit voice either. We just hear the humming.

Yeah, it's I guess it's to leave a little room open for the possibility early in the picture that he isn't hearing anybody that this is, you know, some unhinged behavior here or hallucination or something. Yes, but it also I have to It's also kind of similar to say, anytime a character has a conversation with a Wookie or a droid in the Star Wars universe, you know, where it's like, we don't understand what's being said, that there's some sort of conversation going on here.

Yeah where. When these conversations happen later in the movie, Tom will often have to like repeat back what he has just heard from the other side. So it's those classic Wookie conversations. Yeah, what do you mean the hyperdrives broken? Yeah. Anyway, while they're listening to the humming trying to hear the voice, the phone rings. It's for Paul. It's the Rocket Lab. They inform him that just this very moment, the satellite that they put into orbit three months ago has disappeared. It darted out of its bit and off into space. So Paul and Joan have to leave Claire in Tom's house in a hurry so Paul can deal with the satellite. And as they're going out and getting into the car to drive away, Joan says, I've always thought Tom was a little off tonight. He went too far. So anyway, they drive to the installation, but by the time they get there, the satellite is already back wherever it went. That was pretty quick, and Paul decides they're going to have to bring the satellite down for inspection. Is that a thing in reality with satellites? I don't know about that.

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

Yeah. So, meanwhile, back at Tom and Claire's house, Claire is walking around fiddling with things nervously. She's in a state of anxiety. She is obviously unhappy that Tom started talking about the messages from Venus, even though he promised her that he wouldn't. So Tom goes to his covert Venus radio and he tunes in, but then, to our shock, he begins speaking to someone. Now, once again, we don't hear a voice on the other side. We just hear the spooky humming. It kind of oscillates at different frequencies. But Tom hears something because he responds to what the present says. He says, this is Anderson Acknowledge. Where are you? Yes, yes, it's true. I am your only friend. Nobody else even knows you exist, but they will and it will be the greatest day in the history of mankind. Now, at some point in this conversation, Beverly Garland comes out of the bedroom and like a big puffy nightgown with a caller. I love these old movie nightgowns. So she asks Tom to come to bed, but he is not ready. He says, he's here, darling. He drew the satellite to his world, to Venus, and now he's back. Within an hour, he's in the circling laboratory, just waiting to come down to us to save us. And Claire is obviously disturbed. She thinks he's going mad. But Tom is just a big ball of excitement. He says he's finally proven right. All of his theories about alien observers from other planets in the Solar System, they were all correct. He was right all along. But while in the past he didn't know if their intentions would be good or evil, he now knows that they're good. That this intelligence from Venus has returned with the goal of helping our planet to ascend and thrive. So later Tom falls asleep on the couch by his radio kit, and Claire comes out and lays a blanket over him, and it's a tender moment because she is frightened and bewildered by his behavior, but she still loves him and she wants him to be well.

Yeah, it is a nice little scene.

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

Not that there's a lot of space to trim.

Yeah, well this could have gone in the pile with all of the parking scenes and the driving scenes.

Yeah stuff, thin you risk cutting it down to like a nice lean forty minutes.

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

Yeah, like basically like an Outer Limits episode.

Yeah, yes, yeah. So Tom learns from his radio that the presence from Venus survived the crash and is now hiding in the mountains about ten miles south of the installation, And here we get our very first glimpse of the alien, moving slowly through the thick brush of a forest. We do not see its whole body. We see the conical tip of its head with some little antennae poking out and then it stops and reaches up and waves these clawed hands around. This part is already pretty funny.

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

Oh you know what, I realized the static design of the monster face and it conquered the world is basically in the same zone as the goro punched in the groin face.

Yeah, yeah, okay.

Anyway, next we get a montage of all machinery coming to a halt. There's some clever use of stock footage played in reverse here to achieve a stopping effect on things like So the idea is the alien has managed to shut off every machine in the area. I think I saw some plot summary that said it managed to stop every machine in the whole world. I don't recall if they actually say that in the movie. I don't think they do well.

The title of the movie is it conquered the World, And there's maybe like some brief mention of that, but the whole film feels very regional.

Yes, the action is quite local. Yeah, so I don't know whatever's going on far away, at least within this talent. Around the military installation, all machines stop, and that's all machines of every kind, electrical gas combustion, all the cars come to a stop in the road. We see airplanes falling out of the sky. A train stops, we see I think a printing press stop printing, and it even stops just purely mechanical machines like Jones wind up watch stops working.

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

Yeah, that's right, it stops dipping.

Yeah, wind up toys are totally non functional.

Yeah, that monkey is not clapping symbols anymore so, that's phase one of the takeover plan. Turn off all the machines begin phase two. Tom is on the radio with an alien. Now, why does his radio still work? Because the alien can specifically target certain machines to still function. They're the machines that belong to the alien's allies, and right now I think Tom is the only ally and Tom and Claire's household, so their stuff still works.

Yeah, which again speaks to this being a very local invasion. Yes, maybe like maybe limited to a single California county. Yes, maybe not even municipal regions yet.

So Tom's on the radio with the alien and he's reading off a list that he has created of control personnel. This includes the mayor of the town, the chief of police, the commander of the air Force base, and also his friend Paul Nelson. They say that these four men, along with their wives, will be the targets of the eight control devices that the Presence has brought with them from Venus, and it will take time on the scale of weeks to create more control devices. So this is all they've got right now. And then in a hilarious cutaway, we see these little mineoch type creatures, nasty little winged beasts scooting out from under the alien's costume and flying away. Now Here we begin a number of scenes that are the mind control attacks. So these flying creatures, they spread out all over the place, They swoop down on their targets, latch briefly onto the back of the neck, and then once they do and it only takes a few seconds, the target is fully obedient to the will of the benefactor from Venus, I think, in a seemingly psychic sense, like they automatically into it their orders. They don't have to check in via radio like Tom does.

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

Guess, yes. And then once they bite you and mind control you, they just fall off and die immediately. They say it's.

Like a b sting, yeah, kind of like a face hugger, you know, yes, face hug Yeah.

Now we learn that in this early phase of the plan that they're targeting these key leadership figures in the immediate vicinity of the crash site set where the satellite came down. But ultimately we learned that the way the being from Venus intends to help or save humanity is by subjecting all of us to a mind altering procedure which will leave us with no emotions, only logic. And Tom explains the rationale here, emotions are the source of everything bad in human society, all war, hate, stupidity, unnecessary strife. This purging of emotions will purge humankind of these evils and elevate us to a state of utopian rationality. Now, ultimately this plan comes under some serious interrogation by various characters in later scenes. But I first wanted to ask, so this is Tom's understanding of the alien's plan. We hear it explained in Tom's words, what the alien is going to do purge us of emotions and elevate us to a better existence. But I had a serious question, do we ever find out if the alien itself actually believes this? Like, from the alien's perspective, is it really trying to help us at least what it would consider help, or in the alien's own mind, is this just a mission of conquest and exploitation, and the emotion purging Utopia story is a way of manipulating Tom into helping it.

Yeah. I don't know. There are various ways to sort of interpret this because on one level, I was thinking earlier about the earlier satellites that had failed gone missing, and Anderson's theory that this was due to alien interference. Perhaps those were different aliens, you know, the idea that there are different intelligence is in the Solar System that don't want Earth to advance too much. But then you have a few bad players on Venus who realize, actually, we can make this work for us. We need to get off Venus. We would love to manipulate these people and make them work for us, conquering their world.

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

Yeah, And it's also later discussed that the Venusians themselves lack emotion. Yeah, but at the same time, we've seen this creature's face. Its face is clearly evil, it's full of emotion. Yeah, so I don't know, the message is a little skewed here, like is it evil and I'm looking to manipulate our desire for betterment and Anderson's desire for human advancement? Or is this all just perfectly logical to it, like, of course I'm going to you know, take over key leaders and overthrow the government because these are all necessary logical steps that need to take place in order to bring about this new utopia. We don't really know. It's kind of the movie seems to have it both ways.

Yeah. Yeah, So I've got my own thoughts about the sort of emotion logic divide here that we can get into after we talk about some of the scenes where they discussed this. But before we get to that, in the middle of the movie, there are a lot of scenes of like Paul riding around on a bicycle to different locations trying to figure out what's going on. Paul sort of slowly gets wise to the fact that something is really wrong. But I had a question, if a wind up watch stops working, why would a bicycle work?

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

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

And these scenes are really the meat of the movie. Yeah, And I say that in a good way because they're generally entertaining scenes.

Yeah.

If they weren't, the entire film would be a watch.

Yeah. So there's one scene between Tom and Claire that's leev Ncleeve in Beverly, Garland, and he's trying to sell her on the benefits of being part of the alien's plan and purging all emotion. But she's like, if we have no emotion, will we won't we have no love for one another? And Tom is he's not dissuaded, but it seems like he doesn't really have a very good answer for this. He says something like, well, even if there are no emotions, they'll still need you. But Claire presses him on this. She's like, okay, but if you need me but you don't love me, what does that mean? So would I just basically work for you? And it seems that this kind of gets through. Tom doesn't really have a good answer, but he just kind of like is like, well, I can't think about that right now. Yeah, somewhere also in here, we've got the I've got a present for you scene, which is great but also a huge WTF scene, Yeah.

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

Yes, So Paul comes home and Joan is in. She's very much in Stepford wife mode. She's like, honey, welcome home. I love you. I have a present for you. Why don't you sit down? Right there, and I'll show you, you know, show you what I'm holding behind my back. And of course, what do you know, it's a mind control bat. Beautiful, thank you, thank you, Happy birthday. She releases it, and she's while it's attacking Paul. She's like, I'm going to go out for a while. I'll be back when you're feeling better, And so she goes out for a walk, but Paul bests the mind control bad. He kills it with a fire poker.

And I rather like the scene where he kills it with the fire poker. It had some some oomph to it.

Yeah, yeah, it's good. Uh. And then when she comes back, she thinks he has been turned. So these the people who have been turned by the mind control devices are not like omnipotent, like they don't fully understand everything. Uh So I guess that comes back somewhat on my guess about them being sort of psychic. She doesn't know he hasn't been turned. He's faking it, and he's like, will we ever go back to how we were? And she says no, the change is irreversible, and then Paul shoots her yes what yes, Like what if she was wrong about the fact that they couldn't go back.

Yeah, yeah, what if there was some sort of cure? Yeah, so many questions here. So yeah, this is like really shocking. I mean, I think part of it is most of us at this point we've seen enough vampire and zombie films to be very well acquainted with the my beloved is no longer my beloved. They're a monster. Now I'm going to have to kill them. Seen. You know, he usually comes with a great deal of emotional anguish, and sometimes you know, it's it's the individual facing this choice, can't do it, you know, like their emotions are too strong. They're like, I know you're a zombie now, but I can't kill you. I'm gonna have to lock you in the basement instead, that sort of thing.

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

So yeah, they want it. They have to drive home a very black and white scenario while also driving home that this is a terrible choice that is having to be made. Yes, but Paul does not hesitate. He just shoots her down in cold blood, then presumably has a smoke and finishes reading the newspaper. I don't know. Yeah, there's no exploration of the parameters here, no consideration of how much of her is truly in there anymore. And it's even weirder when you drag in the whole sort of like cold War anxiety aspects of this film, because it's kind of like, no, sir, I found out my wife was a secret Communist, and I did what any red blooded American would do, and it just comes off like darn. But Paul is a cold guy. Again. This is our champion of emotion in the film, and he shows very little emotion in making this fatal choice.

Yeah, that's right. So that is a real tension and how these themes are realized within the movie because of how cold Paul is. But so later we get these scenes where Tom and Paul are themselves arguing about the plans of the benefactor from Venus. Paul is convinced basically of what's going on. He goes to talk to Tom about the merits of the plan. I think there are various they're planning to kill each other. Also in these scenes, because Tom has received orders from the alien that he has to kill Paul. I think Paul has plans of his own, but they're arguing it out, and so we get some speeches. One thing is that Tom says, you know, first of all, he tries to convince Paul to join him. He's like, he wants you on his side, next to me. He wants you so like, you know, come be, Come be the lieutenant of the Venus invasion plan. And Paul says, you want me to condone this reign of terror, to swear allegiance to this monstrous king of yours, to kill my own soul and all within reach. Well I won't, Anderson. I'll fight it till the last of breath in my body. And I'll fight you too, because you're part of it, the worst part, because you belong to a living race, not a dying one. This is your land, your world. Your hands are human, but your mind is enemy. You're a trader, Anderson, the greatest trader of all time. And you know why, because you're not betraying part of mankind, you're betraying all of it. That's a Peter Graves speech. That's pretty great.

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

You know. Yeah, it's a comment. He's got a lot of little the mad face emoji reactions. Yeah, So he makes the case that he's being a trader. But they also have a conversation where Paul explains why the why he thinks that the emotion purging plan won't work. He's like, I think Earth is actually going to defeat these you know, these supposedly purely logical, mind controlled beings from Venus, because he says, for example, humans will feel emotional solidarity for one another, and their emotions will cause them to cooperate together and to sacrifice their own personal interests in you know, in the interest of better protect humanity as a whole, so they can coordinate and cooperate and make sacrifices in a way that these purely logical, rational, individualistic beings controlled by the aliens will not. Now I sort of get what they're going for there. I don't know if that's exactly the way I would frame it, but I think it raises a lot of interesting questions. I think the way I would think about it more is that the way Tom is thinking about logic versus emotion is just a little bit miscalibrated as to the roles these things actually play in how we act. Like, logic is a good way of formulating plans of action, right, It's better to think logically about what to do than to just act emotionally to try to figure out what you should do. But emotions generate all of the motivation states for action. So if you have a very logical plan about how to achieve a goal, the way you decide what your goal is as usually emotion like. You have emotional motivations that tell you what you want and what you think is good, and then you have logic to help you decide best how to achieve that thing.

Yeah, and of course logic can be flawed. Logic can lead to incorrect answers like it's interesting to think about you Anderson here, like he has been he has followed a path that is both logical and emotional to reach this point where he risks dooming the planet, you know, yes, so yeah, it is hard to sort of tease tease these apart. You know, you get into the whole vulcan territory right of trying to figure out what a what a people would be like if they purge themselves of emotion and followed pure logic, you know, what what would that look like and what would be what kind of pitfalls would still be possible.

But there's a great twist here because in one of these scenes where Paul comes over and he's arguing with Tom about what they should do, Claire actually sneaks out, like she she comes to hate this alien presence and she's like, you know what, I'm going to deal with this issue myself. So Beverly Garland steals Tom's rifle that he was going to use to kill Paul and then goes and gets in the car and drives away to find the alien. And she at one point, she I think, gets on the radio and says like I'm coming for you, yeah, yeah, and I love this. Like Claire, she gets in the car, arms herself, gets in the car and goes to find the cave where the alien lives, and she's like, I'm going to destroy it.

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

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

Yeah, and she sells it.

She also tells it that it's ugly.

It is ugly, Yeah, And I think that's one thing they were trying to sort of drive, like they're trying to like hold off this is one of the tricky things of having seen this picture so many times and or having seen that face on the poster. You know, the menace, the alien menace is ugly, and I think the film is crafted in a sense where they wanted that to be a big reveal and it you know that this would be a realization. Oh, the thing that we thought was a benefactor really as a hideous monster. And there's something about its appearance that cluses into this even more. But you know, what can you do? You got to put a monster on the poster.

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, yeah, flames him up. Yeah, and he runs a little bit and falls over on fire. Yeah. So yeah, pretty.

Harsh, But eventually they get to the cave. Oh and this intersects with a fairly consistently grown inducing subplot where some soldiers are wandering around in the woods and they're like, oh, we're hungry, where can we get food? They are not mine controlled, and they're wandering around but they eventually hear the violence in the commotion at the cave, so they go there with all their weapons, and so we end up with a bunch of soldiers going into the cave confronting the monster, and the monster attacks them. I think it kills some of them, and ultimately, in the final showdown, Tom himself has to go up against the creature that he invited from Venus.

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

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

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

Yeah yeah. But then, of course he is killed in the scuffle as well, so he's laying there next to the dead overturned ice cream cone or artichoke, however you think of it. And then finally, so all of the characters except Paul are dead. Basically he's the only one left standing. And then he gives the monologue the one I delivered earlier. I'm not going to say it again, but he does explain that, referring to Tom, he learned almost too late, that man is a feeling creature. Well wait, no, actually, hold on a second. I always assumed in this monologue he's talking about Tom. Do you think he could be talking about the alien from Venus or is he definitely talking about Tom, who.

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

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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

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

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

I think, yeah, it's only eight or nine or something, and this is just one of them.

Yeah, there's still eight super intelligent Venusians out there who may or may not be reaching out to humans via their radar. There may be other alien players in the Solar System who have a vested interest in keeping humanity from advance beyond a certain technological level. So I don't know. It's kind of commendable that a film like this, this does ultimately introduce those kinds of concepts, you know, where you can leave the theater thinking about all of these things and wondering, well, how would this how would the characters from this film, how would the world from this film progress?

Yeah? What if the benefactors from Mars come to purgase of all logic and leave us with only emotion?

Oh wow, there you go. Now there's an interesting sequel idea for it conquered the World. Like this time they promise pure emotion, pure ecstasy, they come in peace.

Yeah, okay, well I think that's all I've got on It Conquered the World.

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

If I recall correctly, by the time that episode is over, they've played the end monologue by Peter Graves at least three times, maybe four.

You have.

Good choice.

All right, We're going to gohea and close out here, but we'd love to hear from everyone out there. Misty's if you want to write in about this one. Old school science fiction fans, Roger Korman fans write in as well, Western fans. You may have some thoughts here as well. Especially as it relates to Lee van Cleef. But yeah, this was film number one hundred and seventy five for Weird House Cinema. If you want to see the full list of films we've covered over the years and sometimes get a peek ahead at what's coming up next, go to letterbox dot com. That's l E T E r box d dot com. Our user name there is weird House and you can find that list. Let's see. If you're on Instagram, follow us. We are st b ym podcast and that way you can keep up with everything we're doing in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast space.

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

Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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