The Cold War. West, East, Diplomacy, Mutually Assured Destruction, for decades it went on. “I was born in '49…” “A cold war kid in McCarthy time…” “Stop 'em at the 38th Parallel…” “Blast those yellow reds to Hell…” “Cold war kids were hard to kill…” “Under their desks in an air raid drill…” “Haven’t they heard we won the war…” “What do they keep on fighting for?” Servo’s Haircut, Candy Adding Machine, Water Polo Foosball, The Phantom Creeps Again, Charlie McCarthy, The Civil Defense Quiz Bowl, Joel’s Russian Counterpart, Picking Apart The Plot. “Remember guys, this is filmed in color. It’s just that everything is grey in Russia”, “And the godless Communists”, “Short and One Name People listed here.” “Those are missiles not taxis” or “Excuse Me, Excuse Me, Excuse Me”?
A Cold War thriller that doesn’t really thrill and has a pessimistic resolution. There’s also another installment of The Phantom Creeps. But other than establishing a spunky girl reporter character who was sneaking around in the previous chapter, I have no idea what was going on. While the shoddy audio is a big contributor to the problem, it appears as if characters are simply blundering about at random.
As for the feature, the initial plot concerns a spy who gets inserted into the Soviet Union to investigate the status of their ICBM program. He contacts an agent who is the mistress of a high up government official (since he looks like a slightly less heavyset Tor Johnson, she deserves some hazard pay). They sneak onto the ICBM installation with the intent of sabotage. But they get caught and are shot dead, with the bomb being disposed of before it causes any damage. Quite a downer ending, except it’s not yet the end. Instead we get a POV shift in the vein of Psycho where we observe the lives of random New Yorkers going about their business. Little do they know that, as Joel and the Bots put it, the Big Apple is about to become (radioactive) applesauce.
Not much else to say about the movie. However, the director Barry Mahon is more familiar than you might realize. The two genres he’s best known for directing are nudie films and children’s films, which does feel like a bit of a disconnect. Two of the latter type have been covered by RiffTrax. The first is a relatively faithful adaptation of The Land of Oz that looks like someone had recorded a community theater play with a Super 8. For all I know, that was the case. More infamous however is the nightmarish Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny. New York being reduced to a glassy crater is somehow less horrific.
For some reason, I never caught it. Probably because I was exhausted. Once in a blue moon, a word of similar construction will be in my head and I’ll type that instead of the word in question. If given the time I’d have corrected it myself. Best guess? The Robot Holocaust (1987) Thread was trending when I wrote this and I punched Robot not Rocket due to that. It’s funny I checked the body of the thread many times and the title slipped by me. The Ro and the T left it looking right without catching it.
It happens. God knows enough MST movies had multiple names–not all of which made sense–but I didn’t think this one was ever known as “Robot Attack USA”
That’s on me! Robot and Rocket are close enough in composition as words once I accidentally wrote one not the other I didn’t see it at first. Robot Attack USA could be another name for Robot Holocaust (1987) however. Maybe I stumbled on a new title.
