Retroblog

The Robot Connection (Part Two)

The relentless robot invasion continued on the big screen, as B-pictures introduced a new breed of hot bot: a bevy of bikini-clad beauties hard-wired to kiss and kill. In Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, mad scientist Vincent Price creates sexy robots to first marry, and then murder unsuspecting millionaires. The follow-up, Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs added a little TNT to the titillation, and was directed by genre fave Mario Bava, which gives it some well-deserved street cred some four decades hence. And of course, there are the Flint films – Our Man Flint and In Like Flint, both starring James Coburn and co-starring the lovely, leggy prototypes for Austin Powers’ Fembots. And if you really want to go deep, the sexiest puppet ever in the history of cinema, the sultry, bedroom-voiced Francesca was revealed to be a robot in Mad Monster Party, but she was so unbelievably hot that her paramour Felix really didn’t seem to mind if she was a robot or not, let alone a puppet. In the immortal words of Joe E. Brown at the end of Some Like it Hot: “Nobody’s perfect!”

Walt Disney became obsessed with robots in the early 1960s, so much so that he presided over the creation of a six-foot tall audio-animatronic recreation of an idealized Abraham Lincoln that could stand, sit, and deliver the Gettysburg Address to capacity crowds at the 1964 World’s Fair. Disney and his imagineers then turned their robot technology toward Disneyland, which resulted in the creation of hundreds of animatronic figures for now-classic attractions like the Pirates of the Caribbean, The Haunted Mansion and America Sings. The Disney animatronics in turn inspired visionary author Philip K. Dick, (author of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the novel that inspired the film Blade Runner) to write We Can Build You, a sci-fi novel about a company that manufactures robotic Abe Lincolns and other historical figures.

Over the years, there have been many instances of evil robot replacements – yes, there really was a giant King Kong robot in King Kong Escapes, a 1960s Toho production. In the mid-1970s fellow Toho star Godzilla faced off against his own evil robotic twin – the wonderfully metallic Mecha-Godzilla. And dare I mention KISS Meets the Phantom, in which KISS robots incite an audience to riot with their evil robot anthem Rip and Destroy (which was actually Hotter than Hell with more “evil” lyrics)? Inexplicably produced by the legendary Hanna-Barbera Studio as a made-for-TV in 1977, KISS Meets the Phantom was remarkably prescient in its portrayal of rock music being delivered to the unsuspecting masses by robot-like band members.

When robots long to be human, there can only be trouble, tears, and mechanical heartbreak. Roy Batty and his runaway replicants fought hard for their short-lived freedom in Blade Runner. Bicentennial Man’s journey spanned two agonizingly long centuries. The kid in A.I. never caught a break either. He kept on looking for his adoptive human mommy for wayyyy too long, like some kind of demented Energizer Bunny with an eternity to kill. And then there’s the all-too-human Marvin, the chronically depressed robot from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. And we all know that HAL 9000 was a very naughty robot who killed his human companions in the ultimate road trip 2001: A Space Odyssey.

But HAL 9000 was a disturbing sign of things to come. Battlestar Galactica’s Cylons were a chrome-plated robot army programmed to destroy the human race. Short Circuit, though friendly, was almost as lethal as a Cylon battalion because he could cute you to death. And while we’re talking “cute,” those annoying Heartbeeps robots deserve an honorable mention, as does the terminally cheerful little girl robot in Small Wonder.
On the other hand, we have Bender from Futurama, who is arguably more human than most of us watching him, for he is our flawed reflection – his vices, his weaknesses, and his beer obsession mirror our own, not unlike an android Archie Bunker.

TO BE CONTINUED