OBLIGATORY GARY LARSON

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

KNOB
KNOB
KNOB
KNOB
ELECTRICITY!!!
MAD MAN SCREAMING AT THE VOID!!!!!
KNOB
KNOB
KNOB
KNOB

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

#Monsterdon in this part of the movie, the science boys do what Abby from NCIS would normally do in a few hours. Only this was in the fifties, so computers were bulkier and Goth Girls weren't invented yet.

this movie is about the weirdest fetish cross-over:

pregnancy & magnets

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

this 1950s motherfucker just said they could buy a house without him getting a raise.

i fucking hate boomers.

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

by the way whatever the fuck is the Cyclotron at the University, it better have treadmill, funky music and a disco ball

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

If you're playing along at home, 320 mrem is something like 300x the federal annual dose limit.

It's uh, a lot.

#Monsterdon

WE HAVE TELETYPE SIGN

#Monsterdon

"We placed it in a vacuum chamber, so it's probably fine"

SOMEbody didn't get the memo about the falsification of the luminiferous æther

#Monsterdon

in nuclear research there is no place for lone wolves

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

WE HAVE CYCLOTRON SIGN

#Monsterdon

#Monsterdon I find it unusual that the Science Masters can just do a radio broadcast asking everyone to check for a magnetic radiation ghost. If real life scientists had this power I think we would get a lot more science announcements... a quarter of those announcements would be biologists screaming excitedly about a new bug they found, another quarter would be astronomers screaming excitedly about a new exoplanet they found, and the remaining half would be climatologists wailing in agony.

how much you wanna bet the guy that wrote #MagneticMonster was Marc Andreessen's ghost writer for that #TechnologyOptimism fascist manifesto?

#Monsterdon

get into your protective suits. why?

THE
POWER
OF
MAGNETISM!

oh. ok. we got them in the car.

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

You think magnetic power is bad for you, just wait until they try to bring 5G cell service to your area! #Monsterdon

THE IRON CROSS OF TECHNOCRACY!

because the only way to kill this Magnetic Monster that we never get to see is with...

FASCISM!

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

#Monsterdon the lady switched the food at breakfast because she's not into Doctor Stewie's inflation fetish. He also tries to talk them into buying a house, which was a thing people did in the 50s.

Doctor Stewie is into two forms of sprawl, the fleshy and the urban.

@moira
But when they’re out of bullets and throw the guns at the target (as one must do in a movie), the gun is sure to hit the magnetic target. So that’s good, right? #Monsterdon

So that guy was taking the unipolar element to … where? … in order to do … what?

#Monsterdon

Bill Nye the Science Guy watched this as a kid. Probably. #Monsterdon

AN A-MEN FIRST!!!
#MagneticMonster is the first #Monsterdon without an actual monster. well done @Taweret@octodon.social you're so, like, totally avant garde and shit.

ah-ah-ah-ah
STAYING ALIVE
STAYING ALIVE

https://invidious.lunar.icu/watch?v=fNFzfwLM72c

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

FASCISM! with it's shiny laser thinking and doohickeys with more numbers you could ever imagine, is the real power we need against this invisible danger

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

#Monsterdon at 50 minutes into the movie we see what is at stake... the magnetic ghost might get too hungry and angry and I guess kick the earth out into deeper space, where we will all freeze and die probably.

Naturally, the city council is summoned. They decide to light the beacons and call upon Canada for aid.

the computer being fed the magnetism data is called MANIAC

because of course it's called that.

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

"you know what's happening? mass is forming into empty space! "

"WE ARE WITNESSING THE SECRET OF CREATION!"

and with this technobabble, somewhere in Silicon Valley, an Operation Paperclip wannabe nepobaby got an erection

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

An electron(ic) microscope, mass-energy equivalence…

The plot is hokey to be sure, but all the scientific nods are a lot better than a lot of stuff I've seen from this era!

I'm really liking this one 🤷

#Monsterdon

"We'll have a fat sassy baby"

#Monsterdon

So, this Geiger counter maxes out at 5 mrem/hr. I'm not sure if models in this era came with multipliers, but I'm going to assume in the film's fiction that his is set to 100x and the earlier mention of 320 mrem was actually 320 mrem/hr.

Even what we saw on-screen if the meter was at 1x is an alarmingly high reading in a public place. RIP to those folks.

#Monsterdon

Convenient loops on their helmets in case they need to attach themselves to carabiners and rappel somewhere
#Monsterdon

in all these 1950s movies, scientists get well paid enough to wear tailored Hugo Boss knock-offs to work 🧐

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

Opening with the oscilloscope content that I crave, a good omen right off the bat.

#Monsterdon

I keep comparing #Monsterdon movies to star trek because I'm a goddamn nerd. Anyway, parts of this remind me of the weird-space-mystery episodes in the Next Generation and what not, with with scientific discussions between the crew who have to combine weird machines together to try to save a planet from a deadly anomaly.

But instead of made up 24th century scientific equipment as the background scenery, we see more realistic (and expensive) 1950s stuff everywhere.

so that was the mile-high tech fetish, airplane refueling porn portion of our movie

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

by the way: there's AI in MANIAC

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

#Monsterdon Between the punched tape, the teletypes, the vacuum tubes and other electronic accouterments, this movie has pornographic levels of archaic computer bits.

🗣️ MAXIMUM VACUUM

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

It's gone from blow to suck. #Monsterdon #ReverseAMovieQuote

Hungry Hungry Paramagnetism

#Monsterdon

Oh hot damn, the monster is magnetic monopoles?

I'm really enjoying the pseudo-physics in this movie.

#Monsterdon

More science-y fiction movies should weave airline insurance into the plots
#Monsterdon

uh-oh..

our suspected villain looks suspiciously pogrommable

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

RADIOACTIVE AIRLINE INSURANCE is your next punk geiger counters band

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

A kangaroo in a cab? Can we see THAT movie? #Monsterdon

These interstitials are great, a lesser film would get bogged down, but this one is moving things along and developing well.

#Monsterdon

it's like the writers had a mad libs book of SCIENCY sounding words and just vomited them onto the page with some courier font and voila! a screenplay was born

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

#Monsterdon Demonstrating the scientific method, we throw some metal washers in the air and they stick to the ceiling. I guess there's a magnetic ghost there or something. Also there's radiation.

We call the Chief Science Master Master and he tells us to put on our "protective clothing". Also, we summoned some police who will shoot anyone who tries to steal the radiation ghost or something.

police are instructed to shoot to kill... what?

oh of course...

MAGNETISM!!!

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

"Police will be instructed to shoot to kill"

Guessing this is gonna be an early bingo for @jonny

#Monsterdon

OMFG

Mr. Retail Capitalist told the very busy man in the grey government office that he is a tax paper and someone ought to do something about the magnetized power fucking with his products and the guy said, "OF COURSE, we'll send someone right away!"

like, you know, "am a taxpayer" is the cheat code for getting government help

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

#Monsterdon Meanwhile at the neighborhood clock store, the Small Business Owner berates his employees for not winding up the clocks or some other bullshit. Actually, the employee did his job, but it turns out that the clocks all the appliances are haunted.

So they dial 911 and get an engineer in a suit, who calls the Science Masters and summons the "A-Men" which I guess means Doctor Stewie and Forbes the nerdier looking scientist.

we should have created a drinking game involving the word DISINTEGRATION

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

"What time is it?"

"Exactly 9 o'clock"

They KNOW :blobfox0_0:

#Monsterdon

"My name is Stewart, Jeff Stewart, class of 53 at M.I.T."

oh, so he's probably already being funded by a futurism pedophile with shady ties to a ghoulish sheik

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

A-MEN the superhero prequel to X-MEN

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

(male voice over speaking in ALLCAPS)

TODAY NEW DANGERS CHALLENGE MANKIND...

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

uh-uh... there goes Canada?

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

somewhere, the Buck Rogers producers are mad they ain't making money out of all the electricity doohickeys ganked from their movie sets.

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

#Monsterdon the set also reminds me of the villain lair in Superman 3. :)

STOP PUSHING THE NAZI DANGER STICK. #Monsterdon #TheMagneticMonster

there was once a time when Hollywood sold the technocrataganda that Canadians had far more advanced technology than Americans.

the technocratic movement (a fascist political movement started by techbros) was launched in NYC but it became all the rage in Canada; so much so, it got Elon Musk's grandfather literally stripped of his Canadian citizenship and forced to leave the country.

and that's how Musk's Canadian mother ended up in South Africa.

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

#Monsterdon Feed them into the computer. The answer is 42. It’s always 42.

#Monsterdon that eerie feeling is the best the OSI could do, pursuing the Brown Note. ;)

girder busting magnetic mayhem is what happens when you bring all those fucking Nazis as "war reparations" to conduct secret research

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

she needs a nurse that can cook and a house with a backyard.

bitch, how dare you talk like that to use in the 21st century?

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

see, she's pregnant so they can't have sex now... allegedly 🙄

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

Paperclips and magnetism do not mix

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

@ryan
“Just precautions for your safety, Sir.”
#Monsterdon

not only does our suspected villain looks like the 4th Stooge... he also has bleeding gums. a nightmare, i say. pure mayhem!

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

#Monsterdon everyone is coding secretly wanting to kiss. Every character. To every other character. Gender be damned. :D

whenever i hear them say ON THE RADIO

https://invidious.lunar.icu/watch?v=zQOaLTSKOSY

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

Just IMAGINE telling the public to contact the police if any household appliances act oddly.

Think how many operators you'd need to work the hotline. #monsterdon

#Monsterdon it would be amusing if the Geiger counter was responding to the radium in their wrist-watches, just waving all Willy nilly. Wheee! Like Sound Of Music, on the green just spinning around.

so the geiger counter detects magnets and the hazmat suit protects against magnetic power

yes, this is science

#monsterdon

i wanna be a Magnet Detective when i grow up, weaing a deerstalker hat and examining everything with a big magnet duct taped to a magnifying glass

#monsterdon

this movie was absolutely conceived of when someone in the studio's special effects department spent too much on magnets #monsterdon

@arrjay Apparently this film predates the Becquerel as a formal unit! #monsterdon

Loving the lab equipment vibes so far. Gorgeous table of nuclides in the background! A lazy film-maker might use the periodic table of elements instead.

#Monsterdon

GOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOGOG
#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

@diazona @forestine It seems the better #Monsterdon films have explanations that are complete from a plot perspective but nonsense objectively.

e.g. - "we have to shoot godzilla with these radiation torpedoes to resurrect him so he can save japan from the three furbies that turned into a dragon."

in the example, we know enough to know what's going on, just no parts of it make sense.

@forestine One might think to resolve plot points like these in a movie script, but nooo

#Monsterdon

Remember folks, if your appliances become magnetized … DUCK AND COVER!
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#Monsterdon
#TheMagneticMonster

Finishing this #Monsterdon I give it a rating of "fine". The characters and plot were mostly boring (Doctor Stewie's inflation fetish notwithstanding...), but the science dragnet and the method of resolution was an interesting change of pace from other monster movies. It was also neat seeing a 1950s movie in color with weird gadgets everywhere, DESPITE the lack of toy boats.

I will give this movie 5 fedoras out of 10.

Find it funny that cinematic scientists were always more figures of gothic horror, bent on wreaking havoc from the 20s through the early 40s. Then, when the Cold War comes around and both sides are IRL stockpiling doomsday devices, scientists are suddenly enlightened heroes, saving The Free World from peril. Either drop the propaganda, or apologize to all of those Bela Lugosi-esque Mad Scientists for previous slander.
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#Monsterdon
#TheMagneticMonster

@yatsu Wait... Did someone read "British Columbia" on a map and just... Assume Canadians had British accents? #Monsterdon

#Monsterdon our electricity machine explodes and is doused by water. Before that, there were lots of KNOBS and SCREAMING and also LIGHTNING. Inexplicably the LIGHTNING was controlled by a World War I German air force roundel.

I guess that killed the magnet ghost. Hooray, earth is saved.

Now they've gone and done it. They've created magnetic sharks. And we know THOSE would never make a good movie. #Monsterdon

@blogdiva looks around nervously sweating! #Monsterdon

the Canadian scientist with the British accent can get it though

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

Between the constant insistence that they have to overfeed the element and the male lead's obsession with a fat pregnant wife, I'm beginning to think this was a whole THING with the director. #Monsterdon

all they had to do was paint a guy silver and say he was a monster

have him run around going "RAWR" and like feeding off metal or something

how hard would that have been to do?

#monsterdon

#monsterdon this scene almost earned the film an R rating until the producers explained that it's a perfectly natural process and there is no shame involved when planes do it.

on preview "Here are the americans, I hope they know what they're doing" oh buddy, spoiler alert for the next 50 years...

I think this might be the only film I’ve ever seen that actually uses more stock footage than Ed Wood does …
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#Monsterdon
#TheMagneticMonster

#Monsterdon no toy boats in this movie (sad), but we do see some cool 50s jets, including a gratuitous aerial refueling scene.

I'm not quite sure how to explain how we loaded the element into a P-80 shooting star, and then the airplane turned into a F-86 after taking off. Suspicious.

The Earth is going to fly out of its orbit (in space) into...more space. #Monsterdon

by the way²

machines are feminine... even in the English language

https://invidious.lunar.icu/watch?v=AIgJenz0ZK4

#Monsterdon #MagneticMonster

#Monsterdon We stuck the magnet monster in our microperiscope again and it got EVEN MORE SPARKLY!

We concluded that it was alive and eating things, and so we have to shoot it with electrons. I don't know enough about physics to say if this approach makes sense or not.

But anyway, I guess Doctor Stewie made the sparkly magnet ghost larger and more hungry, which is what he was trying to do with his wife.

#Monsterdon After a phone call reports that a hospital explodes, Doctor Stewie leaves to do a science dragnet again. After some arguing in a meeting room, we place the magnetic ghost behind a screen so it can sparkle at us.

Apparently the magnetic ghost turns energy into mass, so we've found some kind of magic replicator.

Some guy says that this was the origin of the solar system, making modern day astronomers mad. Unfortunately, they can't object to this on a radio broadcast.

Did they just discover dark energy? #Monsterdon

This movie is gonna end with the US government dumping its problem in the arctic again, isn't it. #Monsterdon