Line #29 Film/MonsterAGoGo


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/monsteragogo_8482.jpg]]
2
3	->''"You may come from beyond the moon,\
4	But to me, you're just a goon!"''
5	-->-- '''The Other Three''', lyrics to TitleThemeTune
6
7	Describe ''Monster a Go-Go'' here:\
8	What is this? I don't even.
9
10	In 1965, director Creator/HerschellGordonLewis needed another movie to round out a double-feature with ''Moonshine Mountain''. So he bought Bill (''Film/TheGiantSpiderInvasion'') Rebane's unfinished ''Terror at Halfday'', added a couple of extra scenes, some new dialogue, some narration, and voilà: ''Monster a Go-Go'' was born. (The birth was illegitimate, as Lewis [[AlanSmithee did not deign to put his name on the movie]], instead crediting himself by the pseudonym "Sheldon S. Seymour.")
11
12	The plot, such as it is, is that an astronaut has gone missing after crash-landing in suburban Illinois. At the same time, a monster that looks suspiciously like the lost spaceman (and is highly radioactive) has been terrorizing teenagers and scaring the pants off of the locals. Scientists work to study the monster, but he escapes into the UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} sewers, only to disappear suddenly.
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14	For the ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'' version, please go to the [[Recap/MysteryScienceTheater3000S04E21MonsterAGoGo episode recap page]].
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17	!!This film provides examples of
18	* AWizardDidIt: Invoked by the ending speech, in which the narrator seems to imply that some vague cosmic force, "[[YouCannotGraspTheTrueForm eons beyond our comprehension]]" [[RealityWarper screwed around with reality]] so that the entire plot of the movie effectively [[CosmicRetcon never happened]], (although some of the characters' memories, and all of the actions they took in response to the now non-existent monster, seemed to remain unaltered).
19	* BlatantLies: [[UnreliableNarrator Anything the narrator says]].
20	* BloodlessCarnage: The horribly mutilated corpses are in fact completely intact. In fact the first guy killed is supposedly facially disfigured but this is conveyed by the actor making a silly "Agh!" face.
21	* CosmicHorrorStory: Maybe? As with so many things in this movie, this is never elaborated on.
22	* CosmicRetcon: Implied by the ending narration.
23	* GainaxEnding: Thanks to a plot twist that was supposed to be TheEndingChangesEverything but only managed to make absolutely no sense of whatever happened. You might conclude that the monster just dematerialized to escape its pursuers and it wasn't really Douglas to begin with, but that's the best you can do.
24	* InformedAttribute:
25	** The corpse of the monster's first victim is described as being horribly burned and "shriveled up like a dried prune", but doesn't look like either, instead just looking perfectly normal.
26	** The monster is said to have a sort of InstantDeathRadius due to being super radioactive, with it even being stated late in the movie that it will keep getting bigger the longer he's alive. Despite this, we see several people get nearly within hugging distance of the monster without any ill effects.
27	* {{Jerkass}}: Dr. Carl. Talks to the wife of the mission's pilot about how well the mission went when ''the pilot didn't come back alive'', instructs a mother not to tell her son that his stepfather is dead, and inexplicably disappears before doing anything useful. And he promised the kid they'd go out for milkshakes, then vanished while the kid was out of the room. Considering the quality of this movie, vanishing from it might make Dr. Carl a KarmaHoudini.
28	* LastNameBasis: The Logan brothers.
29	* LeaveTheCameraRunning: The "climax" of the film is just an endless series of shots of trucks driving around, people running cable, and the like, with no dialogue or plot to speak of. Considering we don't see any of the main characters in most of the shots,[[note]]Shooting ended when Rebane ran out of money, and a second producer added stuff later without the original actors.[[/note]] it's highly likely they just took a bunch of StockFootage and used it to pad out the runtime.
30	* MindScrew: How the climax happened is not only never explained, but {{handwave}}d by the narrator at the very end.
31	* NeverTrustATitle: There is a very very ''very'' brief moment of go-go dancers at the very beginning, but you have to imagine that anyone not making out with their girlfriend at the drive-in felt profoundly ripped off. It turns out, though, not only are there no go-go dancers, there's also no monster.
32	* NoEnding: [[AssPull There was no monster.]] This chain of events is also never explained properly, making what was supposed to be a shocking TwistEnding turn into a huge PlotHole.
33	* NoOntologicalInertia: When the monster [[MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext just disappears suddenly]] all the characters tracking it seem to immediately forget what they were doing, and the narrator even describes them as "puzzled men of courage".
34	* NothingIsScarier: Used very poorly. Nothing at all is, it turns out, a huge letdown.
35	* OffscreenMomentOfAwesome: Absolutely every moment that had the slightest potential for awesome.
36	* PlotHole: Plenty of them, due to the incomplete nature of the film. Very little of what's going on is explained properly, and attempts to explain it just end up posing more questions than they answer.
37	* RetGone: The narrator suggests that this happened to the monster... somehow.
38	* SensoryAbuse: The film's score consists mainly of sparse, jangly {{Scare Chord}}s played on a Fender Rhodes and amplified to distortion; it's atonal, harsh, and probably meant to be creepy, but just gets annoying after a while. The composer/musician responsible is uncredited, perhaps out of shame.
39	* SpaceClothes: On the monster. Inexplicably.
40	* StrongFamilyResemblance: Used to HandWave why one Dr. Logan is similar to his brother that disappeared without a trace from the earlier part of the plot. (In reality, the same actor filmed the second part several years after the first and changed a lot in the meantime.)
41	* WhamLine: [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools Not in a good way]].
42	-->'''Narrator:''' As if a switch had been turned, as if an eye had been blinked, as if some phantom force in the universe had made a move eons beyond our comprehension, suddenly, there was no trail! [[TheTreacheryOfImages There was no giant, no monster, no thing called "Douglas" to be followed.]] There was nothing in the tunnel but the puzzled men of courage, who suddenly found themselves alone with shadows and darkness! With the telegram, one cloud lifts, and another descends. Astronaut Frank Douglas, rescued, alive, well, and of normal size, some eight thousand miles away in a lifeboat, with no memory of where he has been, or how he was separated from his capsule! Then who, or what, has landed here? Is it here yet? Or has the cosmic switch been pulled? Case in point: The line between science fiction and science fact is microscopically thin! You have witnessed the line being shaved even thinner! But is the menace with us? Or is the monster gone?
43	* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: About half the characters disappear about halfway into the movie. One of them, Dr. Logan, is replaced by his brother, Dr. Logan, who is the same actor with a different haircut. The reason for this is because Lewis attempted to complete the film several years after Rebane abandoned it; the new characters replace the old ones whose actors were unavailable, and the same actor playing his original character's brother was on account of the actor being available but having drastically changed his appearance in the interim.
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Context Film / MonsterAGoGo