Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Herculoids: "The Beaked People"

This week’s segment of the Hanna Barbera  Saturday morning series The Herculoids (1967) is called “The Beaked People,” and it is a little jauntier than some of the previous installments.  There’s still no exposition, explanation or background, but the episode at least seems to have more fun with the basic premise than some stories so far.

In “The Beaked People,” alien parrots (!) led by the evil Krogar, invade the planet Azmot. Their first act of terror is to run off the planet’s peaceful flying monkeys, and “destroy all those who resist.”  Zandor steps up to fight Krogar but is captured, tied to a log, and sent hurtling down “The Dark River.”  His destination is a waterfall at the end of this “River of the Bottomless Pit.”

When Dorno is also captured too, Tara and Zok save the day.  Zok frees Zandor from his bindings as he goes over the waterfall, and Krogar ends up in his place.  We actually see him plummeting down the waterfall to his doom.

This is the first Herculoids episode in which we’ve seen other, apparently indigenous creatures of Azmot. 

The flying monkeys are a friendly lot, and look as though they came straight from The Wizard of Oz (1939).  

As for the regular creatures -- Igoo, Gleep and Gloop, Tundro and Zok -- at least a few of them are treated with humor for the first time.  Early in the episode, Dorno attempts to teach Igoo to crack nutshells with his fingers, but he ends up turning the shells -- and the nuts -- to dust.  Dorn also describes Tundro as having a very healthy appetite.

No it’s not much. But it’s an attempt at least to deepen the characters a little bit.  There seems to be a dawning awareness on the part of the writers that they are doing “camp” here.  Whether that is a good thing or not, I’ll leave to individual taste.  At least the hokey humor breaks up the monotony a bit.

In terms of the villains, Krogar and the “beaked people” are again given no motive, rational or otherwise, for their invasion of the planet of Azmot.  And again, Krogar professes a history with Zandor.  They have, apparently, tangled before. 

As an adult viewer of The Herculoids, it would be nice to know more about Zandor’s storied past, though as a kid, I suppose it’s the rock ‘em, sock ‘em action that matters. 

The Herculoids Promo

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Herculoids: "Mekkor" (1967)

In The Herculoids (1967) segment called “Mekkor,” an army of small flying robot machines land on Azmot and, under the direction of a buried command unit, begin to take out the indigenous opposition. 

Protected by force-fields and armed with freeze rays, these mechanical invaders incapacitate Igoo and capture Tara.   Fortunately, Zot and Zandor find the army’s “hidden power source” -- or the command unit -- and cripple the enemy once and for all. 

When Dorno asks what will become of the dormant machines, Zandor replies: “They’ll stay where they are.  Someday the forest will claim them all…”

Dorno gets a funny line of dialogue in “Mekkor.”  He sees the diminutive alien robots and notes with astonishment: “I’ve never seen anything like that!”

Except, of course, Dorno and the other Herculoids just repelled an invasion by similar small aliens in the previous episode, “The Pod Creatures.” 

Other than that (recent) encounter, he’s never seen anything like these robots before, I suppose.

Once more, “Mekkor” reveals almost no background about its particular story.  Why have the robot aliens landed on Azmot?  Why did they choose this location for an  invasion?  What is there, on that wild planet that they could possibly want or need? 

“Mekkor” might have worked better as a story if a line or two of dialogue established that Azmot is home to some vital material, substance or ore that the aliens need to mine or collect to survive. 

Instead, “Mekkor” depicts another unprovoked, unmotivated attack on Azmot, and another campaign that the Herculoids successfully and quickly repel.  The most interesting aspect of the tale is Zandor’s final line, which establishes the primacy of nature over technology, a recurring theme in this Hanna Barbera Saturday morning program. 

Nature will survive, endure, and even encroach.  Technology will soon become…trash.

The Herculoids Intro

The Herculoids: The Pod Creatures (1967)

The third Herculoids story, “The Pod Creatures” dramatizes the story of strange alien capsules that land in the Azmot jungle and proceed to attack Zandor and his family. 

The plain-looking metal capsules open up to reveal evil-looking robots that are bent on ensnaring the primate-like Igoo in restraining nets.  For his part, Igoo uses karate chops to destroy the restraints.

At the end of the story, the Herculoids defeat the Pod Creatures, and the alien spaceship -- a flying saucer -- leaves Azmot for good.

is the simplest (or most simple-minded….) so far of the Herculoids (1967) adventures.  There’s no stated reason for the attack of the “pod creatures,” and more so, no revelation regarding the source of the attack.  The alien saucer merely shows up, drops the capsules and attacks.  When the invasion fails…the saucer leaves.

Who are these guys?  What do they want? Why did they choose Azmot?  I always appreciate a good mystery, but this episode is set up almost purely as an action vehicle.

I’ve been cataloguing The Herculoids’ Edgar Rice Burroughs or Tarzan-like touches in previous posts, and there are fewer of them in this abundantly-direct installment.  About the only element that touches on this comparison is a visualization of Zandor’s family home, a weird alien tree/mushroom plant.  It indeed looks like the equivalent of Tarzan’s tree house in the African jungle, only transposed to an alien environment.

The paucity of new ideas or developed plot-line in “The Pod Creatures” suggests that The Herculoids works better as a concept -- Tarzan in an alien jungle -- that it does as a week-by-week, story-by-story enterprise.  I felt there was a lot to mull over while watching “The Pirates” and “Sarko the Arkman,” and, contrarily, almost nothing at all to discuss here.

We’ll see what the next episode brings…

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Herculoids: "Sarko the Arkman"

“Sarko the Arkman” is another episode of The 1960s Hanna-Barbera animated series The Herculoids that reveals the series’ basis for storytelling: the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, particularly the Tarzan stories.

In this tale, an alien scientist called Sarko lands on unspoiled Azmot and captures the powerful primate creature Igoo, as well as Tundro, and Zandor’s son, Dorno.  Almost immediately, Zandor responds, taking the dragon Zok to the stars to retrieve the abducted Herculoids from the planet Zodan.

Like the pirate villains featured in last week’s opening episode, Sarko (or “Arko” as all the characters call him) boasts some undisclosed previous relationship with Zandor.  He notes, for example, that he has been warned never to return to Azmot.  The precise nature of their relationship, is, however, left unexplored.  Were they enemies in a galactic war?  Allies?

This week’s episode contains two specific moments which recall the adventures of Tarzan.  In the first, Zandor bounces from one jungle vine to the other, recalling the trademark image of Tarzan swinging from such vines since time immemorial.  No animal yell, alas, is evident.

The second Tarzan-inspired image is of a technologically-advanced non-native traveling to a wild ecosphere (think of an American zoo-keeper or hunter on safari in Africa) to capture and bring the wildlife back to his own world.

Sarko is a plunderer of the natural environment, and again, is contextualized in terms of his technology.  He has the power to immobilize the local wild-life, as well as the interplanetary transportation to bring them back to his civilization.  Late in the program, we see what happens to “animals” such as Igoo and Tundro when taken out of their natural habitat and made slaves in the “first world:” they are put in cages for display.

Basically, “Sarko the Arkman” re-states The Herculoids’ thesis, which is that Azmot should remain free and unspoiled for those who live there, while those living in the galaxy’s technological space age must stay away, or risk Zandor’s mighty wrath. 

Uniquely, Zandor is fully capable of piloting a starship, as we see this week when he commandeers Sarko’s Ark.  It would have been nice to see some of the character’s background information filled in a little bit.  Where did he learn this skill?  Why did he forsake all aspects of technology for a life on Azmot?

Again, it would be incredibly cool if a screenwriter wrote a Herculoids movie that filled in all these details, and remembered to glean inspiration and metaphors from the works of Burroughs.