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Box from the movie Logan's Run
Box, played by Roscoe Lee Browne, is a killer robot from the movie Logan's Run. It seems that originally he was not designed as a killing machine, at least not for killing humans.
In the happy old days his job was to freeze and storage sea food. When people built the Domed city, they found other means to feed themselves and they forgot about this robot and his icy chambers below the ground.
Eventually, as we learn in the movie, instead of the sea food, the people from the Domed city started coming.
These people, called "runners", were searching for a secret place, the Sanctuary, their only hope of escape from early death at age 30. Sooner or later they all stumbled into the robot's domain, a maze of underground passages and grottoes covered with ice and decorated with beautiful ice statues of fish, penguins and walrus.
That is how Jessica 6 and Logan 5 come across the long-forgotten robot. He greets them with the following words: "Welcome, humans. I am ready for you. Fish, plankton, sea greens and protein from the sea. Fresh as harvest day. Overwhelming, am I not? Are you, too, startled? Am I too removed from your ken?"
When Logan asks him who he is the robot replies: "I'm more than machine or man. More than a fusion of the two."
The robot shows them his birds on the on the ceiling of his frozen room and proudly says: "Wait for the winds. Then, my birds sing and the deep grottoes whisper my name." (You can say whatever you like about Box but he has a way with words!)
Presently Jessica and Logan discover what happened with 1056 runners, whom the main computer in the Domed city listed as missing. As runners started coming, the robot re-programmed himself and found another task: he froze the hapless runners the same way he had once frozen the stored food.
In the ensuing fight, Logan destroys Box's ice birds. The robot, floundering around while the walls of the grotto crumble on top of him, does not even attempt to pursue the fugitives or fight for his life. He finds the resting place underneath his beloved statues carved from ice.
Our visitor Margie is looking for a movie she saw as a kid. Here is her description:
"I am trying to find a TV movie I saw in 1963 -- was a late 50's or very early 60's sci-fi in which Madagascar fish protoplasm is brought to the U.S., escapes and becomes a huge blob that strangles people (and maybe eats them). This is not 'The Blob' with Steve McQueen. Could be Twilight Zone or Outer Limits?"
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