"Fish, and plankton, and sea greens, and protein from the sea. It's all here. Ready! Fresh as harvest day!"
-- Box from
Logan's Run
Box is one of the more obscure robots,
albeit memorable and horrifying robots, in pre-
Star Wars sci fi film history. Box is part
C3PO, part
Gort from
The Day the Earth Stood Still. Box appeared in 1976's
Logan's Run (and, of course, the book upon which the film was based).
Roscoe Lee Browne (best known as
Saunders the butler from
Soap) did the voice over work for Box.
Box is a silver semi
android. He has a silver human head and silver arms attached to a very un-human silver box on a wheels. Box's job was to prepare and freeze meat and protein products shipped to him before transport to "the
dome", the
distopia where the civilians of the
Logan's Run universe live out perfect
hedonistic lives until they reach 30.
Quite mysteriously beef, fish, and
pork meat stopped being shipped to him. However, Box quickly found a new source of meat, humans. Yes the other
white meat. Shortly after the meat shipments stopped, humans started showing up.
Runners, following the reputed path to
Sanctuary, had to pass through Box's
meat locker.
Box assumed humans were being shipped to him for meat processing and he dutifully started freezing runners.
Apparently in earlier treatments of the film, Box's humanity was going to be emphasized more. Box, while waiting for meat to be dutifully processed, bides his time creating beautiful ice sculptures. Box is probably a symbolic commentary on Nazi Germany. How man can act in robotic ways -- processing humans for the death camps -- yet still be a people that gave the world the most beautiful music ever written, the music of
Bach and
Beethoven? How could people that gave us such beauty also be the same people who gave us the ultimate in horror?
It's all about dualism, baby. Box is it.
Apparently another Box scene that was deleted is Box reveals he has frozen exactly 1056 humans for processing. This number matches a figure
Logan was given earlier that 1056 people have run, looking for Sanctuary. Everyone figures many of those 1056 runners had found Sanctuary. Logan realizes no one has ever made it past Box. No one has ever found Sanctuary.