MST3K #505: The Magic Voyage of Sinbad (sic)

And now, #505, as a Russian folk hero pretends to be Sinbad.

Vikings be different from Persians, you see.

A 1953 award-winning film, based on a classic opera. Seems like a perfect film for Roger Corman to buy and adapt, right? Except for one problem -- it's Russian, and we're at the height of the First Cold War. So his screenwriter (some guy named Francis Something-or-Other Coppola) renamed the hero "Sinbad," and changed the setting to Arabia. The original film is fantastic, imaginative, and has great production value. The reworked, commie-free version has bad dubbing and doesn't make a lot of sense. (The message still retains a little anti-capitalist flavor, though in an inoffensive kiddie-movie way.)

Skinbag discovers the snack that smiles back

Sinbad ... um, I mean Sadko, sells his hat to free a slave, catches a golden fish (with some help from Neptune's daughter), kidnaps a horse, beats up a lot of guys, plays human chess, kidnaps a bird-lady, sacrifices himself to Neptune, and fails to find the bluebird of happiness ("It's the Grackle of Weltschmerz"). 

I've seen two of the Russo-Finnish quadrilogy before (I saw The Day The Earth Froze and Jack Frost more or less upon their original airings, and adored them both), and I'm looking forward to The Sword and The Dragon before the end of March. They're always huge, goofy, perfect fodder for our friends to watch. 

Jestering is grueling!

And speaking of winning awards, let's talk host segments. For the first time in this binge, I've really enjoyed every single host segment. We first see Crow and Gypsy presenting a S.O.L.tie award (Tom: "Get Pricewaterhouse on the phone! I demand a recount!"), and then two classic inventions (chinderwear and the Rat Pack chess set). The jestering sketch is followed by a great town council, then Joel's bewildering catfish puppet, and topped off by Dr. F's friend Mr. Fistie.

The riffing is, of course, top-notch too. Besides the obligatory reference to Sinbad, they also mention Brad Garrett, Foster Brooks, Carrot Top, and Gilbert Gottfried. There's a questionable string of unrelated references to "Take Back The Night," the Rodney King jury, and even Stonewall.

This is my second episode in a row to mention: Dean Martin (now retired), I Dream of Jeannie, Jack Nicholson, Arby's, "Don't eat refrozen ice cream," The B-52s, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. It's the third of four to mention Captain Crunch, The Marx Brothers, and Indiana Jones. And four of my last five episodes have mentioned: Blazing Saddles and The Flintstones (which join Martin and Lewis, The Wizard of Oz, Python, Beatles and Stones, and 1960s TV Batman in the ranks of references I've stopped counting).

A joke I had to look up: "It's Steve Martin's World of Birds."
A joke that just became relevant again: "They're test-marketing Crystal Pepsi."
My favorite joke: I loved "Man, I never knew Arabia was so Russian!" but I also have a soft spot in my heart for Joel's take on a really obvious model shot: "I've glued you all to the boats and put rods in your limbs for a reason!"
Overall, I rate this episode 10/10. Just flawless in most every respect.

Up next, I'm watching #509: The Girl in Lover's Lane.

MST3K #109: Project Moonbase

It's #109, with twice the Cody, and eight times the sexism!

When Joel and the bots find out they have two chapters with Cody this week, they... react badly, and I don't blame them. He's wearing thin on me, and I only have to watch each one once. And I skipped more than half!

I do like Joel's props in this short, where he holds up Batman-style words like "Biff" and "Pow," during the obligatory fistfight. (For a civilization with advanced radar guns, the moonmen sure do suffer a lot of fistfights.)

And during the second title sequence, they're so sick of writing credit gags they come up with a theme song for Cody, sung vaguely toward the tune of the underscore. This became a MST staple, and the first one is good right off the bat.

(Did I mention how much I love to hear Tom sing?)

And speaking of firsts, this also hears our first mention of "Slowly I turned..."

I'm so glad this is my last taste of Cody for now. (Until, that is, Shout! Factory decides to put out a bonus disc with the complete Commando Cody adventures. No reason not to, since the films are public domain.)

On the other hand, Cody is just dull and silly, and he doesn't make my skin crawl. The movie this week, though, wow. It's supposedly based on a story by Robert Heinlein, back before he thought even a little bit about women and sexism (even his later, more nuanced things aren't particularly great on that front).

I feel all icky after this one, watching a supposedly-professional woman cower at danger (she's a colonel for god's sake!). We also have to see her commanding officer threaten to spank her. Then she's married off to some meathead so America's morals won't be threatened by two grown adults shacking up on the moon. It's all so demeaning, and even the final twist (the president is -- get this! -- a WOMAN!!!!) is more a tasteless joke than forward-thinking futurism.

Let's try to move on. The so-called plot of this one is that dirty commies are trying to destroy America's space station, so they kidnap a scientist, and replace him with a double. The intrigue feels paper-thin, and the plot falls prey almost immediately to that old gag where the spy doesn't care about his "local" baseball team. (In this case, it's the 1970 Brooklyn Dodgers - "Oh, this is the future when they sold the Dodgers back to Brooklyn.")

The movie wants to be a serious, hard-science film. But it spends too much time on silly spy plots and cliche romance, and doesn't even bother to pretend that the models demonstrated early in the film aren't being used for the miniature shots a few minutes later.

This episode is dedicated to the memory of Alan Hale Jr. (who died just four days before it aired), who would show up in two later episodes, Angels' Revenge and The Giant Spider Invasion. (I'm not watching either of them this year, but Spider Invasion is the grimiest, ickiest film I'd ever seen on MST until this one.)

Bonus feature alert: There's a nice interview with Jeff Stonehouse, who was the show's DP for 3 seasons and a movie. I'm not sure why that bonus is on this disk (in fact, this box was all Joel eps, and Jeff wasn't there during Joel's years), but it's a nice brief memory of his time on the show. He was there during the great lighting-change in season 7 or so (when all of a sudden, lighting got a lot more important, and a lot more colorful). I've seen and heard a lot of interviews with the cast and crew before, but I don't remember hearing from Jeff before, and it's nice to add his voice to the history.

A reference I just don't get (write in if you know it): "This thing's full of candy! Watch what I can do with it."
A joke that didn't age well: "I see a thousand points of light."
A joke I had to look up: "Ooh, radishes." (Apparently they cause gas, which I did NOT know. Lots of flatulence jokes in this one.)
My favorite bit is the run of model jokes: "Space station," "Or, frisbee."

Odds I'll watch this again: 1/10. I feel bad as a male, a sci-fi fan, and a human being having to watch this one.
Overall, I rate this 3/10. The riffing is pretty fast and solid, but there are oh so many episodes without the ick factor.

Up next is #112, Untamed Youth.