MST3K K02: Revenge of the Mysterons From Mars

Like Invaders From The Deep, this is a compilation of 4 TV episodes edited into a feature. And like that one, this movie didn't try to disguise its episodic nature. Neither film has much in the way of dramatic structure, and they didn't even bother to cut out reused model shots. Also, the formulaic procedural elements of each episode repeat themselves throughout -- Tom points out that we have at least five "dramatic" countdowns in this 90-minute film.

This movie feels more serious and grown-up to me than Invaders From The Deep, with a lot more attention to the actual science of planetary motion and geography. I guess that credit goes to the writer, Tony Barwick, for putting some research into his scripts. (For example, we learn a little about Phobos, one of Mars' moons, including its orbital period.) The unseen Mysterons are a community on Mars, and in a flashback we see their first interaction with Earthlings -- as usual, the trigger-happy humans assume the Martian settlement is a threat, and blow it up almost immediately, causing a war that went on for 32 episodes, two film compilations, and even an aughties reboot. And that's an interesting, serious contemporary idea, though it's mostly ignored in this collection of episodes.

The puppets are also more realistically sculpted, though their motion is a lot less fluid. We'll call that a draw. (Plus, there are a few puppets of color included. A small step forward from last movie's WASPS.)

MST3K has always had a special relationship with Thanksgiving, and that started right here. Every single host segment hinges on the holiday (I especially love the one where Joel and all the bots make hand turkeys). Only one other episode would set itself at Thanksgiving officially (Season Seven's Night of the Blood Beast), though most of us have had a marathon on the last 26 Turkey Days, official or no.

There are a lot of other firsts in this episode. Tom shows up in a speaking role, and they put food in his head twice! Crow's first good joke in this episode is MST's earliest Python reference. ("It's only a model.") The riffing speed also picked up a lot, and it's nice to have all three of our main characters in the theater, all making jokes and interacting with each other.

The show is still pretty rough -- someone in the theater is still wearing their digital wristwatch, which we can hear beep three times (around six minutes, around 45 minutes, and around 1:12). Not exactly professional TV behavior, but they had no idea thousands of people would be watching this in the next century. (Was it Trace? We didn't hear that in the first episode, and he didn't get to work on that one. Of course, that's pretty circumstantial.) As with the previous episode, this was lost until earlier this year, and Joel has some thoughts he'd like to share.

My favorite joke in this episode is Tom's love for the repeated countdowns.
A joke I had to look up: "Looks like Carol Merrill."
A joke that didn't age well: "Dr. Breck, the shampoo genius." (Breck shampoo has been exclusively available at Dollar Tree stores for the last decade.)

Odds I'll watch this one again: 1/10. The movie is less silly than K01, but that actually makes the show less fun overall.
I rate this episode: 2/10. The joke speed picked up, though the quality isn't what we came to expect later on.

You can't buy this episode outright, though Kickstarter supporters should be able to watch it on vhx.tv. If you're late to the whole thing but still want to join in, you can spend $40 and get the two lost KTMA eps here.

A Spoopy Month #14: Mad Monster Party?

Well, I made it 13 days before running out of pre-written posts. This post is going up late in the day, not my usual schedule at all, but I've watched a lot of stuff I'm excited to write about, so I hope to get a few more posts in the pipeline today. Here's another Karloff movie, 1967's Mad Monster Party?

As you can see, it's stop-motion, and it's another Rankin-Bass spectacular. What you can't see, and might not guess, is why that word "Mad" is in the title. It was produced by Mad Magazine's publisher, and the characters were mostly designed by Mad artist Jack Davis. The movie was also co-written by Mad creator Harvey Kurtzman. (It's not important to this movie, but pretty important to me, that around the time Kurtzman was working on this movie, he'd just finished several years as Terry Gilliam's boss at Help! Magazine.)

I don't feel like this movie reaches the dizzying absurdist heights of humor that Mad could go to, though there are plenty of familiar touches (the characters are named things like Yetch and Felix Flanken). It's consistently amusing, though most people agree it's too long. (Apparently the producer/distributor wanted it to be 90 minutes, so a handful of extraneous scenes were added and filmed. This would benefit greatly from removal of those scenes, and a general tightening of atmosphere and chase scenes.) And while we're on the subject of the script, my DVD contains a special feature in which Arthur Rankin himself takes credit for my favorite joke in the movie: our hero and his lady are running from the monsters, trying to escape off the island, and she's unable to run any more. She begs the hero to save himself: "Go on, Felix. Just leave me something to read."

Karloff plays Dr. Frankenstein for a change in this one, and Phyllis Diller is immediately recognizable as herself (they even renamed Frankenstein's Monster to "Fang," in honor of her act). Most of the voice duties, though, fall to Allen Swift, who plays Felix as Jimmy Stewart (his job is as a pharmacist's assistant, and frankly I can't NOT think of It's A Wonderful Life in those scenes). Swift also makes The Invisible Man into Sydney Greenstreet and Yetch into Peter Lorre (what, no one could sound like Bogart?).

There are songs, too, which I personally didn't care for at all, since they had almost no jokes in them, though apparently the cult following for this film is at least partly due to the soundtrack. One person's meat, and all that.

You can find this on DVD most anywhere this time of year, and I'm honestly surprised I hadn't ever bothered to watch it before now. I doubt I'll see it every year, but it's a pleasant way to spend 90 minutes and has a handful of really funny monster jokes.