MST3K #413: Manhunt In Space

Well, I caught a cold, and that put me behind schedule at the worst possible time -- the release date for the new season was finally announced. It all drops on April 14. That means I've got just 46 days to finish my pregame binge. And with twenty more episodes to watch, I need to aim for one every two days. Seems like I won't make it, but I'll sure enjoy the attempt.

Anyway, today we're looking at #413, with some soapy clips and some space-spies.

Featuring Nurse Feratu

In an excerpt from the first season of General Hospital, doctors and nurses and patients soap it up, with long expository monologues and melodramatic speeches. The electric organ, as you might expect, is too high in the mix. Afterwards, the bots want to play soap opera, but Joel refuses to go along.

I guess Bill Paxton was just glad he didn't have to work with Helen Hunt in space.

And next, another movie that isn't. It's more TV episodes cut together, though at least this story was conceived as a single piece (take that, Master Ninja!). Rocky Jones is another one of those square-headed, cowboy-style space heroes, who solves every conflict with a fistfight, the old American way. (I'm glad to know that we haven't had anything like that happen on the ISS.)

Space pirates are capturing ships, stealing the cargo, and killing the crews, AND they've infiltrated the base of the heroes. Rocky and his irritating sidekick Winky use their invisible space-technology to find the mole and catch the bad guys. They get captured a LOT (this was originally three TV episodes, and I think the heroes get captured at least four times), and each time they have to punch their way out. In the meantime, the tiresome sidekick brags about his notional love life, and sings a cloying lullaby. I've seen the other MST'd Rocky Jones movie, though I'll be danged if I can remember anything about it. I hope Winky doesn't sing in that one.

Crow isn't a Stratocaster; Tom isn't the Golden Throat.

The riffs are up to the usual standard -- two fairly obscure Star Trek jokes I had to look up, plus mentions of Ted Knight, Mr. Mooney, Roy Lichtenstein, and Bettie Page. I really enjoyed the Mr. Wizard/Police Squad! style joke: "And that's how cattle are inseminated." (Speaking of Police Squad!, how obscure a reference is "Hey, it's the 'Sucker' Brothers"?!?) 

We learn a few trivia facts about our friends in this one: not only is Tom color-blind, but Joel apparently has a sister. (In the SciFi era, we would've seen Mike's sister, and she would've been Mike in a wig. In fact, I'll wager one American dollar that did happen.)

It's rare in this binge for me to watch two consecutive episodes, so I appreciated that Crow calls back the "good-natured brawling" from #412, just a few minutes after the well-aged callback to Fugitive Alien. But since these two aired in order, there aren't many repeated jokes. This is my second episode in a row to reference Captain Crunch, and the third to mention The Flintstones.

A joke that didn't age well: "What is this, Radio AHHS?"
A joke I had to look up: "When in Duluth, visit the Lift Bridge."
My favorite joke: Once again, I enjoyed the variant "Sturgeon! In! Spaaaaaaaace!", but the winner is clearly "It's like a million-to-one shot that we'll ever be seen." "Oh, they're on Comedy Central."
Overall, I rate this episode 9/10. Rocky's a little dull, but otherwise it's perfect.

Up next, it's #505, The Magic Voyage of Sinbad.

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.

25 Days of Christmas #11: MST3K "Santa Claus Conquers The Martians"

Here's one of my favorite Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes: "Santa Claus Conquers The Martians."

First off, a bit about this movie: it's weird. It's weird, and goofy, and seems like someone pulled two kids' movies out of a hat and mixed them up together. There's about ten dry, sad minutes on Mars, where the kids never laugh and the nearly-dead oracle proclaims "We need a Santa Claus on Mars." So, naturally, the King of Mars decides to come to Earth and kidnap Santa.

And they do it too, and kidnap two all-American Earth kids in the bargain. Along the way, the kids encounter an unconvincing polar bear, and the Martians' cardboard-box robot. Santa turns the robot into a giant toy with unexplained magic, but once the Martians use their freezey-guns on a few elves and Mrs. Claus, Santa goes along with them.

On the trip back to Mars, the evil Martian underling tries to eject Santa and the kids into space, only for Santa to escape using his chimney skills. The Earth kids meet the depressed Martian kids, who have to eat pills for dinner and learn all their lessons in a sleep-pyramid... I think. Santa cheers up the Martian kids, and recruits the film's annoying comic relief to be the Martian Santa.

This is a truly strange movie, in the way that no studio-released film could be -- nothing in this film was focus-grouped or done by committee, and in a weird way I respect that kind of integrity. On the other hand, it's pretty bad, so there's that. This isn't even the weirdest Christmas movie made. We'll be looking at that in the next Christmas MST3K...

This is from the third season of MST3K, by which point the show was going full-bore, and this episode just cracks along. The joke/minute ratio is really high, and most of them land well. (I also feel like the percentage of then-topical jokes which haven't survived the ensuing decades are fewer than usual.) If you'd care to read annotations for all the jokes, please feel free to do so here. I feel like the host segments, as usual, are hit-or-miss; my favorite one is Tom's soulful take on A Child's Christmas in Wales which quickly descends into screaming worry about Santa exploding in the vaccuum of space.

This is the only MST3K film which has been redone by both Rifftrax and Cinematic Titanic. I've seen the CT version (once, a while ago) but not the Rifftrax version. Maybe next Christmas, instead of this MST version I've seen so often, I'll watch those two back-to-back. While the film proper is public domain, this episode is currently out-of-print, so the buy link below is a little pricey. But, for that price, you also get Manos: Hands of Fate, so it's all relative. OR, a quick websearch will just take you to the full video online, and you can watch for free. Your choice.

The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection - The Essentials (Manos, the Hands of Fate / Santa Claus Conquers the Martians)