The Queen's Corgi (2019)

A quick introduction to this review. I wanted to raise some money for all the worthy causes out there, and a month ago I found a terrible movie. So I gave a small group of friends this challenge: if at least three of them donated $81.00 (a dollar, per person, per minute of film) to a bail fund or similar organization in support of BIPOC, I would watch the terrible movie and give them a detailed report. This is my preliminary report.

What do you need to know about this film? Well, first off, it's written by the writers of Gnomeo and Juliet (but not Sherlock Gnomes). It was produced in Belgium. It has a 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes. And, disappointingly for me, they redubbed it for American release. I like Jack Whitehall, who originally played Rex. I even really like Jon Culshaw's impression of Trump, which I hear 20ish times a year on Radio Four's Dead Ringers.


But the American cast is ... less impressive. Trump's voice actor did it under a pseudonym. And the top-billed actor is also clearly a pseudonym (cartoon fans will recognize the joke). Almost like they were ashamed of this.

Too bad Joey Camen didn't use a pseudonym -- he plays the only human character of color in the film. The UK cast avoided voiceover brownface by casting an actual person of Asian descent, but this film couldn't be bothered. (I can't find any decent biographical info on Camen -- please tell me if I'm offbase here.)

I assume the redubbing was done to accomodate script changes, presumably to Americanize the script -- I remember a few things that probably weren't in the original, like using "pee" instead of "widdle" or something. Also, for some reason, the swans in St. James' Park were called "evil geese." I mean, do they assume kids in America haven't heard of swans?

But then, the whole thing is divorced from anything real anyway. Prince Phillip is ugly, but he's also a total dick the whole time. I feel like he was probably the original antagonist in the first draft of the script, but that got rewritten to avoid controversy.

Which, I mean, how do you avoid controversy when Donald Trump's visit is an inciting incident in your film? This movie does it by writing him as a goofy child, which would be fun if it were Gerald Ford or Reagan. But real-life Donald Trump owns no dog. He would never pet a dog, or be nice to a dog, or (as portrayed in this film), push a dog around in a plush carriage and speak to it in babytalk. (If that sounds like fun to watch, let me remind you: ZERO PERCENT.)


Just one more small roundup of Trumpy things about this film, and then I'll move on, I promise. Melania (who, in the American version, has a wery-wery veird accent) mentions how big the President's hands are. He's gracious when he has to eat English food, which is the biggest lie in this entire film. This movie wants to make a few broad jokes about the man and move on, as if the entire world population isn't excruciatingly familiar with his monstrous effect on literally all our lives.

But then this movie doesn't expect us to be familiar with anything, not even other movies. It rips off Puss In Boots' big-eyes trick. It rips off the traffic cone road crossing from Toy Story 2. It somehow thinks a training montage, a la Rocky, is fresh and intriguing grounds for comedy. It thinks we've never heard a single riff on the rules of Fight Club.

There are a few jokes that I almost liked -- the film is set at Christmas, so out-of-nowhere, a group of dogs sing "Jingle Bells," a nod to the novelty record which might well be funny in a better movie. Similarly, a bigger role for the swans would probably work as comedy. I also like how kindly Elizabeth is portrayed here; all real-life personality aside, it's sweet to see her enjoy the dogs so much.

To sum up, this is absolutely the worst film I've seen in 2020, but it was for a good cause. If you have a few extra dollars, might I recommend you send them to the Equal Justice Initiative? Or a local bail fund for protestors, many of whom are still locked up in our COVID-hotspots? Or the Navajo Nation COVID fund?

If you donate, and send me a picture of your receipt, I will gladly answer any questions you have about this movie. Thanks for your time. Don't watch the film.

MST3K #604: Zombie Nightmare

It's #604, with more delinquents and a baseball-bat-wielding zombie.

Our movie this time is a low-budget Canadian rock-teen-horror-baseball-voodoo film (yes, ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE), featuring Adam West and Tia Carrere. A chunky baseball player stops two young punks from raping a young woman, and one of them stabs him to death, right in front of his son. Then, years later, his grown-up son prevents a robbery and gets coincidentally run down in front of the store. The new young punks (one is the son of the second, non-murdering punk from the prologue, and is also a rapist) drive off, leaving the son to die in the street. His mother calls on the young woman from the prologue, who luckily is a voodoo witch (there are lots of those in Montreal, doncha know?) and they revive the son. He's not really himself, though, just a vengeance-bent zombie.

Why you should always call before you dig.

There's a young cop trying to solve all the teen murders, and his boss (Mr. West, there), seems to know an awful lot of the players in this case. Since, as it turns out, he's the stabby rapey punk from the opening, and the old baseball guy gets zombified just long enough to drag him down to hell.

The movie is pretty bad, but it kinda knows it. (Or at least the creators did -- the DVD special feature has several of the stars talking about their reflections on the MST version of their film, and how much they liked the show even before they were on it.) Adam West wasn't quite in full self-parody mode yet, though that time wasn't far off. As a result, his character work and mustache are enacted seriously, even his breakdown during the scene pictured above.

A deleted scene from Batman Vs. Soup.

And since Adam's in the movie, it's only right that Mike and the bots spend a lot of time talking about Batman. Crow's even written a sketch about it, but he threw it out, so Mike's wearing those tiny shorts for no good reason. Besides all the obvious Batman jokes, there are also a decent amount of jokes about the Canadian setting (David Steinberg, Andrea Martin, Bob and Doug McKenzie, and even The Kids In The Hall get called out).

Sidebar: Boy, do I ever wish the Mads didn't wear that makeup for their voodoo phase. Okay, maybe even the makeup would be okay, but the Screamin' Jay Hawkins bone-in-nose getup is just so tasteless.

This is my second episode in a row to mention: The NRA, Peanut Buster Parfaits, Chi-Chi's, Frankenstein, an Orlon sweater, Elvis, and ABBA. It's the third to mention Happy Days (four out of the last five, and now retired). And three out of my last four episodes have mentioned The Dilly Bar (that's it, all Dairy Queen references are retired too).

A (dark) joke I had to look up: "Were they the Tonton Macoutes?"
A joke that didn't age well: "He's doing the Nestea Plunge!"
My favorite joke: "George Romero's Casey At The Bat." (Honorable mention to the garage door closing: "That's a really trivial use of her dark powers.")
Overall, I rate this one 6/10. The movie is too dark to see, too noisy to hear. The riffs are on point, but the movie is a tad too serious for me to fully enjoy.

Up next, I'm watching #616, Racket Girls.

MST3K #523: Village of the Giants

It's #523, with some giant "teen" delinquents.

Based on Dreams From My Father

Our movie this time is a teen party film, like Catalina Caper but without the blazing wit or hard rock. It's an affable movie, which only wants to make us laugh. And it pulls out all the stops: giant ducks dancing adorably, then being roasted and eaten; Tommy Kirk mugging; and Ronny Howard nearly killing himself repeatedly. Then, the film ends with possibly the most casually distasteful joke I've ever seen in a MST'd movie. (To sum up: Ronny is a chemical wunderkind, and has invented a goo that makes living creatures grow. A troupe of little people wander, on foot, into town so they can get bigger. Get it?)

Eldritch Cleavage

Along the way, we also see Beau Bridges make heartfelt speeches about how hard the teens have it these days (apparently he personally rewrote the dialogue), and the 30-year-old teens dance to a gaggle of pop songs from today's top hitmakers (or at least Freddy "Boom Boom" Cannon, whom I like, but who is no Little Richard). Finally, Ronny creates the antidote and shrinks those delinquents back down to size, The sheriff decides to forget all about that time they kidnapped his daughter and literally threatened her life. It's fun!

He was even stripped of his spitcurl!

You know what's actually fun, though? The arc of host segments. This is the first time in my binge that they've laser-focused on a single story (not counting the run of Thanksgiving skits way back during K02). And what a story it is! Frank has been downsized, and over 90 minutes of in-universe time, he grows a beard and watches weeks of daytime television. Oh, and Torgo is applying for his old job. Plenty of fantastic character stuff from Frank, and I always love seeing Mike's Torgo (there's one theme-music joke here which I can't even describe, but it sure is great). The whole thing is just a lovefest for Frank (with another great song by Mike -- and his lovely bride), and it's not till the nonstinger that we realize it's all thinly camouflaged love for another departed Frank. I'm watching #624 soon, so I'll hold off on my eulogy for TV's Frank till then, but this is a great tribute.

And even without the Zappa tribute, this episode has some out-of-left-field references: Mudhoney, The Fugs, Bukowski, and Ed Gein all get mentioned (putting to rest my complaint regarding too little avant-garde trivia in the last episode). Since Ronny has a lot of screen time, we hear a few lines from "The Wells Fargo Wagon," but more impressive to me is the other song from Meredith Willson: "Chicken Fat," the song despised by generations of exercise-avoiders. And there's a reference to Animal from The Muppets, with a very creditable impression.

This is my second episode in a row to mention: Deney Terio, Honey I Shrunk The Kids, William Conrad, Acapulco HEAT, Dudley Do-Right, Ed Sullivan, What's Happening!!, Dirty Harry, Happy Days, North By Northwest, The Chevy Chase Show, and Gymkata (now retired). This is the third in a row to quote a song by The Who, and the third of my last four to quote Groucho (also newly retired).

A joke I had to look up: "The ravaging effects of Osgood-Schlatter disease."
A joke that didn't age well: "Frank, you haven't been off that couch since Vicki!"
My favorite joke: I enjoyed "The Ope of Greenwich Village," but it was just edged out by "Very, very white-collar crime."
Overall, I rate this 10/10. The movie is perfectly goofy, and the host segments are impeccable. I'd gladly show this one as an introduction to anyone who hasn't seen the show before.

Up next, I'm watching #604, Zombie Nightmare.

MST3K #519: Outlaw (Of Gor)

It's #519, with a parallel-universe jerk of a hero.

Don't get your hopes up.

Our movie this time is a tiresome fantasy slog, based (loosely) on a notoriously misogynistic series of fantasy novels. And it's a sequel to something. Tarl Cabot (sure, that's believable as the name of a mid-80s American college professor) is a fella from Earth who found himself drawn to another planet, where he had some kind of adventures, though the flashbacks don't tell us much at all. It doesn't matter though, since he's quickly pulled back (along with an irritating sidekick character). And immediately, he has to save the kingdom from evil.

Jack Palance, showing the depths he fell to before City Slickers.

An ambitious woman has seduced the kind, beloved king (whose daughter is Cabot's true love). A priest-king (why would anyone cast Palance as a religious leader??) is colluding with her to overthrow the king, take over the kingdom, and undo all the progressive freedom and justice and stuff. (Nope, no political sidebars from me today. You can write it yourself -- seems pretty obvious.)

Cabot's earthman sidekick betrays him at the first scent of sex, the queen murders the king and frames Cabot, and the princess is imprisoned. Oh, and we see a LOT of body parts. Like, a lot. Thighs and calves, buttcheeks and sideboobs, and plenty of greasy oily sweat. In the end, Cabot is spurred into action by the queen's slaving policies, and manages to defeat her, marrying his princess and becoming king. (It seems the original novels took a different approach to slavery, and spent a lot of time on pretty backwards gender relations. The DVD bonus features include a short documentary about the original novels [they were written by an American college professor -- wishful thinking much?], along with the revelation that this film was shot in South Africa, during Apartheid. Ick, double ick, and damn humanity in general.)

Big, buttery slabs of Fabio! (feat. Crow's Leno chin)

It's my first Mike episode of the binge (his seventh as host overall), and he's already in full-flow. The episode first shows him rough-housing with Tom and Crow (and, naturally, it ends badly.). This episode's "invention exchange" is one in name only, since Mike and the bots are presenting Fabio kits. Clay and Frank present a totally-real time machine. This would be the final invention exchange, and I'm kind of glad they decided to abandon the concept. Mike wasn't that maker guy; he was a song-writing guy. And boy, does this episode have a great song. "Tubular, Boobular Joy" is a masterpiece of pop-novelty music-craft, properly beloved in the fandom.

The quality of the riffs is pretty indistinguishable from my last Joel episode. The obscurest riffs are slightly less avant-garde and slightly more 70s TV, but that's a first, unscientific impression, so take it with a grain of salt. There were an awful lot of jokes I wanted to specifically mention here, so here's just a few:

• "It's time for The Brutal Gourmet."
• "Here you go, Socrates."
• "Honey, I shrunk the Nelson."
• "He dislocated his mandible!"

This is my second episode to mention: Dilly Bars, Cosmo, Marlene Deitrich, a song by The Who, Cliffhanger, The Lambada, and "Sampo!" It's the third in a row to mention Jethro Tull, and the third out of the last four to reference Mr. Ed. Four out of my last five have mentioned The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and five out of the last seven referenced Indiana Jones (both now retired).

A joke I had to look up: "Joe Namath!"
A joke that didn't age well: "Kathie Lee had her baby." (Honorable mention: the reference to Ted Danson's notorious blackface appearance.)
My favorite joke: "This is the life." "For you maybe, not for the women."
Overall, I rate this one 6/10. The movie has a lot of things happen, but it's just so dull. I can't fault the in-theater riffs, but (song notwithstanding) the host segments aren't perfect.

Up next, it's #523, Village of the Giants.

MST3K #510: The Painted Hills

It's #510, so we get to learn about good grooming, and then Lassie's out to get revenge.

They're cops.

First, a condescending narrator tells all us college kids about the importance of personal cleanliness, obsessive grooming rituals, and conformity. Like all the great educational shorts on this show, the riffing gets dark and dirty, and deservedly so. I love that Joel and the bots call out the narrator for his narrow-minded shaming, and in the following host segment both Crow and Tom champion individuality. Before, you know, the debate descends into chaos.

And our feature film is a dark, gritty Lassie movie (decades before dark, gritty reboots were even a thing). Lassie plays Shep, a dog who looks just like Lassie but with murderous vengeance in her heart. Her owner has been murdered over a gold claim, the villain nearly kills a kid, and Shep survives poisoning and eventually runs the guy over a cliff. It's half Treasure of the Sierra Madre, half family adventure movie. It's too serious to be fun, and has too much Lassie to be a suitable movie for grownups.

Sidebar: Speaking of surprisingly brutal sequels, I saw Logan this week. It's amazing, and unexpected. I nearly mentioned it in my previous episode writeup (as another reason I was sad). I figured it was maybe too personal, but closer in tone to this Lassie movie. I can't imagine how many thousands of tiny kids were taken to see this movie, just like I was surprised to see that seven-year-old girl in my theater, dancing to the Johnny Cash song playing during Logan's credits. And, like The Girl In Lover's Lane, this movie is darker than I like for a MST episode.

Crow slaughters Jay.

And since the movie is so dark, it's lucky that the riffs are so good. Running gags about Snausages and the irregular Pete piling-on are consistently good, and several of the host segments are perfection. I like Crow playing Leno, and his report on Rutherford B. Hayes ("Pornograph?") is classic.

I can't believe I've already made it to my last Joel episode of the binge. For me, Joel is not just the creator/writer/original host of the show, he's the progenitor. I know that, for legal reasons, Mallon gets to claim some credit, but Joel is the creative person who made it all happen. I tweeted an earlier post at Joel, though I can't imagine he read it, and he probably won't ever see this. But he's brought me literally hundreds of hours of joy, and I know there are millions of other people out there who can say the same thing.

This is the second episode in a row to mention: Jethro Tull, Perfect Strangers, Paul Revere's ride, Groucho (now retired), and Abraham Lincoln. It's the third to reference: Kenny Rogers and It's A Wonderful Life (also now retired). Since I've been tracking all the Muppet references, I also laughed out loud at the joke on Big Bird's "ABC-DEF-GHI".

Bonus feature alert: I haven't been mentioning all of these, but this disc has nearly an hour of host segments from Turkey Days past, with appearances from all our friends and Jack Perkins too.

A joke that aged so poorly, it was already cancelled: "Remember to tape Delta."
A joke I had to look up: "Call her what you will: a Scoop Jackson Democrat or a Jacob Javits Republican."
My favorite joke from this one: I loved "Arf-keeba! Gym-collie!," but the prize goes to "Well, looks like the montage finally blew over."
Overall, I rate this one 6/10. It's just too serious to make good MST fodder. It might sound silly, but I really liked the characters and didn't feel like laughing when Shep nearly died from poison.

Up next, I greet Mike in #519, Outlaw of Gor.

MST3K #509: The Girl In Lover's Lane

It's Episode 509, wherein two drifters visit a small town, sowing unhappiness among the townsfolk AND the audience.

Ah, the romance of the open rail! And the soul-crushing depression of the closed heart!

Our movie this week is a sad little slab of teen-crime drama.  Bix is a rough-and-tumble drifter, riding the rails, hopping freights from town to town, after his drunken slob of a father dies. Spoiled rich-boy Danny is running from his home too, though it's just a broken one. After Danny gets rolled and knocked out, they hop off a train near Sherman, a little town with about four women (and two of the four are prostitutes). Carrie (a waitress) falls for Bix, while one of the prostitutes gets Danny drunk and steals his wallet. Carrie gets the pair hired at her dad's diner (where they have to shoo off her stalker), and takes Bix out for night-time walks near the local pond. He pushes her away, since he's determined to drift on.

Sidebar: I couldn't help but be reminded of a similar -- though more recent -- potboiler by Lawrence Block, one of my favorite crime writers. His Resume Speed is about a similar drifter, who gets a job in a diner and falls for a woman. And he has to decide, does he deserve the happiness of settling down, or should he keep punishing himself? The ending of that isn't as manipulative as this one, and treats the subject with more emotion and adult seriousness. 

"Are we gonna hustle these guys, Big Stupid?"

Then Danny makes the mistake of changing a $50 in the local poolhall, and the local gang gives them an alley-fight to remember. And Carrie's stalker keeps creeping by, and before you know it, Bix has broken Carrie's heart, and then the stalker kills her, and her dad is beating Bix nearly to death. Just a really uplifting ending all around.

I dunno, maybe I'm just bummed out because I'm still hurting a little from Resume Speed. (On the other hand, the final host segment is just Tom and Crow coming up with alternate endings to the film, so I know I'm not alone in my response.)

Let's move on to more pleasant things. This episode has one of my favorite original songs from the show, which prompted me to embed a video for the first time in this binge. It's a brilliant train-song pastiche and, thanks to the lyrics from Frank, takes a really dark, real-life turn in the last verse. (The movie's opening "song," too, has a nice set of lyrics courtesy of our funny friends.)

All of these episodes have what I'm starting to think of as "reference clumps". This one has a LOT of references to painters: Picasso, Lichtenstein, Gainsborough, Whistler, and Munch all get mentioned along with Andrew Wyeth. 

This is the second episode in a row to reference: Garrison Keillor, Mr. Ed, Unforgiven, David Crosby, It's A Wonderful Life, Foster Brooks, "Jim Dandy To The Rescue," a Kenny Rogers song, Siddhartha, and Peter Lawford. It's the third to mention The Mary Tyler Moore Show and I Dream of Jeannie.

A joke I had to look up: "I am Xenon. Play me."

A joke that didn't age well: "It's Larry and Balki's apartment."

My favorite joke: I love the whole run of Danny's alternate dialogue. In addition to the one quoted above, there's "What about that guy I groined in the knee?"

Overall, I rate this one: 5/10. The ending of the movie, even with the constant jokes, is too close to sadmaking for me. 

Speaking of sadmaking things, next, I'm bidding farewell to Joel with #510, The Painted Hills.

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 #412: Hercules and the Captive Women

It's #412, wherein Hercules rescues a captive woman. Just one.

This film is dedicated to Uranus

For Gypsy's first real riffing experience, our film is... weird. It's got huge production value, a silly script, and poor editing. ("Can God Himself make a plot so complicated that even He can't comprehend it?") This is like the eighth Hercules movie the crew had to sit through, and I know I've seen a bunch of them. I can't remember a single thing about the others, and I don't know how much of this one I'll remember either.

Herc fights a terrible lizard

Well, okay. I'll probably remember the scene where they clearly reuse an old dinosaur costume from another film. I was never a big fan of ancient myths, and I can't necessarily explain the difference between Zeus and Poseidon. So let's just say I'm not a fan of the franchise, and don't have much emotional investment in the characters. The idea that Hercules personally destroyed Atlantis is interesting, I guess. This film is goofy, but even its goofiness is kind of boring. I don't know that I'd ever want to watch it again, or any of the other Hercules MST episodes for that matter.

Sidebar: I have a bad habit of needing a nap halfway through the dullest MST films, and I probably could've dozed off during this one. Maybe that's why I'm so cranky. ...either that, or I'm jealous of all the naps Hercules takes as the plot unfolds around him.

The aftermath of good-natured brawling

And apart from Gypsy making a decent joke in the theater ("They're steam-cleaning the horses!") there's not much memorable in the riff department either. I enjoyed all the softballs the movie threw about Uranus, and how the gang reply to them. It's nice to have the clump of sugar cereal jokes (for unrelated reasons, they call out Lucky Charms, Captain Crunch, and Cocoa Puffs), and this is my first time hearing "Jim Henson's Fill-In-The-Blank Babies" during the binge.

This is my second episode in a row to reference: "Don't take the brown acid," The Six Million Dollar Man, The Marx Brothers, "John And Marsha," "Attica Attica Attica," Indiana Jones, Tahitian Treat, and The Flintstones. And it's my third time hearing about: The Rockford Files, The Simpsons, Gymkata, "Hooker was a good cop!," Blazing Saddles, and Prince.

Bonus feature alert: We get a nice feature on all the Shout! Factory poster art from Steve Vance, and Joel introduces the film.

A joke I had to look up: "We love you Conrad, oh yes we do." (Bye Bye Birdie is on my to-watch list, honest.)
My favorite joke in this one: "Tonight's Episode: Jack and Jill Went Up the Hill To Fetch a Pail of MURDER!"
Overall, I rate this one: 5/10. The jokes are good, but the dull movie just killed my joy.

Next, it's #413, Manhunt In Space.

MST3K #205: Rocket Attack U.S.A

It's #205: Bela creeps around some more, and commies attack the USA with rockets.

 

This episode opens with Tom's new head. It wouldn't last long -- just two episodes. In the short, Bela's still mad-sciencing, and this time he's killed his wife and is out for vengeance. He uses the invisibelt to knock some guys out, the giant robot does nothing, and the exploding mechaspider nearly coma-fies Bela's underling. The spunky reporter parachutes into a tree, and everyone -- EVERYONE -- sneaks around.

And our film this week is a red-bashing military propaganda film. Our brave spies attempt to sabotage Russia's long-range nuke, but screw up. While the narrator and the film's military chief bemoan the low budget of the army ("Had we half the money that was appropriated for such worthy programs as cheese price supports, we would have had our ICBM long ago"), Russia fires a missile. It levels New York, and kills three million people. (One single unprompted political fact, and then I'm done: The USDA pays around $20 billion each year in total subsidies, and the military spent 30 times that in 2015. Apparently, some people are still upset about our subsidy programs, by the way.) 

The film's not subtle, in any way, about anything, and its emotional manipulation and condescension to the presumed audience remind me of local news teases. ("Are unseen dangers murdering your children? Tune in at 11 to find out.")

Sidebar: I've seen Hidden Figures this week, which shows us a more peaceful view of the post-Sputnik space race (along with more important things). My wife asked me what this MST was about, and I told her it's a movie that would've scared the nationalist cop who pulls over the film's three heroines.

And on the subject of Sputnik, Mike shows up in the hexfield again, with two robots of his own (though they aren't good for much). I also enjoyed the host segment about the McCarthy hearings -- the Charlie McCarthy hearings. And I loved the obscurity of this episode's Python reference, and the really dark joke about the set of The Conqueror.

This is my second episode in a row to feature jokes about: Dune ("I will KILL him!"), Airport, Roddy McDowall, "Let's get out of here, Scooby!", I Love Lucy, The Little Rascals, John Mellencamp, Zack Norman, and callbacks to Robot Holocaust. It's also the first-ever episode to have a stinger.

Bonus feature alert: The disc has a short interview with Trace, as he tells us about his life after MST3K. I'm still amazed he auditioned for Jar-Jar.

A joke that didn't age particularly well: "Mallory?" "Yes, Alex?"
A joke I had to look up: "It's Wheeler and Woolsey!"
My favorite joke: "It's hard to believe that a group of civilized men could sit around and calmly discuss how to murder five or six million others." "That's why we've got to CRUSH THEM!"
Overall, I rate this 8/10. The original movie is a little dull in spots, but the MSTers have nothing to apologize for.

Next, it's #310, Fugitive Alien.

MST3K #203: Jungle Goddess

It's Episode #203, with a Bela Lugosi serial and a racist, sexist story about white men in Africa.

It's a new season (for me, anyway), and the first chapter of a new serial. Bela plays a mad scientist who's invented a giant robot, an invisibility belt, and an exploding-spider/coma-inducer. Unlike the mad scientist in Mad Monster, he's unpatriotic and will gladly sell his inventions to America's enemies! (It's set in 1939, so I'm pretty sure that means ze Germans. Apparently the spies actually show up in later chapters, so I might know soon if I'm right.)

This serial reuses (to no particular effect) Franz Waxman's iconic, brilliant score from Bride of Frankenstein. Bela makes a great mad scientist, though he doesn't talk about his idea for "a rice of pipples" here.

Sidebar: I'm catching up on my podcasts, and just got around to hearing the Movie Sign With The Mads episode about Ed Wood. It's a discussion podcast, not a performance podcast, but I was still surprised I didn't get to hear Trace do his Bela impression. It's still good fun, though, and I love hearing Trace and Frank (and Carolina! Hi, Carolina!) chew over the great and not-so-great movies.

 

Then, our feature presentation. It's a pretty offensive thing, with Filipino and Mexican actors playing African natives (I guess I should just be glad they didn't black up for their scenes, but that's small comfort). When a Danish heiress crashes into the jungle, she's worshipped as a goddess by the "primitive, childlike" (her words) natives, and she spends at least six years there, befriending the only other woman and being waited on hand and foot. Everything about the representation of the natives is pretty awful, and that makes the whole movie terrible. Sure, it's a similar type of representation as parts of the original King Kong (one bit actor from that plays a bit part here), but the natives appear in nearly this whole movie. That really rubs in just how little Hollywood cared to learn about Africa. Joel and the bots don't particularly call the movie out on this, either, which seems like a bad choice. There are plenty of ways to be funny at the movie's expense about this. (I also get a bad taste in my mouth when Gypsy shows up with a bone in her... flashlight.) The movie is also pretty sexist, and the boy's club that was the MST writer's room at the time doesn't particularly call that out either.

The two white men in the film are Superman and Dick Tracy, though only George Reeves' character is really a hero; Ralph Byrd is a murderous chiseler, ready to abandon his partner at the first chance. (I love the run of jokes about him murdering monkeys and coconuts, etc.) It's a welcome relief when he gets a spear to the back, though I wish Reeve didn't shoot the native who dispatched him. (But then, white men always stick up for each other, even if they were literally fighting each other to the death 30 seconds earlier.)

"Whoa, huge slam on Lucy out of nowhere!"

I enjoy the use of unrelated stock footage of wildlife, and the "binocular" device used to slot it into the film. It wasn't until I saw the host segment making fun of the use of camera gobos that I realized I wasn't watching this episode for the first time. (For those of you keeping track at home, this is only the second episode from my binge that I've seen before, and this might be the first episode I saw as a young person.) This is a perfect reversal of the lecture-type host segments from Season One. It starts out like a lecture, but quickly becomes a breakneck series of jokes.

And, hey, it's TV's Frank! He's arrived, even if Dr. Forrester isn't experimenting on him yet. And Kevin's here too! It's only their third episode, but they already inhabit their roles perfectly. (Plus, I get to hear multi-tracked Kevin sing in the final host sketch.)

This is my second episode in a row to reference (deep breath): The Wisconsin Dells, Dune, Sabu, Adolphe Menjou, GI Joe, Gary Crosby, and even the urban legend of The Hook. It also has two Python references in five minutes, and I got references to Rocky and Bullwinkle and The Muppets to delight my soul.

Bonus feature alert: DVD viewers get a short history of Turkey Day, and an intro Joel did for a recent Turkey Day marathon. Also, before I watched this, I dialed up the first five minutes of #201, just to see the milk-carton farewell to Larry and Frank's introduction.

A reference I had to look up: "Where's Ted Bessell?"
A joke that didn't age well: “Have a drink." "We haven’t got time.” "We don’t fly Northwest."
My favorite joke: "I'd stake my life on it." "That's already in the kitty, Bob."
Overall, I rate this: 7/10. The riffs are on point, and the sketches are nearly at their peak. It'd probably go up to 8/10 if they called the movie out on its racism and sexism.

Up next, #205, Rocket Attack USA (and the second chapter of Phantom Creeps).

MST3K #113: The Black Scorpion

It's #113: The Black Scorpion, with giant clay bugs.

Our movie this time is a 1957 monster movie, with better-than-average scope (thanks to the expansive use of location shoots) and effects (thanks to King Kong genius Willis O'Brien). In fact, apart from its shoddy script, it's not a terrible film.

An Mexican earthquake opens up a new volcano, freeing plenty of subterranean prehistoric giant scorpions, who attack cows and people and trains indiscriminately. The brave scientists venture down into the scorpions' cave, discovering a lot of other giant bug species (like in Kong, and a lot of the designs are either similar or identical to the ones from Skull Island). There's a lukewarm romance plot and ranching and an annoying kid and silly plot complications, to pad out the running time. But, like I said, the film overall is halfway decent.

Well, okay, some of the effects aren't perfect either. But our in-theater friends keep the experience fun and fast-moving. The riffing is thick on the ground, diverse and sharp. (Sadly, the host segments are still not quite as good -- I like the idea of Crow and Tom trying to understand Joel's humanity, but Gypsy turning into a scorpion behind them is less funny to me. Later, the idea of Tom and Crow doing a puppet show of Joel is funny, but it just turns into a lecture about film history.)

There are a lot of repeated jokes in this one. For the second episode in a row, the gang references: M*A*S*H, "Serpentine!", Manuel Noriega, Nick the ...Wonderful Life bartender, Jacques Cousteau, and a "motorman's helper." Only the last is the same identical joke, but with the quantity here, there are bound to be some reuses. Joel also calls back his minigolf obsession from #102, and there's a long run of golf jokes. (Oddly, there's no Python joke.)

This is, sadly, our farewell to Josh. While I prefer TV's Frank to Larry Erhardt (naturally), Josh's Tom is so wonderful. Josh was a fantastic writer and a hilarious performer. One of my favorite things about Cinematic Titanic was that it helped remind us about the greatness of Josh. His farewell here is beyond understated -- the show didn't realize yet that we could get attached to its stars, so Larry just waves goodbye and walks off.

Bonus feature alert: for the first time in my binge, I get one of those great Shout! Factory documentaries about the making of the original film. It's a nice historical overview of the effects and production, and I love having that type of info about the raw material. Also, the traditional Shout! Factory animated menu is done all in stop-motion, and it's great. Stop-motion Tom and Crow, plus an adorable felted scorpion? I'm in.

A joke I had to look up: "Look over there. It says Arne Saknussemm."
A joke that didn't age well: "Wow, Dan Witkowski really puts on a halftime show. When do the Elvis impersonators come out?"
My favorite joke from this show: (as Jacques Cousteau) "Lower and lower we go, past ze matte paintings."

Odds I'll watch this one again: 7/10. It's a perfect encapsulation of season one.
Overall, I rate this one 6/10. The host segments still aren't perfect, but otherwise this is great.

Coming up next, it's #203, Jungle Goddess.

MST3K #112: Untamed Youth

It's Episode #112, with Mamie Van Doren singing rock songs and taking down an evil corrruption scheme!

In our movie this week, Mamie and her sister are arrested for vagrancy and hitchhiking, and sentenced to 30 days labor picking cotton. It's got a lot of teensploitation tropes, and a handful of womens' prison tropes (eg, the cat fight which leads to mutual respect), and like nine songs in 80 minutes (one by Eddie Cochran!). The food is awful (it's actually dog food), the labor is literally deadly, and the judge was in cahoots with the cotton-farmer. 

Sidebar: This one's kinda long, and doesn't have much to do with wisecracking robots, so feel free to jump down below. Sixty years after this film, our for-profit prisons are at least as bad as this movie would suggest, with way too many people jailed way too long for way too flimsy reasons. And it's only gonna get worse. I decided I wasn't going to talk about this in this post, I really wasn't. Until the evil cotton farmer was named "Tropp." 

Sure, he's evil, he harasses the help, and he puts profit above everything else in life. Sure, he makes secret deals to enrich himself, no matter who gets hurt. Sure, he's a duplicitous sociopath who has no respect for women. But Russ Tropp only hurts the people in his town, not the whole damn planet.

And, since it's a Hollywood movie from the 1950s, there aren't many nonwhite people around for Tropp to oppress. How do you make a movie about cotton picking, Warner Brothers, and cast zero African-Americans? (There's one character who's textually Latina, but she's pretty incidental.)

The movie tries to be honest about the realities of life, leading to a scene where Joel has to say "Gee, I'm sorry we even made fun of this movie." But it's just so obviously fakey, like most of the studio teen movies of the time, that I can't take it very seriously. 

And the movie's concept of female empowerment isn't great: the female judge has easily been suckered into the scheme by emotional manipulation. Her overdue enlightenment leads her to do the right thing, but the movie doesn't bother to differentiate how much of that is from her hurt feelings over the betrayal.

The cartoony corruption in this movie is solved easily, and it's hard to believe that about real life. It's hard to hear naive characters say things like "I don't think Mr. Tropp's that kind" without feeling dark about our future.

Right. So, the movie is okay, I guess, as far as teensploitation potboilers of the 50's go. It's got some good songs, thanks to Eddie Cochran (whom I adore!) and the whitebread rock stylings of Les Baxter, early in his film career. (He also scored two of the Corman Poe films I saw a few years ago, though I know him best from his contributions to the exotica music scene.)

It's nice to see Joel and the bots deal with a different type of film. This was their first movie without any horror or sci-fi elements, and I'm sure they questioned if MST3K could work with something like this. (I keep forgetting to pull out my dogeared copy of TACEG to check these things.) The fact it does is testament to the dexterity of movie riffing as an artform, and more specifically to the strengths of the show's format. (I'm also happy to see Gypsy show up in the theater, even if I don't think her run of jokes is particularly strong.) (And speaking of firsts, here's the first reference to Jeff Dunham, long before America loved him for his xenophobic nonsense.)

And how do they deal with the film?  While the host sketches aren't particularly great, the riffing is pretty sharp. The jokes are reaching that rarefied breadth and scope I love most about the show, with plenty that made me laugh out loud. Sure, there are a lot of easy ones about The Wizard of Oz and Andy Griffith, but there's also callouts for Tom Waits and Tobe Hooper and Squeaky Fromme. It's a heady stew, and a lot of us who grew up on the show got a certain percentage of our cultural education from those jokes.

This is my second show in a row to reference Disneyland, Boss Hogg, and Fawlty Towers (instead of Monty Python). They also make a reference back to SPACOM, from my previous movie.

Bonus feature alert: The DVD has an intro from Joel, and an interview about his one-man show, "Riffing Myself." There's also an interview with Mamie, and she's still energetic and active.

A joke I had to look up: "It's Vic Tayback!"
A joke that didn't age well: "Wait, so you’re my grandma, my sister, my mom ... did you marry Bill Wyman?"
My favorite joke: "Hey, it's Blonde Lemon Jefferson."

Odds I'll rewatch this: 4/10. The worst thing about this episode is how I feel about our country right now. I'm pretty sure that my lessened enjoyment of a silly puppet show isn't important, either, so let's move on and someday I'll laugh at this again.
Overall, I rate this one 6/10. The host sketches go nowhere, and I can't wait for better Gypsy material (no pun intended, sorry), but otherwise, it's pretty good.

Up next, we bid farewell to Josh (and Larry), in #113: The Black Scorpion.

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.

MST3K #103: Mad Monster

Our next episode is #103. It begins with Chapter Two of Commando Cody, as Tom learns another lesson about serials: "If they had shown him diving out of the way LAST time, I wouldn't have spent the week worrying about him." The short isn't nearly as bad as the movie this time -- the special effects of the cave melting are really pretty decent.

Yeah, so this movie is a slower, boring-er ripoff of Universal's The Wolf Man. It's got a lower budget and a much more generic script. One of the few things I liked about the film is Glenn Strange. He plays the human version of the titular monster like that other Lon Chaney character, the one from Of Mice and Men.

Sidebar: Two years later, Strange would play Frankenstein's monster against Chaney's Wolfman in House of Frankenstein. They played those characters twice more together -- I can't help but wonder if they ever discussed this one. Probably not.

If the movie sounds like something you might watch without Joel and the bots, well, it's in the public domain, and you can do so here. (Same for Commando Cody.)

The riffing is still really loose -- at one point, Joel calls Tom "Crow." This is the second episode to ever offer RAM chips for movie criticism (and the first in my binge). But the biggest first (and hopefully a last) is Joel's mad experiment with switching bot heads.

This is the second episode in a row to have jokes referencing: The Michelin Man, "peas and carrots," Airplane!, and Kellogg's Frosted Miniwheats. I know that's a long list, but I'm glad they didn't fall into a rut. Speaking of, this is the first of my four episodes to not reference Monty Python.

Coming up next, #108, The Slime People!

A joke I had to look up: "Even our name says Merry Christmas!" (Honorable mention to the Smothers Brothers' winery.)
A joke that didn't age well: "You could learn a lot from a dummy."
My favorite joke: It's cliched, but I love Tom romancing the blender. Josh's Tom is already so perfect and fully-formed. ("Nobody drinks from my gal!") Tom even sings for the first time in this one, and I imagine in coming weeks I'll talk some more about how much I love it when Tom sings.

Odds I'll watch this one again: 5/10. I'll almost always watch any episode a second time.
Overall, I rate this one: 5/10. The movie is kinda slow (I had to nap halfway through), but some of the performances are so big that it's goofy fun. And, like with Time of the Apes or Pod People, I love seeing blatant genre ripoffs get the MST treatment.