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.

A Spoopy Month #18: The Wasp Woman

It's my last Corman of this October. It's 1959's The Wasp Woman.

To be completely honest, this was a much better movie than I expected. Well, let me rephrase. The story, and implications, of this film were much better than I expected. The film shows all the hallmarks of early low-budget Corman productions, the science makes no sense at all, and the monster makeup at the end of the movie is truly laughable. But the meaning of the film shouldn't be laughed at, not at all.

First off, this is a unique type of mad-scientist-makes-monster movie. To start with, the scientist isn't mad at all. As this article points out, our Dr. Zinthrop is cautious and methodical. Unique among movie scientists, his experimental documentation is painstaking and complete. The monster only happens because Dr. Zinthrop is required, for plot purposes, to stagger into traffic before he can stop the abuse of his method.

And why is our heroine, Janice Starlin, abusing his method in the first place? Well, she's a woman who got ahead in business using the only tools available to her in 1940's and 50's America: her youth and beauty. Since she abdicated her role as spokesperson for her cosmetics company, sales have been dropping. And she only abdicated because -- horror of horrors -- she's starting to look like she's on the far side of 30! So when Dr. Zinthrop's youth restoration method isn't working fast enough for her, Janice goes behind his back to multiply her personal dosage of his untested drug, a drug he didn't want to give her in the first place.

Don't get me wrong -- Ms. Starlin is far, far more than just a pretty face. The movie goes out of its way to show us she has a keen business sense and a strong grasp on the whims of the market. But she's lost confidence in her physical appearance. The age-makeup worn by the actress is fairly good for a film of this era and budget, but the youth makeup, when Janice starts to feel 20 again, is only part of the bargain. When the treatment has finally taken hold, Janice feels 20, and that gives her a bounce in her step and a huge smile. More importantly, it makes her once again feel confident that she can not only run her company, but serve as the trusted public face. 

On the other hand, now she's some kind of monster who kills people, drinks their blood, and (thankfully offscreen) is probably eating every bit of their bodies. She's going through at least one a day by the end, and no amount of market share is worth that.

In the end, this monster is made not by the evils of science, toying with things man was not meant to know, but by internalized sexism. The female voices in this movie are strong, and mostly admirable (or at least relatable), but it's clear that AMERICAN INDUSTRY is still very much a man's man's man's world. 

We all see what we expect to see -- it's part of the human condition. When the male board members of Starlin Cosmetics see Janice Starlin showing doubt and weakness, it never occurs to them that they might play some part in her self-doubt. When Janice looks in the mirror near the end, and sees herself looking 20 years younger, it never occurs to her that her smile and wide-open eyes have so much to do with it. And when we look back on a movie with this title, made by Roger Corman in this era, with this budget, we don't expect to have to think much about it. It's so easy to write it off as another cheapy monster exploitation movie (it even quotes the previous year's The Fly, as Janice screams "Help meeee!"). But we're better off if we don't. 

This film is, again, in the public domain, so you can watch it (or download it) at archive.org, which includes the ten minutes of extra padding added to the film (the loooooong opening sequence, where Dr. Zinthrop walks through fields and gets fired from his previous job, and the looooong search scene, where police drive around and around, looking for him since he was foolish enough to wander into traffic without carrying ID). I can't find a release of the film with that stuff taken back out, but here's a buy link for you anyway, just in case:

A Spoopy Month #13: The Terror

So what, you're asking yourself, is with all the Roger Corman movies? To be honest, it's just a coincidence. The Poe movies I watched last year were in the $5 bin. The Cormans I'm watching this year were too. Here's the next one, 1963's The Terror.



For all his business savvy, Corman wasn't the sharpest legal guy. He left copyright notices off a lot of his movies, which is why you can watch this and things like his original Little Shop Of Horrors for free, or even sell copies yourself.

This movie is kind of a mess. The script was hammered together by Jack Hill, who ten years later would be the king of a different type of exploitation movie (he directed Coffy and Foxy Brown), and Leo Gordon, who was much better known as a cowboy actor (that same year John Wayne famously punched him in McLintock!). The plot is needlessly complex and twisty (I must admit I kept being surprised by the ambitious plot), but the dialogue is frequently clunky.

It took five directors to film this mess, too, including Corman himself and Jack Nicholson and even one F. F. Coppola. Karloff only had three days to film all his scenes, and quite a few establishing shots reuse footage I saw in one of the Poe films last year. (I also feel like all the sets are leftovers from those films too.)

So here's the plot: Karloff, using his natural British accent, is a German baron hiding from the world in his rotting castle. Nicholson, using his own personal American accent, is an occupying French soldier during the Napoleonic era, who's been separated from his regiment. Karloff is being tormented by a terrible secret from his past, and a neighboring witch is trying to gaslight him into committing suicide, with the unwitting help of a hypnotized girl. (The girl is hypnotized with the same lamp Basil Rathbone used the previous year to hypnotize Vincent Price in the final third of Tales Of Terror, and I assume her gruesome end is achieved the same way as Price's dissolution in that film.) (Oh, and did I mention that the girl, who's presumably German but has an American accent, was Jack's real-life wife at the time?)

Jack Nicholson's character, showing characteristic American French bravery and nobility, tries to get to the bottom of the mystery, foil the witch's evil plans, save the baron, and make out with the girl. While each of his goals is temporarily achieved, he barely escapes with his life, and at the end of the film he's even lost his horse, and still hasn't met up with his regiment.

In the end, this film is long on "spooky" atmosphere and short on, well, most other things. I'm glad I've seen it, though, which I can't always say for these things. (I'm looking directly at you, Masque of the Red Death!)

A Spoopy Month #7: A Bucket Of Blood

So here's our next full film review of the year: Roger Corman's low-budget nasty, A Bucket Of Blood. It's from 1959, and was Corman's first attempt at comedy (that Wikipedia link there is full of great info and background, and you should definitely read it if you're interested). More importantly, the success of this film led to Corman's next production, probably his best-known film, Little Shop Of Horrors. 

This is set in the world of the beatniks, and apparently is well-regarded as a fair, honest portrayal of the beatnik (though some of the jokes feel a little mean-spirited to me these days). It opens with a lengthy poem, recited over a saxophone, as the credits roll, but don't be fooled: The literary ambitions of that poem don't indicate that the movie is equally inaccessible.

Our protagonist, poor sweet-natured Walter the waiter, isn't particularly smart or creative, and sadly for him he's living in the beatnk world, which values smarts and creativity above all else. A series of accidents leads Walter down a dark path, and he learns he can exploit others to get acclaim and money for his "art". He's a sweet schlubby guy, with very little ambition in that direction, so it's a wild ride when we see him turn. (The screenwriter, Charles B. Griffith, also used that character arc to make Little Shop.)

In the long run, this movie is about artistic vampires: for centuries, artists have worried that the only way to make relatable, human art is to cannibalize their own lives and the lives of their friends and loved ones. (My first exposure to this concept is an essay by Neil Simon, wherein he tells us that he's always observing, never participating in life, since he's concerned more with getting things down to make his plays more real. He tells us that he worries his friends and family will complain about his use of their personal lives to further his career.) I can just imagine Griffith churning out these scripts, despairing that they'll always be low-budget triple-bill exploitation fare, wondering what he has to do to make the scripts more human, more real. It's, by this point, an old horror trope for an artist to sacrifice others for his continued efforts, sometimes quite literally like here or House Of Wax, but those stories rarely turn out well for the "hero" artists. Luckily, we know the ending of Griffith's story, and it's a lot happier than Walter Paisley's.

This movie has lapsed into the public domain, and if you want to spend the time, you should definitely feel free to watch the archive.org version embedded above, but the official DVD release linked down here is well-reviewed and will be a nice clean copy to own forever. I like to give you a buy link for everything I can, you know.

A Spoopy Month #3: Some capsule reviews, part one

So this blog really started last October, when I watched 20 horror movies and posted capsule reviews for my close friends on Facebook. I didn't actually start this blog officially till December, but the reviews of Christmas TV were inspired by my enjoyment of reviewing stuff again. So I'm gonna repost those here. These are all short, so I'll post a handful at a time till I run out.


Oct 15, 2014:

I've been watching a lot of horror movies this October. I'll talk about one a day till the end of the month. I finally rewatched The Cabin in the Woods, off my new Bluray of it, and I think the second viewing is just as good as the first. That's a movie that will live in my head forever. Is it a metaphor for our military complex, or just a loving hate-letter to slasher movies? Me, I think it's a metaphor for our stupid lizard brains, the ones that lead us to consistently hurt others, purposely and accidentally, in an attempt to follow our own desires. But for all that, there sure are a lot of huge snakes, evil demons, and bloodgushers.
I'm not a big haunted house guy, but last year this was turned into two different houses: one at Universal Orlando, and one at Thorpe Park, which had branching hallways, so you could choose your own destiny to a point. Damn, I wish I could've seen one of those.

     

Oct 16, 2014:

So the second horror movie I saw this month was Roger Corman's 1961 adaptation of The Pit and The Pendulum. Well, I say "adaptation." Really, it only contains 1) A pit, 2) A pendulum, and 3) An Inquisition-era torture chamber. All the rest is an invention of Richard Matheson, who also published his short story "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" the same year. It's barely related to Poe, but it's not otherwise bad: production values are pretty good. And, though his acting is far from subtle, this was before Vincent Price had descended into Shatnerian levels of self-parody. If you wanna watch a 1961 movie about torture and psychosexual horror, this isn't a bad choice.

While I don't like the style of the fantasy sequences much, I love that Corman shot them in black and white because he'd read that, at the time, psychologists believed most people dreamed that way.

 

Oct 17, 2014:

Corman's fourth Poe film, Tales of Terror, is a compilation of three short films, each starring Vincent Price. The first, "Morella," is a fairly straightforward retelling of that story, reusing (for at least the second time) the house-consuming fire footage from his first Poe film, Fall of the House of Usher. The second short is the best, entitled "The Black Cat" but much more inspired by "The Cask of Amontillado." It's great fun to watch Price and Peter Lorre have a wine-tasting competition, and you just know Lorre's breakdown at the end of the story is going to be big, big, big. The third, "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar," has Basil Rathbone as an evil hypnotist, changing the original story into a revenge tale (so all three stories share that theme.) I think this is the best of the three Corman Poe movies I watched this month. The digest format makes sure that things move along at a brisk pace, and there's very little slowness to it.

Oct 18, 2014:

Roger Corman's seventh (!) and penultimate Poe adaptation, The Masque of the Red Death, represented a change in production and style for the series. It was filmed in London (to take advantage of certain tax schemes) and credited a lot of British people who did little work on the actual movie. Like "The Black Cat" from Tales of Terror, Masque... interpolates another Poe story into the action. "Hoptoad" is a Poe story I was completely unfamiliar with until this film, and its inclusion is one of the best aspects of the script. For some unknown reason, the decadent Prince Prospero is a Satanist in this version of the story, and there's a lot of nonsense about worshiping The Dark One and "Your God is dead." The script for this wasn't written by Richard Matheson, but two other TV writers, Charles Beaumont (who wrote a lot of Twilight Zones) and R. Wright Campbell, who mostly worked on Westerns. I wouldn't bother with this, unless you're the most obsessed Poe completist in the world.
One footnote: the sweet, innocent ingenue of the movie is played by a young British model and actor named Jane Asher. The story goes that, during filming in '63, her boyfriend, a musician, was about to play his first London gig and he visited her on set the day prior. Corman met him, declined an invitation to attend the show, and wished him luck. That kid's name was Paul McCartney. So the story goes, but the story comes from Corman, and I suspect he's a bit of a fabulist and self-promoter above all else...

So the next four year-old reviews I'll post include one last Price/Corman film and three early horror films from the 40's. Stay, as they say, tuned!