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 #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).

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.