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.

The Twelve Days of Christmas (1993)

Since it was cheapish, I bought a DVD containing a bunch of holiday specials. This is the one I bought it for, since it stars Phil Hartman as a weedy, bumbling squire.

This special is based on a story idea from Romeo Muller, the legendary writer of Rudolph and Frosty and a lot of other, less beloved Christmas specials. The actual writing, though, fell to another fella who mostly wrote for Smurfs, and this special's idea of both humor and tension feel very 1983 Saturday morning -- lots of sound-effect-enhanced pratfalls throughout. For some reason, all the main characters are bears, looking a lot like the Disney Gummi Bears characters to me, though your mileage might vary.

Sidebar: I know this is my pet peeve, and most people won't care, but a show that focuses so much on music shouldn't have every instrument in the score portrayed by a 1993 synthesizer. (Sure, every other possible corner was cut, from the cheap animation to the lack of brand-name voice actors [apart from Phil, the only other "name" in this special is the voice of Lion-O from Thundercats]. Still, it's named after a song. It's based on a song. Hire some people that own real instruments, and pay for some studio time.)

But even after all that, there are a few bright spots to this special, It's fun to see Phil Hartman do his brief impression of Maurice Chevalier, and the best parts of the special are different musical spoofs. The titular song itself can be interminable, but I enjoy the conceit here, where each verse is done in a different style, from doo wop and Dylan to Michael Jackson and Elvis. The basic idea of the story, wherein a crossword puzzle and a Christmas wishlist get confused, is vaguely clever, so much so that I can imagine a truly enjoyable version of this story.

More Christmas Phil coming up. Stay tuned.

You have two choices of buy link today -- either by itself, or you can spend two bucks more and get other specials too (including TWO with Ernest Borgnine!)

Monster Mansion Redux

I've written about Monster Mansion twice before, and those two posts provide a good introduction to what it is and why I care about it.

To sum up: it's an exclusive dark ride at Six Flags Over Georgia, with over 100 animatronics, a bunch of 4D effects, and a catchy, catchy theme song.

Rather than repeat anything else from what I just linked to, I'll just say this: I've only gotten to ride it once this year, and found that this soundtrack CD is no longer for sale at the park.

I'm not terribly surprised by that, really -- it was a niche product, and frankly they probably sold as many as they could, realistically. (I was also impressed with the physical item -- the CD booklet folded out to make that attraction poster, which I kinda wanted to frame.)

So I decided I would make this available to download for you. A lot of you who aren't theme park nerds won't care, but the rest of you might. So I zipped up the CD with all the artwork and a few extra things I've collected here and there. (If you like theme parks and aren't following the Goddard Group on Facebook, you should fix that immediately.)

If any of the owners or creative folks behind this are upset with my sharing, I'll pull it down immediately. Obviously, I own nothing and am just a huge fan of this unlikely, weird, wonderful achievement. I'd hate awfully to upset any of you. (If your contracts allow, you should consider making the music available digitally -- low overhead, and it can stay in print forever.)

Happy Halloween, everybody!

Get the music here!

Legacy of Frankenstein #7b: Young Frankenstein: The Moichandising

Today we're looking at a few of Young Frankenstein's ancillary products (where, of course, the REAL money is made).

This is from a line of gorgeous Sideshow Collectibles figures from 2001. Until today, I'd never taken mine out of the box. He's gorgeous, and looks just like Gene as Frederick.

His accessories include operating tools and a stethoscope, his lightning goggles, a nice textured stand, and a copy of his grandfather's book.

He has all the expected points of articulation for free posing (including a full range of motion at the ankles, which is nice) and stands about a foot high.

Sadly, I don't have the other two figures in this set (they also made an Igor and a Monster, of course) but you can look at them, and maybe even buy one, at this eBay link.

If I have a little extra time and energy before the month is out, maybe you'll see some more of this guy.

Also sadly, I don't have any of the more recent Funko toys. As you can see, they've chosen the same character lineup, but with a more stylised, cutesier design. (Well, ugly-cute, but that's in keeping with the franchise.)

They're shorter, too, so maybe I only want the Igor to keep my Sideshow Frederick company. Luckily, these guys are still widely available, and I just added all of them to my Amazon Wishlist.

As I mentioned in my last post, I haven't seen or read Mel's new book about the film yet, but I hope to very soon. And of course, there have always been T-shirts and soundtrack albums and tie-in magazine covers and the Young Frankenstein Flame Thrower ("A Children's Toy").

Finally for today, we're going to have a brief discussion of the Broadway musical adaptation of the film.

That video puts a happy spin on Mel's followup to his Producers bonanza, but the reviews and grosses weren't nearly as good. I'll be honest, I'm not much of a Broadway musical guy. (For some reason, the sound of a modern pitband grates on my nerves.) I saw The Producers (on a later tour, and then the movie version, which I preferred), and I enjoyed it well enough. But I didn't feel the need to ever see it again, or even rewatch the film version. I prefer the original film so much to either adaptation that, at least until Mel leaves us, I probably won't even relisten to the songs (which I remember as okay, but they didn't inspire me to buy the album).

Over on my Twitter feed, I compulsively notate every album I listen to, and this month I've done a lot of Halloween-themed listening. I heard this for the first time right after the Addams Family musical, which I enjoy whole-heartedly. I'm afraid Young Frankenstein pales in comparison, though.

A lot of the movie fits well into a musical-theater structure, and a lot of the movie's most important moments are well-represented in song (I really enjoyed the full treatment of "Roll In The Hay," based on just five seconds of the movie). But, while the songs work well musically, a lot of the lyrics aren't particularly clever. So much time is spent on innuendo that we don't get a lot of wordplay, or even much emotion or character development.

Sidebar: on the topic of "Deep Love," the part of the movie that has dated the worst is the Monster's rape of Elizabeth (to be fair, this was hinted at way back in Whale's 1931 film, but playing it for laughs is deeply troublesome). I get the impression (just from the songs, since I haven't seen a production) that they attempted to soften the blow of this by having Elizabeth be a recovered slut (which is, to my mind, just as troublesome). I know the movie is beloved, and any big change will alienate a lot of the core fanbase, but I think a change was possible that could avoid slut shaming and victim blaming in this case.

I don't think I'll ever love this musical adaptation, and I'm sad it's not better. I can't imagine a better film than Young Frankenstein. I can certainly imagine much better musicals made from it.