I couldn't really come up with another good idea for T so I'm using it for disaster movies. Trials and tribulations, disasters, whatever. I already had a D so let's do this.
Sharknado & Sharknado 2: The Sharknado movies were made by schlock studio The Asylum so they were pretty much intended to be bad. You almost don't need riffing and yet the two Rifftrax live shows for these are still pretty hilarious nonetheless. If you don't know the Sharknado movies are about tornadoes full of sharks. The first one is in LA and the second in New York. And somehow only retired surfer and bartender Fin, played by 90210's Ian Ziering, and his ex-wife April, played by plastic surgery aficionado Tara Reid, can stop the sharknadoes by throwing bombs into them. Makes sense, right? Um, no. Not at all.
Bad acting, terrible CGI, and a complete lack of logic make these movies so bad they're still bad. The first one was such a hit that unfortunately they made five more. The second one, called, wait for it, The Second One, features a lot of celebrity cameos. The sadly hilarious thing is the live show for the second one was the same week Jared from Subway was arrested so when his cameo comes on it's pretty uncomfortable for everyone. The Matt Lauer cameo is more uncomfortable in hindsight.
The Last Shark: Speaking of sharks, this late 70s Italian movie was basically a pale imitation of Jaws. It's pretty much the same story only the small town that's terrorized by a shark is having a windsurfing race. Because that's a thing. Otherwise it's like Jaws without real actors, Spielberg's direction, or the John Williams soundtrack. You know, everything that made it work.
Grizzly: It's like Jaws, only with a grizzly bear! Seriously it's kind of the same thing only there's a bear in a national park that's killing people instead of a shark terrorizing a small town. And it ends the same, with a guy blowing the grizzly up with a rocket launcher. That happened in Jaws, right? It's hilarious how the bear explodes like the Death Star; was its belly full of nitro or something?
Day of the Animals: Before Grizzly, the director of that made a disaster movie about even more animals terrorizing people. Basically without the ozone layer all the animals in a town go crazy, from rats on up to bears. It's gross when a sheriff goes home and all these rats are eating a pie in the dining room and then start jumping on him, because I guess they're like kangaroos or flying squirrels or something. Ick. Meanwhile Leslie Nielsen is a total jerk in the movie, constantly calling this one guy "hotshot" until a bear finally kills him. Hooray, bear!
Rocket Attack USA: This was made in the 50s around the time of Sputnik. The filmmakers were apparently really concerned that this would give the USSR an advantage to let it rule the world. In this cheap movie that's largely file footage, the US sends a secret agent into Russia to obtain its space and nuclear secrets. But the dumbass dies and the USSR launches nukes to destroy America. In the end it says, "Don't Let This Happen!" A real positive, feel-good movie. The filmmakers were obviously right-wing nuts because a couple of times characters lament that we're spending too much money on social programs and not enough on the military-industrial complex. Yeah, we're only spending 2/3 of our budget on it--we should spend the whole thing on defense! This was the only one of these on MST3K, maybe because disaster movies weren't much of a thing until the 70s.
There you go, what a disaster of an entry!
Thursday, April 23, 2020
Wednesday, April 22, 2020
#AtoZChallenge: Super Zeroes
Nowadays superhero movies are the biggest thing around that's not Star Wars. But long before the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there were these crappy superhero movies.
First up, Mexican wrestler superhero movies from the 60s!
Superargo: A former Mexican wrestler who looks like he's wearing a red version of The Phantom's costume battles a mad scientist who's captured athletes and turned them into cyborgs. This was from the 60s and the cyborgs made me think of what Borg would have looked like if they had been part of the original series. The funniest part is earlier Superargo says his costume is bulletproof yet when he's climbing up the stairs with some escaped prisoners and the bad guy fires a gun, Superargo ducks and lets some poor schlub get killed. Our hero!
Neutron the Atomic Superman: No he's not Superman, but he's A superman with the power to...shave his chest and punch people? He doesn't even have a cool car. Basically some shirtless guy in a wrestler mask has to foil the plan of a guy with his head wrapped in bandages who has an army of crappy "death robots" led by a midget dressed like a lumberjack. Since this was made in Mexico it features bad dubbing along with crappy effects and acting. While there are three guys who could possibly be Neutron, we never find out which one it is. Or maybe like Scream they take turns. Though really the cops should just have them take off their shirts and see who has the least chest hair.
Samson the Silver Maskman vs the Vampire Women: Samson is pretty much like Neutron only he has a cool car. He has to battle a cult of, wait for it, vampire women. Who are really done in by their own stupidity. I mean if you're vampires why would your lair have windows for sun to shine in and kill you? Duuuuuh. This was an MST3K episode notable for it's the last episode with Dr. Forrester's henchman TV's Frank. During one of the intermission skits Torgo from Manos the Hands of Fate (played by host Michael J Nelson) invites Frank to "Second Banana Heaven" with other sidekicks. One riff I liked is during a wrestling match Crow says, "So this is the sport John Irving wrote about so eloquently." I wouldn't have got it in 1994 but now I get it. (If you've followed my blog a while maybe you do too. Or not.)
With the success of Superman in 1978 there were of course some imitators that were not very good. These two were made in Italy or maybe one was Spain but either way they were both foreign productions attempting to cash in on another movie's success.
The Pumaman: Long ago aliens visit the Earth and left some magical mask that would be guarded by the Pumaman. Years later the mask is stolen by Donald Pleasance. And thus a new Pumaman needs to be found to stop him. So this big Aztec guy goes to England to bestow the honor on some whiny, dorky scientist. Who then gains the power to fly awkwardly with his ass in the air. And his hands can rip through stuff and somehow he can walk through walls. Mostly his power is whining. It's kind of like the Seth Rogen Green Hornet where the ethnic character does most of the actual work while the white hero is a total dumbass, only instead of an Asian guy it's the Aztec guy. One of the unintentionally hilarious things (besides the effects, especially the "flying") is that most people say "Pooh-ma-man" while Donald Pleasance says "P-You-ma-man." This was an MST3K episode with skits where the bots get Mike to wear ridiculous clothes to become a hero and then make a mask like in the movie to control singer Roger Whittaker.
First up, Mexican wrestler superhero movies from the 60s!
Superargo: A former Mexican wrestler who looks like he's wearing a red version of The Phantom's costume battles a mad scientist who's captured athletes and turned them into cyborgs. This was from the 60s and the cyborgs made me think of what Borg would have looked like if they had been part of the original series. The funniest part is earlier Superargo says his costume is bulletproof yet when he's climbing up the stairs with some escaped prisoners and the bad guy fires a gun, Superargo ducks and lets some poor schlub get killed. Our hero!
Neutron the Atomic Superman: No he's not Superman, but he's A superman with the power to...shave his chest and punch people? He doesn't even have a cool car. Basically some shirtless guy in a wrestler mask has to foil the plan of a guy with his head wrapped in bandages who has an army of crappy "death robots" led by a midget dressed like a lumberjack. Since this was made in Mexico it features bad dubbing along with crappy effects and acting. While there are three guys who could possibly be Neutron, we never find out which one it is. Or maybe like Scream they take turns. Though really the cops should just have them take off their shirts and see who has the least chest hair.
Samson the Silver Maskman vs the Vampire Women: Samson is pretty much like Neutron only he has a cool car. He has to battle a cult of, wait for it, vampire women. Who are really done in by their own stupidity. I mean if you're vampires why would your lair have windows for sun to shine in and kill you? Duuuuuh. This was an MST3K episode notable for it's the last episode with Dr. Forrester's henchman TV's Frank. During one of the intermission skits Torgo from Manos the Hands of Fate (played by host Michael J Nelson) invites Frank to "Second Banana Heaven" with other sidekicks. One riff I liked is during a wrestling match Crow says, "So this is the sport John Irving wrote about so eloquently." I wouldn't have got it in 1994 but now I get it. (If you've followed my blog a while maybe you do too. Or not.)
With the success of Superman in 1978 there were of course some imitators that were not very good. These two were made in Italy or maybe one was Spain but either way they were both foreign productions attempting to cash in on another movie's success.
The Pumaman: Long ago aliens visit the Earth and left some magical mask that would be guarded by the Pumaman. Years later the mask is stolen by Donald Pleasance. And thus a new Pumaman needs to be found to stop him. So this big Aztec guy goes to England to bestow the honor on some whiny, dorky scientist. Who then gains the power to fly awkwardly with his ass in the air. And his hands can rip through stuff and somehow he can walk through walls. Mostly his power is whining. It's kind of like the Seth Rogen Green Hornet where the ethnic character does most of the actual work while the white hero is a total dumbass, only instead of an Asian guy it's the Aztec guy. One of the unintentionally hilarious things (besides the effects, especially the "flying") is that most people say "Pooh-ma-man" while Donald Pleasance says "P-You-ma-man." This was an MST3K episode with skits where the bots get Mike to wear ridiculous clothes to become a hero and then make a mask like in the movie to control singer Roger Whittaker.
Supersonic Man: This late 70s movie from...Spain? Italy? Brazil?...whatever is a mockbuster of Superman, though it has more in common with Flash Gordon or that really lame 70s Captain America movie. The Wonder Woman and Incredible Hulk TV shows look like The Dark Knight compared to this cheesy production featuring a superhero whose main power seems to be not being able to lower his arms to his sides. There's even one of those 50s-era boxy automatons to menace the hero, whose catch phrase is "May the force of the galaxies be with me." Hmmm, I seem to have heard that somewhere before. The bad guy played by Cameron Mitchell looks like he stole William Shatner's toupee and a drum major’s uniform. On the plus side Supersonic Man is able to at least fly without is ass in the air, so there's that.
Firehead: This 1990 action movie is filled with head-scratching questions. Like, why do they call him "Firehead" when he shoots lasers or whatever from his eyes? What the hell does "bigger than a hog's dick on Sunday" mean? And how did they get legendary actors Christopher Plummer and Martin Landau to appear in it? The plot is that "Firehead" defects from the USSR to America and starts blowing up factories working on some secret government project. Chris Lemmon (son of Jack) is brought in to investigate and with some female agent they track Firehead down and join with him to overthrow Christopher Plummer and a bunch of guys who dress like extras of The Prisoner. It's a pretty corny movie with a cornier theme song. Besides the hog's dick line there was also another animal-themed goody: cleaner than a wolves' tooth--that's their wording. I don't know what either of those expressions is supposed to mean.
A cinematic universe of all these heroes would probably make about 50 cents.
A cinematic universe of all these heroes would probably make about 50 cents.
Tuesday, April 21, 2020
#AtoZChallenge Rebels Without a Clue
In the 50s you had James Dean and Marlon Brando and then...you had the rest of the wanna-bes. These are all MST3K episodes.
The Violent Years: Written by the great bad filmmaker Ed Wood, this is the overwrought story of four rebellious girls who pull small robberies for kicks. They hold up a gas station, a couple pulled over to make out, and finally they ransack a school as part of some Communist plan for world domination--or something. But most of them are killed during this, except the lead girl who somehow got pregnant and dies giving birth in prison. A judge then lectures her parents for an interminably long time basically telling them it was all their fault. It's made slightly better than an Ed Wood film, but not by much.
The Beatniks: The misleading thing about the title is the juvenile delinquents in this movie are not beatniks in any way, shape, or form. They don't hang out at coffeehouses, they don't read or write poetry, and they don't wear black turtlenecks or berets. Basically they're just hoodlums who commit petty robberies and hassle adults. But the ringleader of the gang is overheard singing in a diner by some record scout and so he begins a career singing swing music. Because all beatniks were into Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin music, right? Um, no. Not at all. This is basically the kind of movie where they probably just came up with a title for the posters and marquees and didn't really care if the actual movie fit it in any way. Anyway, the ringleader's followers become jealous of him and wind up bringing him down until they kill each other. Hooray?
The Rebel Set: The guys in this movie are actually more of Beatniks than the "beatniks" in The Beatniks. They hang out at a coffeehouse, where an old guy recruits four of them to rob an armored car while on a layover taking a train from New York to California or something. One of them is a failed actor and another a failed writer and then there are two other guys and the old guy disguised as a priest who all get back on the train with their loot. As you'd expect, though, someone starts eliminating them to take the loot for himself until only the failed actor is left. As far as heist movies go it's not terrible but it's not exactly Ocean's 11 either. The parts in the coffeehouse are kind of goofy and as you'd expect not exactly George Clooney or Brad Pitt type talent.
A funny thing in retrospect is throughout the movie Joel and Crow repeatedly call the old train conductor guy "Merritt Stone," to which Tom Servo keeps screaming, "It's NOT Merritt Stone." At the end of the movie, Servo dressed as Hercule Poirot deduces that "Merritt Stone" is actually Gene Roth. The funny thing now is that you can go on IMDB.com and find out in about 30 seconds that Servo is right: "Merritt Stone" is Gene Roth. It reminds me of an old Lawrence Block book where to find out an actor's name they wound up calling SAG when now you can just look it up online in seconds. Progress!
So there you go, some real wild rebels there.
The Violent Years: Written by the great bad filmmaker Ed Wood, this is the overwrought story of four rebellious girls who pull small robberies for kicks. They hold up a gas station, a couple pulled over to make out, and finally they ransack a school as part of some Communist plan for world domination--or something. But most of them are killed during this, except the lead girl who somehow got pregnant and dies giving birth in prison. A judge then lectures her parents for an interminably long time basically telling them it was all their fault. It's made slightly better than an Ed Wood film, but not by much.
The Beatniks: The misleading thing about the title is the juvenile delinquents in this movie are not beatniks in any way, shape, or form. They don't hang out at coffeehouses, they don't read or write poetry, and they don't wear black turtlenecks or berets. Basically they're just hoodlums who commit petty robberies and hassle adults. But the ringleader of the gang is overheard singing in a diner by some record scout and so he begins a career singing swing music. Because all beatniks were into Frank Sinatra/Dean Martin music, right? Um, no. Not at all. This is basically the kind of movie where they probably just came up with a title for the posters and marquees and didn't really care if the actual movie fit it in any way. Anyway, the ringleader's followers become jealous of him and wind up bringing him down until they kill each other. Hooray?
The Rebel Set: The guys in this movie are actually more of Beatniks than the "beatniks" in The Beatniks. They hang out at a coffeehouse, where an old guy recruits four of them to rob an armored car while on a layover taking a train from New York to California or something. One of them is a failed actor and another a failed writer and then there are two other guys and the old guy disguised as a priest who all get back on the train with their loot. As you'd expect, though, someone starts eliminating them to take the loot for himself until only the failed actor is left. As far as heist movies go it's not terrible but it's not exactly Ocean's 11 either. The parts in the coffeehouse are kind of goofy and as you'd expect not exactly George Clooney or Brad Pitt type talent.
A funny thing in retrospect is throughout the movie Joel and Crow repeatedly call the old train conductor guy "Merritt Stone," to which Tom Servo keeps screaming, "It's NOT Merritt Stone." At the end of the movie, Servo dressed as Hercule Poirot deduces that "Merritt Stone" is actually Gene Roth. The funny thing now is that you can go on IMDB.com and find out in about 30 seconds that Servo is right: "Merritt Stone" is Gene Roth. It reminds me of an old Lawrence Block book where to find out an actor's name they wound up calling SAG when now you can just look it up online in seconds. Progress!
So there you go, some real wild rebels there.
Monday, April 20, 2020
#AtoZChallenge Quests!
As far as MST3K and Rifftrax go there seem to be two popular time periods for fantasy movies: the 60s and the 80s. The ones in the early 80s I think you can attribute to the success of the Conan movies, but I'm not sure what brought it about in the early 60s.
The Magic Sword: This early 60s movie features a guy raised by a witch who gives him a, wait for it, magic sword to go rescue a princess from an evil wizard played by Basil Rathbone. There are knights of seven nations (Ireland, France, etc) who go with him, though most of them die. In the end the wizard turns into a dragon. Since this is from dreck producer Burt I Gordon there are lots of crappy effects and bad acting. The MST3K episode features an intermission skit where Crow sings a love song dedicated to the middle-aged witch in the movie.
Jack the Giant Killer: This early 60s movie has an MST3K episode and a Rifftrax--plus a live Rifftrax show. It's about a, wait for it, guy named Jack who kills a giant. Then he has to rescue a princess from an evil wizard. So it's pretty much the same movie as The Magic Sword, only it makes even less sense and has crappier effects and acting. A guy gets turned into a chimp, another into a dog, and the princess into some evil witch or succubus or something. And a bunch of crap that doesn't make sense.
Hercules: Like Godzilla or Gamera, early on in MST3K they showed a lot of Hercules movies. Hercules and the Captive Women and Hercules Unchained are two they show frequently on Pluto TV. I think they were made in Italy or Spain or something like that. They were pretty cheaply made back in the 60s, most featuring Steve Reeves as Hercules, who spent most of his time pushing stuff, throwing stuff, or sleeping. I really can't tell the movies apart.
They added a third one on Pluto TV: Hercules and the Moon Men that's pretty much the same as the other two, only it stars Alan Steel as Herc.
Sons of Hercules: This Rifftrax is another old 60s movie that's supposed to be about the "sons" (plural) of Hercules. The theme song tells us about two guys who are "man as man can be" or some damned thing. And yet the actual movie only deals with one of them who has a nearly invisible blond beard. He goes to some evil kingdom to rescue a damsel with the help of some whiny, annoying old guy sidekick. It's pretty funny that as they're going to this place a bear keeps following them by walking on its hind legs. Pretty obvious that it's a guy in a suit. And when they're supposed to be fighting on a log it's shot so it's obvious that they're not actually on a log. Then later it stops to say, "Next time..." and then tells you everything that happens so what would be the point in coming back? It's all extremely cheap and lame and makes those other Hercules movies look like the Fast & Furious franchise.
Prisoners of the Lost Universe: Now we get to the 80s portion of this entry. This mostly takes place in a fantasy universe but like Narnia some of it is in modern times. Richard Hatch from the original Battlestar Galactica plays a carpenter who gets in a wreck with a female reporter and threatens to spank her with a broken kendo sword before they both accidentally get beamed into another universe during an earthquake in a professor's lab. This one has giants and weird creatures and John Saxon as an evil warlord who's used the professor to create "magic" like guns. Besides some hammy acting and not great effects this is one of those movies that keeps shifting tone from cartoon sound effects to John Saxon slapping the female reporter and threatening to rape her. It's just kind of creepy when you shift tone like that. What kind of movie are you wanting to make?
The Sword and the Sorcerer: In this early 80s movie a prince's family is murdered by an evil warlord named Cromwell but he escapes with a cool but useless sword that has three blades that can shoot away from each other, though in the end all he needed was a knife on his wrist. Cromwell gets power from an evil wizard played by Bull from Night Court and takes over the kingdom. Meanwhile the prince has become a douchebag mercenary man whose lieutenant is Frank from Murphy Brown, but eventually gets drawn into saving the kingdom when he saves a woman. Only some other guy becomes the king. It's pretty lame and there's one gross part where a tunnel fills with rats as it gets lit on fire. As you'd expect it's not exactly top-notch quality entertainment. Like Prisoners of the Lost Universe this can't really seem to settle on a tone; case in point a couple of soldiers try to rape a woman and then our hero comes in making dick jokes.
Outlaw of Gor: Similar to Prisoners of the Lost Universe, this late 80s movie from Cannon Films features a couple of guys who go from the present to some fantasy world. The world of Gor that's ruled by some evil queen and a wizard played by Jack Palance. I think this has fewer cartoon sound effects though. It's pretty funny that the queen dies via a spear thrown from like three hundred feet away that hits her in the midsection. Was it tipped with poison? Anyway, like Alien From LA this was on MST3K only a few years after its release thanks to Cannon Films going bankrupt.
Ator the Fighting Eagle: This one was on Rifftrax about a year before it was also on the second season of the Netflix revival of MST3K. It's an early 80s movie about a hero who wants to marry his sister but then their village is raided and he has to rescue her from bad guys. To do that he has to learn to become a great warrior and shit. As for the eagle thing, there are no eagles in the movie. As you'd expect there's not great acting or effects and it's just damned creepy he wants to marry his sister.
Cave Dwellers: The funny thing about this early 90s MST3K episode is it shows the sequel to Ator almost 30 years before they showed the first movie. The other really funny thing is the opening credits to this movie use footage from some other movie about two guys from modern day who are in some fantasy world. Which has nothing to do with this. This is about some evil warlord trying to take over the world. He wants some MacGuffin so a woman wearing a big gold plate like Flava Flave's clock goes to find Ator and his Asian kung-fu master. Not watching the first one doesn't really matter since it recaps who Ator is and nothing from that movie really affects this one. Basically Ator and the woman go back and defeat the bad guy. The end. There's less creepy incest stuff but otherwise it's not really an improvement over the first movie.
There you go, a bunch of fantasy movies that still aren't as bad as Willow.
The Magic Sword: This early 60s movie features a guy raised by a witch who gives him a, wait for it, magic sword to go rescue a princess from an evil wizard played by Basil Rathbone. There are knights of seven nations (Ireland, France, etc) who go with him, though most of them die. In the end the wizard turns into a dragon. Since this is from dreck producer Burt I Gordon there are lots of crappy effects and bad acting. The MST3K episode features an intermission skit where Crow sings a love song dedicated to the middle-aged witch in the movie.
Jack the Giant Killer: This early 60s movie has an MST3K episode and a Rifftrax--plus a live Rifftrax show. It's about a, wait for it, guy named Jack who kills a giant. Then he has to rescue a princess from an evil wizard. So it's pretty much the same movie as The Magic Sword, only it makes even less sense and has crappier effects and acting. A guy gets turned into a chimp, another into a dog, and the princess into some evil witch or succubus or something. And a bunch of crap that doesn't make sense.
Hercules: Like Godzilla or Gamera, early on in MST3K they showed a lot of Hercules movies. Hercules and the Captive Women and Hercules Unchained are two they show frequently on Pluto TV. I think they were made in Italy or Spain or something like that. They were pretty cheaply made back in the 60s, most featuring Steve Reeves as Hercules, who spent most of his time pushing stuff, throwing stuff, or sleeping. I really can't tell the movies apart.
They added a third one on Pluto TV: Hercules and the Moon Men that's pretty much the same as the other two, only it stars Alan Steel as Herc.
Sons of Hercules: This Rifftrax is another old 60s movie that's supposed to be about the "sons" (plural) of Hercules. The theme song tells us about two guys who are "man as man can be" or some damned thing. And yet the actual movie only deals with one of them who has a nearly invisible blond beard. He goes to some evil kingdom to rescue a damsel with the help of some whiny, annoying old guy sidekick. It's pretty funny that as they're going to this place a bear keeps following them by walking on its hind legs. Pretty obvious that it's a guy in a suit. And when they're supposed to be fighting on a log it's shot so it's obvious that they're not actually on a log. Then later it stops to say, "Next time..." and then tells you everything that happens so what would be the point in coming back? It's all extremely cheap and lame and makes those other Hercules movies look like the Fast & Furious franchise.
Prisoners of the Lost Universe: Now we get to the 80s portion of this entry. This mostly takes place in a fantasy universe but like Narnia some of it is in modern times. Richard Hatch from the original Battlestar Galactica plays a carpenter who gets in a wreck with a female reporter and threatens to spank her with a broken kendo sword before they both accidentally get beamed into another universe during an earthquake in a professor's lab. This one has giants and weird creatures and John Saxon as an evil warlord who's used the professor to create "magic" like guns. Besides some hammy acting and not great effects this is one of those movies that keeps shifting tone from cartoon sound effects to John Saxon slapping the female reporter and threatening to rape her. It's just kind of creepy when you shift tone like that. What kind of movie are you wanting to make?
The Sword and the Sorcerer: In this early 80s movie a prince's family is murdered by an evil warlord named Cromwell but he escapes with a cool but useless sword that has three blades that can shoot away from each other, though in the end all he needed was a knife on his wrist. Cromwell gets power from an evil wizard played by Bull from Night Court and takes over the kingdom. Meanwhile the prince has become a douchebag mercenary man whose lieutenant is Frank from Murphy Brown, but eventually gets drawn into saving the kingdom when he saves a woman. Only some other guy becomes the king. It's pretty lame and there's one gross part where a tunnel fills with rats as it gets lit on fire. As you'd expect it's not exactly top-notch quality entertainment. Like Prisoners of the Lost Universe this can't really seem to settle on a tone; case in point a couple of soldiers try to rape a woman and then our hero comes in making dick jokes.
Outlaw of Gor: Similar to Prisoners of the Lost Universe, this late 80s movie from Cannon Films features a couple of guys who go from the present to some fantasy world. The world of Gor that's ruled by some evil queen and a wizard played by Jack Palance. I think this has fewer cartoon sound effects though. It's pretty funny that the queen dies via a spear thrown from like three hundred feet away that hits her in the midsection. Was it tipped with poison? Anyway, like Alien From LA this was on MST3K only a few years after its release thanks to Cannon Films going bankrupt.
Ator the Fighting Eagle: This one was on Rifftrax about a year before it was also on the second season of the Netflix revival of MST3K. It's an early 80s movie about a hero who wants to marry his sister but then their village is raided and he has to rescue her from bad guys. To do that he has to learn to become a great warrior and shit. As for the eagle thing, there are no eagles in the movie. As you'd expect there's not great acting or effects and it's just damned creepy he wants to marry his sister.
Cave Dwellers: The funny thing about this early 90s MST3K episode is it shows the sequel to Ator almost 30 years before they showed the first movie. The other really funny thing is the opening credits to this movie use footage from some other movie about two guys from modern day who are in some fantasy world. Which has nothing to do with this. This is about some evil warlord trying to take over the world. He wants some MacGuffin so a woman wearing a big gold plate like Flava Flave's clock goes to find Ator and his Asian kung-fu master. Not watching the first one doesn't really matter since it recaps who Ator is and nothing from that movie really affects this one. Basically Ator and the woman go back and defeat the bad guy. The end. There's less creepy incest stuff but otherwise it's not really an improvement over the first movie.
There you go, a bunch of fantasy movies that still aren't as bad as Willow.
Saturday, April 18, 2020
#AtoZChallenge Psycho Killers
Since slasher movies weren't all that popular in the 50s and 60s there's not really many of them on MST3K that I can recall. But there are a lot of them on Rifftrax, as this entry will prove.
Psycho II: Let's start with the granddaddy of all psycho killers: Norman Bates. In the early 80s, after Sir Alfred Hitchcock had died, the studio decided to cash in with a sequel. Norman Bates is released from prison back to the old homestead. The motel has since gone to seed under the management of Dennis Franz, becoming the establishment where you pay by the hour while management watches you through a peephole.
Norman is given a job at a local diner where he meets a waitress named Mary played by Jennifer Tilly's sister Meg. She claims to have nowhere to stay so he invites her to stay at his creepy ass house, where he makes "toasted cheese" sandwiches for her. A toasted cheese sandwich is what normal people call a grilled cheese.
Soon Norman starts to get phone calls he thinks are from his mother and someone masquerading as his mother kills a couple of teenagers who sneak into the basement to make out, as well as Norman's doctor, played by Robert Loggia.
In the end it's revealed that Mary and her mother are trying to drive Norman crazy to get him put back in jail, but they die. He has some help in the lady who runs the diner who claims to be his real mother and the sister of Ma Bates. When she confesses all of this, Norman hits her over the head with a shovel and then sets her up in his mom's room to resume business.
It's not a terrible movie but not as good as the classic original of course. Some movies don't really need to be a franchise, but I guess with Halloween and the invention of the super killer franchise, the studio wanted to jump on the bandwagon. Anyway, this is another of those you can't find on Amazon and it was only sometimes on Pluto TV so you'd really have to find it with the main site.
The Psychotronic Man: In this short, cheap 70s "thriller" a barber in Chicago goes on a long, long road trip until he has an encounter with a UFO or something. When he wakes up he finds he has telekinesis. Which he starts to use to murder people for...reasons. Then there's a lengthy chase with police before he dies. During the chase through various alleys sometimes you see rats scurry by and I keep thinking I bet those were real vermin not ones planted. I mean a movie this cheap probably doesn't have a rat wrangler on set, right? Anyway, if you want to fall asleep this is a perfect movie for it with all the pointless driving and running and undercharacterization.
The Last Slumber Party: This early 80s slasher movie is a horror movie in the sense it's very, very horrible. I'm not sure the writer, if there was one, ever really went to a slumber party because the three girls in this movie don't really do anything. They watch a little TV, eat a couple of apples, and smoke a joint. A couple of annoying boys come over and get slashed by one of two slashers. One slasher is their nerdy classmate "Science" who I guess is a copycat of the real slasher, some mental patient played by the director.
It disregards one of the rules of these movies as the sweet virgin is killed while the annoying slut remains to the end. Then there's a big twist as it's revealed none of the stuff we saw actually happened! It was the annoying slut's dream. But then her and her friend go to the virgin's house and the killer sneaks in. So I guess it's all going to happen this time, right?
With bad acting, shitty editing, and an awful synth soundtrack this is one of those that's so bad it's still bad, which makes it ripe for riffing. This used to be on Pluto TV all the time but then they stopped showing it but it's still on Amazon.
Fever Lake: This mid-90s slasher movie features one of the Coreys (the one who died) as a college student who goes to the eponymous lake with Mario Lopez, another guy, and three girls. It's funny when the girls go to a local diner everyone stares at them like they're aliens. Oh no, three white middle-class girls! They're so out of place!
After a lot of boring non-scares people finally start dying. Then it's revealed one of the girls is possessed by the spirit of the Corey's dead mother--or something. This is one of those that makes the mistake of some horror movies--even big-budget ones--in being really boring instead of scary. But still it's fun to riff on it.
Terror at Tenkiller: Another slasher movie that's not really very scary or exciting. Made on the cheap in Oklahoma it features two college girls who go to the eponymous Tenkiller Lake for the summer. The younger of the two has been stalked by an emotionally abusive boyfriend. Just her luck, a local named Tor starts to obsess about her. Tor has already murdered a few other women and soon sets his sights on the older of the girls before he tries to make the other girl his bride or something.
One of the funniest things is the girls work at a local diner and are always talking about how busy it is...and yet we never see anyone else in there. The music is especially bad; like The Last Slumber Party it uses bad synth music--even on the harmonica Tor plays! It's funny during the end chase when the riffers start making quacking and beeping noises that perfectly fit the soundtrack. A goofy soundtrack is really the way to increase tension in your movie.
The House on Sorority Row: This early 80s horror movie uses sort of the formula from the original Friday the 13th, only in reverse. In the original Friday the 13th you think it's Jason Voorhees killing the campers but it's really his mother. In this case you think it's the old lady who runs a sorority house killing the girls after they play a nasty prank on her by throwing her in a pool, but really it's some weird kid of hers who's been locked up in an asylum--except during summers.
This twist doesn't make it better because it's not really clear who this son of hers is. The kills aren't really that great either. So it's kind of boring and not all that scary, like those above.
Ice Cream Man: In this mid-90s movie, an ice cream man played by Clint Howard terrorizes some local kids. Meanwhile the adults in town are all incredibly stupid because it's so obvious Clint Howard is evil. I mean, look at him! And his truck is full of bugs and mice and human body parts. Doesn't this town have a health inspector?
In an entry about a year ago I talked about a few things that were introduced that didn't really pay off. Like the kids have rockets on their bikes that never really get any use. And one girl's mother is foaming at the mouth and talking gibberish at one point, but there's no reason given and it has no significance to the plot.
In the end a kid pushes Clint Howard into a mixer and he dies. Then the kid goes crazy to repeat the cycle, or something. It's not all that scary but it is kind of gross, especially when he puts an eyeball in a cop's ice cream cone. Ick.
Jack Frost: This is also from the mid-90s and should not be confused with the Michael Keaton movie from around the same time. This is a bizarrely bad horror movie where some weird science project creates a snowman with the soul of a serial killer. The snowman then begins murdering people in a small Colorado town.
The dialogue in this is utterly ludicrous. The snowman speaks in non sequiters, randomly shouting things like, "Made in America!" Which means...I have no idea. Along with lame effects, poor acting, and a plot about as logical as the dialogue, this is definitely worse than that other movie with the same name, though a lot funnier.
Terror in the Wax Museum: This is a recent Rifftrax of a late 60s British TV movie. It's a pretty tepid murder mystery featuring John Carradine as the owner of a wax museum in 1890s London who's murdered in the first act. Then some other people are murdered and it seems Jack the Ripper (or his wax version) is killing people. But really it's the local bartender because he's after John Carradine's buried treasure. Um, wait, treasure? There was no mention of treasure before this! And why would the owner of a shitty wax museum have treasure? The treasure turns out to be surgical tools made of platinum, I guess. Because that makes sense, right? No. Not at all.
Sisters of Death: This Rifftrax is a 70s movie about some sorority sisters who 7 years ago "accidentally" killed a pledge sort of in the same way Brandon Lee died on the set of The Crow. They were supposed to fake shoot her with a fake bullet but instead someone swapped it with a real bullet. So 7 years later they're all brought to the house of dead pledge's father. And then these dumb sorority girls start to die in boring, non-gory ways. There aren't even any great boob shots. So, pretty lame. A lot of the movie is the girls and two pervy guys trying to figure out how to get past an electrified fence that's only like six feet tall. I mean they probably could have found some boxes or something to pile up and then jump over the fence. Maybe throw some pillows or a mattress over the fence to land on. In the end it's revealed one pledge killed the other for...reasons. It really would have helped if the opening scene had given us any idea who these characters were. Kind of ruins the payoff.
Blood Theatre: This is a pretty nonsensical, non-scary slasher movie. There's a vague setup about a theater whose owner decided to kill his audience (somehow) instead of convert to movies. When was this? It's not really clear. How did he kill everyone? Um...gas or something?
Then it skips to the present day (or 1984) to the most unrealistic movie theater in history. I guess someone like Rick Sloane wouldn't know what an actual movie theater is like; it's not like his movies ever played in one. I mean this place has intermissions, almost constant loud speaker announcements, movie posters that look like they were hand drawn by Napoleon Dynamite, and a locker room. A locker room? Don't the employees just change at home? I suppose that was just an excuse for gratuitous nudity; in which case it's surprising there wasn't an employee shower.
Anyway, three middle-aged teenagers are transferred to the theater from the beginning of the movie to reopen it. And then two other annoying girls. The one is a total bitch who shows her boobs in a theater and assaults a few customers and yet isn't jailed or even fired. WTF?
The original owner, now an old man, somehow manages to go around murdering people. There's a slight attempt to set up a plot of the original owner in love with one of the middle-aged teenagers he thinks is some girl who worked at the theater and didn't return his love or some damned thing. But the girl stabs him and ends the curse or whatever. For some reason the movie ends with a freeze frame on two cops we've never seen before entering the theater. Yay?
A total lack of plot logic, annoying characters, awful music (even for 1984), and sound effects that make no sense like whooshing doors, this is an especially bad example of early 80s horror movies.
I'm sure there are more I haven't covered, but this was certainly a lot of them.
Psycho II: Let's start with the granddaddy of all psycho killers: Norman Bates. In the early 80s, after Sir Alfred Hitchcock had died, the studio decided to cash in with a sequel. Norman Bates is released from prison back to the old homestead. The motel has since gone to seed under the management of Dennis Franz, becoming the establishment where you pay by the hour while management watches you through a peephole.
Norman is given a job at a local diner where he meets a waitress named Mary played by Jennifer Tilly's sister Meg. She claims to have nowhere to stay so he invites her to stay at his creepy ass house, where he makes "toasted cheese" sandwiches for her. A toasted cheese sandwich is what normal people call a grilled cheese.
Soon Norman starts to get phone calls he thinks are from his mother and someone masquerading as his mother kills a couple of teenagers who sneak into the basement to make out, as well as Norman's doctor, played by Robert Loggia.
In the end it's revealed that Mary and her mother are trying to drive Norman crazy to get him put back in jail, but they die. He has some help in the lady who runs the diner who claims to be his real mother and the sister of Ma Bates. When she confesses all of this, Norman hits her over the head with a shovel and then sets her up in his mom's room to resume business.
It's not a terrible movie but not as good as the classic original of course. Some movies don't really need to be a franchise, but I guess with Halloween and the invention of the super killer franchise, the studio wanted to jump on the bandwagon. Anyway, this is another of those you can't find on Amazon and it was only sometimes on Pluto TV so you'd really have to find it with the main site.
The Psychotronic Man: In this short, cheap 70s "thriller" a barber in Chicago goes on a long, long road trip until he has an encounter with a UFO or something. When he wakes up he finds he has telekinesis. Which he starts to use to murder people for...reasons. Then there's a lengthy chase with police before he dies. During the chase through various alleys sometimes you see rats scurry by and I keep thinking I bet those were real vermin not ones planted. I mean a movie this cheap probably doesn't have a rat wrangler on set, right? Anyway, if you want to fall asleep this is a perfect movie for it with all the pointless driving and running and undercharacterization.
The Last Slumber Party: This early 80s slasher movie is a horror movie in the sense it's very, very horrible. I'm not sure the writer, if there was one, ever really went to a slumber party because the three girls in this movie don't really do anything. They watch a little TV, eat a couple of apples, and smoke a joint. A couple of annoying boys come over and get slashed by one of two slashers. One slasher is their nerdy classmate "Science" who I guess is a copycat of the real slasher, some mental patient played by the director.
It disregards one of the rules of these movies as the sweet virgin is killed while the annoying slut remains to the end. Then there's a big twist as it's revealed none of the stuff we saw actually happened! It was the annoying slut's dream. But then her and her friend go to the virgin's house and the killer sneaks in. So I guess it's all going to happen this time, right?
With bad acting, shitty editing, and an awful synth soundtrack this is one of those that's so bad it's still bad, which makes it ripe for riffing. This used to be on Pluto TV all the time but then they stopped showing it but it's still on Amazon.
Fever Lake: This mid-90s slasher movie features one of the Coreys (the one who died) as a college student who goes to the eponymous lake with Mario Lopez, another guy, and three girls. It's funny when the girls go to a local diner everyone stares at them like they're aliens. Oh no, three white middle-class girls! They're so out of place!
After a lot of boring non-scares people finally start dying. Then it's revealed one of the girls is possessed by the spirit of the Corey's dead mother--or something. This is one of those that makes the mistake of some horror movies--even big-budget ones--in being really boring instead of scary. But still it's fun to riff on it.
Terror at Tenkiller: Another slasher movie that's not really very scary or exciting. Made on the cheap in Oklahoma it features two college girls who go to the eponymous Tenkiller Lake for the summer. The younger of the two has been stalked by an emotionally abusive boyfriend. Just her luck, a local named Tor starts to obsess about her. Tor has already murdered a few other women and soon sets his sights on the older of the girls before he tries to make the other girl his bride or something.
One of the funniest things is the girls work at a local diner and are always talking about how busy it is...and yet we never see anyone else in there. The music is especially bad; like The Last Slumber Party it uses bad synth music--even on the harmonica Tor plays! It's funny during the end chase when the riffers start making quacking and beeping noises that perfectly fit the soundtrack. A goofy soundtrack is really the way to increase tension in your movie.
The House on Sorority Row: This early 80s horror movie uses sort of the formula from the original Friday the 13th, only in reverse. In the original Friday the 13th you think it's Jason Voorhees killing the campers but it's really his mother. In this case you think it's the old lady who runs a sorority house killing the girls after they play a nasty prank on her by throwing her in a pool, but really it's some weird kid of hers who's been locked up in an asylum--except during summers.
This twist doesn't make it better because it's not really clear who this son of hers is. The kills aren't really that great either. So it's kind of boring and not all that scary, like those above.
Ice Cream Man: In this mid-90s movie, an ice cream man played by Clint Howard terrorizes some local kids. Meanwhile the adults in town are all incredibly stupid because it's so obvious Clint Howard is evil. I mean, look at him! And his truck is full of bugs and mice and human body parts. Doesn't this town have a health inspector?
In an entry about a year ago I talked about a few things that were introduced that didn't really pay off. Like the kids have rockets on their bikes that never really get any use. And one girl's mother is foaming at the mouth and talking gibberish at one point, but there's no reason given and it has no significance to the plot.
In the end a kid pushes Clint Howard into a mixer and he dies. Then the kid goes crazy to repeat the cycle, or something. It's not all that scary but it is kind of gross, especially when he puts an eyeball in a cop's ice cream cone. Ick.
Jack Frost: This is also from the mid-90s and should not be confused with the Michael Keaton movie from around the same time. This is a bizarrely bad horror movie where some weird science project creates a snowman with the soul of a serial killer. The snowman then begins murdering people in a small Colorado town.
The dialogue in this is utterly ludicrous. The snowman speaks in non sequiters, randomly shouting things like, "Made in America!" Which means...I have no idea. Along with lame effects, poor acting, and a plot about as logical as the dialogue, this is definitely worse than that other movie with the same name, though a lot funnier.
Terror in the Wax Museum: This is a recent Rifftrax of a late 60s British TV movie. It's a pretty tepid murder mystery featuring John Carradine as the owner of a wax museum in 1890s London who's murdered in the first act. Then some other people are murdered and it seems Jack the Ripper (or his wax version) is killing people. But really it's the local bartender because he's after John Carradine's buried treasure. Um, wait, treasure? There was no mention of treasure before this! And why would the owner of a shitty wax museum have treasure? The treasure turns out to be surgical tools made of platinum, I guess. Because that makes sense, right? No. Not at all.
Sisters of Death: This Rifftrax is a 70s movie about some sorority sisters who 7 years ago "accidentally" killed a pledge sort of in the same way Brandon Lee died on the set of The Crow. They were supposed to fake shoot her with a fake bullet but instead someone swapped it with a real bullet. So 7 years later they're all brought to the house of dead pledge's father. And then these dumb sorority girls start to die in boring, non-gory ways. There aren't even any great boob shots. So, pretty lame. A lot of the movie is the girls and two pervy guys trying to figure out how to get past an electrified fence that's only like six feet tall. I mean they probably could have found some boxes or something to pile up and then jump over the fence. Maybe throw some pillows or a mattress over the fence to land on. In the end it's revealed one pledge killed the other for...reasons. It really would have helped if the opening scene had given us any idea who these characters were. Kind of ruins the payoff.
Blood Theatre: This is a pretty nonsensical, non-scary slasher movie. There's a vague setup about a theater whose owner decided to kill his audience (somehow) instead of convert to movies. When was this? It's not really clear. How did he kill everyone? Um...gas or something?
Then it skips to the present day (or 1984) to the most unrealistic movie theater in history. I guess someone like Rick Sloane wouldn't know what an actual movie theater is like; it's not like his movies ever played in one. I mean this place has intermissions, almost constant loud speaker announcements, movie posters that look like they were hand drawn by Napoleon Dynamite, and a locker room. A locker room? Don't the employees just change at home? I suppose that was just an excuse for gratuitous nudity; in which case it's surprising there wasn't an employee shower.
Anyway, three middle-aged teenagers are transferred to the theater from the beginning of the movie to reopen it. And then two other annoying girls. The one is a total bitch who shows her boobs in a theater and assaults a few customers and yet isn't jailed or even fired. WTF?
The original owner, now an old man, somehow manages to go around murdering people. There's a slight attempt to set up a plot of the original owner in love with one of the middle-aged teenagers he thinks is some girl who worked at the theater and didn't return his love or some damned thing. But the girl stabs him and ends the curse or whatever. For some reason the movie ends with a freeze frame on two cops we've never seen before entering the theater. Yay?
A total lack of plot logic, annoying characters, awful music (even for 1984), and sound effects that make no sense like whooshing doors, this is an especially bad example of early 80s horror movies.
I'm sure there are more I haven't covered, but this was certainly a lot of them.
Friday, April 17, 2020
#AtoZChallenge Outer Space
As I said in the A entry, there were a lot of crappy sci-fi movies made on the cheap that were easy to obtain for MST3K and later Rifftrax. In the A entry we dealt with aliens coming to Earth but there were also plenty that remained in, wait for it, outer space.
Oblivion & Oblivion: Backlash: These were made in the mid-90s in Eastern Europe on the cheap. They were a sci-fi Western that would be like Firefly if it all took place on one planet and were pretty bad. The first one involves a lizard alien coming to the world of Oblivion to kill the sheriff and the sheriff's son then avenging his murder.
The town looks like your average Wild West ghost town dressed up with a lot of outdoor ceiling fans for some reason. Maybe they're supposed to be wind turbines? In the town there's Miss Kitty--played by Julie Newmar, of course--who runs the bar/whorehouse and likes to act like a cat. There's also a doctor/inventor played by George Takei who spouts bad Star Trek puns and rambles drunkenly through most of the first movie. And an attractive widow who runs the general store and becomes a target for the sheriff's son's affections.
The most interesting character is the town mortician played by that really tall guy who was Lurch in the Addams Family movies and Lawxana Troi's servant on Star Trek The Next Generation. Every time he comes out of his shop people run in terror because he only appears when someone is going to die, though he can't sense exactly who. Still, it's best not to be around him. Unlike those other things, in this the guy actually gets some lines other than grunting and growling, so that must have been a nice change of pace for him.
The bad guy in the first movie had a henchwoman called Backlash who carried a whip and dressed in a lot of black leather. In the second movie she obtains the rights for a mine that has something valuable that could make her a lot of money, but other people want it. The sheriff and a shapeshifting bounty hunter go after her and Miss Kitty, who holds some secret to the mine.
In a way the second one is better as Julie Newmar tones down the cat act and Backlash does more than just attempt to titillate. But there's still George Takei spouting annoying puns so it's not that much better. It's one of those that looks a lot older than it actually is because of the lame effects.
Space Mutiny: This MST3K episode was referenced in at least one Rifftrax episode so when I saw I could rent it on Amazon I decided to watch it. I think I'd seen it a couple years earlier on Netflix or Hulu when they still had MST3K. Anyway, it's a 1988 movie that looks much older because it uses IBM PC computers and old footage from Battlestar Galactica-the original series, obviously. I'm not sure if they just ripped off the footage of the show or if they bought the models or what but the fighters and main ship are exactly the same. The plot involves a mutiny of the security forces called "Enforcers" who go about it in the most half-assed way possible because apparently there are no other combat people on the ship except one burly fighter pilot who falls in love with the captain's daughter. The captain is played by Cameron Mitchell in a bad fake beard. While the outside of the ship looks like the Galactica, the inside has all sorts of pipes and conduits like a factory. And they drive around in these pathetic little bumper cars that look more like what janitors use to wax floors. Meanwhile the bridge uses TVs, IBM PCs, and graphics that look like they're from an Atari 2600. But the funniest part is a bridge crewwoman is murdered but in the next scene you see her sitting at her station on the bridge! Either she has an identical twin or she came back to life. It's even worse than the headlight coming back in Mitchell!
In the intermission skits the evil Pearl Forrester and her henchmen have to escape from ancient Rome. There's some irony when they coerce Mike to help them and he struggles to seduce a Roman woman played by his real-life wife. Another irony is that while this has never aired on Pluto TV they used to use a few seconds of footage during promos advertising which MST3K episode was on currently and coming up next.
In 2018 there was a Rifftrax Live showing of Space Mutiny that was added to Amazon about a year later. Unlike the MST3K version the Rifftrax Live one is unedited except for a part that shows boobs; they have a digital "gorilla gram" covering the naughty bits. Even complete the story still makes little sense. Perhaps the most hilarious part though is at the beginning when Kevin Murphy comes out dressed in a silver robe like Cameron Mitchell's in the movie.
Manhunt in Space & Crash of the Moons: These are two old 50s sci-fi B movies on MST3K involving the adventures of Rocky Jones, a space ranger or whatever. He and his annoying sidekick fly around in a cheesy rocket ship on a string. Manhunt in Space features bad guys trying to steal some kind of ultimate weapon and Rocky having to track them down and stop them. It's a manhunt--in space. Get it?
In the sequel Crash of the Moons Rocky has to convince a bad lady from the first movie to evacuate her planet before it crashes into another planet and everyone is killed. She doesn't trust them and instead tries to kill them until they finally get her to see reason.
These both feature cheap effects, cheaper sets, poorly choreographed fights, wooden acting, and Neil deGrasse Tyson would have a fit over the lack of realism about space and space travel.
First Spaceship on Venus: This is also an old movie on MST3K about an international crew that receives a signal from Venus. So they hop in a spaceship and head out to Venus. But as Ackbar would say, it's a trap! The planet's population is dead but there are a lot of traps left active that kill a couple of members of the crew before they're able to escape. At the time this wasn't regarded as a terrible movie, but obviously the effects are bad and the knowledge of space pretty dated.
Missile to the Moon: One of the earliest Rifftrax on demand movies featured Michael J Nelson and comedian/actor Fred Willard riffing on this 50s movie where a scientist and a couple of petty criminals take a rocket to the moon. The criminals were taking refuge on the scientist's farm when he finds them and decides they'd make perfect astronauts. Basically the same night they blast off from a field to the moon, which I guess you could do back then. They have to escape some rock monsters and then find a whole bunch of hot blue women who mistake the scientist for some guy who had previously been there. In the end most of them escape back to the rocket and go home. I bet Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin wish they'd found a bunch of blue women--or maybe they did and the government covered it up. Anyway, a few years later they redid this with the traditional Rifftrax lineup too.
Star Force: Fugitive Alien II: Another repackaged Japanese turd from American producer Sandy Frank who brought over such MST3K favorites as the Gamera movies, Mighty Jack, and Time of the Apes. This is actually a sequel to, wait for it, Star Force: Fugitive Alien. Both of which were just repackaged from Japanese TV serials. Fortunately it's one of those where they recap the first movie early on so you don't have to worry about keeping up with the highly cerebral story line. It's basically a Star Wars ripoff with a group of Japanese people in a lame spaceship who go to some planet with a lot of desert and fight a bad guy in a samurai Darth Vader outfit. On IMDB it says this is from 1987 but the effects make it look like it's from the late 60s.
Moon Zero Two: This was a first season episode of MST3K so I don't watch it a lot but I do own it because it's part of the 25th Anniversary set. This 1969 Hammer Films/Warner Bros fiasco features cheesy animated credits, a jazz soundtrack, go-go dancing, and a lot of bad costumes as people on a lunar colony fight over an asteroid with sapphire in it or something. It's a lot more Adventures of Pluto Nash than 2001.
This Island Earth: This was the movie used for Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie. In a documentary on one DVD the cast talked about why they chose this movie. It was basically the movie studio wanted them to use a movie in their catalog and so they picked this old sci-fi movie where aliens come to Earth and recruit some guy who's like a prototype of young Sean Connery and a female doctor, but they're too late to save it. It was sort of like Forbidden Planet, only probably not as well known.
There was some controversy in that a lot of people regarded this as a classic and so didn't appreciate the riffing on it. And really like some others I've mentioned it's not terrible so much as it's just old. Like First Spaceship on Venus the effects are bad and the space knowledge is dated but it's from 1955 so what do you expect? Like one of the cast said they probably should have just redone Manos the Hands of Fate or something really bad like anything by Ed Wood.
The intermission segments featured upgraded production values and sets and showed us other parts of the Satellite of Love like Servo's quarters and the "basement" where Crow causes a hull breech trying to tunnel to freedom. Like the last season of the show preceding it it featured only Dr. Forrester as the villain. They even created a new door opening sequence before going into the theater; this sequence was not used in the Sci-Fi episodes so it's really the only time it was used.
Oblivion & Oblivion: Backlash: These were made in the mid-90s in Eastern Europe on the cheap. They were a sci-fi Western that would be like Firefly if it all took place on one planet and were pretty bad. The first one involves a lizard alien coming to the world of Oblivion to kill the sheriff and the sheriff's son then avenging his murder.
The town looks like your average Wild West ghost town dressed up with a lot of outdoor ceiling fans for some reason. Maybe they're supposed to be wind turbines? In the town there's Miss Kitty--played by Julie Newmar, of course--who runs the bar/whorehouse and likes to act like a cat. There's also a doctor/inventor played by George Takei who spouts bad Star Trek puns and rambles drunkenly through most of the first movie. And an attractive widow who runs the general store and becomes a target for the sheriff's son's affections.
The most interesting character is the town mortician played by that really tall guy who was Lurch in the Addams Family movies and Lawxana Troi's servant on Star Trek The Next Generation. Every time he comes out of his shop people run in terror because he only appears when someone is going to die, though he can't sense exactly who. Still, it's best not to be around him. Unlike those other things, in this the guy actually gets some lines other than grunting and growling, so that must have been a nice change of pace for him.
The bad guy in the first movie had a henchwoman called Backlash who carried a whip and dressed in a lot of black leather. In the second movie she obtains the rights for a mine that has something valuable that could make her a lot of money, but other people want it. The sheriff and a shapeshifting bounty hunter go after her and Miss Kitty, who holds some secret to the mine.
In a way the second one is better as Julie Newmar tones down the cat act and Backlash does more than just attempt to titillate. But there's still George Takei spouting annoying puns so it's not that much better. It's one of those that looks a lot older than it actually is because of the lame effects.
Space Mutiny: This MST3K episode was referenced in at least one Rifftrax episode so when I saw I could rent it on Amazon I decided to watch it. I think I'd seen it a couple years earlier on Netflix or Hulu when they still had MST3K. Anyway, it's a 1988 movie that looks much older because it uses IBM PC computers and old footage from Battlestar Galactica-the original series, obviously. I'm not sure if they just ripped off the footage of the show or if they bought the models or what but the fighters and main ship are exactly the same. The plot involves a mutiny of the security forces called "Enforcers" who go about it in the most half-assed way possible because apparently there are no other combat people on the ship except one burly fighter pilot who falls in love with the captain's daughter. The captain is played by Cameron Mitchell in a bad fake beard. While the outside of the ship looks like the Galactica, the inside has all sorts of pipes and conduits like a factory. And they drive around in these pathetic little bumper cars that look more like what janitors use to wax floors. Meanwhile the bridge uses TVs, IBM PCs, and graphics that look like they're from an Atari 2600. But the funniest part is a bridge crewwoman is murdered but in the next scene you see her sitting at her station on the bridge! Either she has an identical twin or she came back to life. It's even worse than the headlight coming back in Mitchell!
In the intermission skits the evil Pearl Forrester and her henchmen have to escape from ancient Rome. There's some irony when they coerce Mike to help them and he struggles to seduce a Roman woman played by his real-life wife. Another irony is that while this has never aired on Pluto TV they used to use a few seconds of footage during promos advertising which MST3K episode was on currently and coming up next.
In 2018 there was a Rifftrax Live showing of Space Mutiny that was added to Amazon about a year later. Unlike the MST3K version the Rifftrax Live one is unedited except for a part that shows boobs; they have a digital "gorilla gram" covering the naughty bits. Even complete the story still makes little sense. Perhaps the most hilarious part though is at the beginning when Kevin Murphy comes out dressed in a silver robe like Cameron Mitchell's in the movie.
Manhunt in Space & Crash of the Moons: These are two old 50s sci-fi B movies on MST3K involving the adventures of Rocky Jones, a space ranger or whatever. He and his annoying sidekick fly around in a cheesy rocket ship on a string. Manhunt in Space features bad guys trying to steal some kind of ultimate weapon and Rocky having to track them down and stop them. It's a manhunt--in space. Get it?
In the sequel Crash of the Moons Rocky has to convince a bad lady from the first movie to evacuate her planet before it crashes into another planet and everyone is killed. She doesn't trust them and instead tries to kill them until they finally get her to see reason.
These both feature cheap effects, cheaper sets, poorly choreographed fights, wooden acting, and Neil deGrasse Tyson would have a fit over the lack of realism about space and space travel.
First Spaceship on Venus: This is also an old movie on MST3K about an international crew that receives a signal from Venus. So they hop in a spaceship and head out to Venus. But as Ackbar would say, it's a trap! The planet's population is dead but there are a lot of traps left active that kill a couple of members of the crew before they're able to escape. At the time this wasn't regarded as a terrible movie, but obviously the effects are bad and the knowledge of space pretty dated.
Missile to the Moon: One of the earliest Rifftrax on demand movies featured Michael J Nelson and comedian/actor Fred Willard riffing on this 50s movie where a scientist and a couple of petty criminals take a rocket to the moon. The criminals were taking refuge on the scientist's farm when he finds them and decides they'd make perfect astronauts. Basically the same night they blast off from a field to the moon, which I guess you could do back then. They have to escape some rock monsters and then find a whole bunch of hot blue women who mistake the scientist for some guy who had previously been there. In the end most of them escape back to the rocket and go home. I bet Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin wish they'd found a bunch of blue women--or maybe they did and the government covered it up. Anyway, a few years later they redid this with the traditional Rifftrax lineup too.
Star Force: Fugitive Alien II: Another repackaged Japanese turd from American producer Sandy Frank who brought over such MST3K favorites as the Gamera movies, Mighty Jack, and Time of the Apes. This is actually a sequel to, wait for it, Star Force: Fugitive Alien. Both of which were just repackaged from Japanese TV serials. Fortunately it's one of those where they recap the first movie early on so you don't have to worry about keeping up with the highly cerebral story line. It's basically a Star Wars ripoff with a group of Japanese people in a lame spaceship who go to some planet with a lot of desert and fight a bad guy in a samurai Darth Vader outfit. On IMDB it says this is from 1987 but the effects make it look like it's from the late 60s.
Moon Zero Two: This was a first season episode of MST3K so I don't watch it a lot but I do own it because it's part of the 25th Anniversary set. This 1969 Hammer Films/Warner Bros fiasco features cheesy animated credits, a jazz soundtrack, go-go dancing, and a lot of bad costumes as people on a lunar colony fight over an asteroid with sapphire in it or something. It's a lot more Adventures of Pluto Nash than 2001.
This Island Earth: This was the movie used for Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie. In a documentary on one DVD the cast talked about why they chose this movie. It was basically the movie studio wanted them to use a movie in their catalog and so they picked this old sci-fi movie where aliens come to Earth and recruit some guy who's like a prototype of young Sean Connery and a female doctor, but they're too late to save it. It was sort of like Forbidden Planet, only probably not as well known.
There was some controversy in that a lot of people regarded this as a classic and so didn't appreciate the riffing on it. And really like some others I've mentioned it's not terrible so much as it's just old. Like First Spaceship on Venus the effects are bad and the space knowledge is dated but it's from 1955 so what do you expect? Like one of the cast said they probably should have just redone Manos the Hands of Fate or something really bad like anything by Ed Wood.
The intermission segments featured upgraded production values and sets and showed us other parts of the Satellite of Love like Servo's quarters and the "basement" where Crow causes a hull breech trying to tunnel to freedom. Like the last season of the show preceding it it featured only Dr. Forrester as the villain. They even created a new door opening sequence before going into the theater; this sequence was not used in the Sci-Fi episodes so it's really the only time it was used.
Thursday, April 16, 2020
#AtoZChallenge Night of the Shorts
A lot of old movies didn't run the 90 minutes or so to fill a full MST3K episode so they would supplement the movie with an old short film. Some were the old serials like The Phantom Creeps starring Bela Lugosi or Commander Cody. There were also old episodes of General Hospital and Gumby.
But most of them were the "educational" movies you might have seen in school. My first job was working in the Instructional Media Center for the Midland Public Schools where they kept films and videos sent to schools when a teacher needed a break from teaching. The old films I had to rewind and sometimes splice them back together if they broke. I'm sure a lot of the movies we had in there are the same ones they showed on MST3K and later on Rifftrax.
There are so many that I can't do them all, but here are some of the favorites.
The Norman Cycle: These are a series of "educational" films that are educational in theory only. I really have no idea what the point of these was as they're mostly just a lot of bad physical comedy starring a balding middle-aged salesman named Norman Krasner.
The first one was in 1974 and called Krasner, Norman: Beloved Husband of Irma. According to IMDB it's about Norman attempting to cope with stress. I haven't really seen this one, though I probably could if I ever bothered to go to the Rifftrax site or use the app.
In 1979 there came Welcome Back Norman. This was featured on Night of the Shorts, a live show from San Francisco's Sketchfest in 2013, and also the live show of Manos the Hands of Fate. It's about Norman arriving home from a business trip and trying to leave the airport. He encounters all sorts of hazards like cars making it hard for him to get into his huge 70s vehicle, leaving his briefcase on top of the car, an old couple at the parking gate who can't find their ticket, and then plain old getting lost. I kind of wonder if the airport is Metro Airport in Romulus as the plates on the cars look like Michigan ones from back in the day, but I can't be positive. The educational message of this is...don't park at airports?
In 1984 there was Norman Checks In, which was featured during the live show of Birdemic. As you might guess, it's about Norman checking into a motel. There's a big taxidermy convention--which is a thing, I guess--so Norman has to be moved to the improbable room 13X. And then he has all sorts of troubles like the water going off in mid-shower, the maid cleaning his room while he's in the shower so that he surprises her when he's nude except for a layer of soap, and a malfunctioning vibrating bed. Plus annoying neighbors and bright neon lights. The educational message of this is...never go to motels?
Finally in 1989 there was Norman Gives a Speech, where Norman, wait for it, has to make a speech. But some of his slides are sucked up by a cleaning woman, he drops his notes in the toilet, and on the way to the speech he's knocked down in the hall and winds up on crutches. Then when he's finally going to make the speech the fire alarm goes off and the sprinklers are set off, drenching him. The end. The educational message of this is...don't make speeches?
That was it for Norman and apparently Douglas MacIntosh never acted in anything else until he died in Royal Oak, MI in 2012. Sad.
Setting Up a Room: This is exactly what it says: two women setting up a kindergarten room. In real time. It's about 30 minutes of women moving around furniture or talking about moving around furniture. It is even more boring than it sounds. Seriously they should force terrorists to watch this to get them to reveal their secrets. By the second showing they'd have probably revealed everything they know. This was featured on Night of the Shorts 2015 also from Sketchfest in San Francisco, only it was split into 2 parts to make it slightly more tolerable. They also show it on Pluto TV all in one go, which is much worse.
A Case of Spring Fever: This was both on MST3K and in the Rifftrax Live Sharknado show. A guy who looks like a chubbier, balder Norman is trying to fix a couch when he wishes he'd never see a spring again. So a cartoon spring called Coily makes all springs in the world disappear. Apparently springs are in everything from couches to doors to your car seat. We can't live without them! Save us Coily! Thankfully Coily returns the world to normal. Then the second half is this guy droning on to all his soon-to-be-ex-friends about how awesome springs are. It really makes you want to go buy a few cases of Slinkies. I'm not sure this was really necessary. I mean was there a surplus of springs that required education on their value? Was there some rival technology like Betamax or HD-DVD that needed stamped out? There's a similar one on Rifftrax about paper where a talking paper bag makes all paper disappear to show a little boy--and the world--how important paper is. Then when they're done the boy blows into the bag and pops it; seems like kind of jerk way to dispose of the paper bag, sort of like how Dr. Manhattan explodes Rorschach in Watchmen. I mean did you have explode it? You couldn't let it die more peacefully?
Masks of Grass: There's a company called ACI that made some really weird shorts. One of them shown before Rifftrax Live Carnival of Souls was called Masks of Grass. It shows kids how to turn weeds, cardboard, tape, glue, and other crap into really creepy masks. Why any kid would do this even in the 70s I have no idea. Maybe for Halloween if you want to freak people out. Another one, shown during the 2013 Sketchfest was called At Your Fingertips: Cylinders. It was about using cylinders like paper towel rolls, toilet paper rolls, and oatmeal canisters to make shit like cardboard robot "kites." Again why anyone would do this, I have no idea.
The Dirt Witch: Also in Rifftrax Live Carnival of Souls was this short called "The Dirt Witch" about, wait for it, a dirty witch. She decides then that if she's dirty, everyone should be dirty. So she as a farmer fall down in his pig sty, a house painter get covered in pink paint, and some boys play football in a field that turns to mud. But then a little girl sees the witch and helps her bathe. As the riffers say, "Kids, don't just go home with strangers--bathe them!" Um, yeah, that's just a little creepy. I don't think GI Joe would do that for one of their PSAs.
Safety Woman: A couple of Rifftrax shorts introduced one of the lamest superheroes ever: Safety Woman! By day she's a mild-mannered freelance architect and crossing guard, but by...also day, she dons a silver jumpsuit, big sunglasses, and a red headband to become Guardiana, the Safety Woman. She has a wand given to her by helium-voiced aliens that allows her to teleport and stop accidents from befalling children. Then she harangues them about fire safety, gun safety, ladder safety, boat safety, and so on. Basically everything can be deadly if you try hard enough. There are two episodes, one that's shown on Pluto TV as part of a Rifftrax Superheroes special and in a Night of the Shorts. There's a second one also shown in a Night of the Shorts, though I forget which one.
Measuring Man: Another lame "superhero" with a short, Measuring Man is a milkman who turns into a skinny Clark Kent wearing a Superman cape and bodysuit. He abducts a kid to "measuring land" to harangue him about standard units of measurement. Because you need a superhero for that, not just a math tutor.
Last Clear Chance and X Marks the Spot: These two safe driving shorts were featured on MST3K. They aren't as gruesome as the infamous Red Asphalt but they aren't all that pleasant either. Last Clear Chance was featured before the movie Radar Secret Service, which was on the short side so this one is like 20 minutes long. It's about a state trooper in Idaho or Iowa or somewhere like that who goes to a farm to harangue the family about safe driving because their youngest son just got his license. After this lecture, guess what happens? The older brother and his girlfriend go out and don't look at a railroad crossing to end up splattered right in front of the younger brother. A train engineer asks, "Why don't they look?" And then the state trooper vows to pull over anyone driving unsafely. Hooray? X Marks the Spot I forget which movie it was shown before. It starts off with some New Jersey government official making a really stilted, boring speech. Then it goes to the story of a bad driver who dies and goes to Purgatory or something where his frustrated guardian angel tells a judge how badly the guy drives despite the angel's best efforts. At the end, the judge leaves it up to us to decide what should happen to the guy. Burn him! Burn him!
Hired!: This was actually two parts on two different MST3K episodes I can't remember right now. Anyway, in part 1 a new Chevy salesman in 1940 is having a tough time going door-to-door selling cars, which apparently was a thing back then. In Part 2 his boss laments how these young people today (the "Greatest Generation") are a bunch of lazy slackers and his dad asks him what he's done to help his salesmen to which the boss has no answer so he goes and helps the salesman and everyone lives happily ever after...for about a year until Pearl Harbor. I noted in a previous blog how ironic it is that the boss's attitude about what came to be the Greatest Generation is the same as Boomers about Millennials. Anyway, in one of the MST3K episodes they do a musical version of this during one of the intermission sketches. It's funny if you watch Joel in the background when Gypsy attempts to sing his face is like, "Holy shit, what the fuck is that?!"
What to Do On a Date: This is one they show in an episode of MST3K but also on its own on Pluto TV. This is from the 50s and it's about this total dumbass named Nick who can't think of anything to do on a date. So his friend suggests that he take this girl Kay to the community center to help set up a "scavenger sale" which I guess is like a rummage sale. And then he looks at the bulletin board and comes up with all sorts of other lame ideas like weenie roasts and bike rides. Dude, come on, you're supposed to take her for a drive and then "run out of gas," not do charity work. Haven't you ever watched movies or TV shows? Well I guess it was the 50s. Later in the MST3K episode Tom Servo asks Gypsy (the only female) on a date and it does not go well.
Parents, Who Needs Them?: This short was featured before the Rifftrax Live show of Sharknado 2. It's from the early 70s and features a creepy clown puppet showing a kid what his parents do. The kid initially tosses the puppet away so the puppet makes the boy invisible so he can follow his parents around to see all the things he takes for granted. This being the early 70s the mom stays at home to clean and cook. Meanwhile the dad works at a slaughterhouse or something like that and then comes home to fix stuff. Once the kid realizes how much his parents do for him he turns visible again. The kid is badly dubbed, sounding like Kenny in Gamera. It's kind of funny for me that the kid's parents look pretty much like how my parents looked in the 70s, especially the dad. The mom also looks like an older Velma from Scooby-Doo. Jinkies.
Shorty the Chimp the Fireman: This was featured before the Rifftrax Live show of Time Chasers. It's an old one from the 30s or 40s about, wait for it, a chimp named Shorty who goes to work for the local fire department. He gets to smoke a cigar and rescues a little girl's doll--by rescue I mean he climbs out a window for it and then hurls it to the ground. I don't think PETA would approve of this one.
The Chicken of Tomorrow: This is on the MST3K episode called The Brute Man. That movie was fairly short so this was like the first 20 minutes or so. It's all about how to grow bigger, better chickens. And not organically either. This is pretty much the opposite of that, or how to grow chickens in a way PETA would bitch about. There was an elaborate science to it from how to build their coops to what to feed them to how productive the hens should be. It's really, really...boring.
Cheating: I forget what the full title of this is but it was shown before the MST3K movie The Wild, Wild World of Batwoman. It's a 50s short about a kid named Johnny who's in the student council and got friends and everything--until he asks his friend Mary to help him cheat on a test. When he's found out he's voted out of the student council and loses his friends. So, cheaters never prosper. Ha. Throughout the rest of the episode, Crow T Robot cheats off Gypsy's paper for an essay contest and is then shunned by his fellow bots until after a non-apology he's sentenced to eating Hostess Sno-Balls with the others. Who says cheaters don't prosper?
What is Nothing?: Another one of those I think they show in a Rifftrax Live show but also on its own. Two little kids pontificate on what nothing means. They pretty much sound like a couple of stoners after a few joints; that's probably how this got written.
Drugs are Like That: This is probably in a live show but also it's on its own on Pluto TV. It's a 70s short where some lady keeps saying that drugs are like...anything. I mean, think of anything and drugs are like that somehow. Taxidermy, Polish sausage, nuclear war, sweater vests--drugs are like that! But it does feature some cool Lego building.
Why Doesn't Cathy Eat Breakfast?: This is one shown on Pluto TV with some of the other ones in this entry. It's about a girl named Cathy in the 70s and the narrator badgers her about why she doesn't eat breakfast. But guess what? The film never answers the question! It remains a mystery; someone call Mulder and Scully!
Shake Hands With Danger: From the director of Carnival of Souls comes this short about workplace safety. Mostly construction vehicles and stuff like that. There's a lot of twangy guitar and this Sam Elliott-sounding guy who says stuff like, "Well, friend, if you don't tie down your load you're shaking hands with danger." I don't think Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor ever watched this; Home Improvement was like a whole series of Shake Hands With Danger moments. This was on a Rifftrax Live show at some point but again I don't remember which one.
Flying Stewardess: This was part of the entertainment before the first Rifftrax Live show, Plan 9 From Outer Space. It's a 30s or 40s film about becoming a stewardess. Back then people dressed up to travel and there were sleeping bunks and real meals prepared. It really shows you that while planes are bigger and more powerful, the actual traveling isn't really better. Since it's from the 30s or 40s there's also a lot of sexism in that there are no male stewards and goes on about the girls preparing for marriage, though they can't marry pilots because they're all taken already. Ha, yeah, right.
Progress Island: This 60s short before the MST3K episode Beast of Yucca Flats really should have been shown to Trump and Republicans after the hurricane devastated Puerto Rico. It's about Puerto Rico and says controversial stuff like Puerto Rico is a part of America. It goes into the various industries and cultural attractions it has to offer. Some people could definitely have used a refresher on this.
There are so many more that are all pretty unintentionally hilarious.
But most of them were the "educational" movies you might have seen in school. My first job was working in the Instructional Media Center for the Midland Public Schools where they kept films and videos sent to schools when a teacher needed a break from teaching. The old films I had to rewind and sometimes splice them back together if they broke. I'm sure a lot of the movies we had in there are the same ones they showed on MST3K and later on Rifftrax.
There are so many that I can't do them all, but here are some of the favorites.
The Norman Cycle: These are a series of "educational" films that are educational in theory only. I really have no idea what the point of these was as they're mostly just a lot of bad physical comedy starring a balding middle-aged salesman named Norman Krasner.
The first one was in 1974 and called Krasner, Norman: Beloved Husband of Irma. According to IMDB it's about Norman attempting to cope with stress. I haven't really seen this one, though I probably could if I ever bothered to go to the Rifftrax site or use the app.
In 1979 there came Welcome Back Norman. This was featured on Night of the Shorts, a live show from San Francisco's Sketchfest in 2013, and also the live show of Manos the Hands of Fate. It's about Norman arriving home from a business trip and trying to leave the airport. He encounters all sorts of hazards like cars making it hard for him to get into his huge 70s vehicle, leaving his briefcase on top of the car, an old couple at the parking gate who can't find their ticket, and then plain old getting lost. I kind of wonder if the airport is Metro Airport in Romulus as the plates on the cars look like Michigan ones from back in the day, but I can't be positive. The educational message of this is...don't park at airports?
In 1984 there was Norman Checks In, which was featured during the live show of Birdemic. As you might guess, it's about Norman checking into a motel. There's a big taxidermy convention--which is a thing, I guess--so Norman has to be moved to the improbable room 13X. And then he has all sorts of troubles like the water going off in mid-shower, the maid cleaning his room while he's in the shower so that he surprises her when he's nude except for a layer of soap, and a malfunctioning vibrating bed. Plus annoying neighbors and bright neon lights. The educational message of this is...never go to motels?
Finally in 1989 there was Norman Gives a Speech, where Norman, wait for it, has to make a speech. But some of his slides are sucked up by a cleaning woman, he drops his notes in the toilet, and on the way to the speech he's knocked down in the hall and winds up on crutches. Then when he's finally going to make the speech the fire alarm goes off and the sprinklers are set off, drenching him. The end. The educational message of this is...don't make speeches?
That was it for Norman and apparently Douglas MacIntosh never acted in anything else until he died in Royal Oak, MI in 2012. Sad.
Setting Up a Room: This is exactly what it says: two women setting up a kindergarten room. In real time. It's about 30 minutes of women moving around furniture or talking about moving around furniture. It is even more boring than it sounds. Seriously they should force terrorists to watch this to get them to reveal their secrets. By the second showing they'd have probably revealed everything they know. This was featured on Night of the Shorts 2015 also from Sketchfest in San Francisco, only it was split into 2 parts to make it slightly more tolerable. They also show it on Pluto TV all in one go, which is much worse.
A Case of Spring Fever: This was both on MST3K and in the Rifftrax Live Sharknado show. A guy who looks like a chubbier, balder Norman is trying to fix a couch when he wishes he'd never see a spring again. So a cartoon spring called Coily makes all springs in the world disappear. Apparently springs are in everything from couches to doors to your car seat. We can't live without them! Save us Coily! Thankfully Coily returns the world to normal. Then the second half is this guy droning on to all his soon-to-be-ex-friends about how awesome springs are. It really makes you want to go buy a few cases of Slinkies. I'm not sure this was really necessary. I mean was there a surplus of springs that required education on their value? Was there some rival technology like Betamax or HD-DVD that needed stamped out? There's a similar one on Rifftrax about paper where a talking paper bag makes all paper disappear to show a little boy--and the world--how important paper is. Then when they're done the boy blows into the bag and pops it; seems like kind of jerk way to dispose of the paper bag, sort of like how Dr. Manhattan explodes Rorschach in Watchmen. I mean did you have explode it? You couldn't let it die more peacefully?
Masks of Grass: There's a company called ACI that made some really weird shorts. One of them shown before Rifftrax Live Carnival of Souls was called Masks of Grass. It shows kids how to turn weeds, cardboard, tape, glue, and other crap into really creepy masks. Why any kid would do this even in the 70s I have no idea. Maybe for Halloween if you want to freak people out. Another one, shown during the 2013 Sketchfest was called At Your Fingertips: Cylinders. It was about using cylinders like paper towel rolls, toilet paper rolls, and oatmeal canisters to make shit like cardboard robot "kites." Again why anyone would do this, I have no idea.
The Dirt Witch: Also in Rifftrax Live Carnival of Souls was this short called "The Dirt Witch" about, wait for it, a dirty witch. She decides then that if she's dirty, everyone should be dirty. So she as a farmer fall down in his pig sty, a house painter get covered in pink paint, and some boys play football in a field that turns to mud. But then a little girl sees the witch and helps her bathe. As the riffers say, "Kids, don't just go home with strangers--bathe them!" Um, yeah, that's just a little creepy. I don't think GI Joe would do that for one of their PSAs.
Safety Woman: A couple of Rifftrax shorts introduced one of the lamest superheroes ever: Safety Woman! By day she's a mild-mannered freelance architect and crossing guard, but by...also day, she dons a silver jumpsuit, big sunglasses, and a red headband to become Guardiana, the Safety Woman. She has a wand given to her by helium-voiced aliens that allows her to teleport and stop accidents from befalling children. Then she harangues them about fire safety, gun safety, ladder safety, boat safety, and so on. Basically everything can be deadly if you try hard enough. There are two episodes, one that's shown on Pluto TV as part of a Rifftrax Superheroes special and in a Night of the Shorts. There's a second one also shown in a Night of the Shorts, though I forget which one.
Measuring Man: Another lame "superhero" with a short, Measuring Man is a milkman who turns into a skinny Clark Kent wearing a Superman cape and bodysuit. He abducts a kid to "measuring land" to harangue him about standard units of measurement. Because you need a superhero for that, not just a math tutor.
Last Clear Chance and X Marks the Spot: These two safe driving shorts were featured on MST3K. They aren't as gruesome as the infamous Red Asphalt but they aren't all that pleasant either. Last Clear Chance was featured before the movie Radar Secret Service, which was on the short side so this one is like 20 minutes long. It's about a state trooper in Idaho or Iowa or somewhere like that who goes to a farm to harangue the family about safe driving because their youngest son just got his license. After this lecture, guess what happens? The older brother and his girlfriend go out and don't look at a railroad crossing to end up splattered right in front of the younger brother. A train engineer asks, "Why don't they look?" And then the state trooper vows to pull over anyone driving unsafely. Hooray? X Marks the Spot I forget which movie it was shown before. It starts off with some New Jersey government official making a really stilted, boring speech. Then it goes to the story of a bad driver who dies and goes to Purgatory or something where his frustrated guardian angel tells a judge how badly the guy drives despite the angel's best efforts. At the end, the judge leaves it up to us to decide what should happen to the guy. Burn him! Burn him!
Hired!: This was actually two parts on two different MST3K episodes I can't remember right now. Anyway, in part 1 a new Chevy salesman in 1940 is having a tough time going door-to-door selling cars, which apparently was a thing back then. In Part 2 his boss laments how these young people today (the "Greatest Generation") are a bunch of lazy slackers and his dad asks him what he's done to help his salesmen to which the boss has no answer so he goes and helps the salesman and everyone lives happily ever after...for about a year until Pearl Harbor. I noted in a previous blog how ironic it is that the boss's attitude about what came to be the Greatest Generation is the same as Boomers about Millennials. Anyway, in one of the MST3K episodes they do a musical version of this during one of the intermission sketches. It's funny if you watch Joel in the background when Gypsy attempts to sing his face is like, "Holy shit, what the fuck is that?!"
What to Do On a Date: This is one they show in an episode of MST3K but also on its own on Pluto TV. This is from the 50s and it's about this total dumbass named Nick who can't think of anything to do on a date. So his friend suggests that he take this girl Kay to the community center to help set up a "scavenger sale" which I guess is like a rummage sale. And then he looks at the bulletin board and comes up with all sorts of other lame ideas like weenie roasts and bike rides. Dude, come on, you're supposed to take her for a drive and then "run out of gas," not do charity work. Haven't you ever watched movies or TV shows? Well I guess it was the 50s. Later in the MST3K episode Tom Servo asks Gypsy (the only female) on a date and it does not go well.
Parents, Who Needs Them?: This short was featured before the Rifftrax Live show of Sharknado 2. It's from the early 70s and features a creepy clown puppet showing a kid what his parents do. The kid initially tosses the puppet away so the puppet makes the boy invisible so he can follow his parents around to see all the things he takes for granted. This being the early 70s the mom stays at home to clean and cook. Meanwhile the dad works at a slaughterhouse or something like that and then comes home to fix stuff. Once the kid realizes how much his parents do for him he turns visible again. The kid is badly dubbed, sounding like Kenny in Gamera. It's kind of funny for me that the kid's parents look pretty much like how my parents looked in the 70s, especially the dad. The mom also looks like an older Velma from Scooby-Doo. Jinkies.
Shorty the Chimp the Fireman: This was featured before the Rifftrax Live show of Time Chasers. It's an old one from the 30s or 40s about, wait for it, a chimp named Shorty who goes to work for the local fire department. He gets to smoke a cigar and rescues a little girl's doll--by rescue I mean he climbs out a window for it and then hurls it to the ground. I don't think PETA would approve of this one.
The Chicken of Tomorrow: This is on the MST3K episode called The Brute Man. That movie was fairly short so this was like the first 20 minutes or so. It's all about how to grow bigger, better chickens. And not organically either. This is pretty much the opposite of that, or how to grow chickens in a way PETA would bitch about. There was an elaborate science to it from how to build their coops to what to feed them to how productive the hens should be. It's really, really...boring.
Cheating: I forget what the full title of this is but it was shown before the MST3K movie The Wild, Wild World of Batwoman. It's a 50s short about a kid named Johnny who's in the student council and got friends and everything--until he asks his friend Mary to help him cheat on a test. When he's found out he's voted out of the student council and loses his friends. So, cheaters never prosper. Ha. Throughout the rest of the episode, Crow T Robot cheats off Gypsy's paper for an essay contest and is then shunned by his fellow bots until after a non-apology he's sentenced to eating Hostess Sno-Balls with the others. Who says cheaters don't prosper?
What is Nothing?: Another one of those I think they show in a Rifftrax Live show but also on its own. Two little kids pontificate on what nothing means. They pretty much sound like a couple of stoners after a few joints; that's probably how this got written.
Drugs are Like That: This is probably in a live show but also it's on its own on Pluto TV. It's a 70s short where some lady keeps saying that drugs are like...anything. I mean, think of anything and drugs are like that somehow. Taxidermy, Polish sausage, nuclear war, sweater vests--drugs are like that! But it does feature some cool Lego building.
Why Doesn't Cathy Eat Breakfast?: This is one shown on Pluto TV with some of the other ones in this entry. It's about a girl named Cathy in the 70s and the narrator badgers her about why she doesn't eat breakfast. But guess what? The film never answers the question! It remains a mystery; someone call Mulder and Scully!
Shake Hands With Danger: From the director of Carnival of Souls comes this short about workplace safety. Mostly construction vehicles and stuff like that. There's a lot of twangy guitar and this Sam Elliott-sounding guy who says stuff like, "Well, friend, if you don't tie down your load you're shaking hands with danger." I don't think Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor ever watched this; Home Improvement was like a whole series of Shake Hands With Danger moments. This was on a Rifftrax Live show at some point but again I don't remember which one.
Flying Stewardess: This was part of the entertainment before the first Rifftrax Live show, Plan 9 From Outer Space. It's a 30s or 40s film about becoming a stewardess. Back then people dressed up to travel and there were sleeping bunks and real meals prepared. It really shows you that while planes are bigger and more powerful, the actual traveling isn't really better. Since it's from the 30s or 40s there's also a lot of sexism in that there are no male stewards and goes on about the girls preparing for marriage, though they can't marry pilots because they're all taken already. Ha, yeah, right.
Progress Island: This 60s short before the MST3K episode Beast of Yucca Flats really should have been shown to Trump and Republicans after the hurricane devastated Puerto Rico. It's about Puerto Rico and says controversial stuff like Puerto Rico is a part of America. It goes into the various industries and cultural attractions it has to offer. Some people could definitely have used a refresher on this.
There are so many more that are all pretty unintentionally hilarious.
Wednesday, April 15, 2020
#AtoZChallenge Monster Mash
Tax Day seems like a perfect time to talk about massive kaiju stomping cities and killing people. Monster movies were a staple of 50s and 60s movies so of course there were lots of them on MST3K and the like. Even the King of the Monsters--Godzilla--was on MST3K, though rights issues have prevented those episodes from being reshown or released on DVD or streaming.
Gamera: One of the kaiju who came after the popularity of Godzilla, Gamera has a similar story: he's a giant turtle who is woke from his slumber at the bottom of the ocean and begins stomping the hell out of things. Instead of breathing fire, Gamera can pull all his limbs in and fly.
Despite all the stomping and murdering, an annoying kid named Kenny keeps telling everyone that Gamera is good. Somehow this kid is able to get into top secret military locations and command centers to whine about Gamera's goodness.
Eventually Gamera is trapped in a rocket and sent to Mars. But don't worry, he'll be back! Like Godzilla the movies started to become more geared towards kids. They also went from black-and-white to color. And like Godzilla to make Gamera a good guy they brought in other monsters like the pterodactyl-like Gaos and the knife-headed Guidron. Though unlike Godzilla, Gamera hasn't had any big Hollywood reboots, though there was a well-regarded revival in Japan in the 90s.
I got all five MST3K episodes with Gamera on DVD back in 2012 or so when they were on sale on Amazon, but like Godzilla rights issues have caused them to go out of print and unable to be shown on streaming. An interesting (and gross) story about the creation of the Gamera according to an expert in a DVD extra: the studio was originally going to make a movie about rampaging mutant rats. To this extent they paid people to bring in real sewer rats because ones from a pet shop wouldn't be scary enough. To make the rats act how they wanted they had electrified plates on the set. But luckily for everyone the movie was shut down by health officials and so the studio just threw something together with a giant turtle.
Gammera the Invincible: This Rifftrax is basically the first Gamera movie only I think it was imported by a different company, hence the name change. They spliced in some lame scenes of American military people because I guess they thought the movie needed more white people in it. Also "Kenny" is actually called by his Japanese name, though still just as annoying.
Gorgo: In the early 60s the UK decided to get into the kaiju business with Gorgo. Some Brits go to an island off the Irish coast and kidnap a giant lizard monster. They take it back to London to make into a sideshow attraction. And then Gorgo's mother shows up. She's much bigger and pissed off and so starts trashing a model of London. Apparently the movie did pretty well and the family bond was a new twist. Yet this never really became a franchise for some reason.
This episode features a cameo from film critic Leonard Maltin as he chooses this movie to try and destroy Mike and the bots, which of course is unsuccessful.
Giant Gila Monster: This is a good example of a typical 50s B monster movie: a giant iguana (a normal iguana filmed against miniatures) terrorizes a small town. Only this one features some bad singing and gratuitous shots of people putting their legs up on stuff. One of the intermission skits of this MST3K episode is a montage of all the times someone puts his leg up on something.
Beginning of the End: It's pretty much the same thing as Giant Gila Monster, only with "giant" grasshoppers terrorizing Chicago--or postcards of Chicago. Young Peter Graves is a scientist who figures out how to lure the grasshoppers out to Lake Michigan where they're killed. One of the intermission skits they demonstrate how you can make your own 50s monster movie with a rubber animal and postcards and have a "giant" grasshopper terrorizing cities and even the Beatles. In another intermission sketch Crow debuts his play, "Peter Graves at the University of Minnesota," which is just Crow as Graves saying stuff like, "Hi, I'm Peter Graves at the University of Minnesota." It's still better than a Michael Bay movie.
There are actually a ton more of these I could dig up because so many of these crappy movies ended up in public domain or so cheap that they could be on MST3K back in the 90s.
Dinosaurus: This is a 60s movie in color about miners on an island who wake giant claymation dinosaurs: a T-Rex and a "brontosaurus" or whatever they're called at the moment. There's also a caveman who's unfrozen and goes around being confused by mirrors and kitchen appliances. Most of it is about as lame as the effects.
This one is actually on Rifftrax, not MST3K.
Arachnia: This is also on Rifftrax and from about 2003 thanks to our good friends at Edgewood Studios. During a meteor shower, a small plane in New Mexico (actually Vermont) is knocked out of the sky and crashes. An archaeologist, his assistant, a grad student, two bimbos sleeping with the prof to get a passing grade, and the plane's pilot find a house in the woods and are soon beset by giant spiders.
Unlike the 50s these aren't rubber spiders filmed against miniature backgrounds; they're crappy CGI spiders--hooray for progress! There are also buckets of fake blood and a lot of non-scares plus boobs! So pretty much a standard horror movie, only even cheaper.
Night of the Lepus: What's the least scary giant killer animal you can think of? Bunny rabbits would probably be near the top of the list. Since Night of the Bunny Rabbits wouldn't be very scary they use the technical name of "Lepus." This was made in the 70s and co-stars DeForest Kelley as one of the guys who has to fight giant rabbits destroying a small town. These rabbits apparently eat meat instead of veggies. Like those old 50s movies this clearly uses miniatures against normal-sized rabbits. Even when the rabbits are smeared with blood they still aren't very scary. In the end it's pretty easy to destroy them: just have a bunch of cars shine headlights at them to herd them into power lines that fry them. Problem solved!
Gamera: One of the kaiju who came after the popularity of Godzilla, Gamera has a similar story: he's a giant turtle who is woke from his slumber at the bottom of the ocean and begins stomping the hell out of things. Instead of breathing fire, Gamera can pull all his limbs in and fly.
Despite all the stomping and murdering, an annoying kid named Kenny keeps telling everyone that Gamera is good. Somehow this kid is able to get into top secret military locations and command centers to whine about Gamera's goodness.
Eventually Gamera is trapped in a rocket and sent to Mars. But don't worry, he'll be back! Like Godzilla the movies started to become more geared towards kids. They also went from black-and-white to color. And like Godzilla to make Gamera a good guy they brought in other monsters like the pterodactyl-like Gaos and the knife-headed Guidron. Though unlike Godzilla, Gamera hasn't had any big Hollywood reboots, though there was a well-regarded revival in Japan in the 90s.
I got all five MST3K episodes with Gamera on DVD back in 2012 or so when they were on sale on Amazon, but like Godzilla rights issues have caused them to go out of print and unable to be shown on streaming. An interesting (and gross) story about the creation of the Gamera according to an expert in a DVD extra: the studio was originally going to make a movie about rampaging mutant rats. To this extent they paid people to bring in real sewer rats because ones from a pet shop wouldn't be scary enough. To make the rats act how they wanted they had electrified plates on the set. But luckily for everyone the movie was shut down by health officials and so the studio just threw something together with a giant turtle.
Gammera the Invincible: This Rifftrax is basically the first Gamera movie only I think it was imported by a different company, hence the name change. They spliced in some lame scenes of American military people because I guess they thought the movie needed more white people in it. Also "Kenny" is actually called by his Japanese name, though still just as annoying.
Gorgo: In the early 60s the UK decided to get into the kaiju business with Gorgo. Some Brits go to an island off the Irish coast and kidnap a giant lizard monster. They take it back to London to make into a sideshow attraction. And then Gorgo's mother shows up. She's much bigger and pissed off and so starts trashing a model of London. Apparently the movie did pretty well and the family bond was a new twist. Yet this never really became a franchise for some reason.
This episode features a cameo from film critic Leonard Maltin as he chooses this movie to try and destroy Mike and the bots, which of course is unsuccessful.
Giant Gila Monster: This is a good example of a typical 50s B monster movie: a giant iguana (a normal iguana filmed against miniatures) terrorizes a small town. Only this one features some bad singing and gratuitous shots of people putting their legs up on stuff. One of the intermission skits of this MST3K episode is a montage of all the times someone puts his leg up on something.
Beginning of the End: It's pretty much the same thing as Giant Gila Monster, only with "giant" grasshoppers terrorizing Chicago--or postcards of Chicago. Young Peter Graves is a scientist who figures out how to lure the grasshoppers out to Lake Michigan where they're killed. One of the intermission skits they demonstrate how you can make your own 50s monster movie with a rubber animal and postcards and have a "giant" grasshopper terrorizing cities and even the Beatles. In another intermission sketch Crow debuts his play, "Peter Graves at the University of Minnesota," which is just Crow as Graves saying stuff like, "Hi, I'm Peter Graves at the University of Minnesota." It's still better than a Michael Bay movie.
There are actually a ton more of these I could dig up because so many of these crappy movies ended up in public domain or so cheap that they could be on MST3K back in the 90s.
Dinosaurus: This is a 60s movie in color about miners on an island who wake giant claymation dinosaurs: a T-Rex and a "brontosaurus" or whatever they're called at the moment. There's also a caveman who's unfrozen and goes around being confused by mirrors and kitchen appliances. Most of it is about as lame as the effects.
This one is actually on Rifftrax, not MST3K.
Arachnia: This is also on Rifftrax and from about 2003 thanks to our good friends at Edgewood Studios. During a meteor shower, a small plane in New Mexico (actually Vermont) is knocked out of the sky and crashes. An archaeologist, his assistant, a grad student, two bimbos sleeping with the prof to get a passing grade, and the plane's pilot find a house in the woods and are soon beset by giant spiders.
Unlike the 50s these aren't rubber spiders filmed against miniature backgrounds; they're crappy CGI spiders--hooray for progress! There are also buckets of fake blood and a lot of non-scares plus boobs! So pretty much a standard horror movie, only even cheaper.
Night of the Lepus: What's the least scary giant killer animal you can think of? Bunny rabbits would probably be near the top of the list. Since Night of the Bunny Rabbits wouldn't be very scary they use the technical name of "Lepus." This was made in the 70s and co-stars DeForest Kelley as one of the guys who has to fight giant rabbits destroying a small town. These rabbits apparently eat meat instead of veggies. Like those old 50s movies this clearly uses miniatures against normal-sized rabbits. Even when the rabbits are smeared with blood they still aren't very scary. In the end it's pretty easy to destroy them: just have a bunch of cars shine headlights at them to herd them into power lines that fry them. Problem solved!
Tuesday, April 14, 2020
#AtoZChallenge Lasers!
I couldn't think of a better idea than that one MST3K and one Rifftrax movie have "Laser" in the title.
Laser Mission: Like the kung-fu movies in the previous entry this features a lot of gratuitous violence and a plot that makes little sense. You know what it doesn't feature? Lasers! Yet it's a "laser mission." Um...yeah.
The late Brandon Lee stars as a mercenary man who goes...somewhere to meet with a German scientist played by the late Ernest Borgnine. The description for the regular movie on Amazon says he goes to Cuba but his cover is an American businessman, which is impossible because of the American embargo, right? When Ernest Borgnine is kidnapped by...someone, Brandon Lee goes to...somewhere else to try to find him with the help of a baby doll-voiced woman who claims to be Ernest Borgnine's daughter.
Wherever they go has a desert and palm trees and stuff and yet there are also people speaking Spanish. Maybe it's supposed to be Morocco or Algeria? I don't know. It's one of the few times when a movie really needs to put the location on the screen since there aren't any easily recognizable landmarks. Which is probably because this was made on the cheap by a German production company.
The fights are pretty lame and the bad guys are a hodge-podge of Germans, Cubans, and British Russians that you really have no idea what the hell is supposed to be going on. And where the hell is the laser?
I do feel a little bad laughing at this since Brandon Lee died so tragically, but it is that bad. At least he died making an actually good movie. That's something. Here, enjoy the theme song played about 10,000 times during the movie.
Laserblast: Unlike Laser Mission, this actually has a laser! And really cheesy effects, especially the crappy claymation aliens who speak in gibberish without subtitles.
The "story" is that an alien crashes on Earth with his laser blaster. The above-mentioned crappy-looking aliens kill him but inadvertently leave the gun behind. So a teenager named Billy finds the gun and starts using it to get revenge on some bullies and cops hassling him. But when he uses it it turns his face green (but not his hair) and this chunk of metal forms on his chest. At one point he hilariously shoots a sign that simply reads "Star Wars." Because this movie was clearly going to replace Star Wars in the hearts and minds of people, right? Yeah, right.
He's going on a rampage in his California hometown that for some reason suddenly looks like a 40s New York set when the crappy aliens reappear and kill him. The end. Um, yay? So kids if you ever find a laser gun in the desert, don't use it! Now you know...and knowing is half the battle!
This was a MST3K episode notable because it was the last on Comedy Central. Since they weren't sure they would get picked up somewhere else it was written as a series finale. Dr. Forrester releases the Satellite of Love, which winds up careening through space. In one intermission sketch Mike dons a Captain Janeway costume to steer the ship away from a black hole. In the end the crew reaches the edge of the universe and turn themselves into pure energy. Meanwhile in an end riffing on 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dr. Forrester sees glimpses of his future self and then turns into a baby again. It was the final appearance of Trace Beaulieu as Dr. Forrester and Crow T Robot on the show.
Sadly Kim Milford, the "star" of this movie died tragically in 1988 so I guess there's a depressing additional theme to this entry.
Laser Mission: Like the kung-fu movies in the previous entry this features a lot of gratuitous violence and a plot that makes little sense. You know what it doesn't feature? Lasers! Yet it's a "laser mission." Um...yeah.
The late Brandon Lee stars as a mercenary man who goes...somewhere to meet with a German scientist played by the late Ernest Borgnine. The description for the regular movie on Amazon says he goes to Cuba but his cover is an American businessman, which is impossible because of the American embargo, right? When Ernest Borgnine is kidnapped by...someone, Brandon Lee goes to...somewhere else to try to find him with the help of a baby doll-voiced woman who claims to be Ernest Borgnine's daughter.
Wherever they go has a desert and palm trees and stuff and yet there are also people speaking Spanish. Maybe it's supposed to be Morocco or Algeria? I don't know. It's one of the few times when a movie really needs to put the location on the screen since there aren't any easily recognizable landmarks. Which is probably because this was made on the cheap by a German production company.
The fights are pretty lame and the bad guys are a hodge-podge of Germans, Cubans, and British Russians that you really have no idea what the hell is supposed to be going on. And where the hell is the laser?
I do feel a little bad laughing at this since Brandon Lee died so tragically, but it is that bad. At least he died making an actually good movie. That's something. Here, enjoy the theme song played about 10,000 times during the movie.
Laserblast: Unlike Laser Mission, this actually has a laser! And really cheesy effects, especially the crappy claymation aliens who speak in gibberish without subtitles.
The "story" is that an alien crashes on Earth with his laser blaster. The above-mentioned crappy-looking aliens kill him but inadvertently leave the gun behind. So a teenager named Billy finds the gun and starts using it to get revenge on some bullies and cops hassling him. But when he uses it it turns his face green (but not his hair) and this chunk of metal forms on his chest. At one point he hilariously shoots a sign that simply reads "Star Wars." Because this movie was clearly going to replace Star Wars in the hearts and minds of people, right? Yeah, right.
He's going on a rampage in his California hometown that for some reason suddenly looks like a 40s New York set when the crappy aliens reappear and kill him. The end. Um, yay? So kids if you ever find a laser gun in the desert, don't use it! Now you know...and knowing is half the battle!
This was a MST3K episode notable because it was the last on Comedy Central. Since they weren't sure they would get picked up somewhere else it was written as a series finale. Dr. Forrester releases the Satellite of Love, which winds up careening through space. In one intermission sketch Mike dons a Captain Janeway costume to steer the ship away from a black hole. In the end the crew reaches the edge of the universe and turn themselves into pure energy. Meanwhile in an end riffing on 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dr. Forrester sees glimpses of his future self and then turns into a baby again. It was the final appearance of Trace Beaulieu as Dr. Forrester and Crow T Robot on the show.
Sadly Kim Milford, the "star" of this movie died tragically in 1988 so I guess there's a depressing additional theme to this entry.
Monday, April 13, 2020
#AtoZChallenge Kung-Fu Fighting Everywhere!
Has this ever happened to you: you're driving to the airport and all the sudden your car is surrounded by ninjas on motorcycles? I know, what a pain, right?
Seriously, the funny thing about the Rifftrax movies in this entry is how kung-fu fighting can happen pretty much anywhere at anytime for any reason: on the road to the airport, in a suburban Virginia shopping plaza, or even at a fast food restaurant.
Miami Connection: The grandmaster of all these movies is this cheesy 1986 "classic." It features a group of young men at the University of Central Florida (in Orlando, not Miami) who play in a crappy synth rock band called Dragon Sound. Their leader is a Korean tae kwon do master named Mark who is barely intelligible. (It's hilarious when he says, "Listen to me" in heavily accented English and then you can barely understand what the hell he's saying.) The lone girl in the band has a brother who doesn't approve of her relationship to a member of the band so he and his gang hassle the band and finally kidnap one of the band members. When that guy is killed, his friend who's head of a gang of cocaine-stealing, motorcycle-riding ninjas in Miami, goes after the guys. This leads to three members of the band being stopped on the road to the airport by the gang of ninjas. To which one guy is like, "Ugh. Ninjas." Like this a totally normal thing that happens like geese crossing the road or something.
This movie is one of those that's so bat shit crazy that it's hilarious. And the gratuitous fight scenes are meticulously and yet still badly choreographed. Throw in the bad synth rock and it's a delight of 80s movie excess.
Samurai Cop: There's more gun play and sword play than kung-fu fighting but there's still some. Most of this is like a really bad ripoff of the Lethal Weapon movies that ends up even a worse parody than Loaded Weapon 1.
The eponymous "Samurai Cop" is a long-haired moron from San Diego who transfers to LA to help fight the Asian gangs in the area, though he's such an idiot he can't even pronounce the surname "Fujiyama." He's quite the "samurai" isn't he? The lead henchmen of the evil "katana gang" is the beefy, huge-faced Robert Z'Dar.
There's plenty of gratuitous violence in a restaurant parking lot, a hospital, a photographer's studio, a policewoman's kitchen, and finally at a cabin. Badly choreographed fights, lame car chases, and poor dubbing that causes actor's voices to periodically sound completely different are all hallmarks of this ridiculous action movie.
Maybe because of this infamous Rifftrax episode there was actually a straight-to-video sequel made in 2015 with Tommy Wiseau of The Room as the bad guy.
Honor and Glory: I consider this a spiritual sequel to Miami Connection in that while it's not the same actors or characters or locations it's made with the same corny excess of kung-fu. All it needs is some bad synth rock.
To get it started off running in Hong Kong (still under British control then) an agent is just going down the hallway when Cynthia Rothrock greets him with some kung-fu fighting. As one does, of course. Halfway across the world her sister is doing a news report in a parking lot when a black woman throws a Coke can at her and then tries to stab her to death because the reporter ran some negative stories about her father, a now-former senator. The reporter uses some self-defense moves to quickly disarm the woman and then...goes to the airport to pick up her sister. It's hilarious how chill her and her camera crew are about her almost being murdered. So does that happen a lot?
Meanwhile there's an evil bank president who's trying to buy the trigger for a nuclear weapon to sell to some Arabs for...reasons. The bank president is pretty buff and at one point kickboxes a guy to death. Because those are skills a bank president needs, right?
One hilarious fight scene the background alternates between a house and next to a highway as I guess they couldn't get a permit to reshoot the scene in front of the house, so just shoot it in some random spot nearby. Seamless! Later in a warehouse you see a Pepsi machine and sometimes the "Pepsi" part of the logo is visible and sometimes it's crossed out with tape. That attention to detail is what really makes it great.
Though it's the early 90s the reporter uses a broom to pick up her phone while meditating in her hammock instead of just getting a cordless phone. And then she insinuates a guy is blind just because he's wearing sunglasses--a guy who just casually walks into her backyard to surprise her while she's working out. Because that's what you do, right?
The whole thing is so utterly ludicrous that it's endearing in a way.
No Retreat, No Surrender: After his karate instructor father is run out of town by the mob taking over the lucrative karate studio industry, a boy is forced to move from Southern California toSouthern California Seattle. And then with the help of Bruce Lee's ghost (played by a guy who looks nothing like Bruce Lee) the kid takes revenge by defeating one of the gangsters (a then-little known Jean-Claude van Damme) in a karate tournament.
There's not as much gratuitous violence as the previous movies in this entry, but still a bit of it like when the kid goes to a fast food restaurant and has to fight a fat bully and his minions with the help of his break-dancing black friend--because they needed to work in another crappy 80s fad along with the karate. And it's a pretty funny concept that the mob would kickbox someone almost to death to obtain his karate studio in a shopping plaza. I mean maybe they can use it to launder some money but it hardly seems worth the trouble.
Sadly this movie is only occasionally on Amazon Prime so I can't watch it as often as the others.
Fist of Fury: This Rifftrax is one of my least favorites because it's also one of the longest at about 2 hours long. It's an extremely dull 1972 Bruce Lee movie. It's something about the teacher of a martial arts school is killed and so Bruce Lee seeks revenge. The movie is supposed to be in the 1910s and yet the clothes, hair, and accessories are all current. I mean I'm pretty sure they didn't have plastic-framed glasses in the 1910s. They didn't have plastic, right? It's also badly dubbed and ends with Bruce Lee presumably being shot by a bunch of police. (And as the riffers say, all his friends behind him are probably also going to be shot too.) Hooray?
Kill & Kill Again: This is a South African movie from the early 80s about a cult of brainwashed people who kidnapped a scientist who invented some kind of fuel source that will somehow lead to them ruling the world. The only one who can stop them is some long-haired guy who constantly has his shirt open like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. He recruits a team of idiots to kung-fu fight the bad guy and his main henchman, the Optimus.
I was disappointed in the lack of Optimus Prime references--too obvious?--but otherwise it's pretty funny. And the funniest part is at the end they find a parrot that crashes their car to potentially kill or maim everyone. Hilarious.
Kill or Be Killed: This was actually the precursor to Kill & Kill Again, but it doesn't matter that it was released on Rifftrax later than the second movie because other than the main character being in both, there's no connection between them.
So in this our "hero" is hired to be part of a karate team at a Nazi's extremely fake white castle. But he decides he wants out, not because his boss is a Nazi, but because his boss fired his girlfriend. They clumsily escape into the desert and when their VW Beetle dies, they tear it apart to the frame and rig up a sail to let the wind blow them to safety. But the girlfriend (who's sexy but has the unattractive name Olga) is almost immediately kidnapped back to the castle.
So our "hero" joins a rival karate team funded by some Japanese guy to fight the Nazi's team. And a lot of badly choreographed karate and lame car chases ensue. It ends by going to first-person shooter mode as the Nazi picks up a gun to shoot...himself? The good guy? His midget henchman? I guess it was probably himself since there was a sequel. Hooray.
Hey I found an MST3K episode for this entry! Master Ninja I: Imagine if Kung-Fu and the A-Team had a really, really stupid, cheaply made baby and that's what this "movie" is. I say "movie" because really it's a couple of episodes of a TV show mashed together. It starts off with something about an airport run by Claude Akins and his daughter (a young Demi Moore) who are hassled by a local businessman played by Clu Gulager until this B-team stops them. Then it shifts halfway to a club run by an old tap dance movie star and his disabled daughter (a young nobody) who are hassled by some Japanese gang. And in both episodes the ninja is hassled by another ninja who wants to kill him for leaving the ninja family to look for his daughter. In both cases one of Dick van Patten's kids and a ninja played by Lee van Cleef have to help them from some local thugs. The stunts especially are pretty funny as van Cleef was almost 60 so you know it's not him jumping around or walking on wires or any of that shit. As for Tim van Patten, he got his looks from his mother--and the talent too. Apparently this show had 13 episodes and was called The Master; four of the episodes were mashed into Master Ninja I and Master Ninja II. You know what's great though is you have two guys with "Van" in their names and they ride around in a van! That would have been a better show: Vans, starring Lee van Cleef and Tim van Patten as fictionalized versions of themselves riding around in a van to get work. Maybe the van could have talked like KITT and Tim van Patten could have worn Vans sneakers.
And the follow-up to Master Ninja I: Master Ninja II! It's pretty much the same thing: two episodes of The Master wedged together into a "movie." The first episode has the Vans helping a young Crystal Bernard of Wings fame start a union in a small town. The other teams the Master up with shortest-tenured James Bond, George Lazenby. He plays some kind of government agent trying to help some hostages. He even gets to drive the cool Aston-Martin from the Bond movies. I guess by 1984 that was how low the Bond franchise had fallen. Meanwhile Tim van Patten does...something. Ostensibly the series was about the Master finding his long-lost daughter, but neither of these episodes brings that any closer to fruition.
After about the second season MST3K would end every episode with a shot from the movie. In this case it was a shot of Lee van Cleef caressing Tim van Patten's gerbil with a super creepy look on his face.
Seriously, the funny thing about the Rifftrax movies in this entry is how kung-fu fighting can happen pretty much anywhere at anytime for any reason: on the road to the airport, in a suburban Virginia shopping plaza, or even at a fast food restaurant.
Miami Connection: The grandmaster of all these movies is this cheesy 1986 "classic." It features a group of young men at the University of Central Florida (in Orlando, not Miami) who play in a crappy synth rock band called Dragon Sound. Their leader is a Korean tae kwon do master named Mark who is barely intelligible. (It's hilarious when he says, "Listen to me" in heavily accented English and then you can barely understand what the hell he's saying.) The lone girl in the band has a brother who doesn't approve of her relationship to a member of the band so he and his gang hassle the band and finally kidnap one of the band members. When that guy is killed, his friend who's head of a gang of cocaine-stealing, motorcycle-riding ninjas in Miami, goes after the guys. This leads to three members of the band being stopped on the road to the airport by the gang of ninjas. To which one guy is like, "Ugh. Ninjas." Like this a totally normal thing that happens like geese crossing the road or something.
This movie is one of those that's so bat shit crazy that it's hilarious. And the gratuitous fight scenes are meticulously and yet still badly choreographed. Throw in the bad synth rock and it's a delight of 80s movie excess.
Samurai Cop: There's more gun play and sword play than kung-fu fighting but there's still some. Most of this is like a really bad ripoff of the Lethal Weapon movies that ends up even a worse parody than Loaded Weapon 1.
The eponymous "Samurai Cop" is a long-haired moron from San Diego who transfers to LA to help fight the Asian gangs in the area, though he's such an idiot he can't even pronounce the surname "Fujiyama." He's quite the "samurai" isn't he? The lead henchmen of the evil "katana gang" is the beefy, huge-faced Robert Z'Dar.
There's plenty of gratuitous violence in a restaurant parking lot, a hospital, a photographer's studio, a policewoman's kitchen, and finally at a cabin. Badly choreographed fights, lame car chases, and poor dubbing that causes actor's voices to periodically sound completely different are all hallmarks of this ridiculous action movie.
Maybe because of this infamous Rifftrax episode there was actually a straight-to-video sequel made in 2015 with Tommy Wiseau of The Room as the bad guy.
Honor and Glory: I consider this a spiritual sequel to Miami Connection in that while it's not the same actors or characters or locations it's made with the same corny excess of kung-fu. All it needs is some bad synth rock.
To get it started off running in Hong Kong (still under British control then) an agent is just going down the hallway when Cynthia Rothrock greets him with some kung-fu fighting. As one does, of course. Halfway across the world her sister is doing a news report in a parking lot when a black woman throws a Coke can at her and then tries to stab her to death because the reporter ran some negative stories about her father, a now-former senator. The reporter uses some self-defense moves to quickly disarm the woman and then...goes to the airport to pick up her sister. It's hilarious how chill her and her camera crew are about her almost being murdered. So does that happen a lot?
Meanwhile there's an evil bank president who's trying to buy the trigger for a nuclear weapon to sell to some Arabs for...reasons. The bank president is pretty buff and at one point kickboxes a guy to death. Because those are skills a bank president needs, right?
One hilarious fight scene the background alternates between a house and next to a highway as I guess they couldn't get a permit to reshoot the scene in front of the house, so just shoot it in some random spot nearby. Seamless! Later in a warehouse you see a Pepsi machine and sometimes the "Pepsi" part of the logo is visible and sometimes it's crossed out with tape. That attention to detail is what really makes it great.
Though it's the early 90s the reporter uses a broom to pick up her phone while meditating in her hammock instead of just getting a cordless phone. And then she insinuates a guy is blind just because he's wearing sunglasses--a guy who just casually walks into her backyard to surprise her while she's working out. Because that's what you do, right?
The whole thing is so utterly ludicrous that it's endearing in a way.
No Retreat, No Surrender: After his karate instructor father is run out of town by the mob taking over the lucrative karate studio industry, a boy is forced to move from Southern California to
There's not as much gratuitous violence as the previous movies in this entry, but still a bit of it like when the kid goes to a fast food restaurant and has to fight a fat bully and his minions with the help of his break-dancing black friend--because they needed to work in another crappy 80s fad along with the karate. And it's a pretty funny concept that the mob would kickbox someone almost to death to obtain his karate studio in a shopping plaza. I mean maybe they can use it to launder some money but it hardly seems worth the trouble.
Sadly this movie is only occasionally on Amazon Prime so I can't watch it as often as the others.
Fist of Fury: This Rifftrax is one of my least favorites because it's also one of the longest at about 2 hours long. It's an extremely dull 1972 Bruce Lee movie. It's something about the teacher of a martial arts school is killed and so Bruce Lee seeks revenge. The movie is supposed to be in the 1910s and yet the clothes, hair, and accessories are all current. I mean I'm pretty sure they didn't have plastic-framed glasses in the 1910s. They didn't have plastic, right? It's also badly dubbed and ends with Bruce Lee presumably being shot by a bunch of police. (And as the riffers say, all his friends behind him are probably also going to be shot too.) Hooray?
Kill & Kill Again: This is a South African movie from the early 80s about a cult of brainwashed people who kidnapped a scientist who invented some kind of fuel source that will somehow lead to them ruling the world. The only one who can stop them is some long-haired guy who constantly has his shirt open like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. He recruits a team of idiots to kung-fu fight the bad guy and his main henchman, the Optimus.
I was disappointed in the lack of Optimus Prime references--too obvious?--but otherwise it's pretty funny. And the funniest part is at the end they find a parrot that crashes their car to potentially kill or maim everyone. Hilarious.
Kill or Be Killed: This was actually the precursor to Kill & Kill Again, but it doesn't matter that it was released on Rifftrax later than the second movie because other than the main character being in both, there's no connection between them.
So in this our "hero" is hired to be part of a karate team at a Nazi's extremely fake white castle. But he decides he wants out, not because his boss is a Nazi, but because his boss fired his girlfriend. They clumsily escape into the desert and when their VW Beetle dies, they tear it apart to the frame and rig up a sail to let the wind blow them to safety. But the girlfriend (who's sexy but has the unattractive name Olga) is almost immediately kidnapped back to the castle.
So our "hero" joins a rival karate team funded by some Japanese guy to fight the Nazi's team. And a lot of badly choreographed karate and lame car chases ensue. It ends by going to first-person shooter mode as the Nazi picks up a gun to shoot...himself? The good guy? His midget henchman? I guess it was probably himself since there was a sequel. Hooray.
Hey I found an MST3K episode for this entry! Master Ninja I: Imagine if Kung-Fu and the A-Team had a really, really stupid, cheaply made baby and that's what this "movie" is. I say "movie" because really it's a couple of episodes of a TV show mashed together. It starts off with something about an airport run by Claude Akins and his daughter (a young Demi Moore) who are hassled by a local businessman played by Clu Gulager until this B-team stops them. Then it shifts halfway to a club run by an old tap dance movie star and his disabled daughter (a young nobody) who are hassled by some Japanese gang. And in both episodes the ninja is hassled by another ninja who wants to kill him for leaving the ninja family to look for his daughter. In both cases one of Dick van Patten's kids and a ninja played by Lee van Cleef have to help them from some local thugs. The stunts especially are pretty funny as van Cleef was almost 60 so you know it's not him jumping around or walking on wires or any of that shit. As for Tim van Patten, he got his looks from his mother--and the talent too. Apparently this show had 13 episodes and was called The Master; four of the episodes were mashed into Master Ninja I and Master Ninja II. You know what's great though is you have two guys with "Van" in their names and they ride around in a van! That would have been a better show: Vans, starring Lee van Cleef and Tim van Patten as fictionalized versions of themselves riding around in a van to get work. Maybe the van could have talked like KITT and Tim van Patten could have worn Vans sneakers.
And the follow-up to Master Ninja I: Master Ninja II! It's pretty much the same thing: two episodes of The Master wedged together into a "movie." The first episode has the Vans helping a young Crystal Bernard of Wings fame start a union in a small town. The other teams the Master up with shortest-tenured James Bond, George Lazenby. He plays some kind of government agent trying to help some hostages. He even gets to drive the cool Aston-Martin from the Bond movies. I guess by 1984 that was how low the Bond franchise had fallen. Meanwhile Tim van Patten does...something. Ostensibly the series was about the Master finding his long-lost daughter, but neither of these episodes brings that any closer to fruition.
After about the second season MST3K would end every episode with a shot from the movie. In this case it was a shot of Lee van Cleef caressing Tim van Patten's gerbil with a super creepy look on his face.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
LinkWithin
