Day Three Hundred and Twenty-six - MST3K: The Beginning of the End, "Yay! More Riffs on Netflix!"

It's hard to imagine that Peter Graves was in a giant grasshopper movie back in the 50's.

Well, wait. Actually, it isn't that hard to imagine Peter Graves in a giant grasshopper movie in the 50's. After all, his Airplane co-star Leslie Nielsen was similarly in another 50's era B-movie scifi classic: Forbidden Planet.

Still, I think Leslie got the better end of the deal... and Graves more than made up for this drek during his tenure as Mr.Phelps on the Mission:Impossible series. Cheese, to be sure, but classy cheese.

Anyways, The Beginning of the End has Graves staring as a bug scientist who is assisting a deaf-mute plant scientist in growing overly large strawberries and tomatoes in the hopes of ending world hunger. Sure, you can't eat their efforts yet, what with the fact that they're fertilized with radioactive manure (no, seriously), but they have high hopes for the future... if it wasn't for the fact that some of the locusts that fed off of the giant plants are themselves muting and turning into giant, town-destroying people eaters!

RUN! It's the INVASION OF THE GIANT GRASSHOPPERS! Somebody find those industrious ants to hurry along the coming of winter and freeze the evil, lazy grasshoppers out! No pity food for you this year, slacker!

It's sad... I had such high hopes for the intrepid female reporter lead, but she takes a side-seat to Peter Graves' scientist role almost the moment he shows up twenty minutes into the film. What's the point of setting up an independent, smart, adventurous woman if you're just going to foist her off in favor of a stereotyped dominant male? It's depressing how easily they fall for each other, embracing tenderly whenever things look grim in the last half hour in between moments of bravado and SCIENCE on behalf of Graves.

Harrumph.

This is an early Mike episode and you can tell that he's still trying to find his way around his main host duties. Still, even his weak start is better than most of Joel's best, but that's a matter of opinion and taste. I'm sure there are plenty of Joel fans who think I have none of those, so there you go.

There's not much to say about the inbetweeners as they're pretty lame (also, my opinion), The Mads try to combat the impression that they're sissy boys who are worried about their figures and waiting for women-oriented talk shows to come on by throwing on "the game" and boxing each other. Not all that funny, really. And then there's Tom Servo's stand up comedy routine that doesn't even make me crack a smile, and Crow's fifteen act play about Peter Graves which is just Peter Graves narrating his life while letting you know every other line that he's Peter Graves. Peter Graves? Peter Graves. Yes, there IS such a thing as too on the nose and that skit managed it.

While it's not the best episode of MST3k, it's not terrible. I'd certainly watch it over Doctor Who (and DID). By the by, happy early 50th anniversary, Doc. Maybe I'll watch you again tomorrow and finish up that Cybermen two-parter from yesterday.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day Two Hundred and Thirty-seven - MST3K: Soultaker, "Your Mom is WEIRD!"

This has to be my favorite episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000... and my sister's too, I think.

During the tape circulating days, this was the one my sister and I watched the most, then it took forever to find it on DVD because Rhino was only barely putting box sets out and they did so in random order. When it did release, though, you can be sure that I was there as soon as the stores opened that Tuesday (which is when most new releases have their street date in America) and bought that box immediately.

I've forced my friends to watch Soultaker so much that I've literally burned them out on MST3K, such that I'm immediately shouted down whenever I suggest kicking back with Mike and the Bots on a Saturday night. Sure, it might have something to do with the fact that they're all in serious relationships and I'm sitting here alone with my Netflix, but the world (and my self-esteem) may never know.

And, now, it's on the Instant Stream. I think that my social life, what little there was left of it, is doomed.

Anyways, on to the movie, itself....

Soultaker is a b-movie from 1990 "starring" Joe Estevez (brother to Martin Sheen) as a Grim Reaper who must harvest the souls of the recently dead else they be lost to the void. To do so, he pulls their ectoplasm into tiny glowstick rings, all while doing a horrible Johnny Cash impersonation (not really, but the Guys point it out and it's hard not to laugh and nod).

He's just the villain, actually, as the true main characters are Zack and Natalie, a pair of low-rent star-crossed lovers who are more Saved by the Bell than Romeo and Juliet. It seems that their souls are up for the taking after getting into a car wreck thanks to their frenemy Brad's vehicular homicide. Their spirits ejected from their injured bodies, they're left confused when Joe Estevez begins stalking the pair and their friends... and re-killing each in turn.

I don't know how it works as Soultaker is so full of plotholes that it deserved to be given the MSTie treatment and, like any episode of the show, the glory isn't in the movie, itself, but the jokes Mike and the Bots lay on top of it. Lines like, "If I die, I'm going to die eating string cheese and Fruitopia," and, "I want the soul of that stuffed bunny in the window."

The jokes often revolve around the financial disparity between Zack and Natalie, as well as Vivian Schillings passing resemblance to Tonya Harding. Hearing Crow mock Natalie's frustration with a petulant "but my SKATE BROKE. WAA!" makes for instant, uncontrollable fits of laughter on my part... even watching it alone and sober.

Natalie is played by Vivian Schilling who wrote the film... which makes her awesome and terrible at the same time. It's an admirable effort for a straight to video b-movie, as it managed to pull it not one (Joe Estevez) but two (Robert Z'dar) terrible movie staples from the 80's and 90's. I think it only could've been better (or, perhaps, worse) if they'd gotten Traci Lords and Jeffrey Combs to come along for the ride.

I think I should make a quick mention of the elephant in the room of this film, Robert Z'dar. I know, it's mean, but the guy's face is ginormous! I don't feel quite so bad as Mike and the Bots waste no time riffing on that fact, but every time I laugh I still feel a bit guilty. Another of his appearances made MST3K as well, Future War, and he's just as huge.

It should also be noted that, during the inbetweeners, MST's original host (and creator) Joel Hodgson makes a cameo appearance (as his character Joel Robinson) along with old villain TV's Frank (played by Frank Coniff). This was the first episode of the LAST season of MST3K and it was nice to see them both after they split years ago. My only regret is that Trace Beaulieu didn't make an appearance as an alt-universe Crow/Dr.Clayton Forrester so the whole gang could be back together.

Ah, well....

Soultaker is one of the best terribad movies that MST3K has had the privilege of riffing and that I've had the privilege of watching... over and over and over again. I recommend it, certainly, but mileage may vary (as my friends would no doubt testify to).

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day One Hundred - Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie, "Isn't the fact that it's Universal make it International?"

Wow... 100 days of Netflix.

It feels like I started only yesterday with Day One and Hardware... but also like I've been doing this forever. That's the thing with memory: it exists in both states at once, a kind of quantum uncertainty as our time-sense flickers back and forth.

I'm also living in a weird sort of dual state where I'm both burnt out on media and loving every second of the old favorites and new material that Netflix has brought to me with their streaming package.

In any case, Day One Hundred rolled around and I began to feel the need to be meta... so I chose the only theatrical release of my second favorite television show of all time, Mystery Science Theater.

(The first is, of course, Pushing Daisies which is, sadly, not available on streaming).

Back to the matter at hand... sure, the closing trio of MST3k (Mike, Bill, and Kevin) have been doing one of its two spiritual successors (Rifftrax) live every year, broadcasting in specially streaming theaters across the nation, but it's just not the same without the shadows of Mike (or Joel), Crow, and Tom Servo taking up the bottom third of the screen and adding the occasional physical dynamic to the commentary comedy.

MST3k: The Movie takes most of the silver age cast (including Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Trace Beaulieu) and streamlines the premise of the television series in order to widen the audience and generally introduce the characters and their situation to movie-goers who might not have had the privilege of knowing about MST3k's days on Comedy Central and KTMA.

Trapped in space, Mike Nelson and his Robot Pals (Tom Servo, Crow, and Gypsy) are forced to watch bad movies by their captor, Dr.Clayton Forrester... a would be mad scientist. All of that is just window dressing, though, as the point of the movie (and the series) is a couple of guys getting together and riffing on the cheesy scifi, adventure, and horror films of yesteryear.

MST3k:The Movie chose to riff the classic scifi film This Island Earth, a silly little feature by today's standards that actually had decent effects for its era and tried to rise above its cheesy pulp fiction plot (not very successfully).

Let's just say that it's no Forbidden Planet.

Set in the post-war Americana of the 50's where scifi was all about the Other and the Atomic Age, This Island Earth on its own reminds me of those early comics that played fast and loose with credulity, relying on the most fantastic things they could put to paper and screen.

With the guys adding flavor via their meta-humor (about Meta-Luna, no less~), the movie is pulled up by its dated bootstraps and becomes golden once more. Everything from high-brow political humor to Trek jokes to the crass recurring fart gag, there's something for everyone in the jokes that Mike and the Bots casually lay over This Island Earth's original audio track.

The films, both old and new, are certainly rough... and the added budget of a whole new set and higher quality film and cameras kind of ruins the nostalgic, homespun feel that the series brought. To be honest, that was a lot of the appeal, that notion that a couple of folks with a peanuts budget could put together a consistently fun public-access style show. Seeing it brought up to the cinema level loses all that.

Still, MST3k: The Movie is one of the greatest geek films of all time both for its actual content and for the faction of riffing geekdom that it represents. My only regret is that my mother absolutely hates MST and the show (and my love for it) has been a point of contention between us since I first started watching it in the 90's. It's a small bone to pick, but it's there... lying dormant until my reflexes kick in on movie night and I utter an off-color joke.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~