Stay A Home Festival Bonus FIlm: MST3K TIME OF THE APES

Stay At Home Festival Bonus Film: MST3K OUTLAW OF GOR

Stay At Home Fest Bonus Film: MT3K EARTH VS THE SPIDER

Stay at Home Festival Bonus Film: MST3K HERCULES

Stay At Home Fest Bonus Film: MST3K MOON ZERO TWO

Stay AT Home Fest Bonus Film MST3K THE LOST CONTINENT

Stay At Home Fest Bonus Film: MST3K THE DEADLY MANTIS

Stay AT Home Fest Bonus Film: MST3K MOLE PEOPLE

Stay At Home Fest Bonus Film: MST3K THING THAT COULDN'T DIE

And now the Stay At Home Fest spends a week on the Satellite of Love with the Joel, Mike and the bots.

EEGAH (1962) has been given a 4K restoration and it hits home video Tuesday

EEGAH (which is some times EEGAH!! and some times with the subtitle THE NAME WRITTEN IN BLOOD), the name sends chills up and down the spine of any movie lover on the planet. Good movies lovers hate it’s creaky low budget quality while bad movie lovers love it for the same reason. It is a legendary bad film that Mystery Science Theater 3000 riffed in the original run of the show and which the live version of the most recent incarnation took on the road. Now the film has been lovingly restored in 4K and put out on Blu-ray and DVD by Film Detective who has guaranteed ticket sales by including the original MST3K show plus some neat extras.

The film is the story of some a young woman and her father who run across and are kidnapped by a caveman wandering in the desert.  Instead of being frightened by him she cleans him up, shaves his beard and cuts his hair. Her "boyfriend" tries to find and rescuer and mayhem results.

The film was made by Arch Hall Sr, a man legendary in some film circles as a man of mixed talent. He produced and wrote the films under fake names. His films, which he largely produced via his own production company were all drive-in fare. They were often starred his son Arch Hall Jr, who was, given the right role better than the material. By no means are the films the Halls turned out great works of art, but all are better than the “bad” movie labels they have been saddled with in some circles. Films such as THE SADIST,  are nasty pieces of work that are much better than you would think or their mainstream reputation (assuming the mainstream writers even know about them). They have a kick that mainstream Hollywood films don’t have, which explains why the films are still being discussed while other bigger budgeted and heavily promoted films from the same period are now on histories trash heap.

As I said above normally Hall Sr only produced, wrote and acted in his films but he was forced to step in with EEGAH and take the reins and the result is an okay little film. Admittedly it isn’t the best, and seems downright awful when seen by an audience of one seated at home. However when seen in a car full of people at a drive in or in a crowded theater where the audience can be part of the fun it’s quality increases. Presently the main reason the film known is a legendary episode of  MST3K where the interplay of Joel and the bots helps the reach its maximum potential. I say this as someone who has seen the film any number of times over the years and I find it always plays best when seen with an audience or riffed.

To be completely honest I don’t know why anyone would want to restore the film with 4K restoration but it takes all kinds. Nothing against the people involved but 4K is the sort of expensive restoration that big huge Hollywood legends like LAWRENCE OF ARABIA  or BEN HUR  get, EEGAH is not in that league.  That said the transfer itself is absolutely stunning and having seen it now both as part of the live MST3K show from a couple years back and on the disc I can’t imagine the film ever looking this good even in its original run. I love that the Blu-ray includes the MST3K episode which is an absolute blast.

The Blu-ray also has a couple of great extras. The first is Joel Hodgeson talking about the film(it runs runs 7 minutes). While I am mixed on Joel’s time as host of MST3K (some episodes are great, some are okay) I have always loved listening to Joel talk about the bad films he loves. Listening to him over the years I’ve always gotten a better sense of the deep feelings of respect that allowed him to chide the films he and his fellows riffed. The other extra is Arch Hall Jr talking about the film for about fifteen minutes and is equally good.

The new restoration hits stores on November 26th and is a must for either fans of the movie or for MST3Kies who are always watching out for snakes.

the RIFF TRAX MST3K reunion has everyone

I just got this press release from the Rifftrax people:

CONFIRMED: This is not an April Fools Joke.  Hence the reason for this email.

For RiffTrax's 10th Anniversary we are putting together a LIVE Mystery Science Theater 3000 Reunion including the entire principal cast of the beloved TV show! 

Michael J. Nelson (Mike Nelson)

Kevin Murphy (Tom Servo), 

Bill Corbett (Crow T. Robot),

Frank Conniff (TV’s Frank), 

Trace Beaulieu (Dr. Clayton Forrester, Crow T. Robot), 

Mary Jo Pehl (Pearl Forrester)

Bridget Nelson (Nuveena, Mr. B Natural)

and just announced today, the creator and original MST3K host Joel Hodgson, plus the new host of the revived program Jonah Ray.

Our Kickstarter made this all possible http://RiffTrax.com/Kickstarter  Still time for great rewards.

The RiffTrax LIVE: MST3K Reunion show will be broadcast live into movie theaters nationwide June 28th.  Tickets available April 15th http://RiffTrax.com/MST3KReunion

Next Up:

RiffTrax Live: Time Chasers May 5th http://RiffTrax.com/tickets

Encore May 17th http://RiffTrax.com/encore

Thoughts on the restarting of Mystery Science 3000

I have to make a quick personal comment about the potential restart of Mystery Science 3000.

For those who don’t know Joel Hodgson has announced he is doing a Kickstarter to restart MST3K. You can find details and give here.

I spent a chunk of my day trying to run down who was involved because the Kickstarter page only lists Joel. After not getting anywhere I ran across the Entertainment Weekly article where Joel states this is his baby and that the other people we associated with the show may come on to write and cameo with the show having a new cast. Mike Nelson explained on his Facebook page that he has nothing to do with it and how he makes no money from MST3K.

I mention this because I know some people were going to determine their involvement financially by how many of the group get involved.

Personally this being an all Joel thing makes we wary. I’ve seen stuff he’s done and liked it but I’ve seen more that really missed the mark. For my money when he is balanced by the other MST3K people (say Cinematic Titanic) he produces great stuff but left to his own devices he’s incredibly hit or miss.

Additionally while I know that while Mike and the rest didn't come up with the idea for MST3K and all of that, I kind of feel they really should take part and have a stake in it. Say what you will about MST3K Mike was a more connected to the show writing it before he took over from Joel.Outside of Kevin Murphy he is the longest tenured writer, missing only the first two seasons.

Taking things further as much as MST3K is a cult thing, if it wasn't for Mike, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy doing RIFFTRAX  and keeping movie riffing in to forefront, there would be less demand for MST3K now, RIFFTRAX is the current gateway drug.

This isn't a who do you prefer as host argument, this to me is something more akin to who made the show run? It was in large part due to Mike whose work made some of the later Joel episodes so good. I think Mike and Bill and Kevin should be there. Do I expect that to happen?  No.

Will I back it? Yes I will but not at the level if the whole band was back together.  Frankly without a good team of writers I don't know if Joel will be able to sustain more than a few episodes of the show

Should you back it? That's something you'll have to determine for yourself.

DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY: TERROR OF FRANKENSTEIN (2015) Fantasia 2015

The "director and writer" of TERROR OF FRANKENSTEIN do a commentary track for a film that ended with murder and tragedy.

The minds behind ROOM 237 took an old, and pretty good, adaption of Frankenstein and created a new commentary track where the director and the screenwriter come together to talk about the film and end up talking about the "real life" horror that ensued during and after filming. Its an extremely clever idea and for the most part works as an interesting experiment. I'm not sure it gets past the clever idea stage.

The problem for me is it never feels natural, it feels scripted all the way through. I've heard enough commentary tracks to know that some that try to be off the cuff are scripted, and DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY  has that down for the early bits as Clu Gallagher's director tries to remain on point against Zack Norman's onslaught. However as the conversation goes more and more pear shaped the two continue to sound like they are reading off a script, it never really sounds like two guys talking, its two guys reading lines of dialog. For me it was like watching a horror movie while I had on adequately acted radio show on at the same time.

As an idea I love this film a great deal, especially when you have Leon Vitali star of the original film come in for some mind bending meta moments. But, not to beat a dead horse, the problem is the talk never seems real. It never crosses the threshold into even its own reality.The result is that while we're interested in the "behind the scenes" story there is never enough suspense generated to really thrill us.  There is no horror. I was no more engaged than I am in an episode of a really good TV mystery series or cable true crime documentary.

This isn't to say that the film is bad. Its not. Rather I think the idea behind it is greater than the execution. Definitely worth seeing at some point but not something you need to rush out and see.

Bill Corbett talks the Tribeca RiffTrax performance of THE ROOM

Bill Corbett, Kevin Murphy and Mike Nelson

Three weeks ago I spoke with Bill Corbett one of the minds behind RiffTrax about the upcoming appearance and riffing of THE ROOM at the Tribeca Film Festival. For me this was the opportunity to talk with someone whose work I’ve admired for decades since Corbett one of the people who did Mystery Science Theater before RiffTrax. A book and comics author in his own right, Corbett has also written plays which have been performed all over the world. He’s also a very nice man.

What follows is pretty much the conversation that I had with Corbett. Our talk was brief. I was offered ten minutes and we went a little bit past that. The talk is focused firmly on Tribeca and RiffTrax and didn’t really waiver from there. I am aware that some of these question and answers are not new to longtime fans of Corbett or RiffTrax, but I wasn’t aiming to reinvent the wheel, I didn’t have the time, I simply wanted to put together a piece that would act an introduction to for those who don’t know RiffTrax and be a good warm up for those who are looking to go to the show Friday night. I think that what follows fills the bill.

(For more information on RiffTrax products, Fathom Events or the Tribeca screening click on the links embedded in the names)

STEVE(S): Why has it taken so long for you to come to New York to do a live show?

BILL (B):The answer is we really don't do live shows often at all except the ones that we broadcast through Fathom Events, So we don't really tour. We do shows from Nashville three or four times a year. The reason we're doing them there is Fathom Events hooked us up with the production company in Nashville when we started out and we kind of have a protocol with them and they have their staff there and we have a theater that works there. It's more or less a three or four times a year studio. ...But every now and then we make little exceptions when the city and the opportunity seems right-and this is one of them. And I'm really glad we're getting to New York because I'm from New York

S: I know you're from Brooklyn and I was curious if they threw you out and you couldn't come back

B: (laughing) No I think my exile is over now. I think I might have to wear a mustache and glasses. I think they'll let me in.

S:All is forgiven

B: (laughs)

S: I find it funny that you're coming to the Tribeca Film festival and you're doing a show in Chelsea some 40 blocks from Tribeca.

B: That's not our fault

S: You're better off than the Python guys, they're all the way up town some 100 blocks from Tribeca. I don't know what they did....

B: I think the Tribeca part is getting looser and looser

S:You're doing THE ROOM. Is there going to be any differences between this and the simulcast May 6

B: Probably a few. This is sort of our first go at it but when ever we do a performance we learn a little something. But I don't think there will be gigantic changes. I think the main change will be the audience will tell us what they think funny and not in each individual show and that changes quite a bit as we've learned.

S: When you do the simulcast do you and the guys and just do it or do you do a run through with an audience?

B:No, we don't,but we probably should. We just do seat of the pants. The only run through we do is just sitting around by ourselves running through the lines. But since our thing is pretty scripted,the riffing part, there's not a lot that can wrong on our end. technical stuff is another matter. We do a technical rehearsal the day of the show which is really just checking that all the mics run - it's usually about 15 minutes long and it's usually like a sound check.

S: Do you approach the live stuff differently then one of the RiffTrax say for THE AVENGERS? Do you approach the jokes differently?

B: A little bit. We've learned over the years that we have to watch to make sure our script doesn't get too dense for a live show. And I think that's now boomeranged back into out regular RiffTrax offerings. We realized that some of our early ones sound a little over crowded with jokes, which I guess is a good testament to our work ethic.But humor-wise it doesn't play well. You have to let a thing sit sometimes before you bark out another joke. So we try to make the live shows a little more leisurely and give audiences time to react and give us time to improv here and there.

I think the other thing we try to do is simplify jokes where they need them so they're not really complicated constructions either like the sentence itself or like imposing some reference on a situation that takes a couple of beats of thought. It's a bit like a run away train on a live show and you kind of have to go down to basics a little more, so we try to balance that with trying to make it not too dumb or not too obvious, to keep the thing that people like about RiffTrax is that we try to make smart jokes even when they are not sophisticated.

S: Is it hard for you to see a movie without seeing how you're going to riff it?

B: Not really if I get absorbed in it it's just the greatest thing in the world and I don't. People have been asking us for years and my answer is only when I feel like the movie is going off the rails and I'm not enjoying it or it seems dumb. I mean I never talk in the movie theater. I'm pretty puritanical about that. But watching Netflix at home with my wife I can be a little annoying...but so can she. A couple of years ago when we were having breakfast and I had been up for two hours and had coffee and was full of energy and I'm making all these quips and she said "Honey please quit riffing breakfast". I'm like "Okay" Let me dial it down and wait for work.

S: Do you find it hard not to be on or is it just the way you are constantly riffing everything?

B: No I don't find it hard because really the majority of my time, even for RiffTrax, is spent writing just like any writer, mostly by myself. We do get together eventually but these days the way we write a script is we each take a chunk and write a first go at it., a first draft and from there we smoosh it all together and see how it works. As we get closer to the day of the show we're sitting together more and seeing how the whole thing works. But a lot of the time I'm just living the life of a writer quiet and monk like.

S: How long does it take for you to put something together?

B: Well for a given movie it depends on how many writers we have working on it. It's now Mike and Kevin and I and we have two staff writers Conor Lastowka and Sean Thomason, younger guys we were lucky to find because they are such a great fit. They Keep us apprised of culture that has passed by us old farts.

But I'd say to write a first draft the better part of a week and then we have a rehearsal day where we're flagging lines, trying to make sure we don't have too many duplicate jokes. Then as we get closer we're just throwing a couple of lines overboard here and there.

Maybe 10 days from beginning of writing to recording. That's not consistent in a row days. Usually it's a staggered process

S: You have other stuff going on.

B: We do have other stuff going on so we try to record a couple of things at once just for efficiency's sake. What I mean is that the calendar isn't a straight line, one project and then one project, they kind of overlap depending on who's in town and when the recording studio is available.

S: Do you guys always go in together to record the riffing or do you do it in pieces

B; We were for a while. We all met here doing Mystery Science Theater in the Minneapolis area, but for a while Mike was in Southern California in San Diego where the RiffTrax office still is, because it was an off shoot of another company - it's a little bit long and not very interesting to explain...

S: Was it for Film Crew?

B: No it was unrelated to Film Crew. It was right after that, it was Legend Films....

S:That's the one where they colorized stuff like the Three Stooges....

B: Yea yea. They had a process for colorizing and then it became more of a 3D conversion company. RiffTrax became an increasingly odd fit for them so we've spun off into our own company. But when we were associated with them out in San Diego Kevin and I would go there periodically and Mike was sort of on the ground living there. We kind of realized that we could do it half and half rather than fly Kevin and I out there. After a while Kevin and I would record our lines here (we had a great sound editor)and Mike would do his lines solo listening to ours . But it got a little complicated and not as much fun frankly. Part of the fun is hanging around together. Now Mike moved back here so we're in the same studio.

S: You've probably been asked this before but do you have any guilt, I have a lot of friends who love RiffTrax, who can never go back and watch the movies again. They'll watch your versions of the films a couple of times and then they can't watch say the AVENGERS or the Harry Potter films because now they fill in the jokes watching them straight.

B: I haven't heard that as much as you have. Here's my feeling - if a movie is good it's bigger than us and it withstands us and even if a small percentage of people can't get our voices out of their head, and I feel sorry for them if that's true that's a horrible fate, I don't think that speaks to most people.

I just watched the AVENGERS with my kids after the RiffTrax because they're old enough now and I wanted to show them THE AVENGERS and we really enjoyed it. And it's not in my head. Maybe I'm just off loading it into other poor people who are our victims.

I also think that there is a distinction between AVENGERS and other good films we've done.

We did CASABLANCA as a lark to see if we could do a good RiffTrax of it and we all acknowledge thats a wonderful movie. We did THE WIZARD OF OZ - it's a different kind of source of humor in a way. It's more a celebrity roast then accerting over and over again that this movie is really dooky.

But for something like THE ROOM or any of the lesser known really bad movies we're doing I don't think people are going to be watching without us anyway. Maybe a slight exception with THE ROOM which had it's own fame before us but the vast majority of movies we do people haven't seen before us and won't seek out again without us

S:Is there anything that you wouldn't do?

B: Absolutely. The two examples I always come up with when people ask us this is SCHINDLER'S LIST and HOTEL RWANDA. Anything about a real life tragedy even if it's not the greatest movie in the world and both of those movies are quite good, but even if they were lesser versions of themselves to try and be funny over and over again in the face of tragedy would be monstrous and it would be hard...we wouldn't find much to talk about.

S: There's not a lot of jo...

B: The closest we came in the early days of RiffTrax Mike and I did The original X-MEN, the first X-MEN movie and it begins with Magneto, young Magneto in the concentration camp and we had a joke that I didn't believe it was a superhero movie. You Know "What have you gotten me into Nelson!" but that joke was sustainable as the the 2 minutes it took and you couldn't do that the whole movie.

RIFFTRAX THE ROOM plays Friday at the SVA Theater in Manhattan. For more information and details on Rush tickets go here.

Giant Gila Monster (1959)

Giant Gila Monster is frequently paired with The Killer Shrews on various drive in double bills and home video releases so I’m going to do a quick write up of the film as the Wednesday matinee film today.

The story of a small Texas town that has to deal with a giant Gila monster is an uneasy mix of teen drama and monster movie. It’s a film that hits all the typical teen is misunderstood by adults while driving around in his hot rod notes. Things get complicated when several of the kids go missing and the sheriff has to turn to the ones still around to help him find out what’s going on.

A good but kind of draggy horror film it’s the sort of film that never manages to mesh the two genres its combining. The teen drama is cliché and unremarkable while the giant monster stuff is well done but never seems to integrate with the rest of the film. The problem with the monster stuff is that the model/live lizard stuff is so beautifully shot that it never works when you cut to the actors and the shoddy special effects that don’t full match the model work. The clash breaks the spell.

To me this is a good… well its an okay but unremarkable little film. I don’t think you shouldn’t see it, rather I think that if you do see it you try to rent or borrow a double feature disc or watch it another movie or two since it’s not the sort of thing to stand on it’s own.

Killer Shrews (1959)

What is it about mad scientists and deserted islands? Apparently it’s a prerequisite to not only be not only mad but also antisocial- or maybe that should be considerate since if you stay on a deserted island you’re less likely to have your stupid experiment injure someone... As a safety warning I’m going to tell you why you shouldn’t get off any boat that lands on a desert island inhabited by collies with fangs.

The Killer Shrews is a drive in classic. Its an utterly preposterous film (it was on MST3K) about scientists who take tiny shrews and grow them to the size of large dogs (they are played by collies with fright masks) which then get loose and then try to eat everyone and everything that gets in their way.

It’s a film that is stupid as a stick and a great deal of fun.

The reason the film works is that the cast plays it painfully straight. There is no hint that they are finding it anything other then deadly serious which somehow manages to make the proceedings work.

As I frequently say this ain’t high art- which means we are oh so much better for it.

What I like is that the serious tone mixes with some moody black and photography in order to make a slightly creepy, tense on it’s own terms film. There is no denying that the film generates a certain amount of suspense since the filmmakers kind of plot themselves into a corner which they some how manage to get themselves out of.

A neat little movie perfect for a Saturday night on the couch with popcorn, soda and stack of Drive In movie sort of titles.

Unseen Turkey Day, Hours 23-24: Kitten with a Whip (#615, 1994)

It's maybe appropriate that this experiment wraps up our 2011 Turkey Day marathon as it was the first experiment shown in the fourth annual official Comedy Central Turkey Day (1994), hosted by Adam "Batman" West:



Remember, poor, innocent, well-rounded Mamie van Doren and how she was framed for murder in Girls Town? Well, that's exactly what happens to Ann-Margret in Kitten with a Whip (1954). Except, in this case, Ann-Margret really is guilty, not only of capturing our hearts, but of assault, arson, and kidnapping. All of which are legal in the state of California if you're as ah-ooga as Ann. Or should you always say "Ann-Margret" when you're referring to her? If you met her in a social situation, what would you call her? "Miss Margret" isn't correct, is it? And "Ann" isn't complete or correct. Hardly anybody knows her last name ("Olsson"), so you just call her "Ann-Margret" all the time? Wouldn't that get a little complicated after a while? What did Elvis call her during the filming of Viva Las Vegas? I'm betting "Baby."

Juvenile Delinquent Ms. A.M.O. plays Jody Dvorak, inventor of an unusual keyboard that she insists will revolutionize the way you type, slinks her way into the life of David Stratton (John Forsythe), candidate for senate, compromising his career and threatening the lives of himself and Oscar Goldman from The Six Million Dollar Man (Richard Anderson). It's a more adult and psychological movie than Girls Town or other exploitation flicks MST3K has covered (The Violent Years, The Sinister Urge, Racket Girls), but still not immune to goofy fictional teen slang. You'll never want to use the word "creamy" ever again. Believe me.



The whole situation is both as nightmarish as a Kafka novel and as inappropriately romantically charged as...well, as Lolita. Trying to keep Jody's presence in his house secret, David experiences recurring improbable encounters that threaten his secret: busybody visitors, running into his friend's wife as he's shopping for lingerie for Jody ("Why, David, I thought I'd never find you in ladies' underwear!"), seeing the police all-points-bulletin for Jody's arrest on TV as he's out with Oscar Goldman. David can't catch a break when visitors notice every. Single. Thing. he's trying to hide. He's got worse luck concealing a secret than Jack Tripper in Three's Company.



Even more nightmarish: a guest appearance by "Doodles" Weaver.



It's well-filmed and Ann-Margret is pretty convincing as a flipped-her-wig sexpot, and the movie has a great noir style when the tone begins to get darker and more sinister, turning a scene in which Jody threatens a photograph of David's wife from goofy to menacing.



Then Jody's thug gang shows up, clean-shaven, well-dressed and about as physically menacing as Members Only fashion models.



Jeez, David's senatorial campaign shows every sign of being as solid as Gary Hart's presidential run at this point. It all ends with an ill-advised car race towards Tijuana on the trail of treasure buried under a giant W a no-tell Mexican doctor to stitch up the world's tiniest knife wound, before hitting the reset button on David's life and career when it sends Jody careening over the edge to her fiery end like Wile E. Coyote on Acme rocket roller skates.



Although manipulative and sometimes forced, the film's still compelling and quickly-paced, but Mike and the bots have no problem whipping it into shape with riffs, and you can probably make the argument that it's one of both the sexiest and the most disturbing MST3Ks. And yes, there is an actual Kitten with a Whip in the host segments, played by Kevin Murphy.



It's a lot easier watching MST3K that it is writing about it. Perhaps, like Alice B. Toklas said "Writing about art is like dancing about architecture." I'm not actually certain that she said that, but as Google tells me the source is alternatively, Elvis Costello, Steve Martin, Laurie Anderson, Frank Zappa, and La Femme Nikita's Peta Wilson, I figured I'd throw my own lame-assed guess into the mix to confuse future internet scholars. Anyway, watching MST3K critically is to invite needless reciprocal criticism. What's to understand other than, hey, look! It's a guy and his two robots, watching cheesy movies and talking back to them! You might try to blame Joel Hodgson and company for the contemporary culture of the people sitting behind you in a movie theater never once stopping their blabbing mouths all the way through The King's Speech. (SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!) But that's the wrong message to take from Mystery Science Theater 3000. I'd say that it's the important message of all good satire comedy, whether it be Moliere, Animal Farm or Animal House, Punch or MAD magazines: that nothing is sacred, that you can make harmless a threat by poking fun at it, and that when life sends you cheesy movies, make hamdingers. Hail to you, Joel, Mike, Crow, Servo and all: may your riffs never fall flat.

Unseen Turkey Day, Hours 21-22: Last of the Wild Horses (#611, 1994)

Occasionally there's a MST3K experiment where the host segments are so distinctive and memorable that they pretty much overshadow the movie—so it's a good thing that in this Very Special Episode™ of Mystery Science Theater the movie is the 1948 black-and-white western oatster Last of the Wild Horses, directed by Robert Lippert, the guy who not only directed movies but owned a chain of theaters in which to run them.

Well, that's a good thing. Because Last of the Wild Horses is a pretty mediocre western film, with a good guy and a pretty gal and her invalid dad and the mustache twirling villain and his gang of ruthless minions and one or two drunken comedy relief guys. I think there may be an Aztec Mummy somewhere in there too, but I might be thinking of another film. Anyway, the plot's incidental, because in the end, it turns out to have all been a dream, or a flashback, or a What If?, I dunno.

No, the real attraction of watching the MSTed version of Last of the Wild Horses is of Best Brains playing with the formula of the show through...you guessed it! A Star Trek spoof. When the mads run a dangerous experiement during an ion storm, we're shunted into the Mirror Universe, where good is evil and evil wears a goatee.



Tom Servo and Gypsy are trapped in the evil mirror universe (Tom doesn't think Evil Mike is really all that different from Regular Mike) down in Deep 13 sending films up to the Satellite.



So then, who is on board to watch the cheesy movies? Two guesses:



Yes, Frank and Forrester enter the theater and begin riffing on the movie:



So, for those of you keeping score at home—you are keeping score at home, right? Did you print and cut out your handy reference card?—if Servo and Gypsy are in the Mirror Universe, that means Evil Tom and Wicked Gypsy are in the Regular Universe!



Yes: that means Evil Servo is riffing the movie along with Good Mike and Crow. Which ought to lead to lots of Evil Riffs, but actually Tom exclaims, "Ooh, a cowboy movie!" and gets right into the spirit of things. Later, Mike solves the whole thing using his Alternate Universe Manual and everything's put right.



Of the four theater segments in this experiment, the first featured Frank and Forrester, the second two Mike, Crow, and Evil Tom, and the final segment the usual crew. I wish Best Brains would have had a little more conviction to keep Trace Beaulieu and Frank Conniff in the theater for at least another segment. It's an interesting dynamic to have only two riffers (for the first time since season zero) and the genial mocking humor of the "Good" Mads is a lot of fun. I don't know the thinking behind the idea, but Best Brains was probably right to keep us wanting more. They'd return to the idea of alternate characters in the theater later in the series (Pearl Forrester in Quest of the Delta Knights and Mike's crude older brother Eddie in Time Chasers), but as fun at those switcheroos were, they were never as surprising and delightful as this first one. Which only goes to prove: the Mirror Universe makes everything awesome.



Case in point.

Unseen Turkey Day, Hours 19-20: Code Name: Diamond Head (#608, 1994)

You've got to admire the chutzpah of made-for-TV movies that so believe they're going to series. It's like one of those dramatic productions that thinks it's gonna be the next best thing and is trying, really earnestly, ever so hard, to be the best it can be, and yet everything about it is pretty laughable and easily dismissed, but by golly, the thing's got spunk even as it bursts into flames around you. I'm looking at you, Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark.

You could say the same thing about Code Name: Diamond Head, a Hawaii-based private detective/spy mashup TV pilot starring Roy Thinnes (The Invaders, other such failed pilots as The Norliss Tapes and Satan's School for Girls...okay, that last one wasn't a failed pilot but I like to think it was) as private eye or secret agent or maybe secret eye Diamond Head.



It also features Ian McShane as a killer Catholic priest ("Hey look!" cry Mike and the bots. "It's Lovejoy!" "Hi Lovejoy!").



The formula would be perfected much later by Magnum, P.I., but Code Name: Diamond Head is little more than a Hawaii 5-0 wanna-be produced by the 1970s chief importer of deadly earnest crime dramas, Quinn Martin.

Where 5-0 and Magnum took extensive advantage of the exotic shooting locales of Hawaii to showcase the beauty and uniqueness of the landscape and peoples of the islands, this turkey appears to have been filmed on all of Hawaii's back lots, warehouses, and offices that look exactly like the settings of any other crime drama's locales. There's a competition among Mike, Crow, and Servo to name movies that were more Hawaii in look than CNDH: "The Eiger Sanction had more Hawaiian locations than this movie." "He lives in Hawaii, but somehow he has a furnished apartment in St. Paul."



Much fun is had from the special guest villain appearance of Ian McShane, TV's Lovejoy, who is created with cries of "Lovejoy!" upon each appearance. To the best of my knowledge, this meme never gained the popularity of shouting "Mitchell" when you see Joe Don Baker (and then running away as Baker lumbers towards you like a sleepy, angry bear). It has, however, made my friends bar me from watching Deadwood with them.



Clunky as the crime drama is, it's exceptionally good riffing fodder and one of my top dark horse choices for funniest MST3K. During a hula dancing sequence: "A salute to careful shaving!" When Ian McShane declares "I take risks." Crow retorts "I'm in this movie, aren't I?" Mike, during a scene where the hero discovers his sidekick bound and gagged: "So, how was your date with Madonna?" And, one of those lovely locked-in-retro-time references that just tickle me pink: "You know, when this originally aired, everybody had turned by now to Carter Country."

Sure, I laugh, but we'll probably get a DVD boxed set of Carter Country before we ever get one of the 1966 Batman TV series.

There's also a preceding short film: A Day at the Fair (1947) documenting a farm family's single social event of the year: attending the county fair. If Ingmar Bergman had State Fair, you'd wind up with a more cheerful film than this. Like a stale Oreo, this one's black and white, dry, dull, dreary, and hard going down.

Plus, Dr. F. and TV's Frank take a bath together.



Also: Lovejoy!

Unseen Turkey Day, Hours 17-18: Girls Town (#601, 1994)

Hey, I actually wrote a review of this film some time ago, so in the interest of green politics and recycling, let me trot it out again right now!

Was this bad-girls-in-reform-school flick made in an attempt to cash in on the Academy Award-winning Boys' Town or did the studio just happen to have a few dozen nun's habits in their wardrobe department? Tubby, dewlapped crooner Mel Torme frames busty bottle-blonde bombshell bad-girl Silver Morgan (Mamie Van Doren, the poor man's Jane Mansfield) for the over-a-cliff murder of her attempted rapist in this 1959 teen-sploitation flick. The cops don't have a thing on Silver but the dead punk's dad commands the usual White Male Reality political pull, sending her to the convent/reform-school "Girls' Town," chock-full-o' tough-as-nails nuns, teen gangs played by 35-year old actors, an "Ave Maria"-singing Paul Anka, a no-hands drag race ending in the usual expected laughably "tragic" result, the Platters, badly-choreographed catfights consistently broken up by beefy security nuns, way too much embarrassingly fake teen slang, and Charlie Chaplin, Jr. Watch out for Silver's creepy reform-school pal Serafina, a spooky obsessive fan stalking a vaguely stupefied young Paul Anka; look carefully during the drive-in scene to spot the reflections of the director and camera crew in the windows of the cars. The Sound of Music, this ain't.

Well! That was easy. And fast. Why don't we just fill out the rest of the post with an expanse look at the oversized range of Mamie van Doren's larger-than-life acting skills?



















Still, there's Paul Anka in this movie:



And he's singing "Ave Maria"!



Also, Jesus is in it:



...so you can watch this film in Sunday School and it's OK.

Anyway, just remember:



Mamie van Doren!



Mamie van Doren.