My copy of Wasp Woman showed up today. I can’t wait to watch it.
Yes, I know I skipped a couple of episodes. They are DAP Central editions and for some reason they don’t burn well on DVD+Rs. I’m going to reburn on DVD-R and was told that solves several problems. I don’t know why, but it’s worked once, so I’m willing to go with it.
Despite starring Gregory Peck and Gene Hackman, MST3K somehow still got hold of this dud. Perhaps that’s why they got hold of it. This movie was about a team of three astronauts living in space for five months, to aid research for man’s extended-living in microgravity. When they’re about to come home, something goes wrong with their reentry burners and they become stranded in orbit with limited oxygen.
A rescue is planned, an untested rocket shot quickly into space to save the slowly suffocating astronauts. Gene Hackman breaks down and goes crazy, one of the other astronauts decides he can fix the engine on an EVA, and the other one keeps a level head. EVA astronaut cuts his suit on a sharp bit of metal fin and dies, solving part of the oxygen problem. The rescue ship gets there just as the astronauts are running out of air (of course).
I give this movie one empty seat, for not including Ernest Borgnine in this Poseidon Adventure in space.
I just finished watching The Castle of Fu Manchu, starring Christopher Lee as Fu Manchu. This was back when they used white actors instead of Chinese people to play Chinese people (remember the old Charlie Chan movies?)
Anyway, this movie was so noxious I’m surprised I didn’t smell it before I put it in my DVD player. Fu has a secret weapon that can turn water into ice. He uses it one time in the movie, at the beginning, to sink a cruise ship. He tries to hold the world hostage, but doesn’t make any concrete demands. Scotland yard sends some detective over to do something, and Fu kidnaps a doctor to perform a heart transplant on another guy for some reason. Seriously, this was a bad film!
I give this movie five empty seats because it stinks! (insert “ok” finger sign here)
Oh boy, where do I start? I watched this movie last night in my continuing adventure to watch all of Mystery Science Theater 3000 from the beginning.
This steaming pile of holiday drivel was a terrible idea—unless you’re a Martian I guess. Let me explain. The movie starts out on Mars, with little Martian children watching Earth-broadcast TV about the holidays and Santa Claus. Their parents, upset about them watching Earth TV but also upset because the children never laugh or play or have fun (never mind the fact that they have no toys!), decide to kidnap Santa and bring him to Mars to make the Martian children happy.
So they pop over in their rocket, and begin looking for Santa. When the find Santas all over the world, they kidnap two children and ask them about it. They reply that the real Santa lives at the North Pole, so the Martians take the children there. A goofy Martian servant, Droppo, provides the comedy relief when he hides in the “radar box” that houses the mechanism that protects the rocket from Earth radar.
The children escape the rocket, and are attacked by a super cheesy man in a polar bear suit. As Servo points out, you can even see the head piece overlapping the body. After their escape, the children run to Santa’s workshop to warn him of the Martians. It doesn’t work, and they all get taken by the Martians back to their own planet, where they treat Santa like royalty and provide a giant machine that makes toys by pushing buttons. Now, why they didn’t use this for their children in the first place is beyond me.
One of the Martians, upset by all this holiday cheer, kidnaps Santa, but doesn’t realize that it’s Droppo in a Santa suit—the whole time he has him! When he returns to demand the rest of the Martians send Santa and the children back to Earth they pummel him with toys and he is knocked silly. Droppo escapes by switching two light bulbs around on a control panel (you think I’m kidding?) and everybody has a good laugh and Santa and the kids go back home.
I’m going to give this movie 0 empty seats—for the number of people that watch this every year as a Christmas tradition. Come on, there can’t be anyone that does this…
I watched The Unearthly yesterday, and really have a feeling of deja vu. I think I watched it a long time ago, before I decided to watch the entire series from the beginning.
Anyway, this movie had two great short films for kids, one about posture with inappropriate teacher-student contact, and one about appreciating your parents.
The Unearthly is about a doctor that is working on a miracle gland that will grant eternal life, but he just can’t get the knack of installing it into people, they end up disfigured and crazy. His friend, another doctor, “refers” patients without any family to him to further the experiments. What this doctor friend got out of the deal was unclear. One of the guests figures things out and tries to help the others escape.
I have to give this movie five empty seats to represent Tor Johnson’s classic (and stinger) line “Time for go to bed.”
War of the Colossal Beast is the sequel to The Amazing Colossal Man, by virtue of using the same-named main character. They had a different actor portray the colossal man, who after his fall from the Hoover Dam in the last movie somehow survived though he became horribly disfigured in the process. He emigrates to Mexico where he raids trucks for food.
Glen (the main character) has a sister that believes he is still alive. She hears a rumor about a missing truck in Mexico and somehow connects this with her brother. She travels down there, locates him, but finds him crazy and rampaging through the countryside. With help from the local police and US Army, they bake bread with drugs in the loaves and trick Glen into eating it so they can capture him and return him to the US. He breaks free, is recaptured, and breaks free again to terrorize an observatory and a bus full of junior high school students. His sister finally breaks through his craziness and Glen chooses to electrocute himself on high tension power lines rather than continue his horrible existence.
I rate this movie two empty seats, one for the original actor that played Glen and one for his girlfriend, who apparently abandoned him and was not seen in this film.
Perhaps the most disturbing short film ever produced, Mr. B Natural, precedes this film. First off, “Mr” is definitely a “Mrs” and has an annoying habit of popping up in young boys’ bedrooms. It’s a total sales film for Conn, a musical instrument manufacturer, and the stinger for this episode was appropriately chosen from this short and not the actual movie.
Yesterday I watched Viking Women and the Sea Serpent, another episode from MST3K season three. It’s a movie about a bunch of beautiful viking women tired of waiting for their husbands to return from pillaging overseas, so they go out in search of them. While sailing, they encounter a sea serpent and it wrecks their boat, causing them to be stranded in barbarian country, where they find their missing husbands enslaved. They rescue them, are betrayed by one of their own who later repents and calls down Thor’s wrath on the barbarians to let the vikings escape.
I rate this movie one empty seat, for the teenage male viking that stowed away on the ship full of women but never got anywhere with any of them.
I just finished watching Gamera vs. Zigra, the final Gamera movie for MST3K.
This movie was a bit slow. Two children are kidnapped by a mysterious woman in a space ship. They escape, and the woman chases them because Zigra wants her to kill them. As far as I can tell, Zigra was the space ship, and then it shape-changed into a giant shark monster, except it can stand on its fins just like a real shark can’t. It whoops up on Gamera a few times, but Gamera makes a comeback and takes out Zigra, saving the children and the Earth. Plus, there’s a message at the end about protecting Earth’s oceans.
I rate this movie three empty seats, one for Joel, Tom Servo, and Crow T. Robot since they won’t ever get to see another Gamera movie.
Yesterday I watched Teenage Caveman. This movie was prefaced by two short films, Aquatic Wizards about a training camp for synchronized water skiing that wasn’t really funny, and Catching Trouble an absolutely hilarious short film about a guy that catches wildlife in the Florida Everglades.
In fact, watch it right now:
That was the highlight of my evening. Well, that and the skit they did directly after the short, about catching the great white hunter.
Anyway, back to the review. Teenage Caveman was not what I was expecting from the title. Yes, it was about cavemen, but the main character looked older. Searching around the Internet tells me he was 23 in the release year of the movie. He questions the laws and traditions the cavemen live by, and their fear of the unknown just on the other side of the river. He gets into a lot of trouble, and his father loses his status in their caveman society because of it. When he confronts the “beast that kills with a touch”, he finds that the creature is actually a man in an old radiation suit. They find a book on him with pictures of what society used to be like. Apparently we have all destroyed ourselves and society went Neanderthal on us. At least those that survived.
I rate this movie 42 empty seats, one for each time the bad leader dude said something was evil. You can feel free to correct that number…if you dare!
The other day I watched Mighty Jack. I haven’t reviewed it until now because it was so abysmally bad I hesitate to even admit watching it. This Japanese movie was made by splicing scenes from an older Japanese TV show together in a completely incoherent manner. I could barely follow the plot, and most of the time didn’t know who was coming or going or even what side they were on.
The best part of this movie was after it was already over. Joel sang a song called Slot the Plot Down to the tune of Blow the Man Down, it elicited more laughs than the entire movie.
Saying this movie was haphazard would be too kind a compliment, and even Joel and the ‘Bots had a tough time making itwatchable. I rate this movie 6+ billion empty seats, one for each person on this planet that shouldn’t see this movie.
I still don’t even know who Mighty Jack was…
Before It Conquered the World, Mystery Science Theater 3000 riffed a short film called Snow Thrills. Full the the brim with yesteryear banter, this film was borderline nauseous. The best part was when they introduce a fast-growing popular sport called skiing, pronounced shee-ing. This part starts around 4:17. Go see it, it’s really funny.
Last night I watched Earth vs. the Spider with my wife. It was preceded by a short sales training film about speaking clearly, which was probably funnier than the movie itself. Be heard. Be understood. Be pleasing. Heh heh.
This movie should have been called A Very Small Town vs the Spider. There was no Earth involved. Actually, it really should have been called Two Teenagers, Their Borrowed Car, a High School Teacher, a Sheriff, Two Deputies, and a Small Deputized Posse vs the Spider. Yeah, I think that about sums it up.
There were some pretty funny jokes in it. And a truck full of DDT that only “stunned” the spider. It was amusing when the people opted not to try DDT again, because it only stunned the spider and didn’t kill it. Well, the spider was nearly comatose for hours! Had they used DDT again they could have killed it at their leisure once it was “stunned” again.
One of the best parts of this movie is how the teenager treats his girlfriend. When she calls to ask him if he’ll take her to the cave (where the spider came from) to retrieve the gift she dropped there the first time they encountered the spider, the boy tells her he doesn’t want to go because there’s a new puppet movie that looks really great and he hasn’t seen it yet.
I rate this movie 36 empty seats, one for each year that DDT has been banned (1972) for most uses in the United States.
I watched Fugitive Alien this morning before I went to work. For some reason, the DAP release didn’t play in my DVD player, but played fine in my laptop.
Anyway, Fugitive Alien is a movie spliced together out of a Japanese TV show. It’s about outer space, but there are no giant monsters. At least not yet. And it’s a bumpy ride in, let me tell you. First, a group of evil “wolf raiders” are pillaging Earth. When ordered to kill a young boy named Ken, the main character (also named Ken) has a fit of conscience and stops his partner from killing the boy. Unfortunately, the partner dies accidentally. This puts Ken (the wolf raider Ken, not the boy Ken) on the run from his superiors, who now want him dead.
Ken (again, the raider Ken—the boy Ken ends up dying anyway) hijacks a space ship and flies away, but gets blasted by a weird smelling cloud (don’t ask) and he spaces himself so he doesn’t blow up with the ship. He is picked up by an Earth space ship that doesn’t realize he’s a raider. They take Ken back to Earth, where he escapes their care and tries to hijack another space ship to leave Earth. At this point I have no idea where Ken is going, and I have my doubts whether he does either.
The captain of the Earth space ship (who’s wife and son Ken—yes, that Ken—were both killed in the raid ) shanghais Ken into being one of his crew. They take off to some other planet to defend the natives against the Wolf Raiders, Ken gets captured because he can’t follow orders, but then escapes and rescues an imprisoned soldier and brings him back to the space ship. Ken’s love interest, who happened to be his partner’s sister, is sent to kill Ken because of what he’s done, but ultimately she can’t follow through with the order and dies in an ambush. They escape the planet and the movie ends with a great big To Be Continued. Great…
I rate this movie three empty seats one for each friend or relative of a main character that dies on screen.
I recently watched Gamera vs. Guiron, another classic Japanese monster movie. When a young boy, his friend, and his sister spot a UFO with their telescope land near a river, they set out to find it. When they do, and board it (against their sister’s wishes), they play around hitting buttons and it takes off, leaving the sister behind. When the UFO (which was, apparently, unmanned) leaves Earth, Gamera shows up to try to rescue the two boys.
Alas, the UFO is too fast for Gamera’s rocket-powered turtle shell, and quickly outdistances Gamera. They land on a planet in Earth’s orbit, but opposite the sun. Sound familiar? Anyway, this planet is dying, and there are only two strangely-dressed women left on it. Well, them and some giant monsters. Gaos makes an unexplained return from the volcanic lava that Gamera threw him in to in Gamera vs. Gaos, but is quickly and brutally diced up by Guiron, the monster “controlled” by the two women.
The women are cannibals, and shave one of the boys’ head trying to eat his brain or something, but Gamera shows up and they decide to beat feet instead, taking off in the UFO the boys arrived in. Unfortunately for them, Guiron has gotten out of their control, and uses his giant knife-shaped head to cut the UFO in half whilst in midair and they die.
Gamera and Guiron go at it, Guiron almost wins with the ninja stars he shoots out of his face, but Gamera triumphs in the end (as usual), puts the two halves of the UFO back together, the boys board it, and Gamera carries it back to Earth in his mouth.
I rate this movie one planet worth of empty seats, one for each of the people that died on the planet opposite Earth’s orbit that seems to be so common in Scifi movies.
PS Did I mention Cornjob? There’s a bumbling police officer in this movie whose name sounds like Cornjob. Weird.
I just finished watching It Conquered the World, a hideous film about a man that hears a voice over the radio, a voice belonging to a superior being on Venus that wants to take over the Earth for some unknown reason. The man gives the alien information, and it somehow boards a satellite orbiting Earth and rides it down the the surface, where it begins sending out bat-like drones that sting people in the neck and take over their minds.
Really, I’m not making this up.
The man later realizes his folly and atones for his betrayal of the human race by helping to destroy the alien. I rate this movie eight empty seats, one for each of the drones.