Guest MST3K: 208

The Lost Continent. An experimental rocket makes a desperate bid for freedom, and it's cruel military overlords vow to return it in chains for a lifetime of soul crushing slavery. Luckily for the audience, the rocket has attempted to escape to the top of a mountain, so our heroes have to climb rocks to find it. Alot of rocks. For hours and hours of film time. With little dialog to distract from the non-stop action. Or even, at times, music. It's understandable that Joel and the Bots end up screaming and crying at the screen. The film does actually have some pretty neat looking stop motion claymation dinosaurs. More dinos, less seeming endless rock climbing scenes, and this might have actually been a fun little flick.

What this movie taught me: Sometimes mountains crumble into rubble for no apparent reason.

I laughed a bit at the opening host segment. A sports pep talk probably is a good idea if you're stuck in space forced to watch stinkers. The athletic theme continued with Frank's moving treadmill and other mobile exercise machines. Poor Joel, though, not being able to do his invention. I guess they had to cut it to make room for all the rock climbing. And I guess the Mads were using electric shocks to force him into the theater against his will? Mike makes a fine Hugh Beaumont, whom I never really saw as the bringer of the apocalypse, but it does make sense now that I think about it. I enjoyed the call backs to Jungle Goddess in the skit where Joel explains that he needs the bots to act stupid so he can indulge is white man's need for smug imperialistic superiority, though I think I would have liked it better if Mike and Jim had been back as the British aliens. And I'm pretty jealous that nothing cool ever appears for me to watch outside my rocket #9.

I thought the riffing tended to be a bit overly repetitious in this episode. The line "You ever fly one of these before" was repeated several times, and didn't seem that funny to me to start with. Joel seemed more interactive with this movie than I've seen in some other efforts, I guess maybe the dialog might not have given them much to work with.

My 3 favorite riffs:

(Pilot: Liberation. It's a wonderful thing. Let's drink to it.)
Oh, must be a Northwestern flight.

(After the plane crash lands)
Let's form a soccer team and eat each other.

(a pterodactyl shows up, with a peculiar cry)
Hey! It's a trumpeter swan.