MST3K (421)
421 - Monster A-Go Go (w/ Circus on Ice) - "Oh, this is like It Happened One Night, except... it makes me want to kill myself." That's pretty accurate, Crow. I don't know where people get the idea that Manos is the worst movie MST3K ever tackled. Even considering the driving scenes in that flick, at least it has giant-kneed Torgo and devil worship and other cool stuff. At least that's something. This movie is about absolutely nothing at all. Worse, it completely screws the viewer at the end. "There was no monster," indeed. Monster A-Go Go far exceeds in wretchedness the previous winners of "Worst MSTed Movie Ever" (those being The Mad Monster and Ring of Terror). Wow. Just wow.
The guys' contributions don't really help ease the pain. The movie was just plain a lousy choice for the show. There's not a lot for them to work with, riffing-wise, as there's not a lot going on in the film. Much of the time, they just riff on the images on the screen. Like me, it seems like they barely paid attention to the dialogue. This was easy to do given the poor sound quality of most of the movie.
I'm not a fan of any of the host segments, save for the Mads' invention of the "Johnny Longtorso" action figure. The final segment, with Happy King Tom and Sir Giggles von Laughs-a-Lot, wasn't bad, but it was nothing we haven't seen before. I did like their comparison of the movie to a boring childhood visit to an aunt's house, which was very well-written. The rest of the host segments were not memorable at all. Personally, I've never really paid attention to the lyrics of "The Piña Colada Song," so any humor in the segment that tackled that topic was lost on me.
The one bright spot in this episode was the short. Circus on Ice was easily one of the funniest shorts the guys have ever tackled. They were right on the money for this one and I got the only laughs of the episode during this horror on frozen water. I think they handled the part in which an ice dancer pretends to be a deer that gets shot rather well.
"Vomit sprays out in a beautiful Technicolor dream." (5/10)
film d. Bill Rebane & Herschell Gordon Lewis [as Bill Rebane] (1965)
short d. Gordon Sparling (1954)
mst d. Joel Hodgson (9 Jan 1993)
[Well, my project got derailed for a few days due to the death of a beloved pet. I'm glad I didn't attempt this episode earlier in the week. I wasn't in the mood for laughing and this episode certainly wouldn't have changed that. Given the length of this project, it was bound to bump into life's little unpleasant surprises at some point. I'm still truckin', though. Problem is, I'm sufficiently off schedule that I will need to watch five of these per week in order to get to my original intended destination of 512 for Thanksgiving, or I'm going to have to watch one episode every single day for three weeks in order to reach TD93 by that time. Might be rough.]
