MST3K (510)

510 - The Painted Hills (w/ Body Care and Grooming) - "Don't trust people. They'll only hurt you." Joel's very last short. With its awkward mid-century advice on dressing and skincare, it's a quintessential MST3K short for him to go out on. While not Mr. B-quality, it was full of solid laughs. And, I'm with Crow. I'd take the sloppy coed over the neat-n-clean one any day. The enormous amount of time saved not waiting for her to get ready before going out would be completely worth the occasional snicker at those uneven socks (gasp!).

I much appreciated the restraint the guys displayed. Not once in the entire episode did they roll out the tired "Lassie Translation" joke. I've heard "What's that Lassie? Timmy's trapped in a well?" more times in my life than necessary. Thank you, Joel, Crow and Tom. Thank you.

"Lassie is back and she's pissed." No kidding. This is a surprisingly dark film for being a family-friendly film made in the 1950s. Counting the off-screen death of Tommy's father, The Painted Hills has a body count equal to that of Freddy's Dead. I'm still more scared of Freddy, but facing a growling, high-strung border collie at the edge of a snowy cliff is close.

It occurred to me that this is one type of film that we haven't seen in the show so far: the western. Strangely, the next episode also looks to be of that genre. I like westerns a lot and they seem to be good material for the guys. Given the period dress, there's plenty of appearance jokes to be made. I was waiting for and was not disappointed when the guys compared white-bearded Jonathan to Kenny Rogers.

I'm now temporally halfway through this project: 182 days down, 183 to go. It's going fast. The older you get, the shorter one year seems. It's disturbing, but it makes sense. When I entered school, one year was 1/5th of my entire lifespan. Now it's only 1/30th.

"Grooming is between you and the Lord God." (7/10)

film d. Harold F. Kress (1951)
short d. ?? (1947)
mst d. Trace Beaulieu (26 Sep 1993)