13 January 2007

MST3K (607)

607 - Bloodlust! (w/ Uncle Jim's Dairy Farm) - I'm not a big fan of the "most dangerous game" genre. It's been done and done and done too many times to be remotely interesting at this point. This particular take is especially dull. A quartet of uninteresting sheep are chased by an out-of-shape man with a penchant for tedious monologues. I can't count the number of times the kids could've whacked Balleau on the noggin with a rifle butt, vase, or their fists. And, clearly, the Long John Silver's guards weren't much of a threat. They just seemed to lack the motivation to do anything really proactive about their situation. It ended up taking one of those disgruntled LJS employees to actually do the heavy lifting of killing the villain.

Mary Jo writes in the ACEG that they "vowed [they] would only allow... one Brady Bunch reference for Robert Reed" ("I slapped Ann B. Davis once."). That was much appreciated. Harping on an actor's most well-known role gets tiring after a while, and it's the easy way out for the writers. Instead, we got some solid "gut-sucking" riffing, a comment about the part in his hair making his head look like it has a lid, and a few oblique gay references. That's a good trade.

The riffing during the movie is what I think of as "MST Standard." I wasn't laughing so hard that I was crying, but I wasn't bored either. Solid stuff. The riffing during the short was much better. There was much pathos in the plight of the city kids dropped off at Uncle Jim's farm for the summer for the guys to mine in the riffing.

Crow, why'd you have to spoil the murder mystery game? I want to see more of "Colonel Mike"!

"Well, whadaya know? Someone fell in the thresher again." (7/10)

film d. Ralph Brooke (1959)
short p. Jamison Handy (1960)
mst d. Trace Beaulieu (3 Sep 1994)