MST3K (911)

911 - Devil Fish - "He's enjoying the bold, adventurous life of a TV repairman." Not so adventurous that it didn't almost put me to sleep in the middle of the afternoon, but pretty exciting by electrician standards, I'm sure. On paper, a giant shark-octopus with the powers of Lobo sounds like a good time. In practice, with the film budget clearly spend almost entirely on bribing the Coast Guard for the use of their helicopters in order to give the film an veneer of legitimacy, it's not so great. There's really no reason to watch a Bava movie with all of the gore and nudity snipped out, anyway.

Speaking of, a camera pointed up a ladder nearly gave us a shot of one of the male character's area as he climbed on down. Only a fortuitously place MST3K logo blocked out the offending organ. I guess that'll do the job. I liked it much better when Joel had to handle this issue the last time it came up. As Joel was wont to do back then, he got out of his seat and randomly decided that he needed to open an umbrella. This happened at the exact moment of onscreen nudity way back in 403, much to the bots' disappointment. That's the fun way to censor for TV.

Amazing: a Castle Forrester host segment that actually got me to laugh. I have no idea why, but I found the final segment pretty funny. In it, Pearl serves her cruise ship passengers "dinner with the captain." The captain is played by a costumed Bobo. Not having a good day, Bobo decides to go apeshit during the meal and begings destroying dishes, beating his chest and jumping on the table. Flying breakfast cereal and terrified passengers go well together, I think.

"Yes, here at W.O.I. we do this kind of thing." (6/10)

film d. Lamberto Bava [as John Old Jr.] (1984)
mst d. Michael J. Nelson (15 Aug 1998)