Guest OLR: Dreamgirls (2006)

Chicago all over again and I still can't bring myself to care. (5/10)

d. Bill Condon

MST3K (610)

610 - The Violent Years (w/ Young Man's Fancy) - There was a good crop of weird, funny host segments in this episode. In the prologue, Servo dons a ventriloquist dummy's head, scaring the hell out of Crow. You can't go wrong with a good bot freak-out. This is followed by everyone singing their own theme songs. I like Crow's theme for Mike the best: "Mike. Ma-ma-ma-Mike. Ma-ma-ma-Mike. Ma-ma-ma-Mike, Mike, Mike..." That is followed by the Mads' new radio station with it's classic advertising line "Turn Your Crank to Frank." Coming after that, Servo spends a solid half-hour dressed in a red wig and screaming/crying into a microphone. Mike follows up by dressing as Keanu Reeves. Strangest of all was the final segment, in which Crow and Mike reenact the gas station robbery scene. This involves them not moving and Mike standing with a really bizarre posture. It's been a long time since I've enjoyed every host segment, but there it is.

There was some good-and-funny riffing in this episode as well. One of the riffs from this episode I know I'll be chuckling over tomorrow at work. It was a "call a character a name" riff and was ever-so dead-on appropriate. To the left, I proudly present a picture of Count Juggula.

"Thank goodness for my electric dress." (8/10)

film d. William Morgan (1956)
short d. Donald H. Brown (1952)
mst d. Trace Beaulieu (8 Oct 1994)

MST3K (609)

609 - The Skydivers (w/ Why Study Industrial Arts) - I feel exactly the same about this episode as I did with 603. Both the movie and the short are dull, dull, dull. I've seen Red Zone Cuba before, so I was aware of Coleman Francis' directorial prowess. Man, I can't believe there are three of his films in this season.

Francis' film wasn't without its bits of bad movie gold. The random inserts of characters that don't have anything to do with anything are briefly amusing. Tons of characters walk on screen for ten seconds, do their thing and then disappear. There was Hick Family, at the airfield to watch the crazy parachuters. There was Rubenesque Lady, at the dance to have a good time and break skinny guys in half. And, no one could forget The Scot, fresh from the United Kingdom and there to both watch crazy parachuters and to break skinny guys in half.

I just have two comments on this episode's prologue host segment. Didn't we exhaust the Uranus jokes back in 412? And, that's no Servo-as-a-planetarium, that's Timmy! He's back and he's mutated into a new and terrifying form!

There were a few scattered laughs courtesy of the riffing. After skydiver #2 falls to his death, Servo quips: "This is a real challenge for any band, to bring this party back up," to which I responded with a hearty laugh. Overall, and in complete disagreement with Paul Chaplin in the ACEG who's "fond of the final result," I didn't think this was one of MST's best moments. In fact, the bit that made me laugh the hardest wasn't a riff at all. It was Frank's Joel-eqsue "Nel-stone" rant. "You wake and bake every day. You are so high."

"Geez, they should set a place for Eraserhead." (6/10)

film d. Coleman Francis (1963)
short d. Herk Harvey (1956)
mst d. Jim Mallon (27 Aug 1994)

Guest OLR: Children of Men (2006)

Injects much-deserved life into a practically comatose genre. (9/10)

d. Alfonso Cuaron

MST3K (608)

608 - Code Name: Diamond Head (w/ A Day at the Fair) - And, one episode later, the writers break their own rule. Unlike the Brady Bunch ban of 607, we're tortured with six-and-a-half million mentions of the show Lovejoy whenever Ian McShane is onscreen. It's McCloud Syndrome all over again, though, in their defense, at least Lovejoy was a current show at the time.

Other than that annoyance, the riffing was decent. My favorite riff was early in the movie. Secret Agent on the phone to HQ: "Code two. Tree may be in paradise." Mike: "The hell does that mean? Over." Something about Mike's delivery got me laughing out loud.

So the girl who had her letter read in 524 gets her second letter read in this episode. No fair!

The imaginary scenario cooked up by Magic Voice and Cambot in host segment two was the funniest segment this season so far. In it, Mike dressed as a scoutmaster, berates the poor bots for not finishing their drinks and smashes the cans into their faces. "Shut your pie-hole. I know a thing or two about a thing or two." Robot abuse is always fun. Apparently, this character is from somewhere, but Mike's forceful performance makes it stand on its own.

The other two in this series of "Mike could be worse" segments didn't work at all. In one, Mike is supposed to be Brad Roberts from the one-hit-wonder band Crash Test Dummies. This reference is well out-of-date now and was apparently obscure even when the ACEG was written. In that, the author of the episode summary calls the character "a deep-voiced crash test dummy" (note the lower case). In the other, Mike appears as the Frugal Gourmet. Cutting off pieces of the robots for food ingredients was a good idea, but they should've gone farther with it.

"No one can explain why father is 85." (7/10)

film d. Jeannot Szwarc (1977)
short d. ?? (1947)
mst d. Kevin Murphy (1 Oct 1994)

OLR: Fire in the Sky (1993)

The small town reaction to the abductees' story was an interesting angle, but the execution was too Hollywood. (6/10)

d. Robert Lieberman

OLR: Wolfen (1981)

I learned that sentient wolves just love to eat hobos. (5/10)

d. Michael Wadleigh

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)

MST3K (606)

606 - The Creeping Terror - What a great, bad movie. The carpet monster is brilliant. The "ADR is too hard" narration, the overexposed film, the choppy editing and strange asides are all deliciously amateur. The scene in which the monster makes love to a car is indescribable. This is exactly the kind of movie I expect to see on this show.

Bad as the film was, I think its monster was pretty original. Usually in the films from this era, you're going to get either a giant turnip or an alien that miraculously looks just like a Homo sapiens. The carpet monster is huge, hungry and amorphous. He kind of looks like a reared up centipede. His erect head resembles a sexual organ and his mouth, located exactly in the correct spot below, resembles an excretory orifice. If I were still in college, I could write papers and papers of baloney just on this aspect alone. Anyway, I've never seen anything like it. Point me to the Aurora model kit and I'll grab my charge card.

"Hey, if you could help me out by climbing in..." With plenty of eating-related jokes to make about the monster, the riffing had plenty of fun to offer. That poor monster. The caloric intake he required every day must have been astounding.

I guess there was a lot of time to kill in this episode. Both the end credits and the "Mike's Hi-Fi" segment ate up acres of minutes using the cheesy song from the movie's dance sequence. I loved the "Hi-Fi" segment. The expressions on Mike's face as he soaks in the "sweet spot" sounds of his system were perfect, as was the technobabble relating to the equipment he purchased.

It was kind of a loose theme in the host segment this episode. The guys stick it to Love, American Style (twenty years after its cancellation), coffee shop snobs, audiophiles, Tories and, um, bad launderers. You said it, Mike and the bots!

"And Bobby's hopelessly inbred synapses slowly begin to fire." (8/10)

film d. Arthur Nelson [as A.J. Nelson] (1963)
mst d. Jim Mallon (17 Sep 1994)

Guest OLR: El Laberinto del Fauno (2006)

I would have enjoyed more magic. (7/10)

d. Guillermo del Toro

Guest OLR: Blood Diamond (2006)

DiCaprio fails at making another accent and Zwick fails at making another movie. (5/10)

d. Edward Zwick

Guest OLR: The Fountain (2006)

Watching it is practically a religious experience. (9/10)

d. Darren Aronofsky

MST3K (605)

605 - Colossus and the Headhunters - I discovered today that I'm not a Nummy Muffin Coocol Butter fan. This slightly modified, stuffed pink puppy occupies every single host segment in this episode. Mike and Frank fall in love with him, he sheds a lot, Frank sings a ballad about him and, most alarmingly, Dr. F. spends his final moments onscreen coochie-cooing it. It's all disturbingly Cousin Oliver-esque and just about as funny. Intellectually, I can understand that Frank's tremendously off-key song dedicated to this fur ball is very humorous, but it didn't get me to laugh today.

Fortunately, the Mike part of the final host segment restored a little normality to this episode. In fact, it's just the kind of final host segment that I like. It starts with the bots asking a movie-related question of Big Brother Mike: can you still see for a while after your head is cut off? That segues into viewer mail. One thing I like about the viewer mail segments -- besides their down-home charm -- is that they're clearly un- or less-scripted. The bots appears to be throwing spontaneous comments at Mike, which interrupts his reading of the letter. Mike even has trouble pronouncing the kid's last name in this episode, which is left in. It's raw and KTMAish. I'll be sad to see this part of the show leave.

The riffing for this show took a while to get going. It was sparse and not particularly funny for quite a while. I didn't chuckle at all until about 2/3rds of the way into it. Finally, comments like "A steel piñata? That could take hours!" and the jabs at the guy who looked like a cross between Spock and McCoy began to liven up this pretty lifeless episode.

Maciste and his men pass by some ferns in the woods. Mike, in a stoner voice: "Look at all the pot." Hey, did Joel drop by the writing room?

"There's no one around for miles and he's still self-conscious about tinkling." (6/10)

film d. Guido Malatesta (1960)
mst d. Kevin Murphy (20 Aug 1994)

MST3K (604)

604 - Zombie Nightmare - Mike: "I wish I could understand the lyrics." Crow, mockingly: "Maybe it's for the young generation?" The riffing about Motörhead's classic metal anthem "Ace of Spades" should've warned me that I was going to be on a different wavelength for this film than the guys from MST. Though Mike was 16 and Trace was 22 when that song was released, I think we're looking at more of a cultural gap than a generation gap here. A low-budget, '80s Canadian horror movie starring a bodybuilder/heavy metal band frontman filled with rock music is right up my alley. I'd buy the unMSTied flick in a second if it were available. The MST clearly crew felt otherwise. "This was a very painful movie for us -- we thoroughly, intensely, and unequivocally hated this movie," wrote Mary Jo in the ACEG. It showed.

The host segments were near-nonexistent, presumably to make more room for the movie. Unfortunately, the movie was still chopped up to bits by the Brains. It looks like they cut out nearly every bit of zombie violence directed at the teenagers. Were they worried about their young fans? Did they find the violence distasteful? Or did they just find it easier to riff on the post-violence dialogue? I don't know, but I didn't like it. I was especially disappointed that the entire death scene for the incredibly unlikable, pasta-throwing mullet-guy was cut. Man, I wanted to see zombie-Thor kick that guy's ass.

Not that this episode was without laughs. Outside of the geezer-rific comments on the songs, there were many laugh-out-loud-worthy moments in the movie. "Oooh... it's stuck in his hinder-holster!" Any comments about the "rebellious" mullet-guy's sensible driving were great. I was impressed that the Batman jokes weren't too abused despite Adam West's mustachioed presence. I feel like I got my laughs-worth.

"Suddenly the Twist & Crème seemed a much darker place." (7/10)

film d. Jack Bravman (1986)
mst d. Trace Beaulieu (24 Nov 1994)

MST3K (603)

603 - The Dead Talk Back (w/ The Selling Wizard) - A dull short and movie combined with only occasionally funny riffing and host segments. This is one of those episodes that I won't be able to remember anything about in two weeks. I'm not surprised to read that this film was never released when it was made and didn't see the light of day until 1993.

Yeah, some bands do have really long guitar solos at their live shows, don't they? I'm sure the Grateful Dead was even worse in this regard. It's kind of a one-note joke to occupy three entire host segments. Crow's Dead-ish solo lasts for an impossibly long time, just like a concert. Yep, that's amusing and true-to-life... can we move onto something else? I will offer my compliments to Andy LaCasse for the actual guitar composition. He really nailed that goofy-meandering-waa-waa Dead sound.

During the fake séance, a stool floats handily into Krasker's hands. Crow: "So, big deal! My stools float." When all else fails, go for a poop joke. I'll give 'em credit for this one: it took me a beat to catch it. Most of the rest of the riffing didn't do too much for me. I don't know if I'm out of practice at watching these things or if the guys were just off this show. I think they were just off. The poor source material didn't help.

Not a great choice for a short, either. It's just a really long ad for Budweiser freezers. Once you get past the amusing idea that these macrobrewers used to dabble in ice creamer freezers, there's just pitch after pitch for the wonders of '50s grocery technology. Plus, I'm still disturbed by that enormous scab on the saleslady's knee. Yeesh, thanks for the close-up.

This is also the infamous Rhino release marred by constant glitches. It wasn't quite as bad as I was expecting. There are probably hundreds of video glitches during the episode. Luckily, the vast majority of them only last for one frame. These are noticeable, but honestly not too distracting. There were only three major areas of bad video, found at 0:24:41, 1:04:08 and 1:23:19. Other than those bits, this ep is watchable; no worse than the dozens of fuzzy/hissy taped-from-cable episodes I've seen.

"The pizza dominatrix!" (6/10)

film d. Merle S. Gould (1957)
short p. Jamison Handy (1954)
mst d. Jim Mallon (30 Jul 1994)

[Real life managed to knock me off of my MST schedule for the last two weeks. An Xbox 360, three family Christmas parties and a funeral were the main contributors. It didn't help that I knew my next episode was both poorly regarded by fans and had a flawed transfer from Rhino. As soon as the opening theme started, though, it felt good to be back. I don't think I'll be able to get back on track within season 6, but I'll definitely recover by season 8.]