You know you've watched too much MST3k when...

And yes, I realize I'm putting more thought into these 'movies' than the people who made them.

How did the fellas recognize the Mole People footage long before they watched Mole People for the show?

End! End!

People who don't watch MST3k simply do not know what a bad movie is.
IMDb founder Col Needham gave Alphaville 1 star, Brick 2 stars, and Batman Returns 3 stars. Never mind that I love all those movies; This is insane! Clearly this man has never seen a truly bad movie that deserves a 1,2, or 3. I don't care if he invented the rating system, if Needham isn't familiar with bad movies he cannot accurately rate any movies.
I say that no competently constructed movie with a coherent plot and characters who act somewhat like humans should get less than a 4 or 5, whether or not you enjoy the movie.
The Creeping Terror is the worst movie ever featured on MST and it rightly deserves 1 star. Diabolik is probably the best (least terrible) and it deserves 5 stars.

Oh no they're about to be attacked by a point of view shot!

Why was this not the Thanksgiving episode? Why create alternate Thanksgiving host scenes for Night of the Bloodbeast?

Go ahead, let it out. Have a teenage cry wave.

While all the scenes featuring the teens are filmed on locations in the Montreal area (you can look at the Twist and Creme on Google street view), all scenes with the 'big star' Adam West are on a few cheap sets, in a black void, or in a cemetery at night.
Did they shoot this entire movie in Canada and then later film West's scenes in L.A. with the Detective, Voodoo Woman, and (as the fellas pointed out) a different actor playing the zombie?

Editing Mistake; The last two teens enter the garage, then the boy is killed, then the detective enters the garage, then the girl runs screaming through the garage and is killed, then the detective sees the zombie. WTF?

Shawn Levy (the gang's leader) grew up to direct bland, crappy Comedy films. Clearly he learned nothing from MST3k.

Ever since dad got murdered, things have been great!

When watching this movie about spoiled, disobedient girls who don't go to church and end up knocking over American flags for communist infiltrators before getting pregnant, you can't help thinking; for a cross-dresser who hung out with gays and drug-addicts, Ed Wood sure made some right-wing, jingoistic propaganda films.



Also,
I Accuse My Parents 1945
The Violent Years 1956
MST and Rifftrax Short - What About Juvenile Delinquency? 1955
Rifftrax Short - Why Vandalism 1955
People of this era seemed terribly concerned that juvenile delinquency was going to destroy America. The general sentiment seemed to be that delinquency is caused by wealthy, neglectful parents.

She died as she lived; failing algebra.

I'm wasn't remotely surprised to learn that Coleman Francis committed suicide.

Bay of Pigs.
That's what they say when I go swimming.

You really have to appreciate the levels of gross hypocrisy when you try to imagine just how much cocaine the writer, director, crew, and actors who made this anti-drug movie must've been on.

It's anonymous!

Ninety percent of the movies featured on MST are cheap, straight-to-video/drive-in knockoffs of successful Hollywood films and TV shows of the day.

Black Sunday - Samson vs the Vampire Women
Wolf - Werewolf (complete with same 'twist' ending)
Road Warrior - Warrors of the Lost World
Superman - Pumaman
Conan the Barbarian '82 - Outlaw of Gor
Jaws - Devil Fish
The Quatermass Xperiment - Night of the Blood Beast
The Wolfman - Track of the Moonbeast, It lives by night
Charlie's Angels -Angels Revenge
60's James Bond - Danger Death Ray, Agent for H.A.R.M.
Terminator + Jurassic Park = Future War
Airport - San Fransisco International
The Blob - Creeping Terror
Adam West Batman -Wild world of Batwoman
The Rockford Files - Mitchell
And these are just the specific ripoffs. So many more are just regurgitating what audiences had already seen ten times in the popular film trends of the time (50's nuclear monsters, 80's giggling little puppets), so they're ripoffs of ripoffs.

In a practice that continues today with DVD mock-busters, these knockoffs are made to generate a little quick cash based on the popularity of the big movies. Because the sad fact is that almost any cheaply-made movie, no matter how terrible, will turn a small profit. Teenagers can be tricked into seeing a crappy movie in a drive-in double-bill, and old people can be tricked into buying a mock-buster DVD. I'm sure that the sleazy waterbed salesmen who finance these knockoffs would rather they vanish quickly, never to be seen or heard of again. That's where MST comes in.

Tell your friends the Vampires were here!

A fun question for Trivia night;
What 1990's cable comedy series spawned a theatrically released movie whose run-time was shorter than that of the average episode?

Our licorice Ice Cream Cones melted!

We all know this 'movie' is two episodes of the short lived series 'Gemini Man' edited together using voice-overs from the actors who played Ben Murphy, Buffalo Bill, and Leonard Driscoll.
But why did voiceover-Buffalo-Bill say that the drag races were taking place in Ontario? The location couldn't look less like Canada and they never mention the setting in the second half.
Were they trying to tie Robert Denby in with Torontoist Dr. Hale? Like they were working together?

Hello? Hello?
I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello.

As with so many of the films on MST, TISCWSLABMUZ's writer sat down and was able to put together a half-hours worth of plot and dialogue. To get to the minimum legal length to call the product a movie, he then stretched it out with filler.
We usually we get driving scenes, parking scenes, stock footage, characters searching, characters meandering, characters fretting, etc. So I suppose we should thank Ray Dennis Steckler for at least going out and filming open-mic musical acts.

No, there weren't any spiders in it.

I remember seeing a commercial for Michael Bay's The Island in 2005 and thinking 'rip-off'.

Dick Sargent, communist.

Space Mutiny is a movie that can't seem to decide what kind of Sci-fi universe it takes place in.
The opening narration about a ship leaving an overpopulated earth to search for a new world and housing generations of people for their entire lives, seems to suggest a Space 1999/Battlestar Galactica scenario. Where it's just the one ship/convoy on its own, moving ever forward through wild, uncharted space with no intention of ever going back to where they started.
But then you have Dirk Hardpeck and the ill-fated professor arriving from somewhere else, you have the ship traveling close to what is recognized as pirate territory, and let's not forget the 'law of the galaxy'! This seems to suggest a heavily populated Star Trek/Star Wars universe with star charts and governments and trade routes and bases and outposts.

19:02 "It was cruel fate to be born in space. But I have vowed we will not die here. It is my destiny to set my feet upon a real world-"
Oh, is Kalgan going to be an honorable adversary who has legitimate grievances with the status quo upheld by the heroes? That might make this an interesting movie.
"-to accumulate wealth and power beyond our wildest dreams." Oh, never mind. The writer has seemingly gone out of their way to make him a cartoonish mustache-twirling villain.


Also, if the birth dates on Wikipedia are to be believed, Cameron Mitchell (Captain Santa) was 70 at the time of filming, Reb Brown (Gristle McThornbody) was 40, and Cisse Cameron (Shari Lewis) was 34. Those age jokes are still funny though.

They shouldn't have set their phasers to 'miss'.

Once you learn it was shot in Canada, you can't not notice how Appolonia pronounces her O's.

To Wendy's!

It's pretty clear to me that there was no sound equipment present on set and that the actors' lines and the sound effects were dubbed in later. Despite the fellas jokes, I think the part of Elaine was not dubbed by a different actress, just very badly dubbed. If you watch closely you'll see evidence throughout of the poor dubbing; every line delivered by Dr. Gavin seems unnaturally loud and forceful for the actor's on screen mouth movements.
Even in better fare, water will always give away a film's dubbed status. Foley artists can never seem to recreate the proper sound effects when water is involved. Listen closely to Tina swimming and Elaine's visit to Frank's Discount Falls.

Also, a bratty trouble-making brunette gets in a fight with her straight-laced boyfriend. She swims to a rock outcropping in the ocean where something happens to her. Her boyfriend then gets together with her good-girl blond friend, which causes both to feel guilty. I think writer Richard Hilliard had recently watched L'Avventura.

I don't like slumber parties now that I'm in my forties.

They should've shown a third Strickland sibling in the flashback sequence who would become Luther's parent/grandparent. Unless we're supposed to believe that burned and crazy/possessed Lucinda ever had a child.

Why won't you lay any eggs?

This Island Earth 1955
Fire Maidens of Outer Space 1956
The Mole People 1956
Missile to the Moon 1958 (featured on Rifftrax)
The Phantom Planet 1961

All of these films feature one man or a small group of humans going to another place (a planet or underground cavern) and finding a previously unknown human-looking society. These people usually live in quasi-classical buildings, wear robes, and have a leader with a weird title (Monitor, Lido) overseeing their odd laws and customs. Usually one of the human men will fall in love with one of their women.
In this other place, there is a second species of hideous monsters (guys in rubber suits). These monsters are usually kept by the humanoids as pets, guards, slaves, prisoners.
In the end, the society is usually destroyed, either by the monsters rising up or by a natural disaster (after which the monsters rise up), and the man/small group narrowly gets back to earth with no tangible evidence of their adventure.

Are these other movies ripping off This Island Earth? I know it was the most expensive film riffed on MST3k but I didn't realize it was ever successful enough to spawn imitators. Or is there some other movie they are all ripping off?

You know Captain, every year of my life I grow more and more convinced that the wisest and the best is to fix our attention on the good and the beautiful.
Don't hit him.

As I already mentioned, Werewolf is a topical ripoff of the more successful movie, Wolf.
Wolf is a fairly forgettable romance/horror film in which our protagonist (played by Jack Nicholson) finds himself slowly becoming wolfier after being bitten. He remains a likable protagonist throughout, he never kills any innocent people, and we're happy when he defeats his enemy and gets away in the end.
But when sitting down to pen the rip-off, writer Tony Zarindast apparently forgot about the whole 'likable protagonist' part. He felt compelled to cram in bits from 'The Wolf Man' and had our main character kill some innocent people and rough up his scantily-clad Real Estate Agent and paramilitary Groundskeeper. When this character defeats his enemy and gets away in the end, we're left feeling weirded-out at what the movie wants us to believe is a triumphant happy ending.

A wooden door with a rectangular window at eye level featuring wire mesh reinforced glass is present in the 'Hospital', the bathroom 'at the bar', and the anthropology lab where much of the movie takes place. Clearly, these doors all led to the same hallway.

Now you might assume, as I did, that the barely intelligible lead actress was cast specifically to take off her top in some nude/sex scene that was edited out of the MST version. Well, you'd be wrong.
I found a copy of Werewolf on the internet and skimmed through it. There is no such scene and this woman was hired solely for her acting skills. I want you to think about that for a minute.

OK, stop, everyone go up a shirt size.

I think that Doris Hawkins, last seen lying face down in a deep stream, was supposed to have died in the bee attack but was for some reason saved in post production.
At 1:17:02 (MST episode time), Manfred says 'Mr Hawkins is too upset' and then turns from the camera, at which point we hear the obviously looped line 'Doris is still very ill'.
At 1:24:45 Hargrove delivers another obviously looped line to Hawkins as the camera clumsily cuts away from the action, 'His bees killed my wife and attacked your daughter'.
Were we ever supposed to care about Doris? Did they just have one too many deaths for the British censors?


For the record, Amicus Productions did make some good movies.

Don't leave me, Vicky!
I haven't finished killing you yet.

At no point does any onscreen character say anything about time travel. Our hero even says he's from another planet, nothing about earth in the future. I think they made a movie about alien cyborgs traveling to earth and enslaving dinosaurs and humans and decided to Terminator it up in post production, adding the opening narration and naming it 'Future War'.

Every single scene has at least one person wearing plaid. Sometimes it's everyone in the scene.

All the bras were hell on earth?

Normally, most of the jokes on MST come at the expense of the film's dialogue. It's interesting to watch an episode where the gang (faced with Shakespeare's dialogue) have to mine their humor almost entirely from the actors' facial expressions and mannerisms. It must've been difficult for the writing staff and a big gamble as to whether they could make a quality episode, but I say the gamble paid off.

I can't get rid of them, it's hopeless!

Every shot of Spider-Gary's face is in the 'other dimension' black void. Did the actor not want to wear the makeup on the beach location, did they come up with better make-up after the initial shoot?

The host sequences are out of order. In break one we see Mike trapped in a spider web before the movie scene they're referencing. In breaks two and three they recreate the audition and plane crash scenes, each of which had happened forty minutes ago by then. Maybe to have commercial breaks at the required intervals they had to fit the different length host scenes wherever they'd fit.

Also, most sexist film ever?

Spider Island, home of the stars!

This feature feels like two stitched-together episodes of a TV show. After Valmont is killed and Diabolik gets away scott-free with the emeralds, the plot is simply over. An entirely new plot (concerning the gold shipment) begins in the last half hour.
Could they not have threaded these two plots together in the writing stage? Did they realize mid-shoot that their movie was only an hour long and quickly make up more stuff to film?

Excuse me, a fuse must've blown.
Ooh, I don't blame it!

Up until Poncho is killed three-fifths of the way through the movie, I thought there wouldn't be a monster and it would all be the jerk character trying to scooby-doo the hero into abandoning his ranch. Obviously, I gave this movie way too much credit.

She's wearing a Mexican boob scarf. Classy!