Mystery Science Theater 3000 #406 "Attack of the Giant Leeches" w/short "Undersea Kingdom, Part One"

This episode begins with the short Undersea Kingdom, Part One. The plot is something to do with a war in Atlantis between two factions. On the evil side, a man dressed like a chicken (NOT Krankor) activates some evil robots who shoot a rocket or something. Meanwhile, by way of their submarine, a group of human explorers investigate the lost city under the sea, which strangely looks like a pretty dry place, what with the vast desert they have to wander through. The explorers are soon discovered and hunted down by the undersea marauders. This first part ends on a cliffhanger and is picked up in episode #409 The Indestructible Man.

Definitely not Krankor.

I have never been much of a fan of the serial shorts. Like most people I've always preferred the educational shorts; but this one is fun and has some great riffing. It contains the great, unusually dark riff from Joel: "all of these people are dead now. Isn't that weird?" delivered with complete sincerity. I can't think of many darker from this era of the show.

The main feature Attack of the Giant Leeches begins in a greasy Florida town where we meet a fat man named Dave who discovers that his wife is cheating on him with a guy called Cal who she meets periodically at the local swamp (romantic). Dave follows them there with his shotgun, and as retribution he forces them to run into the swamp at gun point. Dave witnesses the two cheaters dragged away by the giant leeches and calls the local law enforcement. He tries to explain to the sheriff that the monsters are behind the disappearance, but as usual, the authorities don't believe him. Instead they attribute the deaths to alligator attacks. In an unusually dark twist Dave the fat man is overwhelmed by guilt and hangs himself in his cell. 

"Oh great, a swinger. Always on my shift." - Joel

Meanwhile, local hero Steve believes in the monsters and works on a plan to hunt them. He assembles a search party to find the victims, and along the way they discover that there are no alligators left in the swamp. Either they've been scared away or something has eaten them. Scary right? Steve gets permission to go diving in the swamp (which looks to be about a metre deep) armed with a trusty spear and a bomb with which to destroy the monsters. Along the way he gets into a scrape with a leech and his buddy has to jump in to save him. They return to shore with proof of the leeches' existence and blow the swamp up (apparently... there's a splash). The dead leeches float to the surface. The end.

The leeches attack.

As indicated by the inclusion of the short, Attack of the Giant Leeches is a short movie. As a result you'd think it would be fairly fast paced, but you'd be wrong. The only way to describe this film is “intensely boring.” It's not the worst movie featured in MST3K, nor is it one of the best. It's not even the most average. It's nothing. Having said that, the episode itself is a pretty great one; not what I would consider a top ten or top twenty candidate, but pretty solid all around. For a Joel episode there are not too many overly obscure references, as they were known to do on occasion if they had a movie like this that presented a whole heap of nothingness to work with. There is a fun host segment featuring the song "Danger to Myself and Others" that pokes fun at the Southern hicks depicted in the film, that's to my recollection one of the earliest host segments to target the South. There would be many, many more to come in the seasons that followed. It's easy to see why: swamps lend themselves well to crappy monster movies, not to mention the archetypal county sheriff who doesn't want anyone telling him how to do his job. Thus there was a huge catalogue of MST3K fodder set in the South for the crew to choose from. See Squirm, Boggy Creek II and of course "Manos": The Hands of Fate for a few examples.

 

The leech costumes are some of the worst in MST3K history, and there have been some bad ones. There was the pickle / reverse ice cream cone from Venus in It Conquered the World, and the furry dogs passed off as shrews in The Killer Shrews, but the giant leeches possibly out rank them. They look like industrial size bin bags with goggles attached.

Good Thing

The short is infinitely more entertaining than the feature, and you'll be missing it after ten minutes of Attack of the Giant Leeches. I know that the shorts served the purpose of supplementing the shorter feature films to reach the episode length, but I would have liked to have seen The Undersea Kingdom shorts joined together as one whole episode. Maybe someone out there could edit them all together? It would potentially form an interesting "lost" episode.

Bad Thing

It's hard to pick a bad thing from the main feature because nothing happens. I guess it's the anticlimactic ending. Steve plants a bomb, survives a confrontation with one of the leeches and sets off the detonator. Then everyone leaves and the film says “The End.” There are no final speeches, no cliffhanger ending with one of the leeches still alive, nothing. Just like the rest of the film. Some people really enjoy these Roger Corman films and the episodes of MST3K they produced, but although this is a fairly light, entertaining episode, I find Corman's films neither good enough nor bad enough to be interesting.

"Thank you for comforting me with your gun." - Crow

Kubrick's Odyssey: Secrets Hidden in the Films of Stanley Kubrick by Jay Weidner

A long time interest in Stanley Kubrick, and in 2001: A Space Odyssey in particular, brought me to this interesting documentary by conspiracy theorist Jay Weidner. Weidner believes that in the climate of the Cold War, Stanley Kubrick was approached by members of the US Government to fake the Apollo moon landings in return for help with his movies. Weidner does not argue that the landings were faked and man did not go to the moon, he argues that man did go to the moon, but what we saw on television was faked. He postulates that there would have been good reason to film a fake landing for public consumption during the climate of the Cold War, to avoid the public seeing a potential catastrophe, to ensure that the mission was seen to run smoothly, and so on. This documentary is the first of a planned trilogy of documentaries to be released annually that aim to uncover the links between Stanley Kubrick and the secret societies that have long been rumoured to control our nations from behind the curtain.

The early parts of Weidner's documentary focus on the front screen projection methods that Kubrick used for special effects shots in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and how the same method could have been used to fake the moon landing. For those who have not heard of front screen project before, it basically involves filming a set in front of a large screen onto which a background image is being projected, e.g. a desert, or a star field. In essence, it is a more convincing looking green screen effect. Weidner first analyses scenes from 2001 to show us how these effects are done, and then analyses the Apollo moon landing photographs in the same way by drawing an imaginary line over where he feels the set ends and the screen used to project the moon backgrounds begins. Some of this photo analysis is convincing, some is not depending on the photo. Although Weidner makes interesting points in this early part of the film, many elements of his argument are speculative. But it does importantly present the foundation of his idea.

It is the second half of the documentary that really impresses, as Weidner argues that Kubrick encoded a secret confession into his version of The Shining and it is this section that is very difficult to argue with. It manages to tap into many questions I myself had always had about The Shining, such as the significance of the American symbolism throughout the movie and the Apollo 11 jumper that Danny is seen wearing. Weidner wisely focuses his analysis on the differences between Kubrick's film and the Stephen King novel, and it is here where the documentary's strongest moments lie. It would be a disservice to Weidner's film to give too much of it away, but I will say that one of the most startling moments for me personally is when Weidner turns his attention to the famous typewriter scene. Maybe Weidner's theory about this scene has been discussed by other interpreters in the past, but it is something that I had never noticed before and would have sealed the deal for me if I hadn't already been sold on the evidence presented up until that point.

Good Thing

The in-depth yet succinct analysis of The Shining. This section of the documentary was the primary reason for converting me as a sceptic into a believer, and I imagine it will be the same for many viewers to come. If I have one criticism about the film other than what I've put under "Bad Thing" below, it's that I wish Weidner had edited his trilogy together as one big film that we could view now, but that is hardly a criticism at all. I wait with bated breath for next year's installment of Kubrick's Odyssey.

Bad Thing

Weidner doesn't always have the best way with words, and I fear that this may serve to undermine his argument in the eyes of those approaching his documentary with hostility. We sometimes get lines of narration like “Suddenly from nowhere, the hotel rolls the ball from nowhere,” and “It isn't the real launch of Apollo 11, it is of course the symbolic launch of Apollo 11. In other words, it isn't real.” These occasional missteps in Weidner's narration take some value away from his argument, and that's unfortunate, because if we can look past that then the content contained within is very good. Ultimately though the documentary feels unpolished as a result. Here's hoping that Weidner takes a little more time on the fine details of the two planned follow up films of his Kubrick trilogy.

 

A link to the DVD can be found here direct from Jay Weidner's website.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 #910 The Final Sacrifice

“Death will be too merciful for you... ZAPP ROWSDOWER.” - Satorus.

It's hard to say what's more disturbing about this film: the creepy names or the weird faces.

The film takes place in Canada and begins with a pre-credit scene where a man we don't yet know is running away from a gang of hooded thugs and an angry estate agent that we later come to learn is an evil cult leader named Satorus. The fleeing man is killed by the cult, and we soon find that his name is Mike Pipper, father of Troy Pipper, who one credit sequence and seven years later is on a quest to uncover the truth about his father's death and what the plans of the evil cult are. Whilst looking through the junk in the attic that his father left behind Troy finds a map to an ancient city, an ancient city that will apparently give Satorus “an army of invincible warriors” when presented with a (final) human sacrifice. And so a game of cat and mouse begins between Troy, his grizzled guardian Zapp Rowsdower, and the evil Satorus. 

 "Canadian villain Garth Vader" - Mike

Along the way Troy and Rowsdower meet an old man in a cabin who offers his abode to the pair whilst they hide from the forces of Satorus. The Cabin Man, or Grizzled Old Prospector as Mike and the Bots refer to him, has a strained raspy voice that is actually painful to listen to. He sounds equal parts Yosemite Sam, Tom Waits, and the Singing Resident. The Cabin Man's first appearance is one of the funniest parts of the movie, but thank God he only has ten minutes of screen time. The guy that played him must have been sucking Strepsils for weeks.

              

Eventually it turns out that Rowsdower is an ex-member of the cult, and Troy begins to wonder if it was Rowsdower who killed his father. Then there's a final duel between Rowsdower and Satorus, where Rowsdower inexplicably finds a grappling hook. "Is this a grappling hook dumping ground?" wonders Crow. Who wins the duel for the fate of the Earth? That would be telling.

 "My face is warm but my shoulders are freezing!" - Mike

The other notable thing to mention about this movie is the cult member's unnecessarily scant uniform: all they wear above their waists are black hoods and vests. There's a space of seven years between the pre-credits scene and the rest of the film, and apparently no cult members dared to ask if maybe they could wear sleeves. This wouldn't matter so much if the story took place in the heat of the South, but this is Canada in the dead of winter. I suppose the tough guys in this cult have to keep up appearances.

Good Thing

The scenes between Troy and Zap Rowsdower. Rowsdower became a popular name amongst MSTies after this episode both because of the absurdity of the name and the equal absurdity of the character: a Canadian action hero who's overweight, alcoholic, has hockey hair and wears all denim. By himself he would be memorably absurd enough as a kind of Canadian Mitchell. But teamed up with the wimpy Troy the duo transcend the usual ineffective heroes of MST3K fare and become comic gold.

Bad Thing

The pace in the first act is agonising. After the opening credits we're treated to a ten minute scene of the effeminate Troy looking through boxes and reading old books. The only dialogue in this section takes place between Troy and his mother as she brings him tea. As Tom Servo says, “we're just watching someone fritter away their afternoon here.” Eventually, after watching Troy get himself some leftover pizza from the fridge, his house is raided by the evil cult and we're ready to restart the movie. 

 "No wonder Dad lost all his money, he was investing in lemon mines!" - Mike

Mystery Science Theater 3000 #1005 The Blood Waters of Dr. Z

“On the surface it looks like an animal. Like a cat... or an ape.” - Walker 

This is one of those episodes which is funny for the first 30 minutes just because of how absurd the movie is, but becomes agonising soon after. The riffing is below par for season 10 standards, but decent enough if you're in the right frame of mind. Think “Manos”: The Hands of Fate for a similar episode. The bottom line is, if you're not battle hardened to the kind of schlock that The Blood Waters of Dr. Z is, there may be no hope for you lasting the full 90 minutes.

The film opens with what appears to be stock documentary footage of sea creatures, narrated over in disturbing fashion by our antagonist, a mad scientist who looks like Tim Burton but wants to look like a fish. Whilst spewing clichés like “they think I'm insane, THEY'RE the ones who are insane!” and “together we'll conquer the Universe!”, the scientist reveals his plan: he has developed a formula called Zaat that will merge his DNA with that of a fish. Once he has become a man-fish, he will wreak his revenge upon the world that scorned him. 

 "I think the world can handle this invasion." - Mike

If I had to choose two words to describe this film, they would probably be “slow” and “brown.” It takes 15 minutes for the evil doctor to turn into the fish-man and that's the first thing that happens. There is some attempt at horror and action as the Sheriff and his team of scientists try to stop the monster, but it doesn't really matter. This film has no plot. It's obvious that the concept began and ended with the monster costume, which is decent if extremely goofy.

The funniest thing about this film is the disparity between what the monster says and what the monster does. He spends the entire running time telling the audience how scary and powerful he is, when it's plain as the snout on his face that he is a fair-weather monster at best. He stumbles around and generally fails at the tasks he's set for himself on his wheel planner (and how many monsters have a wheel planner anyway?) At one point he gets into a fist fight with one of the good scientists and loses. Maybe if he had chosen to merge with something other than a catfish he'd have had more luck. Yeah, I forgot to mention the fish that he chose to merge with. Not a shark, not a piranha or octopus: a catfish.

"It's his "what shirt should I wear?" wheel." - Crow

Although I'm fond of this episode for its many absurdities, it's a difficult one to recommend. I found my mind wandering during the second half, and once you've seen the monster for the first time you might as well just skip to the end. This is one of those episodes where the riffing struggles to contain the beast within.

GOOD THING

The first host segment, “Cleaning Compound of Deceit.” Crow and Mike parody the ridiculous opening narration of the movie. It's rare for a late season host segment of MST3K to be this good. It's usually the case that the simpler the premise, the funnier the sketch, and this is a good example of that. Mike polishes his boots whilst Crow, playing the part of the mad scientist, taunts him by revealing his unsavoury love of shoes and his plan to turn them against mankind. “Soon there will be shoes the size of which they've never seen before, who like human flesh. And then, at just the right moment, ATTACK!”

BAD THING

The sound. This film is so unpleasant to listen to, the main culprit being the horrible, grating sound effects. Every now and again there's a chugging on the soundtrack like an old engine, and bleeps and bloops that I guess are meant to represent the sea. Most of the time there's no background noise and we just have to listen to the inane narration of the monster. We do get one weird folk song over the opening credits, which is so bad that it does at least make you grateful to not have to hear it again for the remainder of the movie.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 #404 - Teenagers from Outer Space

"By the looks of his outfit, I'd say he's from a private school somewhere." - Grandpa

In general, the movies featured in Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes fall into two categories: the campy, and the disturbing. Teenagers from Outer Space falls into the former category. This 1959 sci-fi film from writer/director Tom Graeff is highly watchable by MST3K standards, and is one of the few movies that I could sit through without the funny commentary.

The plot focuses on a 30-something teenager from outer space called Derek (yes, Derek) who turns against his alien crew when they plan to unleash a herd of giant lobsters on the Earth, so they can graze, grow fat, and serve as food for this nefarious alien race. The aliens disintegrate a dog and Derek runs away. Whilst he flees, the remaining aliens tie a lobster up and leave him in a cave. Why? Don't ask me. Derek's rival Thor runs off in pursuit of him, and it is his job to bring the little rascal back, disintegrated or not disintegrated. 

 "Stay!" - Tom Servo

Along the way we meet a variety of kindly towns folk who are hilariously oblivious to Derek's strange behaviour. Derek talks like Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation and nobody bats an eye lid; the people in this town are happy to drive him around and let him in their homes. Not even Derek's remark that he has “never piloted a vehicle like this before” in response to Earth cars is enough to raise suspicion. And when Derek asks his friendly chauffeur how to drive a car by angrily demanding “TELL ME!”, the driver calmly responds “sure, here's the clutch. When I push it in, I change the gears.”

In fact, it's only towards the end of the film when Derek refers to the moon as “her moon” whilst talking to Betty that she cottons on to the fact that he may not be of this world. “But you seemed so much like us,” she tells him. “Like Grandpa when he was young.” Well I'm glad I never had a Grandpa like hers then.

In the final act of the film Derek stages a mock betrayal of his human companions in order to trick his alien foes and gain control of their ship. He uses it to crash the ships carrying the lobster herds into himself and the other aliens, becoming a martyr. It's an okay ending and the pace is so brisk that you can hardly complain too much. Along with the comments from Joel & the Bots it's easy to see why this is a fan favourite.

The host segments are particularly good in this episode, as they usually were around this time in the series. My personal favourite is the segment where Joel & the Bots design a new fashion line based on the gaffer tape alien costumes from the film. I have a soft spot for seeing the legs of a puppet: it makes me laugh out loud every time when The Muppets do it, and the same happens whenever we see Crow's disturbingly long, matchstick thin legs. Put a funny costume on him too and there is no way it can go wrong. 

GOOD THING

The skeletons. A lot of fun is had from the skeleton props that appear whenever a character is disintegrated, and although it might be a bit cheesy and cheap, it's so much better than just seeing the characters fall over when they die. The film makers actually attempt to put some variety in these scenes too, such as the smoke rising out of the swimming pool when the swimmer is disintegrated, or the gun in the hand of the cop skeleton, or the great disintegrated dog prop. I never get bored of seeing those skeletons flopping around. 

BAD THING

The bad guy, Thor. He's not very menacing. In fact, he's kind of a weiner and a glorified errand boy. He spends most of the movie two steps behind Derek, and is easily tricked at every turn. We don't even get a great death scene to see him off, he's just one of the few easily duped aliens who get a fleet of flying saucers dropped on their heads. Terrible.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 #1002 - The Girl in Gold Boots

“I was thinking about calling it “Do You Want to Laugh or Cry?”” - Critter

The Girl in Gold Boots begins as a vision of your worst nightmares and gets worse.

Our story begins with Buzz, AKA “Icky Elf,” a young man of 35 who is on his way to Los Angeles, where he hopes to fulfil his life long dream of being in Los Angeles. On the way he meets Michelle, AKA “The Girl in Gold Boots,” an abused waitress who has dreams of becoming a famous dancer. Completing the trio is the appealingly named Critter, AKA “Yak Boy,” who has dreams of mopping floors and draft dodging.

It's not long before a love triangle of deadly consequences emerges between our heroes. Disturbingly, Michelle seems to have no say in the matter, with Buzz in particular insisting that he saw her first so he gets to keep her. Buzz and Critter fight over ownership of Michelle, whilst she looks on despairingly and occasionally cries. I'd like to be able to say that these scenes are a comment on misogyny, a dilemma for the female lead that is resolved through the remainder of the picture as she eventually finds empowerment on the other side of her journey. However, the director cruelly crushes these hopes in each following minute of the movie, as greasy guy after greasy guy ogles dancing girls, manipulates them with drugs and smacks them around a little bit in case you weren't depressed enough.

Eventually, the Dynamic Trio reach their destination: a spook-themed LA night club called The Haunted House, where Buzz's sister is the lead dancer. Our heroes soon meet club owner Leo, AKA “The Tower of Oil,” who apparently forces his right hand man to wear a poorly manufactured Halloween mask of his face. Leo is impressed by the gang and hires Michelle as a club dancer, Critter as the new cleaner, and Buzz as the local drug dealer. Yet more loosely connected scenes follow from this world of filth, and the audience is left feeling distraught and violated.

This is a film that disturbs me to my very core. Every aspect of it seems designed specifically to get under your skin and stay there long after you have finished watching. First of all, there's Buzz's unappealing habit of referring to money as bread. Then there's the way the film is shot, as if between shooting days the cameras were just left in the dirt where they lay, and when the audience finally manages to adjust to the amount of filth on the screen, the director cunningly introduces grease to the mix.

Another problem is that we have no idea who the hero is meant to be until 3/4's of the way in, when much to our dismay it turns out to be Critter, a cowardly man who sits and watches like a deer in the headlights as women get smacked around in his presence. He aptly describes himself as a man “who's got to find a hole to crawl into,” and I couldn't have said it better myself.

The episode itself is a brilliant one, and the episodes where the writers seem to be genuinely disturbed by the film are my personal favourites. There are too many great riffs to quote, but one of my favourites is Mike describing the cast of the film as “the Mount Rushmore of ugly.”

Good Thing

Mike's pool table gag. Perhaps it was the recent visit from Joel that season, or perhaps it was the impending cancellation of the series, but Mike began to play around with the shadowrama around this time, much like Joel frequently did in the early seasons of the show. In this episode, Mike conveniently has a pool cue on hand to play in the shady back room of the Ghost House. When Tom Servo asks him how long he's been waiting to use that gag, Mike responds: “Oh, not long... about eight years.”

Bad Thing

When first preparing this review I thought I had a conundrum on my hands. Which is worse: the “wounded turkey” dance of the Girl in Gold Boots, or the fledgling music career of our lovable hero Critter? Thankfully, as if blessed with a vision of my plight from the future, the director saw fit to combine the two elements in one skin crawling final scene of pure terror as the two love birds walk the beach to Critter's latest hit. Mike sums it up best in one of the funniest riffs of the episode: “Here's a puzzler: which of these two is worse at their art form?”