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