Posts
“Death will be too merciful for you... ZAPP ROWSDOWER.” - Satorus.
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
No comments:
Post a Comment