504 - Secret Agent Super Dragon

Gotta drain the Super Dragon…

Hate to say it, but his is a pretty mediocre episode. Not to say that I hated it, though. So far, I’ll take a lower-caliber episode of MST3K over just about anything else. But I’ll also take plenty of episodes over this one. I’d only seen this episode once, when I bought the DVD set it came in, and now I remember why.

The movie itself isn’t the problem. It’s a dubbed Italian James Bond knockoff that follows an agent code named “Super Dragon” as he tries to untangle a confusing plot involving drugs, a missing college girl, a dead agent, chewing gum, and Holland. It’s barely coherent (the MST Hour wraps clue in more to the plot than the actual movie does), lots of time is wasted on sightseeing Holland, there are plenty of sultry 60s European vixens, and the main character barely does more than follow people, act smug, harass women, and get in minor fist fights. It’s just the right amount of bad, goofy, boring, and ridiculous.

But Joel and the bots…they are just not feeling this one. There’s none of that palpable tone of disinterest some of the lesser episodes have; Joel and the Bots are friendly and joke often enough. So maybe it’s just me, but man, there were only a handful of jokes that got more than a chuckle out of me.  In the beginning, when Super Dragon is lounging by the pool, Joel says, “You can tell by his lawn furniture he’s a secret agent.” Tom says, of the movie’s man sultry European women, “Don’t worship false eyelashes.” The most that can be said about the movie’s lavishly adorned sets is Joel wondering, “does anyone in this movie know when to stop decorating?” and then Crow saying, “Do you have any art?” Not quite “State Park” joke levels, but not much better.

But like I said, there are a few jewels in there. When Super Dragon wrestles with his fellow blonde female agent Fulton in the pool, Joel says, “Relationships with secretaries were real different back then.” Upon an electrocution, Tom saying, “Watts for dinner?” And, as the main character walks into the bathroom, Crow saying, “Gotta drain the Super Dragon.” And there’s a Tom Waits joke and a Beatles joke within a minute of one another.

But the movie’s plot is so confounding, so little action happens, so many of the men in it are creeps, that it’s just begging for more irreverence, for them to get annoyed and lash back more. Sure, it’s not a terrible movie, one of their less awful ones, but there’s meat in there, they just hardly chew it. That is a weird metaphor.

Thankfully though, the host segments are pretty damn good. Dr. Forrester comes back from a seminar on super villainy (that he, to my love, pronounces, “super villainry” at one point) that culminates in a great super villainy review at the end. Frank’s invention, the “Virtual Comedy” stand up VR machine, is super 90s and creative (as is the adding in of hecklers as difficulty). The Bots, being annoying, make their own annoying little robot, perpetuation the circle of artificial life. And Joel getting ready to bash the crap out of the thing is a joy. And the Secret Agent Super Dragon jazz theme music segment highlights a lot of what I love about the Joel era; like goofing off with friends. Their segment riffing on Post-kill puns is great, as it points out how death softens the blow of puns. And Crow’s writing a more politically correct spy movie is super 90s, and also shows how far politically correct thinking has gone since then (a lot of the things they say are some things I find myself saying at my most oversensitive)

Secret Agent Super Dragon is a pretty middling entry that also really typifies a lot of the movies shown; foreign, weird, incoherent, a little boring, the kind of movie you’d see on at three in the morning. A decent episode to watch n the middle of the night when there’s nothing else going on.

Episode in a Riff
Nobody in this movie knows when to stop decorating.

Random Asides

-I think every kid my age had that robot toy in segment one
-LOL annoying robots making annoying robots. The circle of artificial life
-I'm with Joel and the Bots in that I have NO IDEA what is going on with the plot of this movie. I can follow time travel and parallel dimension plots easier.
 -The dubbing guy for Agent Dragons sounds like voice of Tuxedo Mask in the Design for Dreaming short from episode 524

-I’m glad Joel picked up on the “Oh, they're in America because there s a flag there' thing

-So this spy agency has lost two agents on one case so far? Wow, they suck

-Super Dragon is a terrible secret agent and an a-hole. More like Secret Agent Sexual Harassment. He also has to be among the top 10 smuggest characters from one of the movies they've watched.

-This story is more like a light evening or vacation for James Bond. Like. There's maybe one fight and a lot of hanging around.

-Man, do the MST Hour wraps bring me back. I wish I could watch the episode with them put in.

-Is everyone in this movie a creep? And does every woman have giant evil eyelashes?

-I love frank’s nonchalance at the end

-Man I’ve seen anime with less awkwardly dubbed lines
-I kept wondering why Joel and the Bots sang some funky song after a character is mentioned having fallen to death in an elevator shaft. Thanks to AnnotatedMST, I now know it's because that's the theme song to Shaft! That has to count as a pun, right?   
-As I was watching this, I thought, "Boy, it's too bad this episode aired so early in the 90s, or they could get some mileage out of the main character being named 'Cooper'." Sure enough, a minute later, there's a Hangin' with Mr. Cooper joke!
 -Thanks for the loud, screeching nail sawing, movie

-This is a superbly decorated movie

-Ollie’s costume in the first season of Arrow is more convincing than those masks

-One of the characters not drinking the drug and super dragon being tense about it is the closest this movie comes to being interesting

-The bad guy in this movie is more boring that the one in Mission: Impossible 4 and Quantum of Solace.  I love Forrester’s point on this guy. Though I disagree; I think a personality deformity or strange personality would work just fine.

-"Thank God we’re alive sex, Ted!"

6 Favorite Riffs

Additional Links

Annotated MST for this episode

Satellite News review for this episode

802 - Leech Woman

JED!!!

Leech Woman was only the second episode of MST3K’s un-cancelled 8^th season, and it found Best Brains returning to riffing movies without missing a stride. Leech Woman is a stepping stone towards the greatness that is season 8, and the second of five sequential Universal International films. Though not an all-time classic, there’s a lot to love about this one, from a movie filled with detestable characters, stock footage and bogus science, to host segments mocking Planet of the Apes. What more could you want? Okay, dinosaurs and boobs, but let’s be realistic, here.

The movie follows a woman who, while on a trip to Africa with her abusive endocrinologist husband, discovers the secret to eternal youth by mixing extract from a rare flower with hormone extracted from the back of men’s heads in the pineal gland. So, she returns to America and goes on a pineal piercing spree in an attempt to stay young.

It’s curious to see the show growing into its new SciFi Channel era with Pearl as the baddie, the Planet of the Apes stage of the “Great Chase” plotline still going strong, and Corbett filling in as Crow. Corbett feels like he’s still working on his Crow voice, sounding a little too high pitched and nasally. But he feels natural in the theater, zinging off lines like, “I guess they came to Africa during animal convention time,” during the depth of the stock footage of animals, and in skits like plotting with Servo to kill Mike and take his pineal juice, the rascal. Meanwhile, the rest of the cast is having a blast on the Apes set, with Pearl growing from Dr. Forrester’s flighty mom to the true Fearful Forrester and Murphy, Nelson, and the others are having great time as the apes. I love Pearl’s line, when dictating arbitrary laws for the Apes, referring to herself as, “the great, and mighty and foxy Lawgiver,” and it’s interesting seeing a more erudite Bobo as opposed to the clown he becomes when Brain Guy takes the role as the smart one.

But the star, as usual, is the movie, and it’s got plenty to offer: despicable people, rampant alcoholism, rapid-fire riffing, and, as Crow says, “It’s not stock footage, it’s stock mileage at this point.” This poor main character, June: she has an awful, dismissive, verbally abusive husband, is almost comically alcoholic, turns young then old again, and murders people. What’s next, she gets audited? Oh and then there’s her new would-be beau Neil, a POS who starts hitting on Young June the second he meets her while his fiancé is STANDING RIGHT NEXT TO HIM   Mike and the Bots make each other chuckle a lot through this and most of season 8, which keeps a jovial, irreverent attitude flowing through the episode, like ripping on annoying coworkers with a good friend, and not to mention a ton of drunk and old people jokes! The jokes come so fast, funny and clever that there’s one I just got after seeing this episode for the umpteenth time almost 20 years after its airing: a leopard runs across the screen, and Servo says, “What? I can’t hear you, I’m deaf!” All in all this is a really fun episode from one of the best runs the show ever saw.

Random asides

-Who’s a worse actor, June's husband, Phillip Terry, or Lance Fuller in She Creature?

-Wouldn’t Dr. Paul Talbot, endocrinologist extraordinaire, make more money out of something that prolongs life than something that makes you young for like a day?

-Interesting how it’s not native hocus pocus that makes her young, but native bogus science that does the trick! Ah, the 50s.Er, 60s.

-The first host segment is okay, but man, are monkeys gross. I’m with the Nostalgia Critic: monkeys aren’t funny!

-My fave stretch of the episode is the last 3^rd with Neil and is wife, where the scheme to turn young, and the romantic dancing around with Neil and his fiance and June’s older self are, as Mike says, “Like a murderous episode of Lucy.”

-Lol dumb robots. They forgot they don’t have the essence of the nipe plant and can’t make themselves immortal! Also, they’re robots and have lived like hundreds of years. Also, it’s a TV show.

-I love Mike and Tom dancing in the theater.

-Man, Tom goes nuts for the Beverly Hillbillies skit at the end. I love Mike strangling him.

-Tom’s gun fires, but there’s no effect. Sad that YouTubers like Angry Joe can do that affect now but MST couldn’t back then.

I love the way Murphy as Bobo pronounces "de-evolution"

-“Finger sandwich lawgiver?” “Why thanks, and here’s one for you!” *poke*

Holy hell, did Murphy do that credits “JED” in one, long take, or did they blend a few?

-Man, how can something that funny as the long “Jed!”, mixed with the somewhat melancholy MST theme, produce such a bittersweet mixture? That something hilarious was enjoyed but is now over? Sigh, each episode makes me miss the show and more excited for its return!

-Funny, seeing the difference between a Joel and Mike episode. I love the feelings of friendship of the Joel episodes, the but Mike ones, which often feel like them united against the movie, also give a feeling of camaraderie, of fellow soldiers in arms, deep in the trenches of war against a bad movie, laughing to keep each other sane, in the hope that one day, the crock climbing scenes will be over, there’ll be no more singing of “I sing whenever I sing”, but also a sadness that when the war is over, so is the friendship.

Repeat to myself, it’s just a show….



Episode in a riff

Good night, everyone! Old women are evil.

My Top 6 Favorite Riffs from the episode:

Additional links:

Annotations for this episode 

Satellite News review of this episode 

418 - Attack of the The Eye Creatures

They just didn’t care.

So, how do you review an episode of MST3K? How do you review people reviewing a movie? I’ve done a few movie reviews, but critiquing critiques along with a movie is an entirely different beast. I could go with a bullet points list like on MST3KInfo.com, or summarize the movie and say how funny the quips are, but there’s more to an episode of MST than that. It’s how Joel, Mike, Tom and Crow react to it, the atmosphere and tone they bring, a kind of mix of art, wit, comradery, and irreverence. It’s an art that, like most comedy, is pretty subjective. That makes it a challenge, but also a blast! Because saying that a movie’s directing or acting is good or bad is relatively easy. Even saying what all those pieces mean when taken as a whole is something critics do all the time. But reviewing MST3K is like reviewing a conversation you have with friends about nostalgia, comedy and media while eating at a restaurant that is supposed to serve bad food you joke about while still eating it. So, all that in mind, what do I have to say about the episode Attack of the The Eye Creatures?

They just didn’t care.

And only MST3K could put so much care into showing why people who made a movie don’t care. I’m reviewing art that reviews other art using comedy. I think I picked an appropriate episode to start this blog with.

Let’s start with the restaurant itself, the movie. It’s…. it’s called “Attack of the The Eye Creatures”. And if you think that a movie just being called “Attack of the Eye Creatures” would be indicative of how bad it’d be, man, you only THINK you’ve seen bad movies. You may have seen some schlock, some incompetence, a Transformers 2 here and Batman and Robin there. But if The Phantom Menace is the epitome of bad movies for you, if you scoffed at Snakes on a Plane…. Please. This movie can’t even spell itself correctly! And yeah, the double “the” in the title ain’t a typo. The movie, originally a made for TV remake of Invasion of the Saucer Men, was just called “The Eye Creatures”, until some genius put “Attack of the” in the title as well. It’s almost like the movie is warning potential viewers to stay away. Too bad a certain guy stuck in space and his robot pals have no choice.

Five minutes in, Crow says, “At this point, I’m rooting for the Eye Creatures.” I’m with ya, buddy. This movie is repulsive, stupid and boring. After following skeevy-ass government agents who use their UFO searching technology to spy on teenagers making out in cars (one of whom mugs so annoyingly that Servo says “the most immediately disgusting character in film”) and then scummy, oily drifters , we finally get to our main characters, typical B-movie teens. The movie becomes less repulsive as it switches to the semi-wholesome teens, but it also starts dragging. However, it remains fun to hate, and thus Joel’s and the bots’ riffing becomes stronger and faster. The first part of the movie, up to the first host segment, is by far the strongest, with the introduction of the many, many unlikeable characters and the more relatable evil eye creatures. Once it settles onto the main characters, it becomes a tedious suspense story.

Still, the multiple plot elements and loathsome characters, from the government cover-up stuff to the loathsome UFO spotters to the oily, oily drifters to the dense teens, to half the movie being a poor day-for -ight shot, along with the cheap, rubbery alien costume, and best of all the overall lack of effort provide plenty of riffing material. And while the riffing is decent but not great, a laconic atmosphere of dislike and disbelief to outright hate and loathing (them yelling at the mugging air force guys to shut up and moral disgust at them are great) keep the episode light, fast moving and fun. MST3K is at its best, to me, when Joel or Mike and the bots are just utterly, utterly loathing and hating a movie or in searing pain from it. The top secret stuff provides great gags like “Please excuse Johnny from gym class, he’s a top secret agent”, the police captain, DA dad and morgue guy give us the great “the secret language of bald men”, the lame rubber monster suits, with their visible sleeves and zippers and, near the end, LACK OF COMPLETE SUITS, give us the classic line, "They just didn't care.” The host segments, like the episode, are good, not great, but have very good moments, namely the Rip Taylor segment and the great “They Just Didn’t Care” ending segment. Movie quality is about a 2 out of 5 (believe me, there are worse; I was watching clips of The Creeping Terror before I wrote this, and…man) and the episode quality is a solid 3 out of 5. Not a gem I’ve been missing, but man, am I glad to have seen it, and can’t wait to see what more MST3Kness I’ve missed!

Random Asides

-The Amazing Colossal Episode Guide makes a point of how oily they are, and damn if they didn’t undersell just how thick and mucu-sy the people in this movie look

                                                                                     

-World's first Rick Roll?

-Some B-movie makers don’t get the respect they deserve. Herschell Gordon Lewis, Samuel Z. Arkoff, Bert I. Gordon, Roger Corman, etc. Larry Buchanan is, and I'm being charitable here, not one of them.

Episode in a Riff:

Joel: "They just didn’t care."

My 6 Favorite Riffs

Additional Links:
Annotated MST for this episode
Satellite News review of this episode

History of My Fandom & What MST3K Means to Me

I don’t think I’m alone in saying MST3K had a huge impact on my life. You might say that’s ridiculous, that a guy and two puppets cracking jokes at bad movies could be anything but passing entertainment, but it’s true. While the premise of MST wasn’t entirely new, as people have been making jokes during movies since they were first invented (the first riff probably being something along the lines of “Wow, that train was coming at me so fast I didn’t even notice it was late to the station!”), MST gave it personality. I look around at the new wave of internet entertainment videos and I see the MST3K influence everywhere. From abridged anime series like Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged to the movie, comic, and video games reviewers such as the Nostalgia Critic, The Spoony Experiment and the many, many other contributors at sites like Channel Awesome, I doubt less than a handful weren’t inspired by MST in some way.  Heck, Doug Walker himself even listed it as his the 2^nd largest comedic influence on him.

We live in a world where Mystery Science Theater 3000 ran for 10 years. 10. 1-0. X.  Think of how many great shows ran for only two or three years, or only one. Serenity. Invader Zim. Surface (anyone remember that one? Sea Monsters: The Series? Lake Bell and Leighton Meester were in it?) But MST3K, one of the weirdest shows with one of the oddest premises ran for in fact over a decade, counting the KTMA episodes. Truly, God does love us. Somewhere out there is an alternate universe where MST3K only ran for one or two seasons, while Firefly lasted longer than Buffy, the Clerks cartoon outlasted Family Guy, where Kings got to continue its modern-alternate-reality King David story. But you know what? We got the better universe. To me, a decent run for a show is 26 episodes, just long enough for it to find its feet and deliver some great episodes. So while I may wish Zim lasted longer or that Megas XLR got to continue, that MST3K ran for a DECADE…well, I can’t complain.

I mean think about it. There are episodes of MST3K we take for granted. How many episodes of Firefly, or Kolchak: The Night Stalker do fans take for granted? Not a one, because there are so few. But we are blessed to have such a treasure trove of MST that we forget some jewels of episodes underneath others simply because they don’t shine as bright. How blessed are we as a planet to have that luxury?

I can still easily remember the night I discovered Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was early 1996, a Friday night, and I was up late playing the Gargoyles video game for the Sega Genesis. After being up for hours and running through my lives on that difficult-as-hell platformer ('member when video games had lives?), I finally ran out, no more continues, and so turned on the TV. I channel surfed for a while, not seeing anything good on Cartoon Network or the rest of cable, until I cycled back to the basic channels. Nothing on Fox 4, or NBC 5...

But on ABC, Channel 8, something was on. It was some old, cheesy, dubbed Italian sword-and-sandals movie. But something wasn't right. There were shadows at the bottom of the screen, of a man and two robot-puppets, and they were watching the movie. And making jokes at it. And they were hilarious! Thinking it was a Siskel & Ebert type review show, I waited for them to stop joking and to turn back to the camera, to review it properly. But they didn't. This guy and his puppet ccohorts kept going. I put in the nearest VHS tape and hit "REC". 

The episode was Hercules Against the Moon Men. The show was Mystery Science Theater 3000. Or, to be more accurate, The Mystery Science Theater Hour, an MST episode cut into a broadcast-friendly and shown late at night, with actor and writer Mike Nelson in makeup as a Jack Perkins-esque host. 

But it didn't matter. I was more alive at 4 am than I was the rest of that day. I don't remember what the first actually riff I heard was, but the first one I remember was Servo, upon seeing a column of soldiers banging against a door, screaming, "WILMAAA!". I was hooked. My only fear was that this show was too funny, too special, to cool to last. I figured I'd caught it maybe a few episodes in, since it was running at an ungodly hour in the morning on a local channel, and there were maybe a dozen or so shows for me to watch before it was cancelled, if It would even rerun at all.

Hercules Against the Moon Men was episode ten of season 4. There were 59 episodes preceding it, it was well into its 6th season at the tiime, and there were four more seasons to come. I had just become rich and didn't know it. What I did know was, I was addicted.

And as anyone who knows me can attest, they know I love MST3K. (More than them, but don't let them find out!) For years, there used to be times when my VCR and DVD player ALWAYS had an MST3K ep in them. It's mellowed a bit since, but you can bet my iPad and then m iPhone have episodes on them.

MST3K was a huge influence on my sense of humor. Already a weird spaz who, thanks to his even stronger, almost religious, love of Godzilla, had a taste for scifi, horror, and B movies, the show seemed almost custom made for me. It taught me comedic timing, cultural references, some high (Ingmar Bergmen films), some low (Benny Hill), some so obscure I'm just now getting on re-visiting old episodes, and, seriously, to not feel so alone. I drove my family and friends crazy with re-watching, quoting, and talking about the show, but there were, and still are, plenty of times when I felt like I didn't belong with other people. Times when I had trouble interacting with them, missed social cues, or was just lost in my world (in fact, where am I?) And there were more than a few times when I wanted to retreat from all human contact, save for fiction. And while plenty of books and movies sated me, MST3K was almost like another example of something I got from Calvin & Hobbes, which had just ended its 10 year run: safe, introverted socialization. I got a slightly-more active group of imaginary friends with Joel, Mike and the Bots. Yes, that is very, very sad and weird. And thank God I've grown quite a bit in the decades since, and am, for the most part, socially capable, despite being weird as all hell. But I, just as I needed Calvin & Hobbes and Godzilla to get me through some lonely and hard times, I needed MST. They helped get me here, and MST helped me laugh all the way, and learn to be a smart ass as well (well, I got that from my Dad, too.)

And sometimes, I still need those times alone. And when I do, there's a guy, two puppets, and a cheesy movie ready to riff waiting for me.