811 - Parts: The Clonus Horror

Sure!

If personal cloning becomes a thing sometime in the future, I hope mine turns out better than the chunkheads that make up Clonus. Cubert Farnsworth, Ben Reilly and Boba Fett can hold their heads up with pride that at least they didn’t ride around in dorky gym shorts acting like entitled daycare babies.

What I’m saying is, Parts: The Clonus Horror offers a lot to Mike and the Bots, not just in yellow and brown 70s cheese, but in conspiratorial plotlines, a character-actor filled cast, and unabashedly idiotic clone characters. It’s about “Clonus”, which looks like a never-ending PE class for braindead adults, but is actually a secret organ-donor clone-farm for the rich and powerful. When the person they’re cloned from needs a new spleen or whatever, the clone is told it’s time to go to “America”, then they’re flash-frozen and diced up. One of the clones, a mealy-mouthed whiner named Richard, escapes Clonus to discover he’s the clone of the brother of a presidential candidate. He’s followed and, being a 70s sci-fi movie, everyone dies at the end, though a Betamax tape Richard smuggled out conveniently explaining everything about Clonus is sent to the media.

I remember this one being good, but not as great as some other Season 8ers, and I was right.  The movie is damn near perfect for them. It’s got all the ingredients of a deep 70s science fiction movie, but with brand X ingredients: blandly ominous synth music, weak cinematography and atmosphere, and the production values of a made-for-TV movie (apparently, most of the movie’s budget went to Graves and Dick Sargent). It’s just serious enough to keep Mike and the Bots attention, but overwrought, cheesy, and cheap enough to be easy to riff without being especially painful to sit through. The Brains make almost the most of the opportunities for jokes Parts presents. There’s 70s jokes, like when, over scenes of a crowd cheering for Graves’ presidential candidate character. Mike and the Bots chant, “Hooray for the 70s! Shaun Cassidy for President! We love Billy Bear!” There’s literary references, such as when a group of clones are out biking while Richard watches from a tree, and Mike says, “A Separate Piece…of crap.” There’s Bewtiched jokes at Dick Sargent’s expense. And there’s just plain goofy jokes, like when a clone in a cafeteria encourages Richard, “Eat,” followed by Crow saying, “Me” (hehe). There aren’t a ton of gut busters, but the laughs are steady throughout. The running gags of the never ending gunshot, Richard’s whine, and following up anytime someone says “America” with “TODAY!” are wonderful.

                                                                                                                                     

But I think they really missed a lot of opportunities with their Peter Graves jokes. There’s no mention of Airplane! or Mission: Impossible or even The Beginning of the End, the giant grasshopper movie they watched back in Season 6. No, every single joke involving Graves is a Biography joke. Now don’t get me wrong, if even a majority of the jokes on him were Biography related, that’d be fine: it’s what Graves was doing at the time of this episode’s airing. But c’mon! It’s not like they haven’t made Mission: Impossible or Airplane! jokes before, and the Biography jokes are mainly them saying an actor’s name or whatever’s happening on screen, followed by, in a Graves-y voice, “tonight, on Biography.” They’re fine, but c'mon, no, “Richard, ever seen a grown clone naked?” Not even a humming of the Mission: Impossible theme when Graves and his goons storm his brother’s house? Man.

So, aside from me thinking that’s a big missed opportunity, the rest of the quips are damn fine. The host segments, however, are uniformly spectacular. Things start great, with Mike growing a mustache and the Bots ripping him apart over it, and then get great with the introduction of all power space children (Mike Nelson, Bridget Jones and, Paul Chaplin doing the “kneel on the ground and put shoes on your knees to play kids” thing). I love the “Great Chase” storyline, and MST3K was almost as good as Futurama at poking fun at scifi tropes, so the idea malevolent, all-powerful space children is taken to its ridiculous extreme. When they don’t get what they want, the space kids use their powers to force people to hit themselves (in a reference to a classic Trek episode I’ve never seen because I’m not a loser). However, they also demand to play Candyland, get fussy when they don’t have their naps, and have to be given “The Talk”. That and Paul Chaplin’s kid continuing to hit poor Professor Bobo in the nuts with a baseball is just fantastic, leading to the fantastic exchange: “You’re fun, Doctor Bobo!”, “Doctor Bobo has to go see Uncle Reconstructive Urologist”. Mike even tries to get the kids to use their powers to free the SOL, but the advice Tom and Crow give him vacillates between bartering and aggressive: “Uh, hi, kids. Y'know, we've always been there for you, working so hard to provide for your future, so don't you dare send us a movie or it'll be the belt for you!" But the best part of the whole affair, to me, is when Pearl tries to get Mike and the Bots to make a PBS-style kids show to keep them entertained so she can sneak off. So they do, and make a banal skit teaching the kids about the letter “A” and the number “3” (that is, showing them the number and letter exist). This works, and the kids are transfixed. Then, Mike and the Bots change into one of those nightmarish Spanish kids shows (Mike wearing a tiny top and hot pants where a hot woman would normally be) and just make the kids break out in tears. It’s great. And honestly, I think the space children bit is even better than the entirety of the season 9 episode Space Children. 

While the episode isn’t quite as good as the majority of season 8, it still offers great laughs, a perfectly cheesy movie, and fantastic host segments. I had a great time revisiting it, and will definitely watch it more than once again. 


Episode in a riff

Crow: "Y'know, this doesn't look like it's headed towards a happy ending.
"Mike: "Any ending would make me happier than I've ever been."

Random Asides

-Do NOT use The Great Santini for parenting advice.

-Paul Chaplin makes the most convincing, and terrifying, space kid.

-My favorite lines from Crow and Servo ripping Mike’s ‘stache:  “You’ve declared your contempt to the world”; “Mike’s mustache to world: I hate you, and am cutting myself off from all human contact.”

-One year later, Graves is in Airplane!

-“These are the days when Michael York could open a movie.” Damn straight! 
-I love the way Crow responds to a character asking if someone will be okay with an absolute, unabashed, and blunt, "Hell no."

-Can we talk about how freaking incompetent Clonus is? I guess just telling Richard that the can of Old Miluakee is something people drink in America was too hard to do. Instead, deny it and encourage his curiosity that leads him to escaping. Well done, Dr. Darrin! Also, WHY THE F ARE THE SECRETS OF CLONUS KEPT ON AN EXPOSITORY VIDEO CASSETTE IN AN UNGUARDED, UNLOCKED ROOM NEXT TO OFFICES FULL OF DIPLOMAS FROM SCHOOLS AND CITIES IN THE OUTSIDE WORLD THE CLONES AREN’T SUPPOSED TO KNOW ABOUT? Why does that one guy with a truck carrying a recently America’d clone under a tarp in the back drive around in the middle of Clonus?! Why are their cameras and guards everywhere except where the secrets files are kept, which is on the same campus as all the clones, because…? How was Clonus going to keep itself a secret when a Clone escaped and, to cover it up, they murdered a presidential candidate’s brother and nephew and don’t have any clones of them old enough to pass as them? Also, according to the movie, they’ve been cloning people since THE DEPRESSION?! Really, I think it’s summed up by the one Clonus track-coach/guard at the race scene who is just like, “whatever.”

-This movie really fits the Family Guy “Depressing Ending to a 70s Scifi Movie” sketch.

-How do you gamble on Candyland?

-If MST had made this episode now, I bet they’d have made a “Siri Booth” joke about the answer booth Richard goes in

-Keenan Wynn is one of those guys who could make a crappy movie and bring some entertainment and gravitas and a little dignity to it. Like John Carradine

-Oral Roberts University is scarier than Clonus

-Birthmarks wouldn’t clone

-WEAR LONGER PANTS, 70S!!!

-Wouldn’t the plot have been more interesting if whiny Richard was the clone of the would-be president instead of his nobody brother?

-Man, imagine the discussion scene about the morality at the end in the hands of a good director or good actors

-Just..why the hell anyone think Richard think going back to Clonus is a good idea? WHEN THEY HAVE THE TAPE AND KNOW A REPORTER?!?

-I love Mike’s deadpan reaction to Crow’s Lena-inspired, Bruce Jenner-ian nose job
-Picking just six favorite riffs from this episode was tough

-“Clone Us”. GET IT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!??!/!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Favorite Riffs

 

Additional Links
AnnotatedMST for this episode
MST3K Info review