309 - The Amazing Colossal Man

What sin...could a man commit in a single lifetime to bring THIS upon himself?!

Amazing Colossal Melodrama

Funny how this seems like such a ubiquitous MST episode, but doesn’t get discussed a lot. Sure, it’s got that great title, one reused in plenty of places, namely in the name of The Amazing Colossal Episode Guide (heck, I considered calling this blog “the Amazing Colossal MST Watching Blog”). It’s enough adjectives to choke Stan Lee. Plus, it was also produced during Season 3, which many, including me, consider Joel’s golden period. So, why isn’t this one talked about more? Is it that the sequel that comes a few episodes later is paired with the best MST short of all time? Is it lacking that special something that makes the best episodes, like something painful or memorable? Is it just not that funny? Well, the latter certainly isn’t the case, because this episode is amazingly, colossally hilarious. Sorry, had to.

I’d seen about 75% of it before, catching it on one of my middle school MST Hour viewings half-way through the first segment, and at the time cursing my inability to stay up till 3 am easily. And since it hasn’t been available on DVD and was only ever briefly on a Rhino VHS, I’m counting this as a revisit. And damn, will I be revisiting this one again. I hate it took me 20 some odd years (GOD IM OLD) of my MST fan life to get to seeing this thing the entire way, because it’s as great as the show paired with a movie called “the amazing colossal man” can be.. Directed by B movie master Bert I. Gordon, a director known for using forced perspective and rear projection to make giant animals and creatures on the cheap, Mr. BIG would produce a good 8 movies featured on MST, and this one’s a doozy. Col. Glenn Manning is part of an army group testing an experimental plutonium bomb test site and of course, things go awry, and one “Incredible Hulk” like origin later, Glen is growing 8-10 feet a day, his fiancé Carol is despondently trying to keep him happy, and the army scientists are struggling to find a cure. Luckily, one is found in time, and Glenn keeps a cool head and is reverted back to normal pfffft I’m kidding he escapes and goes on a rampage in Las Vegas! 

See? Vegas.

Season 3 saw the show hit its stride, and man this one is no exception. I loved this episode immediately, from the opening bit of the Bots making a “No Humans” club in a cardboard fort, to the great invention exchange, with the Mads creating a plant that reviews music, and Joel using the old magnetic plastic paper toy to make rewriteable tattoos. And then the movie starts, and it keeps getting better. This episode is a perfect example of how a rapid succession of riffs and jokes can really make an episode. Almost every opportunity is taken to crack wise, from Crow, upon seeing the title of the movie, saying “oh right, you wish”, to Joel commenting at the sight of a giant hypodermic needle “Oh, they just got done visiting Keith Richards”, to something as simple as Carol saying she’s Glenn’s fiancé, to which Servo replies “Ooh, bummer.” One to two word phrases get a joke out of them, and almost all are hilarious. Add in running jokes like how insensitive all the doctors and scientists are to Glenn and Carol’s feelings, to them commenting on how Glenn now resembles overcooked food more than a person, and you gets movie riffing at its finest.

Discriminatory.

Amazing Colossal Mike. And now, this joke is run into the ground.

The greatness extends to the host segments as well. We’ve got Joel, doing one of his “teach the robots about humanity using the movie” skits turned on him when the Bots tell him all the insensitive things they don’t say (“we know if you had deodorant, you’d use it!”) to Joel playing the ACM and the Bots using Barbies to be the fiancé and army scientist. And of course, there’s a shirtless and baldcap-wearing Mike Nelson portraying Glenn himself.

Critiques are minor. Kevin Murphy, who plays the music critic plant in the invention exchange doesn’t have any makeup on as the music critic plant beyond his head sticking out of some shrubs, and the only thing keeping this episode from being a 10 out of 10 is the movie being slightly more painful or memorably bad (something its sequel episode nails.) But man, 9/10 ain’t bad, and I’m glad to finally see this one all the way through and count it as anew favorite. I just wish I hadn’t taken 20 years to do it.

Episode in a Riff:

Glenn: “Time has lost all perspective.”

Crow: “So has this movie.”

6 Favorite Riffs

Random Asides:

-The best titled MST episode ever?

-I picked this episode since I'm on vacation in Vegas right now! It's been a blast. The city is like a weekend that never stops. We've been to a few casinos, seen two museums, two shows, spent too much money, and eaten too much. I'd love to come back!

-In the first part, Frank talks about how, if Joel doesn’t discipline the bots, they’ll just get wilder and wilder. And he was right; poor, poor Mike.

-great random lines in this one. Tom, upon explaining his and Crow’s No Humans club, says, “We’re neo luddites! We even hate ourselves.” the Mads’ explaining their invention exchange as, “We’re twisting God’s work into our own slithering mutatious thing.”

-Great, what the world needs: another music critic.

-I can’t think of anything that typifies Joel’s relationship with the Bots more than their “No Humans Club” interaction.

-Jokes that go over your head at first: Kevin Murphy’s character of plant music critic is named Robert. I finally got it when, in the credits, his character is listed as “Robert Plant”.

-Not only is this made by Bert I. Gordon, but it’s produced by Samuel Z. Arkoff!  What, did Herschell Gordon Lewis do the catering too?

-It’s also released by American International Pictures, who’ve done a number of MST movies.

-The Bert I. Gordon, or “BIG” movies, worked equally well for both Joel and Mike. They’re goofy enough to fit Joel’s style, but also naive and dumb enough to perfectly fall prey to Mike’s biting sarcasm. I really hope Season 11 has at least one in there.

-The “Wake up honey, we’re at Grandma’s” really exemplify Joel’s Midwestern humor. Love it.

-I like how, at this early point in the show, the Bots are already familiar with Joel trying to teach them about being human. And I love how they immediately give him grief over it.

-I HATE this one isn’t available on DVD, or with the MST hour wraps. Luckily, my old VHS tape has them!

- It’s weird seeing this one all the way through. It has that weird effect like when you see a movie all the way through for the first time, instead of catching bits and pieces on TV. That, and some parts were not in the MST Hour version, such as flashback scene to Glenn and Carol’s romance. But for the life of me, I don’t remember the reporter ever telling Carol about his uncle’s death. Maybe that’s something the Best Brains cut out of the movie when making the episode, but left in a joke referencing it.

-Skits like Joel’s ACM and how the Bots apologize for messing with him by saying “We’re sorry…freak,” really exemplify the comradery/secret club/friendship atmosphere of the show that I adore!

-This movie lives on glen’s performance and it’s enjoyable and melodramatic and fun.

-How do they know his heart isn’t growing bigger? Is there a giant Xray machine somewhere?

-People sure have a hard time finding and losing track of a 50 foot man

-This movie has about 30 m of plot stretched ut to 1 ½ hour

-About half an hour in, Servo lets out the smallest “bitch” during the interrogation of the nurse scene. Mean for this early in the show’s run.

-Why is Carol sneaking around the army hospital if they let her in?

-about 38 minutes in, they refer to A&E, which Servo calls “The Hitler Channel”. I think they’re actually referring to the History Channel, and either way, NEITHER of those channels are anything like they were back then. 

-I like what Mike has to say about Glenn in the ACEG: "[He] begins to wonder what he could have done to deserve such a terrible fate. He doesn't consider the possibility that God hates him and thinks he's a bad person."

-I’m 3 years older than Joel was when he filmed this episode! GOD!

Additional Links

Annotated MST
Satellite News Review

820 - Space Mutiny

The emotions of a hero.

RRRRAAAAAGGGHH!


In a 2011 entry in its “Gateways to Geekry” series, the AV Club recommended Space Mutiny as an ideal place to begin for first time MST3K viewers. This episode also appears on numerous “Top 10” and “Favorite Episode” lists across the web. With it the movie’s cheesy 80s-ness, and the show running in its hilarious prime, it’s easy to see why. And while it’s probably not in my top 10, I can’t argue, this one is a classic for a reason.

Where to even begin? The host segments are all around great. The episode takes place during the “Great Chase” plot, with Pearl, Bobo and Brain Guy captured by the deliciously evil Flavia (Bridget Jones) in Roman times, and Brain Guy, his brain-in-a-bowl taken away, at sub-Bobo intelligence. Seeing Mary Jo Pehl and Bridget Jones bounce off one another as Pearl and Flavia is fantastic. The host segments revolving around Mike and the Bots are also great, especially the space-battle scene, and later when, inspired by the railings of the movie’s industrial plant setting and the many railing kills resulting, installs dozens of needless railings, balustrades and handrails across the ship, tripping Mike and Crow all over the place.

The riffing, as befitting Season 8, is rapid-fire and hilarious. Topics covered: Servo yelling “I wish I had Jesse’s Girl!” when a Rick Springfield look-alike is killed; Mike saying, “We’ve got an infestation of Benedictine monks” when people walk into a room accompanied by chanting; and the plain-ol’ childish, when a character tells another, “Take a chair”, to which Crow replies “And ram it.”And of course, this episodes features one of the single best running gags ever done on the show: the many names they give main character David Ryder, which range from "Dirk Hardpeck" to "Blast Hardcheese" to "Big McLargeHuge". That alone makes this episode legendary.

But the bright, shining North Star all jokes and glory for this episode follow is the movie itself. Shot in South Africa in the 80s, Space Mutiny is about a totally peaceful rebellion that happens aboard the Southern Sun, a generational ship crawling across space. Villainous Kalgan (John Phillip Law, of Barbarella, Diabolik and countless other cult classics), has a tight-grip of the police-like Enforcers and wants the ship to land on the nearest planet (why the ship won’t just land on the nearest habitable world, the movie doesn’t explain, at least the MST cut doesn’t). The only thing stopping him is rugged space hero David Ryder (one time Captain America and 80s actioneer Reb Brown), a blond hunk with arms Chris Redfield would be jealous of. It’s a veritable cheese platter; of 80s action cheese, thanks to Reb Brown and explosions throwing extras everywhere; sci-fi cheese, thanks to shiny pastel and tinfoil costumes, laser blasts, and sets that vary from “pastel space dance club” to “industrial building in the role of space ship”; and cheapo cheese thanks to the movie unceremoniously starring special effects lifted from the original Battlestar Galactica. With a set up like that, stars like those, and a decade such as this, it would’ve been a challenge for the people at Best Brains to have not made this one a classic.

But they knocked it so far out of the park it…landed in a basketball stadium and started another sport? I dunno, ignore that metaphor. Point is, the episode is one of the best. The only reason it isn’t one of my own personal faves is because it doesn’t quite cause Mike and the Bots enough pain. Sure, they feel icky during Leah’s love scene with Ryder or when she tries to seduce a guard to escape, ,but that’s about it (though the pain they do endure and the way they turn on each other in the end is close) The riffing is a 10 out of 10, don’t’ get me wrong, but that extra sense of friendship, of comradery, isn’t there enough to make me adore this episode. I just really, really enjoy it. If you haven’t seen MST before, or if you haven’t seen this one in a while, watch it now! Go! MOVE MOVE MOVE!

Episode in a Riff
Too many, here are a few:

“If we pretend we k now what’s going on this is actually kind of exciting.” -Crow

“That scene really made me stop and think…about how much better a root canal would be than this movie!” – Servo
“A retarded jellyfish could make a better movie “– Servo

“Yknow, give a box turtle a camera and a week, he’d come up with a better movie than this one.” -Crow


Random Asides
-This movie was relatively new for them at the time, only 9 years old at the episode’s airing in 1997. But oh, how quickly the 80s aged.

-It sucks sometimes that the writers of the show weren’t actually bigger B-movie fans, as there’s some great B-movie talent in this. Reb Brown made a ton of action flicks in the 80s, John Phillip Law deserves an honorary medal for all the movies he’s made, and Cameron Mitchell was, according to Lee Strasberg to be a founding member of the Actor’s Studio.

-The episode guide points out they didn’t make fun of the BSG effects. They did make a BSG effect joke in a later episode, tho that one didn’t have BSG effects

-The Bellerians don’t do a damn thing other than look scrawny and writhe around on those electrobe ball things.

Love the encyclopedia bit. The show was well into its prime mike time here, and the bots ridicule of mike, including crow’s “you never finished college” show the chemistry and differences from the Joel era.

-Do they even make physical encyclopedias anymore?

-I like the Bots’ little reading glasses

-I loved Pearl and Flavia in this episode, and their bitter hatred for one another. Little things like Pearl saying, after mention them torturing Bobo, “Ugh, I broke a nail,” is classic, as is the ecstatic way Flavia tells them, “You die at dawn tomorrow” like they’re getting a pop quiz.

-Dumb Observer is a riot, especially his insulting Mike.

-It’s really funny seeing Mike Nelson fail to seduce a character played by his real life wife.

-The Enforcers’ biggest crime, aside from trying to overthrow Captain Santa, is allowing so many mullets on their men.

-David Winters would later go on to direct, among other things, Dancin’: It’s On!

-My girlfriend Gina while watching this with me: “Bumper Cars: The Movie! But they’re future bumper cars, so it’s okay.”

-Crow, Servo, I’m sorry, but the existence of the 80s can’t be blamed on just any generic white guy. At least, not 100% blamed on them.

-Reb Brown was in fact 6 years older than Cisse Cameron during the making of this movie. In fact, she was only 34 at the time it was made. Which is how old I am…*runs sobbing out of the room to repent life misspent on cult TV show*

-Also, THEY GOT MARRIED AND ARE STILL MARRIED TO THIS DAY!

6 Favorite Riffs

Additional Links

Satellite News review