204 - Catalina Caper

Never ever ever steal anything wet!

What 90% of this movie looks like.

What happens when a comedy show based around joking during bad movies watches a comedy? Do you get a perfect mix of comedy and more comedy, or do you get a clash of styles of humor? In the case of Catalina Caper, you get a bit of both, leading an interesting experiment of an experiment (as in the Mads’ type).

The movie is about Tommy Kirk playing a nice young man on vacation with his Aryan beefcake best friend Charlie, out to pick up chicks on beautiful Catalina Island. It’s also about the Duvalls, rich do-nothings who, along with their sidekick Larry, have stolen a scroll from a local museum so they can forge it, sell the forgery to rich Greek Lakopolous, and secretly return the real thing. It’s also also about their son Tad, who disapproves of his parents’ behavior, and finds himself falling for Bob’s sister. It’s also also also about the Lannisters, the richest family in the land, and the most ruthless, who are involved in a power struggle for the throne of the resort island. 

Insert "white people" joke here.

This movie has enough plot for three or four beach and babes movies, and has thrown them all in a blender and hit “frappe”. But it comes out like a nice fruit smoothie: sweet, light, relatively harmless, and goes down easy. What it doesn’t exactly make is great food for the MST beast. It’s a beach comedy with musical numbers! Sure, it’s kinda dumb and goofy, not all the jokes land, some of the songs are lame, and the plot’s a mess, but it’s not bad in the usual way MST3K movies are, like being poorly made, having laughable monsters, what have you. According to Mike Nelson in the Amazing Colossal Episode Guide, it proved a challenge to riff on, and it shows. There’s a few times when Joel and the Bots are just dancing along with the movie’s songs, and some of the jokes just don’t land. But the main problem is they’re trying to joke at the expense of a movie that’s at least trying to be funny. You can’t really lighten up something that’s already bright as hell. It feels largely incongruous, not to mention that, as B-movie critic maestro Scott Foy put it, a bad comedy is painful in its own way. Although this one, with its dated, squeaky clean comedy, dopey characters, and musical interludes, isn’t too painful, the pain that’s there can’t be cured with riffing. Think a far, far, less painful version of the comedy in Hobgoblins, minus the feeling you’re there with the SOL crew trying to survive a traumatic experience.

However, when they can’t lighten the movie up, they can darken it. And MST is great at taking things that are nice and innocent and putting a twist to them. As a bunch of groovy teens light bonfires on a beach at night in the beginning, Servo says, “First I’ll set fire to the Walt Whitman books then the pile of Catcher in the Rye.” When the movie’s incredibly white cast is shown frolicking on the beach, Joel comments, “Welcome to White Island, acting like we deserve this kind of lifetsytle.” And as the camera pans up to a dark night lit by a full moon, Crow chimes in, “Meanwhile in the dark impenetrable void, Jean-Paul Sartre was a movin’ and a groovin’.” Even though I wasn’t busting a gut all throughout the episode, and even with the oddity of watching them riff a comedy, I still laughed a few times (more at Joel and the Bots than the movie, of course), but not as hard or as often during other episodes.

Catalina Caper also finds the Brains still early on in perfecting the science of MSTing. Their delivery is a little staid at times, even a little…well, dumb. They do a few things that are more obvious statements than riffs, such as during the animated opening titles of the movie involving a cartoon deep sea tormenting a giant fish, which just has Joel stating, “Oh, he’s playing a trick on that fish.” They also try too hard and oversell some jokes, like a Red Skelton reference that Crow drags on too long. They also sometimes talk over the characters in the movie, something they rarely do later on. And since the movie itself is so poorly miced and ADRed I had to rewatch scenes multiple times just to figure out what was being said, and to have Joel and the Bots talk over that, you get even more confusion. Not to mention, Kevin Murphy has only been Tom Servo for four episodes, so he’s still finding the character, sometimes making his voice too deep, sometimes a little slow on the delivery. It’s interesting, after talking about Jonah and the new bots finding their footing, to see the original crew do the same in their early days.

But these aren’t the first episodes the Best Brains had made. This is well into the second season, so they’ve got some things down fine. The only host segment that sinks is when Frank hosts a Tupperware party for mole people (that seems to be based on one scene in the movie where a thug carries a gun underwater in a plastic baggie). The beginning of the episode, with Joel making Tom and Crow say their goodnight prayers for all the movie and TV robots, is cute and funny. And of course, in the middle segment, we get the all-time classic MST song “Creepy Girl”, sung by Tom to the raven-bobbed, vaguely-accented babe Katrina from the movie. I haven’t seen this episode in years, and first saw it about a decade and a half ago, but I still have some of the lyrics stuck in my head. 

Tom Servo belts out another classic.

So you’ve got with some sugary 60s pop songs, tons of babes, enjoyable leads, a confusing plot, all wrapped up in a pretty painless movie. This gives Catalina Caper the nice feel of hanging out on the beach with Joel, Crow, and Tom. But the riffing isn’t as strong as it will be, though they have their moments, and just watching them trying to make a comedy funnier feels off.  It’s a nice little episode, but probably one for MSTies only.

Episode In a Riff:

“Okay, everyone wear eye protection. There’s a lotta loose ends flying together all at once here.” –Servo 

Random Asides:

-Wow, a Warner Bros. movie. Weird to see a classy studio logo before one of their movies!

-I haven’t seen this episode in years, and in fact this was the first time I watched the copy in the Rhino DVD Collection Vol.1. I could tell, because the double-sided DVD had the uncut version of Catalina Caper ready to go instead of the actual episode.

-Seeing this episode for the first time when Rhino released it on video was a treat, as I finally got to see both the Tank Tops and the Tickle Bazooka during the Invention Exchange, which has been featured in the intro to the show for years. Some great quotes from this bit, too. “You guys took something fun and made it evil. While I took something evil and made it fun.”

-“Fightin’s outta style. Fun’s where the fear is.” Firesign Theater. If you don’t know them, look them up. Start with Don’t Crush that Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers.

-Ah, for the days when Twiki was the world’s most annoying sci-fi robot.

-According to MST3K Wiki, the animated opening was done by Fred Wolf Films who would go on to animated the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon!

-Little Richard was super, super, super high during the filming of his musical number.  

He's Little Richard. He can get away with it.

-The sound on this movie is pretty bad. Dialogue is usually pretty muffled and equally as loud as the wind and surf in the background. I don’t think a single boom mic was used or an ADR session held. And that when Joel and the Bots quip, their voices aren’t raised much above the film’s. Made for a pretty annoying viewing.

-Joel and Servo both shut down Crow’s Lloyd Bridges Sea Hunt impression hard.

-Tommy Kirk’s character is named Don Pringle, his best friend is Bob Draper. I wonder if Matthew Weiner is a MSTie? I’m gonna prematurely say yes, yes he is.

-Even though it’s been years. I can still remember this great lyric from Servo’s Creepy Girl song. “Creepy Girl / Wont’ you be mine? I’ll give you scrolls and fish and tinker toys and wiiine / I’ll ditch these guys! Be mine before movie siiiigns!”

-What are Crow and Servo whispering as Joel recounts his memories of the 60s? I know I heard ‘subliminal messages’ from Servo. 

-The Bots would never go to Mike or Jonah to ask about the 60s. Such a paternal thing for them to do for Joel; very sweet. 

-That “museum” the scroll is stolen from is totally not someone’s hallway.

-At the 47 minute mark: enjoy two minutes straight of white people dancing

-Tom waits reference! “Nothing wrong with her a hundred dollars won’t fix.”

-My favorite line from Joel’s increasingly deranged rant about being a kid in the 60s. “No, Joel, you can’t go to Woodstock, you’re nine years old! We’re going to the opening of the new Century Store! Yeah, in Echo Lane! 3 days of peace, love and pizza rolls”

-Tommy Kirk and Jim Begg will return in Bert I. Gordon’s Village of the Giants.

Creepy Girl Karaoke!

Additional Links:
Satellite News Review
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