320 - The Unearthly

Time for go to bed!

Titans of character acting, together on screen.

There’s a fine line between mystery and horror. The search for answers can easily turn into a flee from the unknown. The locked rooms of a mysterious house can hold wanted explanations or unwanted eviscerations. They are disparate and linked. Much like how classic character actor John Carradine, of The Grapes of Wrath fame, and cult B-movie favorite Tor Johnson, of Plan 9 from Outer Space fame are linked in a bungled movie about horrific medical experiments, glands of immortality, not a lot of locations, and shots so black they come across like Goth Rothko’s.(“Gothko”?). Unfortunately, in the case of that movie, The Unearthly, it also holds a not-great MST episode, a sentence that befuddles and horrifies me to say (hah, tied that up nicely!)

The Unearthly features the ever inimitable Carradine as Dr Conway, mad scientist and part time organ player who is conducting FDA unapproved experiments on lone, vulnerable patients to produce immortality under the guise of a rest and retreat at his house in the country. Services include basement full of twitching brain dead people, sexy lab assistants, and man giant Lobo’s luggage and kidnapping assistance. Dr Conway will even give people like fugitive Mark Houston a place to hide, providing they’re willing to become part of the experiment. But Mark might want to help get the other guests, including the beautiful Grace, or before they become shriveled up, twitching people taking up valuable Christmas decoration storage space in the basement. Even with the presence of Carradine and Johnson, and a plot involving mad experiments and a spooky house, the movie is mostly Carradine overexposing his plans, fugitive Mark trying to convince others something is going on, and lots, lots, lots of people walking in and out of rooms in a boring looking house.

Tor's reaction mirrors my own to most of the movie.

Despite the class and charisma Carradine always brings and the lumbeing fun of Tor Johnson, there’s not a lot for Joel and the Bots to go on. The movie goes nowhere and fast, and there’s only so much material to be wrung out of people having boring, expository conversations about mumbo jumbo science. The Carradine jokes aren’t even clever beyond referencing that he was in Stagecoach and Grapes of Wrath, though the Tor jokes are much funnier, like when a character says he’d like to wring Lobo’s neck, to which Crow adds, “But I’d need a forklift!”. They try to wring some fun out of one of the side characters being an old style New York palooka, but the fun they have doing the voice doesn’t translate to great jokes. Not that Joel and the bots aren’t trying: this is them in their prime, riffing often and with great verve. But the jokes are just okay, but not very connected to the movie, because they’re not super invested in it. They don’t act bored or riff badly at all; Season 3 was when the show hit its first stride, and the SOL crew are just naturally good at joke delivery and keeping the tone fun and breezy. But the material, from the movie to the riffs, just doesn’t feel there. If anything they’re invested in about it, it’s how confusing it is, resulting in a great host segment where Crow and Tom jam random loose bits of board games to make a new one in the spirit of the movie’s mixed up plot.

Reading the instructions? Lose one turn.

But the shorts before it? Those they easily make art out of. Two classic examples of 50s educational shorts for kids, one, Posture Pals, is about four kids working on their posture so they can become the king, queen, prince and princess of posture and fork a posture monarchy over their classmates ( or just wear dumb cardboard crowns for not slouching like Neanderthals ). The next, Appreciating Our Parents, is about s kid learning all the things his mom and dad do to support him and how worthless and selfish he is for wanting that extra nickel for a mail-order toy each week. The show always does great with these old educational shorts from a more naïve time, getting delightfully dark, like when lil’ Tommy sees his mom cleaning the kitchen in Appreciating our Parents, and Servo says, “While suppressing her hopes and dreams.” Then there’s when Mrs. Reedy, the teacher in Posture Pals, shows the main kids how bad their posture is, and Joel says, “That’s when the kids came up with a plan to blackmail Mrs. Reedy.” And of course, just for the really dark and literate crowd, as lil’ Tommy’s mom kisses him goodnight, Servo whispers, “Good night, Oedipus.”

The height of coolness.

I’m tempted to say it’s scary how the episode couldn’t be funnier, but it’s just sad that a movie about mad doctors, John Carradine, and Tor Johnson just doesn’t result in a better episode. But it does result in two spectacular shorts, which are worth the price of admission. And luckily, this isn’t the last the SOL crew will encounter these two cinematic titans. And when they do, they’ll have better material to work with.

Episode in a Riff:

“Forever’s a long time, doc.” -Mark

“Yeah, tell us about it. This movie’s a long time!” -Crow

Random Asides:

 
-God, it’s just a struggle to see this movie! Maybe the transfer they got for the DVD is just bad, but the whole movie feels like watching an ink smudge move around. This was true of my old VHS tape and it’s true of Shout!’s DVD reissue. Oddly though, the scenes on the MST Hour wraps on the disc look much cleaner.

-Funny how the show slams America’s Funniest Home Videos early on, and later Trace and Frank would go on to write for them.

-I like the acknowledge Magic Voice. She should show up more often. But I do enjoy that the new iteration of the show has Gypsy fulfill both rolls and do more.

-Why aren’t there any guards or locked doors around the secret basement full of people disfigured in the name of medical science?

-Man, the “Hard Pill to Swallow” invention is rough, even by the Mads’ standard

-The skit about Appreciating our Gypsy may be more hilarious than the actual short. Classic Tom bashing Crow lines include, “Crow is thinking hard, or as hard as he can think…”. I also love the flow of this lines about being, “Too bloated on rich foods and heaping portions of our own gargantuan ego” to fix the ship and how, while Gypsy braves the void of space to fix the ship, Crow sits inside, “Cozy as Allister Cook, sipping cocoa and watching Tiny Toons.”

                                                                                                                      

-The show has really good timing on ending the music with the door slamming on the short

-Rather polite and casual entrance to a mad scientist’s secret mansion

-Carradine’s mansion is like if the Kellogg Center was run by Alex Jones

-I love the way John Carradine pronounces it,  “syuooicide”

-“In science, nothing is taken for granted!” Yes, classic evil scientist dialogue.

-I can kinda see how this ep drove Kevin Murphy crazy, if he actually did choke Paul like he says he did in the Amazing Colossal Episode Guide.

-Is this movie a subtle commentary on the overmedication of minor problems and the opiod crisis, or is it just dumb?

                                                                                                                                  

-Where does the synthetic gland Dr. Conway implants come from? You’d think that itself would be a big deal!

-Was the music for this also used in The Atomic Brain?

-The Unearthly board game is great, very Joel era, as is the madness it induces. “Lose one turn.”

-God, watching the MST Hour wraps, I really kept expecting to hear an ABC Channel 8 broadcaster interrupt the credits with talk of what would be on the news that morning.  

-Yes, Mike as Jack Perkins, this episode is the color of pitch.

- “As far as body types go, I’ve never trusted thin people. Frankly, they remind me of Satan. Just like John Carradine.” Um….okay, Mike. 

Additional Links:
Satellite News review
Annotations