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| One Ring to bore them all. |
“Weird.
Yeah, I guess that is the word for it. Weird.” So (awkwardly) says
one of the 30-ish college students populating the campus setting of
Ring of Terror, and this one is weird in a few ways. The
episode falls halfway into the show’s second season, a time when
the writers and performers were still fine-tuning their craft, the
movie itself isn’t memorably or entertainingly bad, and then
there’s the short, which is shown at the end of the movie instead
of before. Maybe “weird” isn’t the right word for this episode;
maybe it’s just “awkward.”
The
movie does the show no favors. As Mary Jo Pehl describes in the
Amazing Colossal Episode Guide, it’s “...completely
inert. There’s no ring and there’s even less terror.” The
story, about med student facing his fear of death, is more like a
long, boring character study, full of bland characters and an
unnecessary gravekeeper narrator, padding out the thin plot. The
movie’s title, referring to the main character being dared to steal
a ring off a corpse, is the actual finale of the movie, and
considering this similar and superior The Twilight Zone
episode The Grave, you see
why the story works better as a short there.
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| As ever with their movies, the best character is the animal. |
But
a lack of real story or plot urgency
never hurt MST3K, right? Well,
maybe not the show in it’s prime, but even then it takes work to
make boring movies where little happens into even good episodes,
like The Touch of Satan.
Here though, their delivery
and joke caliber still need work. Joel,
Tom, and Crow still tell jokes that are often too goofy or basic,
like Tom just asking if a
random guy is Don DeFoe from TV’s Hazel?,
or when they pretend they’re gonna bump into a gate as the camera
zooms into it. Tom also just reads the movie’s entry in the Video
Watchdog book early on. That said, I do enjoy quite a bit of the
early Joel-era goofiness, charming in a Muppets kinda way, so it’s
more a taste thing than anything.
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| They're laughing because they're about to retire. |
The
movie also just does not give them a lot to work with, being
tedious and uneventful, but
they do try with what it
gives. The most obvious source of riffing are the middle-aged actors
playing college students. When
main character Lewis ends a phone call with his girlfriend, Joel
says, “She’s the ginchiest! Life does begin at 40!” There’s
also a fat couple who are the movie’s constant source of
fat-shaming comic relief, which Joel and the Bots mostly call out the
movie for, though also getting in a few jokes: “An interpretive
dance of how plate tectonics work,” Tom says during their dance
scene. And of course there’s corpse humor, some of my dark
favorite, including some inspired corpse-cooking humor during the
students’ examination scene. “Well not very pleasant to look at,”
says the doc, which Crow follows with, “But with rice and a nice
seasoning, you’ve got a wonderful meal.” Throw in some smart
references, like Crow saying a character is writing Tropic of Cancer,
to dumb ones, like when he has a character opine how fine Irene Ryan
is, and you’ve got quite a few solid laughs. Their timing and
delivery is still just a little slight, and they
haven’t quite learned yet to make a great running joke out of how
boring the movie is, instead of just suffering through it. It’s not
bad at all, just a little tame and meandering, and not as great as it
will become.
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| Maybe I should go and major in napping! |
The
movie does give the some inspired host segments, the best of which is
them, inspired by the older-playing-younger cast, making an ad for
“The Old School”, where the school song is “It’s a Good Day
for a BM!” and classes include Napping 101. The Invention Exchange
is also fun, especially the Mads’ evil version of the game
Operation, with Frank as the living, tortured, board.
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| As ever, the Mads improve something with evil. |
All
in all, this episode is a little awkward, due to the movie’s
lackluster nature and the show still perfecting itself. But I
actually found on rewatch there’s a good amount of decent riffs,
and for an episode of a show about to turn 30 years old, it holds up,
mainly due that ol’ MST3K charm showing through.
Oh
wait, I forgot to mention the short! Yes, now that the review is
done, let’s talk about the short, because the short shows up after
the movie is over. It’s awkward as hell, and I’m pretty sure the
only time the show did this. Going from such a boring movie to an
almost-as-boring piece of Republic Serial schlock like The Phantom
Creeps is like being rewarded after doing homework with more
homework. It feels like they have a little more fun with the short;
having Bela Lugosi in it doesn’t hurt, and anything with
trans-atlantic accents can provide a handful of good riffs. That
said, I’m glad this is the only time they watched a short after a
movie.
Episode
in a Riff:
“What
about the Ring of Terror? What about the plot, Joel? Am I the only
one who cares?” -Tom
“I
think the only plot was back in the cemetery, Tom.” -Crow
Random
Asides
-This
movie does make one big contribution to MST history: the narrator
searching for his cat in the graveyard gives us the line, “Puma?
Puma...”
-The
much-better TZ episode The Grave came out the same year as this,
1961. Go watch that instead of t his movie. It has Lee Marvin and
Lee Van Cleef!
Tis
is a weird ass movie. It’s like part college story, part lame and
tame 50s thriller. Who is the audience for this? Why the semi-wacky
fat people and teacher? Why the tepid love story?
-We
actually see Joel going into the porthole to the theater in the
beginning.
-Tom’s
head is a weird, slender shape in this one. I remember reading
somewhere, probably Satellite News, they wanted it to be less
intrusive. Bad idea, and glad they reverted back to his normal round
shape.
-While
I appreciate the effort made in the revival episodes, I always prefer
the bots not working well as puppets.
-I
love Crow pretending to move the clock forward to simulate time
passing in the “robot anatomy” skit.
-The
theater shadows sit really high in this one for some reason.
-Even
with a subpar episode, I was house-sitting alone when I watched this,
and it provided just the soul lifting I needed. MST3K can almost
always do no wrong.
Satellite News Review
Annotations
MST3K Wiki Entry
