206 - Ring of Terror

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Additional Links
Satellite News Review
Annotations
MST3K Wiki Entry