"Rowsdower..."
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| A hero like no other |
Rowsdower: The man; the myth; the mullet. Few characters in MST3K history are as beloved by fans as the amazingly named Zap Rowsdower, the hero of The Final Sacrifice, a student film made for about $2k that somehow ended up on the show. And with it came a hero nobody expected, and fans couldn’t get enough of. But, is the episode surrounding him as hilariously epic as him?
Troy
McGreggor is a young boy searching for clues about the mysterious
death of his father Thomas seven years ago. While
going through his
father’s things, he discovers a strange map that seems to lead to
an ancient city. Soon, Troy finds himself attacked by black hooded
cult members led by the stylishly black-coated and deep voice-dubbed
Satoris. In his rush to escape them, he ends up in the bed of a truck
belonging to mulleted drifter Zap Rowsdower. Yes, seriously. Soon,
Troy and Zap are racing to discover the secrets of the map before
Satoris and his cult can catch them, and Troy may learn the shocking
secret of his dad’s death.
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| Cultists and woods: what 90% of the movie looks like |
Mostly this means lots of shots of characters driving around the suburbs and woods of Canada while being chased by cultists in pickup trucks. It’s pretty admirable for a low budget student film, honestly, and it’s more silly than outright terrible. But, its chase scenes aren’t thrilling, the fight scenes aren’t exciting, and the color palette is as brown as a video game from the mid 2000s. This means the jokes, while frequent, are on the simpler, sillier side. When Crow sees a wintry forest, he says, “Yay! The movie’s closed due to snow!” And Mike’s comments on the music are that, “It sounds like video poker music.” They make attempts at Canda jokes, like when two characters meet, Tom says, “So, uh, eh then, eh?” And then they latch onto the fact that the picture of Troy’s father looks like Dolphins fullback Larry Csonka, which are fine to begin with, but wear old as it feels like it’s all Mike and the Bots have to latch onto. About the fourth one is Tom saying, “Let’s see if there are any Larry Csonka moves on tonight.” Nothing bad, but not great. They do have fun with dweeby Troy, though, like Tom saying, as Troy riffles through papers, “Ah, ‘sex: male’. See, I am!”
But about 30 minutes in, the movie really picks up when Troy is rescued by Rowsdower. As portrayed by Bruce J. Mitchell, he’s a mustachioed and mulleted drifter with a healthy beer belly and a beat up old truck, and he’s the nominal hero of the film. He makes Joe Don Baker’s Mitchell look as suave as 007. And hoo boy, do Mike and the Bots have a holiday with him .As Troy meets Zap, Crow wonders, “So ‘Rowsdower’, is that a stupid name?” And when Zap calls the cops about Troy, Mike says, “And the cops pick up their Zap Rowsdower hotline!” And as Zap drops a crate of empty bottles out of his truck to stop the pursuing cultists, Tom jokes, “I knew there was an upside to being an alcoholic!” Zap is one of the best characters in an MST movie, and THE reason to see this episode.
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| The dynamic duo at rest |
But he and Troy aren’t the only characters they have fun with. Later on, they meet Pipper, Troy’s dad’s friend, who talks with an old prospector voice, so we get jokes like Mike, in a Yosemite Sam voice, saying of the map, “Oh what is that? Gimme that, varmint!” And as Zap leaves, Tom says, “Wait! I was gonna sing something from Bone Machine!”
The host segments have some fun from the movie, but aren’t as great as the riffing, like Pearl, Brain Guy, and Bobo catching cases of hockey hair. The exception being Tom’s song in an attempt to stop Canada bashing which quickly turns from, “I wish back in old Canada, a land which I never shall lampoon / How I pine for the ice covering Lake Manitoba and the beauty that is Saskatoon” to Tom getting in on the bashing by going waaaay too far with, “Oh I wish I was blowing up Prince Edward Island, and going on to bomb Ontario / The destruction of Canada and all of its culture is by far my favorite scenario!”
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| Servo looks good in a uniform |
As I’ve often said, the more “entertainingly bad” a movie can be, the better an episode it can produce. The movie does drag, which can occasionally slow down the riffing. But when Mike, Crow, and Tom start riffing on Zap and Troy, and end the episode “on the next episode”-ing their future adventures, “Join us next week when Troy and Zap battle an army of evil Acadian robots on Cape Breton” followed by their improvised “Rowsdower!” theme song, you can’t help but smile. It’s one of those episode that can feel like it’s whole self contained universe of a story and the riffs on it. It’s just too bad the movie itself isn’t more eventful to give Mike and the Bots even more to work with.
It may sound like I’m being harsh, but I’m just not as in love with this episode as other MSTies are. That’s not to say it’s not very funny, it just takes a while to get going, really until Zap shows up, and from then on it’s consistently good. I just don’t feel its as great as everyone else. But, it gives us a memorable MST movie character in Zap, and has plenty of laughs to go along with it. If the worst I can say about an episode is that I don’t think its as great as everyone else, that may be more a knock on my own taste than to the experiment’s quality. Either way, any self respecting MSTie owes it to themselves to check this one out.
Episode in a Riff: "Pregnant women and children should not watch this scene. In fact no one should watch any of these scenes." -Mike
Random Asides:
-This is my first review of an episode in over a year, and man did I miss it.
-I’ve only seen this one maybe twice before.
-I love the transition in Mike’s dialogue in the first segment as they do the power test on the ship: “I know what you’re thinking, and no looting this time.” “Alright, what’d you loot?” Crow loots his own TV, and Toms teals the recycling.
-I love Pearl’s introduction in this episode, just saying, “...And then, I will rule the world!” Her plan is to do it one person at a time just by being bossy. I’ve heard word plans.
-Brain Guy calls this the worst thing to come out of Canada. Sorry, BG, but I’ve seen too many things from Brandon’s Cult Movies to agree.
-Troy looks like he’s waiting to grow up to become John Mulaney.
-This movie is mostly forests and old trucks.
-I know I like the jokes they make at his expense, but Mike and the bots are mean to Troy. Damn!
-Zap’s actor, Bruce J. Mitchell, gives a really nice interview on the DVD extra. He seemed like a really nice guy. Unfortunately, he passed away in 2018 at age 73. Rest in Peace.
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