We’ll get up to ‘The Day the Earth Froze’ soon enough…
MST3K 3.12 - Gamera vs. Guiron
This is the penultimate Gamera film shown on MST - one more to go. On the SOL - The Mads invent Racy Rorschachs and Joel invents the collapsible Trashcan.
This film features some of the most horrible voice-acting and dubbing I’ve ever seen, ever. The horrible pauses between phrases are almost Shatnerian in length. Apart from Gamera, our star include a tiny American boy who rather resembles Richard Burton, and his Japanese pal, a kid obsessed with Traffic Accidents.
Joel and the Bots really dig the music in this episode - singing along as the kids go exploring on their bikes to find a downed spaceship. They come upon the little saucer - and faster than you can say ‘Gone in 60 Seconds’, they jack it. They end up headed right towards an asteroid - D’oh! - but fortunately, Gamera is there to bail them out. Apparently, he’s the Green Lantern of sector 2814 at this point - seems like he’d have better things to do than save two brats from a Darwin Award. Anyway, it’s after this triumphant scene we get the rousing Gamera song.
Outside the theater for a moment, the crew riffs on the song - ‘Gamera is really neat, he is made of turtle meat!’ And then we’re back - as the kids have crashed on an alien world, and immediately spot a Gaos terrorizing the landscape - then the Gaos is taken out by a monster with a sword for a nose, Guiron. Crow puns relentlessly throughout. The brats bump into the last two survivors of this planet, who apparently have a touch of down-home southern accent. There’s some confusion as to whether they’re standing on a star or a planet, also. (As a footnote - they’re revealed to be on Terra, Earth’s nega-twin on the opposite side of the sun, a common SciFi concept - see also ‘Stranded in Space’.)
We get a little flashback to Gamera’s past - including one of the movies the MST guys skipped - mainly spinning that whole ‘Friend to Children’ angle. The boys’ mothers, back on Earth, have the most polite conversation ever. We learn that our southern-fried aliens are brain eaters. Didn’t see that comin’. Gamera fights Guiron to try and save the boys, and learns the pain of Guiron’s remote-controlled shuriken.
Back outside the theater, we see a salute to Richard Burton. I’m not sure if this is the first time, but Crow insists on being billed as ‘Crow T. Robot’ as Joel introduces them. His stage name, you see. Back inside for the climax, and we see two things I never thought I’d see a giant turtle do - first, he works the parallel bars in a stunning display of Gameracrobatics, and then takes a ruined spaceship, sets his flames on ‘weld’, and fuses the hull back together to transport the two brats back to Earth. We close with a production of the Gamera theme song. (And Mike Nelson as Michael Feinstein, pianist - which is hilarious.)
Signature Riff:
(As Guiron is revealed)
<Crow> : “I know, I know. Don’t laugh, they made me in a hurry.”
MST3K 3.13 - Earth vs. The Spider
First, we see Crow’s talkshow, “Inside the Robot Mind.”
Then a short, Speech : Using Your Voice. Available on one of the Shrots collections, as I recall. Plenty of lip and tongue action.
EvtS is another Bert I. Gordon gem - and we get a gruesome, blood-spraying death in the first two minutes! That’s pretty much the extent of the excitement in the first reel - we also meet our two teenage hero-types. We step outside the theater for a reading of Crow’s screenplay, Earth vs. Soup. Then it’s back inside for wackiness as the two teens slip into a mysterious cave, looking for the girl’s father - only to fall into a giant, sticky tuna net. No ordinary giant sticky tuna net this, it was woven by an asthmatic giant spider, which menaces the pair.
It is then that we meet the able and jocular sheriff of the tiny town - his resemblance to Alan Hale, Jr. does not go unriffed, and is sort of ironic, considering that five years later, we’d see Giant Spider Invasion, with another small town, Giant Spider, and a fellow looking remarkably like Alan Hale, Jr. (in actuality, Alan Hale Jr.) playing the Sheriff. The teens lead the posse back to the cave to show them the spider, in a very tensely-scored scene. ( Crow : ‘Hey, this music wasn’t here before!’)
Outside, we see the Crew’s rock opera, Spydorr, and meet Mike Nelson as the Custodian of the 7th Galaxy, who pays them a visit. This segment is a riff on something the crew hasn’t yet seen in the movie, but will soon. Back in the domain of pain - Tom slams on Hudson Hawk and I hate him for it; we see the theater that our male teen hero works at is shamelessly promoting other Bert Gordon flicks, including the Amazing Colossal Man. Then, finally, we meet Hugo the Janitor and the Rock Band with a Conductor.
There’s a whole bunch of confusion, and while the two heroes are visiting the cave to search for a lost bauble, the stunned spider wakes up and crawls back inside - understandably terrorized, the townsfolk dnamite the cave entrance… THEN find the car that tells them the teens are inside. So there’s some digging, and finally, the spider is electrocuted in a scene foreshadowed in the first reel, in science class.
Signature Riff :
(re : a reused device)
<Tom> : ‘Everybody’s afraid of these crane shots…’