Season 1 is here and I just enjoyed “The Crawling Eye.”
Wow. It was like watching a first read-through.
Still enjoyed it though.
MST3K 6.21 - The Beast of Yucca Flats
Shown with TWO Shorts, Money Talks! and Progress Island, U.S.A..
Ohhh, brudder. You know when you’ve got Tor Johnson cast (albeit briefly) as a scientist, you’re in deep. He plays a Russian defector whose humanity is blown away in the nuclear fire of an atomic test. Then he sort of wanders around and strangles anyone slow enough for him to catch. The narration in odd sentence fragments is distinctive, and of special note is the fact that the film contains no synchronized sound - all dialogue is delivered by people whose mouths are off-camera or otherwise obscured. As Tom puts it, Coleman Francis “tries things in this movie he later pefected in Red Zone Cuba.” The first short has the ghost of Benjamin Franklin teach a scrawny teen about the importance of saving, the second is a propaganda piece about the wonders of Puerto Rico in the 70s.
Intro : Wallpapering the SOL; Proposition Deep 13 Rally - the SOL stages a counter-rally. Host Segments : High School Party on the Hexfield (Crow reads Amethyst comics?); Crow desperately wants it to be lunchtime; Crow introduces the Film Anti-Preservation Society. Finale : SOL Victory Rally.
Signature Riffs :
<Mike> “Why must I be a young Christopher Walken?”
<Crow> “Dead people have too much time on their hands.”
<Crow> “The music of John Phillip Salsa!”
<Mike> “Tor Johnson as the Beast. That’s just smart casting.”
<Tom> “His head has a beer belly.”
<Crow> “It is more suspenseful when you don’t know what’s going on.”
<Crow> “It’s Nickelodeon’s Waiting for Godot!”
<Tom> “This movie stops at nothing… and stays there.”
Next : Angel’s Revenge
Somebody other than Ed Wood gave Tor Johnson a part in a movie?
See, now I’m excited, because I watched (most of) Angels Revenge this weekend. 
Synchronicity!
Hopefully I’ll get to it this weekend.
And maybe I’ll finish it without falling asleep. The Seventies make me tired.
The seventies make you tired? Try watching season one. “Robot Monster” is putting me to sleep right now. I’m glad I encountered MST3K later in it’s run, or else I might not have been turned on to it.
The riffing is getting better by this time, but it’s still so slow-paced and the actors haven’t really found their characters yet. .
MST3K 6.22 - Angels Revenge
Whoo. Let’s see if I can do it justice. A kid jumps his drug dealer, and is beat up in turn. This sparks his teacher and his sister to form a vigilante gang of seven women who proceed to assault, kidnap, rob, and murder while displaying copious amounts of cleavage. One of them is rich enough to just write a check for a motor vehicle, but to get ammunition, they raid a local militia group, assaulting and stealing from essentially innocent citizens. For fun, I guess. Features a gob of down-on-their-luck actors like Alan Hale, Jim Backus, Jack Palance, and Peter Lawford.
Intro : Crow has Amnesia - sort of. The Mads dress as 70’s relief pitchers, and transform Mike and the Bots into the cast of Renegade to boost ratings. Host Segments : Crow has reworked Earth vs. Soup into ‘Chocolate Jones and the Temple of Funk’; Mike does a Fonzie impersonation, Crow detonates him; Aaron Spelling’s orbital mansion drifts by on the Hexfield. Finale : Tom invents the Shame-o-Meter; down in Deep 13, Dr. F and Frank now dress as tennis players.
Signature Riffs :
<Tom> “The Green Barettes.”
<Crow> “I’m givin’ in, and lookin at the breasts.”
<Crow> “It’s the T&A-Team!”
<Mike> (re : song) “In the 70’s, you could take an abstract concept like ‘Shining Your Love’ and just go with it.”
<Crow> “This was Jim Backus’s first film after he died…”
<Mike> “Finally, someone Jim Varney can feel superior to.”
<Mike> “Right now, Benny Hill is smiling down from heaven.”
(a summary of the film’s events plays as a news radio broadcast)
<Crow> “You’re listening to K-PLOT.”
(the commando raid on the drug bunker is interrupted by an hourlong flashback showing the origin of the team)
<Mike> “THAT is a long flashback.”
Next : The Amazing Transparent Man
Ack! I forgot. Angels Revenge is available on Collection Two.
Just a footnote, The rights to the movies on Collection One have expired, so that will be going out of print. One of the movies from Collection 3 is also due to expire.
And Rhino has mysteriously pulled Volume 10 down from their website, but it’s still available elsewhere. Shop quickly! 
I guess I never realized that the militia group they raided had nothing to do with the drug dealers, as paying attention to the plot rarely pays off on MST3K. I think you’re right though – they just jumped a bunch of citizens and stole their stuff.
Any idea why Volume 10 might be pulled from the market? I haven’t heard anything about that.
This was obviously the prototype for Charlies Angels, but does anyone know the original title? I suspect it includes the number 7 since one of the scene transitions uses the numeral seven.
And this is one of my favorite episodes. Not just for the T&A, the riffing was hilarious. Jim Bakus and Pat Buttram were almost vaudvillian in their roles. Was Jack Palance so down on his luck? I thought he’d already acquired enough status to get out of jobs like this and that “Gor” flick.
This was not a prototype for Charlie’s Angels, but it was definitely a ripoff of it. CA started in 1976, this movie is from 1979.
The IMDb lists alternate titles as Angels’ Brigade (apparently its primary title) and Seven from Heaven, which is probably where you get the “7” motif but it may be the other way around. Titles for movies like these changed as they moved from regional market to regional market, and the print MST3K happened to get was one that was titled Angels’ Revenge.
Well smart guy, answer me this:
Did Sticks ever get his weiner back?
Wow. I remember being young enough to be frightened by that. Of course that was before I was old enough to follow a plot, so a plot would have been wasted on me.
mst3kinfo.com had the news, but hadn’t been able to uncover the reason yet.
MST3K 6.23 - The Amazing Transparent Man
Shown with Short, The Days of Our Years.
The Short’s a meditation on safety, narrated by a town pastor as he relates stories of how the accidents of a series of railroad workers affect the lives of those around them. Kind of a downer. The main feature is about a master safecracker, broken out of prison, to steal radioactive materials for his benefactor’s invisibility machine. Also kind of a downer. The main villain sort of looks like Mr. Rogers.
Intro : Crow is Tom’s Science project - Deep 13 is running a bed and breakfast. They enlist the SOL crew to provide ‘local color’ with creepy and hilarious results. Host Segments : Crow learns about ‘gentle pressure’ like in the safety short; Frank gets a day off, but can’t see Squanto; Mike plays an electronic organ. Finale : ‘What Would YOU Do?’, and Mike reads a transparent letter.
Signature Riffs :
<Mike> “Remember to worship at the railroad of your choice.”
MST3K 6.24 - Samson vs. The Vampire Women
This is one of the famous ‘Santo’ Mexican Wrestler movies, branded here as ‘Samson’ as he helps an elderly scientist-type protect his daughter from being abducted by a cult of vampires who intend on making her their next queen. He only really shows up in the second half, where the pace fortunately picks up a little. This episode is noteworthy for a couple of reasons - one, I think it marks the final appearance of Torgo; two, it’s the final episode of season Six; and three, it is TV’s Frank’s last episode as a regular cast member.
Intro : Tom doesn’t understand what a Moment of Silence is; Frank gets a cryptic fortune from a glowing Chinese Food Delivery guy. Host Segments : Mike and the Bots play Stratego, oddly; Torgo the White awakens Frank and takes him to Second Banana Heaven; Dr. F sings ‘Who Will I Kill’ in lament for Frank. Finale : Frank visits Dr. F to push the button one last time.
Signature Riffs :
<Mike> “It must be the maid’s century off.”
<Crow> “Ah, they let Billy draw today’s pamphlet.”
<Mike> “So the devil’s minions are cheap thugs.”
<Tom, as Santo> “I feel sort of silly now. Did I overdress?”
<Crow> “The International ‘Fight Like a Girl’ Championships!”
<All> “Go, El Santo - Go, El Santo - Go, El Santo Go-ooo!”
The moment when El Santo first comes in screen - Mike and the Bots just lose it. It is priceless.
Well! Season Six is done. Mike’s only full CC Season. Full of some solid stuff. During the filming of the 7th and final CC season, they had a shortened production schedule to accomodate the filming of the MST3K movie. I intend to throw it in as a sort of bonus here, so…
Next:
MST3K : The Movie - This Island Earth
Then :
On to Season Seven!
I finished season one on my own lately and found that some of the flicks they did were not all that bad, just B movie fare.
**Moon Zero Two ** and The Black Scorpion both had passable SFX for their times. **TBS ** in particular had Harryhausen doing his speciality rather well. It just suffered from being another giant-monster-heading-for-the-city flick. I also found that this movie was rather kind to old Mexico compared to most B-flicks set south of the border. The Mexican scientist was handsome, intelligent and capable even though it was whitey who saved the day. Also, the mexican army were shown to know their stuff even if it wasn’t up to killing giant scorpions.
Moon Zero Two just seemed to be too shagadellic. The plot was not bad and the sets were pretty good, if a little too Gerry Anderson-esque. But that music and animation! The animation was done by a separate company that apparently didn’t know what the flick was about. But they made sure to give themselves a prominent credit.
MST3K : The Movie - This Island Earth
The one and only. Filmed around the time of the seventh season, the absence of TV’s Frank and the presence of Dr. Forrester put it roughly congruent with Season Seven in terms of series continuity. However, it’s worth noting that all the sets (the SOL, Deep 13) were completely different. A few gags were re-used from earlier episodes, and very few references to series continuity are made. It’s pretty much its own animal.
Regrettably, it’s next to impossible to find on DVD, though I saw it appear on the Sundance channel, and the VHS’s still seem moderately easy to find. Here’s hoping for a re-issue.
The movie is a typical 50’s SciFi thing - a world-class physicist is brought to a secret conclave of Earth’s greatest scientists - all working for the alien Metalunans, who hope to harness Earth’s greatest minds to replenish their uranium supplies so as to survive the war embroiling their home planet. I have sometimes heard complaints about them doing this movie - some consider it a classic of the genre. I say sure, but the genre it’s in is “B-Movie”, so… still riffworthy. And really, they don’t give it that hard a time.
Intro : Dr. F explains the premise; we get a little 2001 parody from Mike and Gypsy. Crow’s escape attempt nearly kills everyone. Host Segment One : After a film break, Mike brags about his piloting skills, culminating in wrecking the Hubble telescope. Contains the only callback in the entire film as far as I can tell - the SOL’s manipulator arm control is labelled ‘Manos’. Host Segment Two : Tom reveals he possesses an interocitor, and we get to see the inside of his room, as well as his fabled underpants collection. Finale : Mike and the Bots throw a Metaluna Mixer.
Signature Riffs:
<Crow> “Well, look at that. ‘Breach hull, all die.’ Even had it underlined.”
<Mike> “Fortunately, he has his theme music on 8-track.”
(as the lead wrestles with his flight control stick)
<Tom> “Should we be seeing this?”
<Crow> “The Secret Government Eggo Project.”
<Mike, as mailman> “Sort this, deliver that, I’ll make’em all pay.”
<Tom> “Ah, I see the script has finally arrived.”
<Tom> “I’m your pilot, Claude Raines, your co-pilot, Harvey the Rabbit.”
<Mike> “Regis and Kathie Lee are : The Fugitive.”
<Exeter>“They’re magnetized.”
<Mike, as Exeter> “And if your hands were metal, that would mean something.”
Next Up : Season Seven and Night of the Blood Beast
There’s one scene in This Island Earth where I just completely lose it whenever I see it. There’s a social going on with people milling around a room, and a random guy walks in from a door on the left side of the room and out a door on the right, with the camera tracking him. One of the bots - I want to say Crow - makes motorcycle noises the entire time the guy is on screen. It’s killing me just thinking about it.
Sadly, the rest of the movie isn’t all that memorable. But then, I only watched it twice when it came out, and haven’t seen it since.
One of the best moviegoing experiences ever was seeing the MST movie in a small arthouse full of MSTies. My favorite riff was near the end, when the male lead, having done nothing during the whole finale, deigns to help the female lead to his feet; Crow says, “Thank god I saved you!” I also loved Servo’s repeated “But I’m not an alien!”.