These Are a Few of My Favorite Riffings, Part Two

[jeriendhal]

6. Warrior of the Lost World (501): “MEGAWEAPON! MEGAWEAPON! MEGAWEAPON!” – In which our “hero” drives a motorbike across the green, lush, post-apocalyptic wasteland, abandons the girl at a critical moment, whines about wearing a jumpsuit, and is out acted by a dump truck mounted with spikes and a flamethrower (the Megaweapon). You have to feel sorry for poor Persis Khambata and Donald Pleasance for being reduced to acting in this dreck. But it’s perfect fodder for Joel and the bots.

7. The Creeping Terror (606): A shag carpet rampages its way across a small town. Notable for giving Mike and the bots a lot of room to riff, since almost the entire movie is narrated, because the original filmmaker couldn’t afford to loop the dialog.

8. Invasion of the Neptune Men (819): “They blew up the Hitler Building!” – While it doesn’t quite beat Manos as one of the worst movies MST3K ever riffed, it’s certainly one of the ones Best Brains hated the most, mostly for using footage from actual WWII bombings in a kids movie. Laughable, ineffective aliens. A hero that doesn’t actually do much. Free range kids with Level 5 security clearance. Just terrible from start to finish, with plenty of material to riff.

9. Space Mutiny (820): “Oh, God! She’s presenting like a mandrill!” – If there’s one flaw to MST3k’s treatment of this movie, it’s them completely missing the fact that all the special effects were “borrowed” from the original Battlestar Galactica. Otherwise it’s a hilarious space adventure, with a supposedly 20 something love interest very obviously in her late 30’s (and wearing incredibly sexist Space Clothes tm on top of that), the interior of a brick factory passing for a spaceship, and such lovely continuity goofs like a character who was killed on screen showing up back at her console in the very next scene.

10. The Pumaman (903): “It’s S&M Day at the Field Museum!” – Pity poor Donald Pleasance, who has the bad luck to appear twice on MST3K (though at least he does better than Peter Graves and Lee Van Cleef). Whiny college professor is granted the all the powers of a pyuma, er puma through an ancient Aztec belt apparently borrowed from the WWE. Fortunately his Aztec sidekick is vastly more competent than he is, and gets most of the work done.

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Egad, but it's been too long since I last saw any of these! I do sort of recall Space Mutiny and Pumaman, though, and I suppose there's nothing that dulls the memory of The Creeping Terror. ^_^;

with a supposedly 20 something love interest very obviously in her late 30’s

Reminds me of Savage Streets, which we watched the other week, where the leads - all in High School - range from around 21 to 40. =:D Actually not a bad film, either - very pulp, but with a certain (at times, disturbingly so) violent charm.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

You can find most of them online on Youtube, including officially sanctioned ones with annotations to explain the dated pop culture refs. And Shout Factory is doing a good job putting them on DVD.