101-The Crawling Eye

Film Year:  1956
Genre:  Horror
Director:  Quentin Lawrence
Starring:  Forrest Tucker, Laurence Payne, Jennifer Jayne
MST Season:  1

The Movie

*I HAVE SURVIVED WATCHING THIS MOVIE UNRIFFED*

A group of people in an observatory in Switzerland are shaken up by people being decapitated while hiking the mountains.  With a radioactive mist hovering around the mountains, rumors of extraterrestrial monsters begin to spread.  Could these monsters by giant eyes?  Why wouldn’t they be?

Delightful monster movie began as a British television serial called The Trollenberg Terror, and was edited together for theatrical release as The Crawling Eye.  The movie, while unevenly paced and with hit and miss special effects work, has a lot of brilliant atmosphere.  Not only that, but it never hesitates to get a little dark in its tone.

The monsters themselves look sensational.  They admittedly look better in certain shots than others, but the design is wickedly cool.  The monster scenes have a knack of hitting the gas in this movie, which is lucky when some of the human scenes drag on.  Despite this there is some cool intrigue to what is actually going on before the big reveal.  This monster movie delivers the goods.

The Episode

And with The Crawling Eye, MST went national (though some speculate that Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy was actually aired first, even though this episode was the first produced).  The riffs are no longer improvised, and while the humor isn’t perfect there is definitely a better flow to these episodes than the KTMA ones.  This first national season also benefits from better movie selections.  I’ve already gushed about my enjoyment of The Crawling Eye, but this season was littered with cool little black and white goodies.  Quality is debatable, but I love ‘em.  And because of my love for the types of films that season one chose to show, I can be pretty easy on it.

The riffing in Crawling Eye is a sizable improvement over the riffing at KTMA.  That’s not to say it sets the standard that all MST must be judged, but more like the standard that this season must be.  Crawling Eye is one of the better ones, even if there is a bit of desperation to find the show’s identity underlining it.  Some of the jokes seem like they were made to fill the gaps, or a joke for the sake of one.  Every once in a while there’s a really good chuckle that breaks any awkwardness, and there are still a lot of smiles in between.  It’s true that the episode benefits from a really fun monster movie, but I like to think that the theater segments are a solid success in this one.

The host segments are just as experimental.  None of them are bad, but the best ones are just kind of witty, with Joel explaining why humans can’t survive decapitation highlighting.  There’s also a swell host segment discussing the viability of the monster itself, which is something I like about these early episodes because they have a tendency to discuss the film itself, giving off that horror movie host flavor.  Gypsy getting all tangled up is hit and miss, as is the very first Invention Exchange which offers Joel’s creative electric bagpipes and the Mads’ funny concept/lacking execution canine antiperspirant.

Poopie!:  At the opening of the first theater segment, Servo just sits at the right side of the screen before entering.  They must have thought he was off camera, but the Shadow-Rama caught it!
Poopie!:  During the second host segment, you can clearly see a puppeteer’s shadow on the wall.  I’m assuming it belongs to Jim Mallon, who voices Gypsy here for the first time.  There’s a second human shadow on the wall, but I’m pretty sure it belongs to Joel.

Season one episodes may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but we all have to start somewhere.  If one continues down this season, one can only hope future episodes are as good as this one.  The Crawling Eye entertains, even if it is spotty.

Good

The DVD

Shout Factory released this episode as a part of Volume XVII.  Picture and sound are pretty rock solid, definitely a sight for sore eyes, as older MST episodes tend to be in much softer condition in the Tape Trading circuit.  An official DVD taken from the actual master of this important episode is definitely welcome.

There are two special features, the first of which is an introduction by Joel Hodgson.  He talks about the transition between KTMA and national TV and why they decided to go scripted instead of improvised, as well as the movie itself.  It’s a great companion piece to the episode.

The second is a trailer for the film.