419-The Rebel Set

Film Year:  1959
Genre:  Drama, Crime
Director:  Gene Fowler Jr.
Starring:  Edward Platt, Gregg Palmer, Kathleen Crowley, John Lupton, Don Sullivan
MST Season:  4
Featured Short:  "Johnny at the Fair"

The Short

This short subject is mostly just a package showing off the wonders of the fair, with a few celebrity cameos as well.  It’s showcased through the eyes of a little boy who has wandered away from his parents, bounces from stranger to stranger, while nobody really questions why this little brat is unattended.

I’m kind of a small-time short subject buff, someone who likes watching these little appetizers that used to play before the main feature.  Stuff like Johnny at the Fair ranks among my more disliked short genre, as they’re just hapless filming of things that really aren’t that special that are only heightened by pointless celebrity cameos.  The attempt at a storyline is a bit inane, showing inept parents not paying attention to their child and the little whippersnapper just kind of wandering around aimlessly.  It’s not that interesting.

The Movie

A few episodes prior in the fourth season we had a movie called The Beatniks that had no actual beatniks.  It could have easily swapped titles with this episode and nobody would have been the wiser.  Not that The Rebel Set has a lot to do with beatniks itself, but at least it has a handful.

Mostly the movie is about a coffeehouse owner rounding up a group of knuckleheads to help him with a heist, though most MSTies won’t notice because the movie is just too boring.  Instead we’ll mostly refer to it as “that movie with the Chief from Get Smart.”  Edward Platt is pretty much the one noteworthy actor of the movie, aside from the chameleon Merritt Stone (“HE’S NOT MERRITT STONE!”).

Dreary tone, stiff performances, and overall B-picture production values make this one a movie that kind of just drifts in with the rest of MST’s line-up.  I don’t really feel interested in vesting too much time talking about it so I’m not going to.  If it wanted me to do that it should have been something interesting.  Instead it’s generic, insanely padded, and kind of drops like a dud.

The Episode

As we open with our short in this episode, Joel warns the bots to not “get too dark.”  This is perhaps more of a warning to the audience, as they really don’t seem afraid to riff in a dark place during this piece.  There’s a lot of jokes about the psychological trauma of being a lost child all the way to something as random as the assassination of John Kennedy.  Mostly what makes Johnny at the Fair worth watching is that Joel and the bots take an “innocent” story and adult it up, with references that can get political, critical, and even a bit blue.  On that latter subject, this short does feature one of my favorite riffs of the series, which sees a baby horse trying to nurse from his mother only to jerk its head away, prompting Crow to spout “Oops!  Sorry, dad!”

Riffing on the movie is enthusiastic, which is really more energy than this movie can rise up within me so kudos to our gang for keeping things peppy.  The film is just inclined to suck the fun out of the room, which makes riffing it difficult.  They push the film to its limits though, and every once in a while they pipe up with a bigger belly laugh than you were expecting this film to inspire.  But much like the film, the riffing just kind of drifts off and doesn’t really inspire much rave about the final product.

Host segments are fair, but unmemorable.  Joel reads the bots a “scary” story, Crow takes Scott Baio endorsed acting lessons, and there’s some healthy and heated debate as to whether the movie features Merritt Stone (spoiler alert:  It doesn’t).  Invention exchange is cute, which features the Quick Primp Kit and Mark Rothko Paint-By-Numbers.

Like the film itself, Rebel Set as an episode doesn’t inspire much within me.  I enjoy portions of it but mostly it just comes off as a “background episode” that you turn on and do something else while it’s playing.  That’s about all the feelings on it I can sum up.

Average

The DVD

This episode was released by Rhino on Volume 12.  Video and audio were pretty good and the disc featured the film’s trailer as a bonus feature.  Also featured is an interview with Don Sullivan, unfortunately a good portion of it is the same that was seen on the Giant Gila Monster disc.  However, technically this disc came first, so I can’t fault it.

Johnny at the Fair was released quite a bit earlier on Mr. B’s Lost Shorts, featured on Rhino’s Volume 6 set.  There were no special features.