820-Space Mutiny

Film Year:  1988
Genre:  Science Fiction
Director:  David Winters
Starring:  Reb Brown, John Phillip Law, Cisse Cameron, Cameron Mitchell
MST Season:  8

The Movie

Shamelessly stealing it’s spaceship footage from the far superior Battlestar Galactica, Space Mutiny also tells the tale of a group of refugees from a dead planet looking for a new home.  Though it’s more in tune with Lost in Space than Battlestar Galactica.  And by Lost in Space, I mean the nutso Goth punk Matt LeBlanc movie.  Only much cheaper.  Cheaper than the original Lost in Space, in fact.

Damn.  I really want to watch either Battlestar Galactica or Lost in Space now.  And I can’t figure out which.

Anyway, a group of people on our spacecraft succumbs to…SPACE!  MADNESS!

…And revolts against the Captain Santa Claus and his faithful underlings.  The events send former Diabolik John Phillip Law and former TV movie Captain America Reb Brown on a collision course!

What can be said about Space Mutiny that isn’t plainly obvious?  The only reason it’s not the worst movie ever made is because it’s too damn unintentionally funny!  Whether it’s the sets, the actors, or our macho hero screaming like a girl, this flick is sure to get a laugh out of you.  That’s the difficulty of reviewing a film that pretty much speaks for itself, because there’s nowhere to start because everything is so haywire that you can’t find a starting point.

But honestly, if there were ever a movie to watch outside the show for a Mystery Science Theater home experience, this is the film to do it on.  It’s painless, funny, and kind of fun to watch.  That doesn’t redeem its worse aspects, but it’s better than nothing!

The Episode

Yes folks, this is the episode where the movie shamelessly rips footage from the original Battlestar Galactica series and nobody on the crew noticed (in fact, they commented on how fake it looks even though it’s quality effects work).  I’m mentioning this right now so I don’t have to mention it again.  The people who work on Mystery Science Theater aren’t required to be knowledgeable on every single piece of pop culture in the history of relevance, and chances had the crew seen Battlestar Galactica at all then it’s very likely they weren’t intimately familiar with every effects shot in it like a bunch of nerds on the internet like us.  I don’t think the oversight is as inexcusable as many fans claim it to be.  I myself hadn’t seen Galactica until many years after I saw Space Mutiny (and I was all “GASP!  THEY STOLE THE EFFECTS FROM SPACE MUTINY!”), so I didn’t notice when this episode aired and I kind of don’t care now.

Whether they recognized the footage or not, it doesn’t take away from the episode.  Sure a Galactica riff or two would be nice, but there’s so much else about this movie that they can zero in on.  The acting is dreadful, the sets and costumes are hilarious, and just the overall goofy production is just a goldmine of lovable bad movie.  I’ve always said that the best episodes of MST have a symbiotic connection between movie and riffing, and when I say that I’m talking about episodes like Space Mutiny.  The movie is funny by itself, and while technically it doesn’t need the riffing to provide enjoyment, the riffing is so on-target that it enhances the movie to a whole new level of hilarity.  The only riffs that really fall flat at this movie’s expense are on the Galactica footage itself, which goes for fairly lazy reference to tunes from 2001:  A Space Odyssey morphing into a commentary of how bad they perceive the effects to be.  I already gave my opinion that these are good sequences of effects, so these riffs are a bit perplexing.  But there’s so much to counterweight that, with the crappy effects on the inside of the ship making up for it (those little scoot carts that the heroes and villains chase each other in are some of the best bad effects ever featured on the show).  Add in the many names of our beefy hero (“Slab Bulkhead!”  “Big McLargeHuge!”  “Bob Johnson!”), a resurrecting officer (“I think it’s nice of you to give that dead woman another chance.”), and some disturbingly sensual hula-hoop dancing in spandex (“Oh pantyhose are itchy!  Really, really itchy!  Itchy, itchy, itchy!”) and this episode just has a laugh around every corner.

Host segments are a tad on the underwhelming side, though amusing, truth be told.  I did enjoy Crow and Servo kamikaze flying a pair of escape pods, and some of the bits in the Roman dungeons made me laugh.  Pearl’s attempts to reach a brainless Observer were obvious but charming, and I enjoyed Bobo’s regurgitation of many items (never expected to type out that sentence).  And I also laugh at the slight in-joke where Mike has trouble hitting on a character who is played by his wife.  Love them or hate them, these segments effectively end our time in Roman times and the two remaining episodes of the series mostly stray away from the season’s “somewhere in time and space” story-arc.

But any way you slice it, Space Mutiny is an undisputed classic.  It’s a riot from start to finish.  Oh sure, I can imagine someone could make the claim that this is a “safe” episode, because the laughs are already there in the movie.  But if going for a sure thing churns out an episode this good, I’m all for it.

Classic

The DVD

This fan favorite MST episode was released by Rhino in their very first collection of Sci-Fi Channel episodes, Volume 4 (and honestly, this episode deserved to be one of the first of its era released).  The picture had a minor video pixel issue halfway through the episode, though very brief and audio is unaffected.  The only extra was an intro by Mike Nelson, who relives some of the more amusing moments of the movie itself.

Volume 4 was re-released by Shout Factory with slight video flaws but mostly fine picture, and great audio.  Mike's intro was retained.