906-The Space Children

Film Year:  1958
Genre:  Science Fiction
Director:  Jack Arnold
Starring:  Michael Ray, Adam Williams, Peggy Webber, Jackie Coogan, Russell Johnston
MST Season:  9
Featured Short:  "20th Century Calling"

The Short

THE FUTURE IS HERE!  And by future I of course mean the latest in phone technology.  Touch screens and apps and data and…

Oh wait...well these new portable flip phones can…

Um...guess not...these wireless…

Ugh...these touch tone dials…

Well crap.  What DO we have?  Oh.  We can turn the sprinklers on with our phone.  I guess that’s something.

This promotional short obviously was made to sell telephones and advertise new ways the technology could be improved over time.  I’m not certain if any phone back then has ever turned on an air conditioner (though there’s probably an app for that now), though certain things promised in the short have come to pass.  But mostly it’s just a dreary and dull look into the world of tomorrow from the point of view of yesterday.

The Movie

From Jack Arnold, director of such classics as It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, and The Incredible Shrinking Man comes a science fiction film that is...that is...well...is...WATCHABLE.  Yes, let’s go with that.

Starring The Screaming Skull’s Peggy Webber and co-starring This Island Earth’s Russell Johnson (yeah, the Professor, that too) and former prolific child actor Jackie Coogan (yeah, Uncle Fester too if you want to simplify his career), all playing adults and not Space Children.  But this movie is about THEIR children who...aren’t from space either.  What the hell, movie?  But these children are controlled by SOMETHING from space so by association they are clearly Space Children.

These Space “In Name Only” Children find some sort of jelly alien thingy that gives them omnipotent powers that allows them to screw around with nukes.  Speaking of omnipotent children, one of the kids in this movie looks and talks exactly like Bill Mumy of “It’s a Good Life” Twilight Zone fame.  In fact I always thought it was.  Putting more research into this film now I was shocked to not only find Mumy’s name was never credited for this movie, but he was only four years old when it was made (far younger than the kid I mistook him for).  I’m kind of convinced even the guys at Best Brains thought it was him too, since they made a “cornfield” reference when he was onscreen.

That was soul shattering.  And damn that was epic digression.

As for the movie itself, it’s mostly fine.  It’s sluggish and not that interesting in its presentation, but it has a neat story and charming 50’s cheese acting.  There’s nothing really here to hate, though there’s not a lot I can praise.  It’s just a drab movie with a preachy ending about ending nuclear war and giving peace a chance.

Until you realized that the aliens destroyed our nukes so they could come down and CONQUER US ALL!

The Movie

It had been so long since MST had delivered a short that to see one now is kind of startling.  Since it was early season seven when we saw our last one, The Chicken of Tomorrow, and now that we close in on the halfway point of season nine, I guess you could say it’s been two seasons since we saw one.  Bear in mind that season seven was ridiculously abbreviated at six episodes and nine is a conservative thirteen.  Still, we had thirty-one episodes during that time and the streak has finally been broken.

Speaking as someone who became a fan during the Sci-Fi era, a short on the series was an entirely foreign concept to me when I first saw this episode.  I didn’t quite understand it at first, because the TV listings said the episode would be Space Children and they were showing some movie called Century 21 Calling instead.  Then the short ended and the real movie started.

“Well, THAT was weird,” my thirteen-year-old self told myself.

I don’t think I came out of this episode with a strong impression on shorts.  Century 21 Calling is funny, but not a very strong offering.  While the short lacks dialogue for a good portion, allowing riffs to flow, it’s just feels dull and dry.  It has also been overshadowed by the other two shorts that aired during the Sci-Fi era, which are much funnier.

When we get to the movie they are faced with something that also feels a bit sluggish, but they are in full play mode.  It’s hard not to be with goofy 50’s sci-fi, and at the very least Mike and the Bots never seem bored with the film.  They get quite a bit of jokes at the expense of multiple sitcom stars featured in this movie, with more than a few references to Gilligan’s Island and The Addams’ Family on the table.  According to Satellite News the lack of recognition of Mr. Drysdale from The Beverly Hillbillies is a knock against the episode, though I don’t think it hurts the episode at all.  There are already an abundance of this type of riff, so lack of overkill is a good thing.

Host segments are a mixed bag.  They get stronger as the episode goes on, with an alien trying to take Servo’s nuke being the highlight of the episode for me, though Crow’s Jackie Coogan fashion show is pretty funny as well.  Servo’s kissing booth is a middle of the road “I don’t really know what to make of this” segment, while the big clunker of the lot is Mike imitating the guy from the short.

Despite uneven host segments and a mostly filler short, I find Space Children to be something of a delightful sleeper episode.  It flies under my radar a lot, but damn those movie segments are enjoyable when they’re on the screen.

Good

The DVD

The Space Children has not seen the light of day on DVD, but it is possible to own a percentage of it.  The host segments are included in Shout Factory’s Satellite Dishes disc on their Volume XXXIX release.  If that’s not enough, the short Century 21 Calling was released on The Killer Shrews disc of Rhino’s Volume 7 collection.