Film Year: 1966
Genre: Drama, Noir
Director: Coleman Francis
Starring: Coleman Francis, John Carradine, Anthony Cardoza, Harold Saunders
MST Season: 6
Featured Short: "Speech: Platform Posture and Appearance"
The Short
In this thrilling sequel to Speech: Using Your Voice, we now learn the importance of appearance in public speaking. Despite their title, speeches aren't just about words but rather selling what you're saying by looking as confident as possible. After all, the world works best when you judge a book by its cover.
The advice here is sound, though it could be a bit more thorough when it comes to body language. This short mostly just tells us to dress well and stand up straight, but there are more things one can do to look more comfortable while telling a speech.
And no, one of them is not to put your hands on your knees and wiggle around. I have no clue what THAT'S about.
The Movie
Initially titled Night Train to Mundo Fine, Red Zone Cuba still features a theme song by this very name at the beginning of the film. And it's sung by John Carradine. I'm going to let that sink in for a moment.
The answer is yes, it sounds exactly like you're picturing in your head.
Red Zone Cuba is the third and final film (second featured on the show) by Mystery Science Theater's favorite auteur Coleman Francis. In many ways you can tell Francis is attempting something far grander and more meaningful than his other films, it's just exploding in his face. I really dislike shitting on someone's passion project, but this film is a mess.
There might be something of an interesting noir tale in Red Zone Cuba. In it Coleman Francis, in the role of his career, plays a fugitive who teams up with a pair of ex-convicts who are hoodwinked into joining the Bay of Pigs invasion. There they are captured by the Cubans and are forced to mount an escape back to America. Watching this play out I can easily tell that Francis is telling a cynical tale of men leading a violent life. Red Zone Cuba wants to be a compelling look at violent men looking for peace and only finding more violence. But just because Red Zone Cuba wants to be this doesn't mean it succeeds.
If one were to judge the film on its technical details alone it would be enough to send it down the toilet. The low budget is apparent with the lack of locations, where both Cuba and America look the same. Night scenes and stormy weather are both portrayed in the middle of broad daylight. The editing is a disaster of random shots being flung in the middle of other random shots.
This is all things we noticed surface level. When you get into the story you find you just don't like it on a personal level. Coleman Francis's character, while I highly doubt he was supposed to be likable at all, just is not a pleasurable protagonist. He scoffs at death, rapes women, and guns people down on a whim. He's supposed to be a bad human being, but he's a disgusting one to spend time with. When we're given a character that we're designed to hate this much, and he's our LEAD, how are we supposed to react?
Red Zone Cuba is just a failure of both story and production. It's an incoherent mess of a movie that just makes the blood boil. Quite frankly, it's just not that good, you know?
There might be something of an interesting noir tale in Red Zone Cuba. In it Coleman Francis, in the role of his career, plays a fugitive who teams up with a pair of ex-convicts who are hoodwinked into joining the Bay of Pigs invasion. There they are captured by the Cubans and are forced to mount an escape back to America. Watching this play out I can easily tell that Francis is telling a cynical tale of men leading a violent life. Red Zone Cuba wants to be a compelling look at violent men looking for peace and only finding more violence. But just because Red Zone Cuba wants to be this doesn't mean it succeeds.
If one were to judge the film on its technical details alone it would be enough to send it down the toilet. The low budget is apparent with the lack of locations, where both Cuba and America look the same. Night scenes and stormy weather are both portrayed in the middle of broad daylight. The editing is a disaster of random shots being flung in the middle of other random shots.
This is all things we noticed surface level. When you get into the story you find you just don't like it on a personal level. Coleman Francis's character, while I highly doubt he was supposed to be likable at all, just is not a pleasurable protagonist. He scoffs at death, rapes women, and guns people down on a whim. He's supposed to be a bad human being, but he's a disgusting one to spend time with. When we're given a character that we're designed to hate this much, and he's our LEAD, how are we supposed to react?
Red Zone Cuba is just a failure of both story and production. It's an incoherent mess of a movie that just makes the blood boil. Quite frankly, it's just not that good, you know?
The Episode
"Hi-CUBA!"
Red Zone Cuba is a harsh movie to bear witness to, so it's going to take something quite spectacular to make this thing watchable. The MST episode of this movie is somewhat polarizing as I've found from experience that a lot of people love it and a lot of people hate it. Usually the movie is front and center as to why on both sides of the argument. My own experience with this episode has been...interesting. The first time I watched it, I loved it. After that experience I sat down to watch it again some time later expecting it to be a laugh riot and found an episode that was excruciating instead. And those sort of reactions never stopped as I've been very hot and cold on this episode for as long as I can remember.
I think I've matured enough to really dissect what about this episode stems such a reaction, and like most fans it's really the movie that is the root of the cause. Because of this angry, cynical, and incomprehensible movie at the center of the experiment Red Zone Cuba to me is a mood episode. If I want something light and silly fun then this is not the episode to watch. I need to mentally prepare myself for this movie and realize what I'm dealing with here, and if I find I can take it then I will laugh for days. As such, even though I think the riffing is quite brilliant in this episode, this is not one I watch often.
The poorly made film has plenty to take note on for the boys. They notice early and often that Coleman Francis's ambitious attempt at setting mood often leads to inconsistencies: Thunder is heard often in the background, though there is never a cloud in the sky; night scenes are set in broad daylight, ect. This being Francis's big starring role in his filmography means he's up front and center and ready to be heckled, and the boys make no short work at pointing out he looks like an angrier, gruff version of Three Stooges alumni Curly Howard. The shoddy production is also under fire, with some hilarious editing highlighting.
"AGH! My neck got broke in that jump cut!"
Oh, but this one started with a short too! Speech: Platform Posture and Appearance (or Speech 2: Cruise Control) is a follow-up to one they riffed during Earth vs. the Spider. One can easily see why they've selected this short. There are a lot of silly visuals of people with poor posture, of which they can easily comment upon. For the most part the riffing is hilarious, and I was laughing in a constant stream. Then the short gets to "the knee test," where one tests one posture by putting their hands on their knees and wiggling around. I don't care if this is a proper technique, but it is just a hilarious visual. The boys take aim and fire, and my sides were absolutely splitting. This is an excellent short.
Red Zone Cuba is a harsh movie to bear witness to, so it's going to take something quite spectacular to make this thing watchable. The MST episode of this movie is somewhat polarizing as I've found from experience that a lot of people love it and a lot of people hate it. Usually the movie is front and center as to why on both sides of the argument. My own experience with this episode has been...interesting. The first time I watched it, I loved it. After that experience I sat down to watch it again some time later expecting it to be a laugh riot and found an episode that was excruciating instead. And those sort of reactions never stopped as I've been very hot and cold on this episode for as long as I can remember.
I think I've matured enough to really dissect what about this episode stems such a reaction, and like most fans it's really the movie that is the root of the cause. Because of this angry, cynical, and incomprehensible movie at the center of the experiment Red Zone Cuba to me is a mood episode. If I want something light and silly fun then this is not the episode to watch. I need to mentally prepare myself for this movie and realize what I'm dealing with here, and if I find I can take it then I will laugh for days. As such, even though I think the riffing is quite brilliant in this episode, this is not one I watch often.
The poorly made film has plenty to take note on for the boys. They notice early and often that Coleman Francis's ambitious attempt at setting mood often leads to inconsistencies: Thunder is heard often in the background, though there is never a cloud in the sky; night scenes are set in broad daylight, ect. This being Francis's big starring role in his filmography means he's up front and center and ready to be heckled, and the boys make no short work at pointing out he looks like an angrier, gruff version of Three Stooges alumni Curly Howard. The shoddy production is also under fire, with some hilarious editing highlighting.
"AGH! My neck got broke in that jump cut!"
Oh, but this one started with a short too! Speech: Platform Posture and Appearance (or Speech 2: Cruise Control) is a follow-up to one they riffed during Earth vs. the Spider. One can easily see why they've selected this short. There are a lot of silly visuals of people with poor posture, of which they can easily comment upon. For the most part the riffing is hilarious, and I was laughing in a constant stream. Then the short gets to "the knee test," where one tests one posture by putting their hands on their knees and wiggling around. I don't care if this is a proper technique, but it is just a hilarious visual. The boys take aim and fire, and my sides were absolutely splitting. This is an excellent short.
The host segments are a batch I never seem to remember all that well, and as I returned to this episode I didn't quite recall them at all. There's a linking storyline here about Frank being in debt with the mob and having them beat up Dr. Forrester via mistaken identity. This seems like it should be regulated to the opening and the closing of the episode, but these segments take up the entire episode. We get Frank tending to Dr. Forrester while he is bed-ridden, predicting/hoping that he will die a horrible death. It's a cute idea, but it feels like there is just too much of it. We spend barely any time on the Satellite of Love at all, but when we do they're brief barely there gags of picking Lotto numbers and Mike pretending to be Carol Channing. I do love the formal way the guys play Bingo though.
For my money Red Zone Cuba just might be the funniest episode of the "Coleman Francis Trilogy," yet there's something that holds me back on it. I feel that the fact that this isn't an episode I can put on during a rainy day is a slight knock against it. Others may disagree, but rest assured I agree with the side who thinks this is a very funny episode.
For my money Red Zone Cuba just might be the funniest episode of the "Coleman Francis Trilogy," yet there's something that holds me back on it. I feel that the fact that this isn't an episode I can put on during a rainy day is a slight knock against it. Others may disagree, but rest assured I agree with the side who thinks this is a very funny episode.
Good
The DVD
Rhino released the episode as a single disc, featuring solid audio and video. There were no special features. Shout Factory also released an online exclusive single disc re-release of the episode that also had no special features.
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