506-Eegah

Film Year:  1962
Genre:  Fantasy, Musical
Director:  Nicholas Merriwether (Arch Hall Sr.)
Starring:  Richard Keil, Arch Hall Jr., Marilyn Manning, William Watters (Arch Hall Sr.)
MST Season:  5

The Movie

This little doofus movie is about a girl named Roxy who sees a giant caveman and nags her father into investigating.  When her father goes missing, she and her boyfriend Tom spring to the rescue.  They soon save dad from the caveman, but he grows infatuated with Roxy and follows the group back into town.

Eegah was one of several cheap musicals in the early 60's to star blond superstar neverwas Arch Hall Jr., and it was the only one of the bunch to be directed by his father.  Movie urban legend says Arch Hall Sr. wished his son to be the next Elvis and nearly went bankrupt raising the money for the film.  But honestly...Elvis made some really weird shit, but nothing nearly as weird as Eegah.  And if you wanted to show off your son's musical talents then you probably need more than two songs to do so.  It might even be debatable whether or not this is a musical at all.

It's fairly difficult for me to really know what to say about this movie.  It's biggest crime is being mighty stupid, and it might be self aware about this but it doesn't really utilize that in its favor.  The best aspect of the film is Richard Keil as the titular caveman, which is probably perfect casting.  When Eegah meets his sad end in the finale I can't help but be a little bummed because I always enjoy Keil.

I think most will either be annoyed by this movie or perplexed by it.  It's so silly, yet it's surprisingly serious about itself when it feels like it knows it should be self-depreciating.  Though I don't dislike the movie because I feel it at least has some sort of heart beating inside it.  It feels like the people making it worked hard and all they just wanted to do was make a movie.  They just made a dumb and incompetent one.

The Episode

Oh damn.  This movie is so perfect for the show.  Like literally, everything about it is just ripe for heckling.  Joel and the Bots pull out all the stops and make Eegah one of the greatest episodes in the series.

The big target of the episode is Arch Hall Jr. himself.  They just take no prisoners with this poor kid, mocking his doughy look all the way down to his music.  It is on the edge of being mean-spirited, but there is just enough playfulness to keep it funny.  But even when Archie isn't onscreen there are so many goofy setpieces in the film to keep the film constantly fresh for the riffs.  Roxy's first encounter with Eegah sets the mood of the riff (with a rather brilliant reference to Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein highlighting), and it continues with some weird sequences including a mind-numbingly awkward shaving scene, a fun dune buggy chase, and Eegah raiding a pool party.  The poor sound synchronization also comes under fire, resulting in the big catch phrase of the episode "WATCH OUT FOR SNAKES!", which is a line that appears out of nowhere and said by no one.

With riffing this good it would be easy to forget the host segments, but Eegah is a rare instance in which they're all winners.  There's some great laughs as Servo and Crow conspire to turn Joel into Arch Hall Jr., while there are some fun philosophical discussions between Joel and the Bots regarding "hell" and the influence of single parent sitcoms, and Crow finds himself falling apart at near-absolute-zero.  The invention exchange is one of my all-time favorites, which has Crow inventing the Porkarina to help score the Beverly Hillbillies movie (note:  Crow lost his deal to provide music for that movie and was replaced by Lalo Schifrin) and Dr. Forrester drains Frank of his blood and replaces it with antifreeze.

There is so much right about this episode that it should be a crime to be this funny.  Eegah is top to bottom MST perfection.  It's a must see episode for every fan.

Classic

WATCH OUT FOR SNAKES! 

The DVD

Eegah was one of the very first episodes of MST to grace the DVD format, as both it and The Brain that Wouldn't Die were both released as singles on the same day way back in 2000.  The audio and video were exceptional, while bonus features include the uncut film itself.  There is also a feature in which a little Crow head icon pops up on-screen allowing you to click it and watch a scene cut from the film as the episode plays.  As cool an idea as it is it kind of ruins the disc for me personally because there is no way to turn the icon off.  No matter what it will always be there when you watch the episode!

Many years later Shout Factory finally re-issued the episode a part of The Singles Collection, which compiled various episodes that remained out of print from the Rhino days.  Audio and video were good, while bonus features offer up an intro by Joel.  He recalls how they judged the movie when they first watched it as something a rich guy made to star his rich son, though latter on he re-evaluated the movie after meeting both Richard Keil and Arch Hall Jr. in person.  Also included is a trailer for the film.

The episode itself was also licensed out to Film Detective, who released an uncut version of the Eegah film with this episode as a bonus feature.  The movie looks flawed but probably more exceptional than it has in a long time, while the episode is pretty sharp looking.  The interview with Joel is ported over from the Singles set to this release, while also included is an interview with the man himself, Arch Hall Jr.  He has a ton of neat stories about the inception of the film and the filming of it, including how Kel would raid theaters showing the film in full Eegah costume and kids would go nuts.