507-I Accuse My Parents

Film Year:  1944
Genre:  Drama
Director:  Sam Newfield
Starring:  Robert Lowell, Mary Beth Hughes, George Meeker, and John Miljan & Vivienne Osborne as "The Accused Parents"
MST Season:  5
Short Featured:  "The Truck Farmer"

The Short

Get ready for some hot, vegetable action!  Thrill as a narrator watches industrial farms harvest crops!  All those vegies on your table that you take for granted, now you know where they come from!

"HAIL TRUCK FARMER!"

The Truck Farmer is a brief industrial short is just a slight showcase of farmers and farm equipment doing farm things, as well as packing them and delivering them.  There is a comparison early on to wagon settlers and how they struggled with food, which directs me into thinking the idea of the short is to make us feel thankful for the easy access vegetables we have today.  Not a terrible idea, though it's very, very short and any message you come across in it is quickly forgotten because it just doesn't leave an impression.

The Movie

Our MST episode identifies Sam Newfield as the director of Jungle Goddess.  Jungle Goddess was directed by Lewis D. Collins and Newfield never touched it.  He did however helm such MSTed classics Mad Monster, Lost Continent, and Radar Secret Service, and now he directs this drama about a pathological liar named Jimmy.  Jimmy's homelife is an apparent trainwreck, as his parents are constantly arguing drunks who ignore Jimmy at every turn (it's a wonder that Jimmy didn't die as an infant due to neglect).  Jimmy gets a job at a shoe store, meets a lovely songbird named Kitty, and lies to her about his life to get into her pants.  Unknown to him, Kitty is the girlfriend of gangster Charles Blake.  Blake initially takes a liking to Jimmy and offers the ignorant Jimmy a job in his organization.  But once Blake gets wind of Jimmy's romance with Kitty things begin to go downhill.

And according to Jimmy, all of this is his parents' fault.  That's the primary moral of this story, if Jimmy had better parents, none of this would have happened, and the film wishes to preach to parents everywhere to not neglect their children and be active in their lives.  While I support this moral one hundred percent, the way the movie gets to this conclusion is faulty at best.  There is a point in which Jimmy needs to be held responsible for his own actions, and almost everything portrayed in the film is a result of his own choice and his parents have barely anything to do with them.  Now you can say that Jimmy's lying helped spiral things out of control and his lying stems back to lies about his parents, but these are also choices that Jimmy has made that he needs to take responsibility for.  While it's possible that Jimmy might not have gone down this road had his parents have been less neglectful, it's also just as likely that it might have happened the exact same way.  Why?  Because Jimmy's a dumbass.

Ignoring how faulty the forced main theme of the movie is, the movie is okay to a point.  If you chopped off the bookend scenes in a courtroom you have an over the top melodrama about a boy being swept up into a world of crime that he doesn't quite understand.  The movie still isn't terrific, but the story being told is mildly interesting and never boring.  The fact that the film tries to scold the audience about something that barely has anything to do with the rest of the movie really makes the movie an eye-roller.

The Episode

I Accuse My Parents is the episode that shows us "the kiss way to the promised land."  With a very naive and daffy movie at its center, there are so many observations to make.  We have a dense and dishonest lead, old-fashioned values, a half-assed mob plot, and even a pair of drunk parents to mock.  I Accuse My Parents is a smorgasbord for our riffers and they dig in.  The highlight is definitely our lead Jimmy, who lies at every turn, and Joel and the Bots have great fun embellishing his lies with a lot more colorful stories.  Sometimes they ride on Jimmy's sole pride of winning an essay contest a little too much, just blurting out "I won an essay contest!" whenever they can.  Sometimes the gag works, but in others it feels like they're just saying it because they don't have a better joke to say.  But really this is just a minor fault, because Jimmy is one of the most fun leads they've ever been given on the show and the episode is worth watching just for him.

The musical numbers are also fun, which is usual for the show.  Mary Beth Hughes gets on stage and sings a couple of numbers, and the riffers pick apart the lyrics and the colorful reactions of the audience members ("Yes Satan, speak to me through this song!").  There's a point where they mimic the noisy atmosphere of the common restaurant and drown her out entirely that's a hoot.  Wonderful stuff!

Oh wait, there's a short too?  Honestly I always forget this episode has a short and watching the episode I can see why.  Truck Farmer isn't a terrible short, as it has a few chuckles, but nothing about it enhances the episode really.  It's a light appetizer, but what we're really hungry for is the main course.

The host segments are pretty solid as well.  There is a great segment late in the episode where Joel and the Bots analyze Jimmy's accusation and take a look at Jimmy's actions and how they relate to Jimmy's parents, which is really convincing argument against the entire theme of the movie.  We also have a pair of segments that imitate scenes from the movie, my choice for the better of the two being the closing segment where Crow and Servo pull a gun on Joel and try to get him to give them a hamburger ("I ACCUSE YOU, JOEL!").  The segment where Gypsy sings a song from the movie is decent too, but I've never been a huge fan of when they just imitate a scene from the movie with not much of a joke.  This segment however is saved by some pretty funny facial expressions by Joel and a fun ending where Crow and Servo mess it up.  Also bringing laughs are Servo painting himself "nude" to become a "real boy" and psychoanalyzing the Bots art projects of their ideal families.  The Invention Exchange has a couple of goodies with the Junk Drawer Organizer (which would go well with the Junk Drawer Starter Kit from First Spaceship on Venus) and Cake 'n' Shake (in which Frank accidentally bakes a male stripper in a cake).

This is the episode that asks "Are You Happy in Your Work?"  Right now, my job is to watch Mystery Science Theater 3000 and write about it.  Why wouldn't I be happy?  Especially when there are episodes as good as this to look forward to.  Despite a weak short, I Accuse My Parents is well deserving of classic status.  I accuse this episode of being hilarious!

Classic

The DVD

I accuse Rhino of releasing I Accuse My Parents as a single disc way back when they were just getting started.  I accuse the picture and audio both being pretty solid, but the lack of special features got me mixed up in the mob.

I also accuse Shout Factory of re-releasing the episode as a part of The Singles Collection, also featuring solid video and audio.  I accuse the special features of featuring an intro by Joel where he accuses the film of being a fan favorite and talks about how they never know when they're making a favorite episode while making it.

I accuse the special features of also featuring a documentary on Sam Newfield called The Man on Poverty Row.  I accuse this special feature of being a thorough 23 minute examination of the career of one of the most prolific directors to grace MST.  It accuses us of taking a look at the diverse films this low budget master has churned out over his career.

And finally, I accuse this disc of supplying MST Hour wraps for the episode.