902-The Phantom Planet

Film Year:  1961
Genre:  Science Fiction
Director:  William Marshall
Starring:  Richard Kiel, Dean Fredericks, Coleen Grey, Francis X. Bushman
MST Season:  9

The Movie

Slight echos of Fire Maidens of Outer Space and The Mole People can be felt in the premise of The Phantom Planet, so there's not a lot in this movie we haven't already seen before.  Except for an Incredible Shrinking Man twist!  An astronaut finds himself stranded on an asteroid and shrinks down to less than a foot tall.  There he finds a colony of tiny people and taken prisoner...where he is sentenced to be free and stay there forever...because logic.  While there he gets into a romance with the native girls, because everyone wants the almighty Caucasian stranger in these movies, and intervenes with a war with an alien race called the Solarites.

Phantom Planet is also cheap in many ways we're familiar with.  There is plenty of stiff model work, clumsy compositing shots, and of course silly looking alien costumes on display.  It's a genre film made like it was trying to get quick dollars from kids who like rocketship movies, though the film's talky nature suggests that it might have initially targeted at an older audience.  But while there are some fine premises featured in The Phantom Planet, it feels like at some point it got dumbed down and its budget slashed.

As is the film is perfectly watchable.  It probably never would have been a classic, but the film services some minor entertainment beats for people who love movies like this.  It is more likely to appeal to the camp demographic of that audience however, as it showcases limited effects work, some goofy designs, and a gladiator match that involves pushing a metal rod from one side of the room to the other.  I dig it for the most part, though its pacing sometimes makes it something of a mood watch.

If you need more of an indication of what you're watching, there's a bombastic narrator in this film who claims this story is "Only the beginning..." and then the film ends with the words "The Beginning" instead of "The End."  The beginning of what, I'm not sure, since the movie's story pretty much had a definitive ending, but that's the kind of corny nonsense you should expect from this movie.

The Episode

"Wow, there's so much gravity out in space!"

The Phantom Planet's pacing and dry tone are a bit of a hurdle when it comes to riffing this film, but when I come out the other end of this experiment I find myself immensely entertained.  The laughter comes early with 60's sci-fi movie logic trying to blindly guess what space travel is like, and the quips are pretty quality.  From there on the film introduces a new concept in a small world, causing the transition of a shrinking leading man leading to more inspiration from our comedians ('Oh...why did THAT have to shrink twice as much as the rest of me?").  The film threatens to go on a bit long as it belabors itself, causing things to feel slightly stale at times, but there's usually something new around each corner to excite our riffers.  The metal rod death match is hilarious, the love triangle gets good laughs, and when we get Richard Kiel lumbering around in a ridiculous alien costume looking like a giant biped bulldog all bets are off and the puppy dog running gags are in full force.

"All dogs GO TO HELL!"

The host segments are a bit slighter, mostly concentrating on Pearl, Observer, and Bobo moving into Castle Forrester.  We see Pearl opening her World Domination Starter Kit only to find pieces of her doomsday machine missing, a supposed haunting (AKA Bobo), and an angry mob of villagers welcoming them to the neighborhood.  On the Satellite of Love, Mike and the Bots get into a pretty hilarious Andy Rooney impression contest (and I think Servo won), Servo ponders "The Good and the Beautiful," Mike floats off into space due to Crow's neglect, and Mike also shows off his water glass music skills.

I'm not sure if The Phantom Planet makes very many top ten lists, if it does I'm not surprised.  It's a quality episode that I laugh a lot during.  Sometimes I can feel the movie anchoring the episode down though, which holds me back a bit from loving it too much.  Still it's one to pop in if your looking for solid laughs and an old fashioned, cheap movie.

Good

The DVD

Rhino released The Phantom Planet on their Volume 8 collection, with good audio and video but also without special features.  The episode was later re-released by Shout Factory on their re-release of the set.  It featured a trailer for the film as a bonus feature.

1112-Carnival Magic

Film Year:  1981
Genre:  Fantasy
Director:  Al Adamson
Starring:  Trudi, the chimp
MST Season:  11

The Movie

The ringleader of this three-ring amateur circus Al Adamson, who Cinematic Titanic fans will recognize as the director of The Oozing Skull and East Meets Watts.

Whew boy, we're in trouble.

Carnival Magic is a low-rent production about a circus magician who saves his circus with the help of his talking chimpanzee, Alexander.  Also:  A love story of carnies, an asshole lion tamer, and a greedy doctor who wants Alexander for himself.

Carnival Magic is one weird movie.  It's a premise seemingly targeting families and yet it completely botches everything that would make it fun for family viewing.  It has a talking chimp who mumbles incoherently more than he talks, while the circus setting has no flair and nothing really all that neat.  Would it kill them to show off something fun or neat to enchant the kiddies?

The film doesn't really have much of a plot.  It just stumbles around from scene to scene depending on where it falls.  Sometimes it's interested in its main magician and chimp and sometimes it forgets them entirely and follows a pair of lovebird characters who don't really contribute anything.  Then it decides to show off more adult things that throw the tone of the piece even more askew, such as the drunk lion tamer who beats his wife (and what child doesn't want spousal abuse in their movie?).  The movie doesn't know how to concentrate on its own goal of telling a story about a talking chimp.  But then again it seems clueless of how to make the idea of a talking chimp enchanting.

Carnival Magic is...Carnival Magic.  It very much is a movie of its own design, and it's...something.  It's attempts at whimsy are a colossal failure and it's just such a plodding, aimless movie in general.  There is plenty of carnival in this movie, but there is no magic.

The Episode

The temptation is strong with a new Mystery Science Theater series to find a movie where you really swing for the fences.  I'd caution anybody to embark upon such a mission away from it and first try to master Little League before you audition for the majors.  The crew of the relaunched series has swagger and confidence, and it seems with Carnival Magic they're looking for their Manos, Monster A-Go Go, Red Zone Cuba, or Hobgoblins:  a movie so bizarrely awful that it causes the viewer to ask themselves "What the fuck am I watching?" while some quality quips bring us to hysterics.  The difference is that the teams that riffed that group of aggressively bad movies had more experience under their belt, and while the new series has some veterans on the writing staff, they've embarked on this challenge in what is essentially their first season in a group of episodes that were made simultaneously before they ever really had an opportunity to learn what they're doing right and what they're doing wrong.  I've seen some claim Carnival Magic is a series highlight, but for me it's a major strike out.

The big issue I find I have with this episode is that for movies like this to work on the show the riffing needs to be in part reactionary, where the bizarreness of the movie just takes them by surprise at times.  A lot of the riffing of the new series doesn't feel like they're naturally watching a movie but rather reading lines toward it, and reaction riffs are almost non-existent.  Carnival Magic is begging for some sort of reaction, but instead they just...read lines toward it.  Now, I'm not going to lie and say I didn't laugh during the episode, in fact there is a magic act about bending bars halfway through that made me laugh quite a bit, but the episode has no rhythm.  It features an aggressively bad movie for a crew that just isn't ready for it.

The big talk about the host segments is a guest appearance by Mark Hamill, star of one of the greatest screen achievements of all time, Batman:  The Animated Series (oh, and Star Wars I guess, but who cares?).  He stops by with a space circus, sings a catchy song, and tries to recruit Jonah and the Bots as space carnies.  This segment is a lot of fun and one of the highlights of the relaunch.  Hamill promises he'll be back, and we can only hope!

Kinga also takes the opportunity to announce her intentions for a ratings stunt wedding to Jonah, much to Jonah's surprise and Max's dismay.  Despite this being a plot point of some sort, it's never brought up again in the episode.  Also featured are a Carnival Magic themed parade, Crow and Servo playing redneck cops, and Tom as a motivational speaker.  The Invention Exchange features Yeasta Pets, which is mildly amusing, and Flavored Sweat, which is gross.

I want to like this episode just as I want to like every episode MST has to offer, but it just doesn't work for me.  I would have much rather have seen them tackle this movie in season thirteen when they are more sure-footed.  Some people get a lot of laughs out of this one, I get a few smiles and chuckles, but am mostly bored.

Not Recommended

The DVD and Blu-Ray

Carnival Magic was released by Shout Factory on both DVD and blu-ray via their Season 11 set.  My copy is a Kickstarter exclusive #WeBroughtBackMST3K Collector's Edition blu-ray, which features stellar audio and video.  There are no bonus features on the disc, however it shares it's disc with the preceding episode, Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II.

Doomsday Machine (Cinematic Titanic)

Film Year:  1972 (filmed in 1967)
Genre:  Science Fiction
Director:  Herbert J. Leder, Harry Hope, Lee Sholem
Starring:  Denny Miller, Ruta Lee, Grant Williams, Mala Powers, Henry Wilcoxon, Bobby Van, Lorri Scott
CT Number:  2

The Movie

The roster for a spaceship to Venus is shaken up at the last minute as three women replace several crewmembers on what was meant to be an all-male mission.  Despite protests that sex will be a distraction from the mission (because these lady scientists are young, pretty, and fertile), the group is immediately launched into space.  Once there they find that the world has exploded, as the Chinese government has set off a stolen doomsday machine because killing off the entire human race benefits them because of...reasons.  They then discover the group was chosen to repopulate the human race on the planet of Venus, but soon...the unthinkable happens......................

.............the budget runs out!  Then several years later they scrounge up some money, hastily film an ending to the movie without the original actors, add some stock footage to make it more coherent, and release the movie for a buck.

The movie is just as good as it sounds.

And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Doomsday Machine is a disaster, but boy is it a glorious one.  First of all, the movie has a halfway interesting premise, one that it tries to coast on.  It would work better if it wasn't cheap as hell, but there's something a little charismatic about its bottom-of-the-barrel state as is.  Nothing in the movie from a production standpoint is convincing, and I'm not sure if that's because they had intended to film special effects or if they always intended on stock footage and the like, but it is very choppy and unconvincing.

This isn't even taking into account the ending, which features two characters in space suits who are clearly not the same actors they're supposed to be, slowly walking around and padding out the film until is stumbles upon something that might be able to pass for an ending.  This final scene is punishing and brutal.  I really would have liked to have seen what the original ending to this movie was meant to be, because I feel like I have an idea but it's frustrating.  The movie doesn't reach a destination, it just stops.

That said, there are a few neat ideas the movie bounces around.  Some of the dramatic interaction about these seven souls discovering they're the last of their race is pretty interesting.  Everyone seems to react a different way:  some with hope, others almost defeated, and some with rage.  There's a premise here, but they didn't have the resources to pull it off.  I can't find it in my heart to hate this movie because of that, and I do wish it had a far better production than it did.

The Riff

As the Titans enter the theater in their second riff we get a glimpse as what might have been the premise behind Cinematic Titanic, though it's debatable that it needed one at all.  Apparently our group is being kept at some sort of facility that's using them to somehow preserve the crummy movies they watch for future generations.  It doesn't have a lot of depth to it, but they never really tried to flesh it out either.  They would dump it and favor live shows in about two years.

There's a bit of an aesthetic change as well, as the Titan podiums are a tad smaller, showing off a bit more of the movie.    Joel is no longer sitting down, opting to stand like J. Elvis and Trace.  He also has a fancy little stand that nobody else is sporting, though he'd switch it up with a similar railing to J. Elvis and Trace in about three releases.

As a riff, Doomsday Machine is probably my favorite of the Cinematic Titanic releases.  Some of this has to do with the fact that I actually like the movie, but for the most part the riffing is pretty strong.  They kid this movie akin to a soap opera, as they note the innuendos, sexism, and the pairing up of the various couples, leading to violence and backstabbing and people being blown out of airlocks...okay, maybe it's not quite a soap opera. The cheap production values are mocked gleefully, with the Titans constantly noting the fake cuts to people getting out of a phony hatch in the floor.  The hasty tacked-on ending doesn't go by unnoticed either, as they riff on the replaced actors and the slow pacing ("It's like watching someone else watch "Manos" The Hands of Fate!").  Overall, mocking this movie is pretty much child's play, because it's a high concept idea that's done so ambitiously simplistic and a lot of the riffs target just how lackluster the production is as a whole.

One of my favorite host segments from Cinematic Titanic happens in this release, where Mary Jo leads a discussion on which ones would have to survive in a post apocalyptic scenario.  Frank's overreaction to a hypothetical question really helps make this segment soar.  Mary Jo claims she'd have to survive because she's the only woman, causing Frank to ask if she intends to have kids with her responding "Hell no!," with Frank's response in turn being "Then GET BACK IN LINE, sister!"  The other segment is nothing much, as Trace tries to make a statement only to be interrupted by Joel's constant messages of "The movie will start in __ seconds!"

Doomsday Machine is really the most fun I've had with a Cinematic Titanic release, with the silly as fuck movie and some pretty solid riffing.  It's probably the most accessible entry for a newbie to the group, and it comes quite highly recommended from me.

Classic

The DVD

Like all Cinematic Titanic releases, Doomsday Machine was initially released on DVD through Cinematic Titanic's website.  Audio and video were good, and there were no bonus features.  The riff was latter re-released on Shout Factory's Complete Collection set, also with good audio and video.  It shares a disc with the preceding show, The Oozing Skull, and it features an interview with J. Elvis Weinstein on the rise and fall of Cinematic Titanic.

Rescueman (Rifftrax Shorts)

Rifftrax Year:  2013
Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

A twelve-year-old who wears superhero underoos goes on a field trip where he learns a little bit about firefighters.  He becomes interested safety and starts bugging his bus driver about fire exits until he agrees to teach him about bus fire safety on his day off (thanks, kid).  That night the boy has a dream where he's his favorite superhero, Rescueman, and leads everyone off the bus safely.

Holy shit this was a goofy one.  I understand the logic behind trying to teach children safety through superheroes, but give them a little bit of credit, will ya?  Children might not realize that they're being pandered to, but they do have a keen sense in what is lame.  And Rescueman is fucking lame.  It's earnest attempt at enthusiastic discussion about bus safety is undercut by how disinterested the actors look, and discussion is all that the short is for about ten minutes.  It goes on so long you forget that someone called "Rescueman" is supposed to have something to do with all of this.  Finally the kid dresses up as Rescueman, looks fucking ridiculous, and slowly explains safety to other children on a bus that's about to explode.  It's hilarious!

Mike, Kevin, and Bill have a lot of fun with this one, and it's easy to see why.  Dubbing Rescueman the lamest Marvel superhero (yes, even lamer than Hawkeye), the climactic scene with Rescueman and the bus is a scream!  They note the oddness of the entire premise, pointing out how he's actually preventing people from evacuating and not helping ("Can we go now?  Cindy's head is on fire!") and ridiculing how he saves the bus driver like he was a damsel in distress ("I shouldn't have taken all that Vicodin..."

The first ten minutes of the short isn't as funny, but they're still given plenty to work with, such as Rescueman underoos and the bus driver's off duty lessons in bus safety, both of which bring solid laughs.  Rescueman saved my sense of humor!

Thumbs Up

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