Night of the Living Dead (Audio Commentary)

Film Year:  1968
Genre:  Horror
Director:  George A. Romero
Starring:  Judith O'Dea, Duane Jones, Marilyn Eastman, Karl Hardman, Judith Ridley, Keith Wayne
Commentator:  Michael J. Nelson

The Movie

*I HAVE SURVIVED WATCHING THIS MOVIE UNRIFFED*

When it gets to be Halloween season and I find myself compiling a list of horror flicks to watch during the October festivities, Night of the Living Dead is usually the first film that pops into my head (it's usually a race between it and Sam Raimi's Evil Dead trilogy).  It was an early favorite horror movie of mine, and along with films like Halloween and Jaws it started to get me interested in the nutty and versatile genre.  I feel this movie is the epitome of isolation, dread, and dramatic conflict.

This classic tells the chilling tale of the dead rising from the grave and eating the flesh of the living.  Seeking shelter, a group of strangers take refuge in an abandoned house and argue over what their next move should be.

I've always loved the character use here, as we're initially introduced to this film through the character of Barbara, who we follow as she runs for her life into the place she'll hide from the ghouls in.  Barbara, in her shock, then shuts down entirely as she finds herself unable to comprehend what's going on.  Other take-charge characters take over the film from there, as Ben and Cooper begin to have heated arguments over what the best course of action to take is.  Cooler heads try to prevail in their clash, but it always comes back to these two and their disagreement on how to handle the situation.

Sometimes stilted acting threatens to overwhelm the character drama though, but it's counteracted by the fluid way the film builds itself.  It grows more unsettling and terrifying as it goes on, fueled by a down and dirty black and white cinematography that is just breathtaking.  Night of the Living Dead is a master wielding of a limited budget and using it to its fullest extent to create an atmosphere.

Night of the Living Dead spawned five sequels directed by George A. Romero, including the equally iconic Dawn of the Dead.  It also inspired a spiritual followups in the Return of the Living Dead and Zombi 2 (which was actually a quasi-sequel to Dawn of the Dead), each in turn inspired their own sequels.  The film also inspired various remakes of itself and a few of the films it spawned.  But the original is the film I always find myself going back to no matter how many movies are squeezed out, because it's so damn good.

The Commentary

Mike's second Legend Films commentary is at the expense of one of the most iconic horror films of all time.  Mike doesn't quite seem to revere the film all that much, as he rides it hard for being needlessly prolonged and depressing.  Agree to disagree.

Though while Mike doesn't seem to be a fan of the film, I'm not entirely convinced he quite knew what to do with it.  He's still in that early commentary phase where he feels he needs to drop production trivia tidbits every so often for it to count as a "commentary," and he spends what may be way too much time riffing on the trivia than the actual movie.  Segments like this feel like Mike is laughing at his own jokes, and it just comes off as a cry for a writing crew more than anything.  Further enhancing this are portions where he gives up on riffing the film and just shares zombie themed drink recipes.  I've never tried any of these myself, but I hope they pack more punch than these portions of the commentary.

When Mike actually comments on the film itself, I find my interest upticking.  Mike relishes the angry-at-everyone character of Harry Cooper and unleashes a slew of comments making fun of his anger and that scuff on his head.  He also has more than a fair bit of zingers at the way the story unfolds, the various performances, and some silly lines reads.  He also has some fun trying to match zombies as lookalikes to various celebrities.  Night of the Living Dead is not a total loss, though watching it without the commentary is far more entertaining.

Average

The DVD

All of Mike's audio commentaries were offered as a part of Legend Films' colorization line of DVDs from the early 2000's.  The video of the film is a bit rough, looking greasy and scratchy overall.  Night of the Living Dead is usually in rough shape on home video, and it at times enhances the mood.  The colorization, on the other hand, does not, and this version of the film just sucks the mood out of the room.  And to be honest, the colorization just isn't very good either.  Flesh tones look like plastic, and hair looks like a colored smudge.  The zombies are given a greenish skin tone, and really just look like Muppets.

Mike's commentary is the highlight of the special features, other than the original black and white version of the film.  The audio and video on that presentation is good enough, and easily the best representation of the film on this disc.  There is also an image gallery called Separated at Death which shows off various characters and zombies and shows which celebrity they look like, playing off a gag from the commentary.

The film rounds out with colorized trailers to Night of the Living Dead and Carnival of Souls, and a black and white trailer to Flesh Eaters.

The Tiny Astronaut (Rifftrax Shorts)

Rifftrax Year:  2016
Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

"You know, I have a bad feeling about this.  White mice are the 'red shirts' of the animal kingdom."

A homemade rocket test launch is being conducted, and a group has put together a rocket which they hope to launch with a tiny mouse inside, ejecting out with a chute at its peak height.  But the youngest of the troop has grown an attachment to their little white mouse, and refuses to let them launch him.

I can sum up my feelings on this short with Mike's riff of "Thank you for watching, kids.  I hope you learned whatever the hell lesson this thing was supposed to be teaching.  I know I sure did!"  I don't really understand the point of the story, which seems to be a about trusting the work you've done for a while, and then it does a one-eighty at the end where it's revealed that had the little white mouse gone up in the rocket, it would have died horribly.  So, I think this might be a story about trusting intuition, maybe?  In the end it comes off that the only lesson Bobby learns is that trust your fears and never overcome them, because bad things are behind every corner.

This is a very stiff and dreary short, that gives off a somber vibe that I don't think is intentional.  It's an obstacle that Mike, Kevin, and Bill have to overcome, and for the most part they come off fine, but its not an overly successful win for them.  The short feels dry and sad, and whatever humor they throw at it doesn't change the tone of the room.  Sometimes they get off a really good jab at its expense, like questioning Bobby's obsession with the mouse, quipping "We pried him out of a glue trap this morning!"  Strong lines like this aren't uncommon during The Tiny Astronaut, so it's probably worth watching, but I just feel depressed when the whole ordeal is over.

Thumbs Down

👎

Thor (Rifftrax)

Film Year:  2011
Genre:  Superhero, Fantasy, Action, Adventure
Director:  Kenneth Branagh
Starring:  Chris Hemsworth, Anthony Hopkins, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Stellan Skarsgard, Rene Russo, Idris Elba, Kat Dennings, Clark Gregg, Jaimie Alexander, Ray Stevenson, Josh Dallas, Tadanobu Asano, Colm Feore
Rifftrax Year:  2011
Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

The Movie

*I HAVE SURVIVED WATCHING THIS MOVIE UNRIFFED*

I'm a Marvel fan, though Thor was mostly out of my wheelhouse growing up.  The Norse God superhero just didn't appeal to me, so I tended to avoid him.  When it came to his own movie, I saw it out of allegiance as a superhero fan first and foremost, and I needed to support this little experiment of a "shared cinematic universe" that the company was creating, because I wanted to see it fulfilled.  I hoped to like the movie, but what I didn't expect was to absolutely adore the movie.

The film is the story of Thor, the prince of the realm eternal Asgard, who on the eve of being crowned king finds the ceremony interrupted by a group of Frost Giants infiltrating Asgard.  In a rage, Thor, his brother Loki, and a group of his warrior friends travel to the Frost Giants home of Jotunheim and threatens them, opening the two realms to war.  In a rage, Thor's father Odin banishes Thor to Earth, and cursing his weapon Mjolnir, a magical hammer, to only be wielded by "one who is worthy."  In order to return to Asgard, Thor must learn compassion and humility through his interaction with humans.

If there is a fault to the movie, it's that the moral lesson Thor needs to learn is a pretty big one to learn over the course of a few days, and when he learns it it's actually through the manipulation of the film's villain than the result of any experience he's had on Earth, which is mostly just an excuse for him to get romantic with Natalie Portman's character.  But the story is a fun little workaround of the classic Thor comics, in which Thor is trapped on Earth, forced to do good deeds through a symbiotic human companion named Donald Blake that turns into the God of Thunder when butts need to be kicked.  The movie dumps that character and just has Thor be Thor, because he can't really have a story arc if he only bursts out for action scenes.  The plotting is still problematic, but I feel it charms in spite of it.

If there's one thing that always enchants me about the films of Kenneth Branagh, it's that they're always beautiful to look at.  This goes from the larger productions he's currently taking part in down to his work with Shakespeare.  Thor is no different, as the production design of the film is lavish and spellbinding.  The way they brought Asgard to life still blows me away to this day, and there is a loving magic that this film had in its portrayed it with that is missing from any film featuring Thor afterward (especially the much praised Thor:  Ragnarok, which I didn't really care for, to be honest).

But most people have come for a superhero movie, though it's fairly action lite.  The big CG blowout scenes sandwich the film in the first act and the third, as Thor has quirky fish-out-of-water conversations with his human companions and his brother Loki broods and schemes up in Asgard in the middle of the film.  I never really minded, because I felt the character-work in this film was more fun and charming than the far less interesting Iron Man 2, which was the Marvel Cinematic Universe movie that was released prior.

I think movie plays up Thor's strengths as a character, including how silly his character is in general.  It's a fun movie to watch and it's one of my favorite superhero films.  I think I lie in a minority on that, since it was deemed the Thor franchise needed "course correction" by the third film, though I never complained about it.  I think the course it charted in this first movie was pretty spellbinding.

The Trax

I didn't watch the few Marvel Cinematic Universe riffs when they came out, and watching them through this blog will be my first subjection to them.  At the time these had came out I had become somewhat disillusioned with Rifftrax and dropped out for a while (save for when they dropped a Twilight riff), because they had distanced themselves from the "movies we could never get on MST" image and started steering toward popular movies that a lot of people owned, therefor we could sell more copies.  I didn't mind them dipping toes into this territory early on, if the movie was self-serious enough to support a humorous commentary like Lord of the Rings or The Matrix, but seeing so many cheeky crowdpleasers being released one after another was just exhausting and not that interesting to me.  I longed for the days of an Island of Dr. Moreau or a Battlefield Earth riff that really tapped the potential of the format they were playing with.  Instead they were aiming at a "popular movies are bad and fuck 'em" crowd, and I wasn't gelling with it.

Then they just bought cheap crappy movies and mostly forgot about this MP3 stuff, saying "We're just Mystery Science Theater again, only without the puppets."  Yay?  But rest in peace to what made Rifftrax exciting when it first started.

But I digress.  The point I was trying to make was that I passed on these riffs when they first came out and never looked back.  Now they're coming up on rotation on my blog and I have to suck up my pissy negative vibes and give them a watch.  It'll be interesting to watch these all these years later, because when these movies came out the MCU wasn't what it is today, where people turned out in droves to bring Avengers:  Endgame to Avatar level box office success.  Nah, the only real success of this franchise was the Iron Man films at the time, and Thor was a "success" at barely topping $400 million worldwide, which is chicken feed compared to almost everything that came after it.  This riff exists in a vacuum in which The Avengers hadn't come out yet, Black Panther was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, the MCU wasn't yet one of the most popular franchises of all time, and this was just another silly movie based on a comic book to most.

"Kenneth Branagh gave us a Kenneth Branagh impersonator!"

To say I wasn't looking forward to this riff is a bit of an understatement, but just as much as the film surprised me in theaters, the riff actually quite surprised me as well.  What I forgot to take into account when I first heard they riffed this movie is just how stoic the scenes on Asgard, and coupled with the extravagant nature of the comic book/mythological hybrid world it inhabits, there is a lot to comment on and properly make fun of.  The first half hour of Thor is pretty hilarious, because it gives them precisely what a thriving riff desires.

"Wow!  It can transform into...something that is turned around!"

The riff starts to grow a little stale once it reaches Earth, because the film is mostly comedy by then.  They do have some cute interplay based on successive scenes of Thor getting knocked out by one means or another, but it becomes clear that they don't really have much to comment on except the fact that they're looking at a bunch of character quirks for long periods of time.  The riff never grows dull, but it teeters on the "meh" line a few times.  Luckily slight trips to Asgard are spread intermittently throughout the film to keep them a little energized, even though nothing lives up to the opening scenes.

"What a shock!  His solution involves hitting something with a hammer!"

Thor almost convinces me at times that I may be a bit too dismissive of the riffs of latest blockbuster movies at times, though its lows do remind me why I didn't really care for them.  But Thor is fueled by an entertaining movie that inspires strong comedy in the best of moments, so I'm glad I watched it.  Does it make me more excited to visit some of these flavor-of-the-month blockbuster riffs?  Not really, because I don't have much of a desire to watch it again.  I'm sure there are more surprises out there, but I'm in no hurry to discover them.

Final note:  Like most Marvel movies, Thor has a scene after the credits, and Mike, Kevin, and Bill stick around to riff it, despite ducking out during the end credits.  Disembodio has a song to kill our ears in the meantime.

Good

Batman and Robin: Chapter 2 - Tunnel of Terror (Rifftrax Shorts)

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

*I HAVE SURVIVED WATCHING THIS SERIAL UNRIFFED*

"'BATMAN AND ROBIN!'  Frankly we have more hope for this new 'Aquaman' character..."
*Note:  This riff was made long before 2018's Aquaman movie became the highest grossing movie based on a DC comic.

Batman and Robin narrowly escape the exploding airplane and sneak aboard the one the Wizard's goons are taking flight in.  Batman takes an opportunity to switch out a package full of stolen diamonds and chase the villains.  Later, Batman follow a private eye to another Wizard crime at the railroad.

This second chapter of Batman's serial adventure is mostly a back and forth chase between our heroes and the bad guys, with a small intermission in between Batman setpieces involving Vicki Vale with her foot stuck in the mud.  It's about as exciting as it sounds.

"Dear god, shut UP, Robin!  'Death in the Family' can't come soon enough!"

Offering up a second helping of Batman and Robin isn't quite as fun as the first, though the riffing has some good jabs at the production quality as well as the inconsistent locals of Gotham City.  It's a mostly consistent effort overall, with a lot of knowing smiles at the ribbing of a cheap product.  It's hard not to laugh as Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson change into Batman and Robin while driving a car as a camera cuts back to them, causing Kevin to quip "Good thing we had our costumes stuffed in our gym bag!"

If there is something holding it back from being amazing, it would probably be the serial's fault because it's second verse same at the first.  I don't quite measure it as highly as the last one, which could be caused by diminishing returns, as serials run repetitive and it drives my interest in the ground because I feel like I've seen this before.  But it's not hard to enjoy something this earnestly goofy with a humorous commentary overlapping it, and I can definitely say it's worth picking up if you enjoyed the last one.

Thumbs Up

👍

1206-Ator, the Fighting Eagle

Film Year:  1982
Genre:  Adventure, Fantasy
Director:  Joe D'Amato
Starring:  Miles O'Keefe, Sabrina Siani, Ritza Brown, Edmund Purdom
MST Season:  12

The Movie

One of the earliest classics in Mystery Science Theater history was a little number called Cave Dwellers, an FVI video release of a film called The Blade Master which saw a barbarian warrior named Ator on a mission to save a scientist.  This film was actually the second in a series of four Ator films, spawning from a quickly filmed Conan the Barbarian knockoff called Ator, the Fighting Eagle (originally released in Italy as Ator the Invicible).

Now, many years later, we finally have the first Ator movie in the riffing circles.  How does it stack up to the sequel that we're far more familiar with?  In a lot of ways, it's the same.  Ator is played by beloved MSTed actor Miles O'Keefe, and he goes on a grand series of misadventures through a quest he is given.  Ator, the Fighting Eagle has a leg up on its sequel in that while it's just as hammy and cheap as its follow-up, it never ventures out of its comfort zone as to what a sword and sandal fantasy/adventure movie typically is and doesn't bother with a hard "science" subplot about nuclear weapons.  On that level, the original Ator is more of a "Sure, whatever" surface level movie.

Ator, the Fighting Eagle tells a more straight forward tale of Ator falling in love with his sister...wait...WHAT?!  Actually she is just his foster sister, though this is unknown to both of them when they decide they should get married (how long have these two been doing the nasty behind their parents' backs?).  Ator discovers his true lineage as an adopted son and they decide to marry, though the nuptials are interrupted by a raid by the soldiers of the Spider Cult, who steal his bride/sister.  Ator is then trained by an ancient warrior who claims he is the man prophesied to destroy the Spider Cult once and for all.

Ator, the Fighting Eagle is a very "What you see is what you get" movie.  If you like sword swinging barbarian movies, then it's a movie for you.  Though to be sure, Conan the Barbarian it isn't.  It was made as a reaction to that film, but Ator has none of the care that was put into it.  It's a budget movie using budget locations, budget actors, budget props, and budget scenarios to work around the lack of money.  Ator goes from one location to the next, fights off bad guys, have women faun for him (including a scenario that reminds me of the "Death by Snu Snu" episode of Futurama), all the while letting his pecs glisten in the sun.  All things considered, Ator is fine.  There are things about it that show that it's not exactly high filmmaking, such as most stabbing motions with swords aiming at the sides of enemies instead of actually hitting them.  There is also a sequence in which Ator fights a shadow, where you can tell the intent just fine, but mostly just comes off as Miles O'Keefe swinging around like a lunatic.  But hey, at least he's not fighting invisible bad guys, like he is in the second one, am I right?

All of this leads up to a final confrontation with the Spider Cult (whose leader may or may not be heavily inspired by James Earl Jones in Conan the Barbarian...oh who are we kidding?  He definitely was), and coming to a head with Ator fighting a giant spider that mostly stays off-screen to hide how fake it is.  There is also a twist enemy at the end that is spoiled in the prologue montage from Cave Dwellers, but is almost hilariously out of left field and without purpose.  Ator is a bare bones warrior adventure that will be fun for genre enthusiasts and tells its story of action and incest with the basest level of near-competence.  Cave Dwellers might be more amusing in that there are sillier aspects to it, but I wouldn't say no to either of these goofy movies.

The Episode

Kinga's Gauntlet is at its final hurdle.  Jonah, Servo, and Crow are on their knees, but we've been offering them moral support during this entire ride, whether they can feel it or not.  The one consolation for them on this one last movie in their eight hour marathon is that it's the superior original film to a sequel that has already been featured on the show, so it's something that we already know can be overcome.  But then again, Cave Dwellers, as bad as it was, didn't have five movies setting up the pain immediately before it when we initially watched it.

The new MST is sometimes shameless in trying to appeal to the nostalgia feels, and the inclusion of Ator this season is probably as shameless a pandering they can come up with.  Last season they brought back Hercules, and while that was wonderful and all, I don't think there was ever a Hercules episode as iconic as Cave Dwellers was.  Finally bringing on the movie that spawned it is a totally calculated "right in the feels" move.

I had some initial disappointment with the movie selection for this episode because, like Wizards of the Lost Kingdom last season, Ator, the Fighting Eagle was already riffed by Rifftrax several years prior.  Personally, one of the reasons I watch these riffing projects is to see movies I've never seen/heard of before, and when one pops up that another riffing project already covered, I'm not too enthused.  I mostly gave Wizards a pass due to the fact that Rifftrax pulled that riff almost immediately because of licensing complications, while Ator stings a lot more because not only is it one I've seen before, but it's taking up a slot in a very abbreviated season.  If season 12 were maybe thirteen episodes instead of six, I might not be too bugged by Ator's inclusion, but our new batch is so limited that I feel cheated out of a movie.

But when the episode started, I began to smile from ear-to-ear.  Yes, I've seen a riff of this movie before, but Ator belongs on MST, and I wouldn't have it any other way.  Is Ator as good an episode as it's classic predecessor?  Not really.  Ator, the Fighting Eagle is in several ways a "better" movie than Cave Dwellers, though I'd admit Cave Dwellers is a more flavorful film in general, because it's more random and goofy with its badness.  Because of that, Cave Dwellers is the more memorable experience, and this is without mentioning the practically perfect commentary on top of it.

"What better for a workshop of blind laborers than a gaping pit in the middle of the floor?"

The riffing also has that hurdle to jump in that it has a riffing precedent in the Rifftrax version to overcome.  It's been a while since I watched Ator via Rifftrax, but from what I recall they rode the incestuous relationship between Ator and his foster sister a lot harder than the MST version does.  Jonah and the Bots do tap that well, though they're cautious enough to know that if they tap it too much the riff will become a one-trick pony.  I felt a more joyous spirit in the theater here than I did in the Rifftrax version.  To an extent, that slightly goes against the fact that Jonah and the Bots are supposedly worn down by these movies at this point in their marathon, but this is the long gestating return of Ator to the series that we're talking about.  This episode should be fun.  And it is, making the experience worthwhile.  I think I enjoyed the approach featured here more than I liked Rifftrax's, but that version was worth watching as well, from what I recall.

"Oh yeah, I call this ArachnErotica!"

The host segments spend a little bit of time mocking certain elements from the movie, mocking Ator's training sequence and his pet baby bear.  Meanwhile, J. Elvis Weinstein delivers his second and final cameo of the season as Dr. Erhardt, and we have a food themed Invention Exchange, the Swiss Army Wheel and the Totino's Pizza Rolls Popper.

But the moment we are waiting for is the conclusion to the Gauntlet, and the rest of this paragraph is spoilers, as Kinga successfully subjects her test subject and the loyal viewers to six movies in a row.  The rest of this paragraph is spoilers, so tread lightly.  What is the endgame to this?  Not a lot.  She just gloats.  Meanwhile the Mads set up a live tour on Earth (which was a prologue to the actual 2018 live tour that featured both Jonah and Joel riffing on The Brain and Deathstalker II).  But Jonah has one final trick up his sleeve that traps both Kinga and Max inside a theater watching Mr. B Natural before the space bus leaves.  If season 12 were to be the final season of the show, the image of Jonah outsmarting his captors and heading back to Earth is as good as any to end on.  Personally, I'd like to see the show continue forever, so pardon me for wishing he is somehow thrown back into captivity in the near future.  I'm also hoping that this ending may set up a Last of the Wild Horses style experiment in the season 13 premiere which features Kinga and Max riffing on a portion of the film (if not a whole movie).

What lies in the future is up in the air, though I remain just as optimistic about the series as I ever was.  The Gauntlet was a fun spin on the MST formula, though I'd point to several aspects of the season and argue against continuing to apply Netflix's bingewatch formula to the show because it doesn't really suit it.  Also, despite the improved riff pace and production in general, the highs of season 12 didn't soar quite as high as season 11, and the batting average of the episodes in general is a bit middling (it's really bookended by the big highlights of the season).

But I need to take a step back from the successes and failures of the season as a whole (which I will go in depth on in a future season overview) and comment upon the episode as an individual, which is a pretty solid trip down memory lane that takes that prologue montage from Cave Dwellers and finally gives it its own episode.  If the series were to riff Iron Warrior and Quest for the Mighty Sword and give MSTies the entire Ator library, I wouldn't complain.  I just hope it doesn't take another twenty-eight years to get to that point.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch Cave Dwellers again.

Good

The DVD and Blu-Ray

Ator, the Fighting Eagle currently is not widely available to the public outside of Netflix, but those who contributed to a pledge drive shortly before the twelfth season's release were offered a chance to order an early copy of Shout Factory's Season 12 box set, offered in both DVD and blu-ray.  I do have the "Pledge Drive Edition" blu-ray and can confirm that it has good audio and video.  There are no bonus features on the disc, though it shares it with the preceding episode, Killer Fish.

810-The Giant Spider Invasion

Film Year:  1975
Genre:  Science Fiction, Horror
Director:  Bill Rebane
Starring:  Alan Hale Jr., Barbara Hale (no relation), Steve Brodie, Robert Easton, Leslie Parrish, Bill Williams, Christiane Schmidtmer, a lot of spiders, and a plush clump posing as a giant spider
MST Season:  8

The Movie

Was I particularly hard on the special effects in Earth vs. the Spider?  If I was, then I take every word back.  Earth vs. the Spider is Avatar compared to Giant Spider Invasion.  I mean, holy crap.  Bert I. Gordon at least knew that a real spider blown-up to a large size on the big screen might have some semblance to realism, whereas Bill Rebane (the original director of the classic Monster A-Go Go) makes his large spider a mostly immobile plush toy with the largest pipe-cleaner legs you'll ever see.  I know suspension of disbelief is a thing, but if you're able to employ it on this movie, congratulations, because you have a much grander imagination than I have.

At least they had the decency to use real spiders for the small ones.  Though it might have been more amusing if they had consistency and just pulled along little rubber ones on strings.

Giant Spider Invasion sees meteors from space (or another dimension...in space) landing in a redneck's yard in Wisconsin.  In the fragments, he finds crystals which he believes are diamonds.  He spends his spare time collecting as many as he can and cheating on his wife, but, unknown to them, space spiders also hitched a ride on those meteors, and they're growing...and hungry.

Giant Spider Invasion also stars Gilligan's Island's Alan Hale Jr. as the laid back town sheriff, which helps this movie go down easier.  Hale is easily the least rage-inducing character in the movie, which is due to the man's gosh darn lovable nature.  Almost everyone else in this movie is trash, and I'm happy to see shoddy spider creatures devour them.  Even the two scientist characters, who are trying to save the day, range from dull to shrill ("BeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeN!") and don't really encourage me to root for the spider.

Alan Hale has a line in this movie that has always bugged me a bit, where he compares the giant spider to the movie Jaws and says "This spider makes that shark look like a goldfish!"  It's not uncommon for a bad movie to throw shade at a good one to try and trick the audience into thinking it's the better film, and say what you will about the "fake shark" in Jaws, but comparing that plush spider to the thing is just a slap in the face.

The Episode

There may need to be some context to the MST version of Giant Spider Invasion that should be noted for anybody from a potential new generation of MSTies that discover the show today, because I'm fairly certain the crew didn't know people would still be watching this episode twenty years later.  There's a running gag late in the movie that features a mob chasing the giant spider and causing a ruckus, which our riffers riff on with a constant slew of "PACKERS WON THE SUPER BOWL!  PACKERS!"  This episode was filmed not long after Super Bowl XXXI, where the Green Bay Packers beat the New England Patriots 35-21.  In the aftermath of that event, they're given a movie that was proudly made in Wisconsin and features an abundance of angry mobs, so they took an opportunity to spin it into references to sporting riots.

The reference runs a bit dated today, and feels very random the further away from 1997 we get, but as someone who watched this episode during MST's original airing, I can confirm it was very hilarious at the time.  It also makes it the perfect episode to burst out whenever the Packers might win the Super Bowl again, which they did do in 2011 (and yes, I had this episode handy, just in case).

Other than that, Giant Spider Invasion is noteworthy as a bit of an expansion of MST's Sci-Fi Channel run.  It's the first color movie they showed on the network, moving away from black-and-white genre pictures from Universal International and American International, which dominated the previous nine episodes.  While I love a good black-and-white episode of MST, it's nice to have some room to breath with diversity.  Here we're faced with a really bottom budget movie from the 70's, with vile, unlikable redneck characters and effects that are much shoddier than you'd find in those 50's productions from earlier in the season (and who says special effects get better as time goes on?).  There is so much more to poke fun at in Giant Spider Invasion than they've been offered in a while, and Mike and the Bots dig in, because they're starving.

The host segments are pretty fun too, as the show plays with a rare episode-long arc with them, and this is probably one of the best ones they've done (up there with Timmy the Dark Crow).  They take inspiration from Invasion of the Body Snatchers as the storyline sees Pearl and Observer taken over by pod replicas who send up pods to try and replace Mike and the Bots.  Fun shenanigans follow, which is highlighted by the crew fighting fatigue in fear of being replaced, getting annoyed with duplicates, and relying on Bobo to save the day.  There are a couple of logic holes in the storyline, such as Pearl and Observer being replaced in an instant when they had no logical time to fall asleep and the idea that Mike and the Bots were struggling to stay awake when they were in the middle of a theater experiment, but "Repeat to yourself it's just a show..."

The ending to this episode tickles me, as the reawakened Pearl becomes annoyed at the fact that Mike, Servo, and Crow sat through the movie and she wasn't there to see it, so she makes them sit through the movie a second time.  I enjoyed the first go-around with Giant Spider Invasion so much that I wouldn't have minded joining them for another run at it.  The movie is a bit of a pain in the ass, but this is one that I watch often despite that.

Good

PACKERS!  WOO!

The DVD

Giant Spider Invasion was featured on Rhino's Volume 10 box set, and was also featured on their eventual Volume 10.2 reissue.  Audio and video were both excellent, and the only bonus feature was a Video Jukebox of songs from the show.

Shout Factory later re-released Volume 10.2 on DVD.  The Jukebox was still featured, but it also contained an interview with director Bill Rebane on the making of Giant Spider Invasion called Spider Man:  Looking Back on Giant Spider Invasion.  He talks about conception, spider wrangling, the crappy giant spider on a Volkswagon, and writing clashes.

313-Earth vs. the Spider

Film Year:  1958
Genre:  Horror
Director:  Bert I. Gordon
Starring:  Ed Kemmer, June Kenney, Eugene Persson, Gene Roth, Hal Torey, Sally Fraser, June Jocelyn, and THE SPIDER
MST Season:  3
Featured Short:  "Speech:  Using Your Voice"

The Short

"I said MISTER I said thi...::cough:: this inn't your seat you see I've been sittin' here a whole lot longer than you seemed to think I have..."

Listening to this guy is like my life story, man.

Listen, we all talk.  That doesn't mean we can all do it well.  Hell, we all probably suck at it.  That's why I have a blog and not a vlog, because nobody wants to hear me ramble.  Reading it is perfectly fine, though.  Speech:  Using Your Voice gives us helpful tips on how to present your words in a more precise and interesting manner to help captivate your audience.

Now, pardon me as I ignore every one of them.

That's not to say the advice isn't sound, as it likely is.  But the examples of careless speaking in this short are so hilarious that no matter how much the short tries to portray them as "boring and uninteresting," I can't help but be more enchanted by them than the examples of proper speaking.  Therefor I use them as my speech teachers and not the narrator.  Life's more fun that way.

The Movie

Legendary MSTed director Bert I. Gordon has thrilled us with King Dinosaur and The Amazing Colossal Man thus far in his career (as well as Attack of the Puppet People, referenced in this film, which was later featured on Rifftrax), and now his attention turns to giant arachnids.  Our story details teenage couple Mike and Carol (Brady?) as they search for Carol's missing father, which leads them to a cave just outside of town.  Investigating the cave, they find it's inhabited by a giant spider, who has eaten Carol's father.  The couple bring the authorities back to the cave where the spider is thought to be killed.  They bring the spider into town for study, where it wakes up and begins devouring civilians.

Earth vs. the Spider was originally titled The Spider, only to have "Earth vs." slapped onto it in the aftermath of the success of Earth vs. the Flying Saucers.  In turn, the marketing for the film shortened it back to The Spider in an attempt to cash in off The Fly, though the onscreen title remained the same.  This is some weird Inception shit right here, man.  At any rate there isn't much of Earth fighting the spider in this movie, as the spider only seems to be a local problem as opposed to a global one.

The movie is mostly cheesy goodness by the man who specialized in cheesy goodness.  Like just about all of Gordon's creature features, the titular spider is brought to life using a real spider that has been blown up with camera tricks and miniatures.  Also in traditional Gordon fashion, they don't look very good in execution.  There are a lot of static shots of the spider crawling around unconvincing stand-ins for actual locations, and a couple of matte shots where you can plainly tell where the matte ends, which kills any sort of suspense for the spider attacking people in the same shot.

For the most part, Earth vs. the Spider is a wonderfully fakey and by-the-numbers creature feature, and I feel more joy than I care to admit while watching it.  Though the fun can be dogged down when Gordon takes his film more seriously than he should.  There is a shot midway through the film of a crying toddler alone in the streets after the spider has presumably eaten his parents, and it deflates the fun of the film because it doesn't fit the tone.  It's just a depressing image thrown into a silly giant spider movie.

But mostly it's a movie about people who scream at a camera on a crane as it looms toward them, and how I enjoy that.  Earth vs. the Spider has some hiccups, but when it's on point, it's about as fun as a B-movie can be.

The Episode

It's hard for the theater to not light up when the words "Directed by Bert I. Gordon" appear onscreen.  This is the type of shit I watch the show for!  Earth vs. the Spider sees them at their most playful for the director yet, and the movie deserves it.  The hot force-perspective spider action of helpless victims screaming into a vacuum is nothing if not humorously fun, and our riffers help push the tone of the piece into that direction.  Even in the above mentioned toddler scene, Crow counteracts the bleakness of the sequence with a well-placed "Damien?  Damien?"  The riffing of the film keeps the whole proceeding light and airy, with targets inclufing our teenage heroes and less-than-convincing effects work, making Earth vs. the Spider an even bigger breeze to watch than it would have been by itself.

This is actually something of an ideal prototype of the spirit of the show is to me:  a delightfully cheesy movie and a wonderfully fun commentary that enhances its best aspects.  This is what Mystery Science Theater 3000 is supposed to be in its purest form.

There is also a callback to the classic season 1 character of Dr. Erhardt in this episode, as they comment on a character who resembles him getting killed by the giant spider.  They speculate this was his fate, and for a while I think that's what we all presumed, until J. Elvis Weinstein returned to the role in the twelfth season of the series all the way in 2018.  Good to know you aren't spider chow, Larry!

But it's not just a movie this week.  First we've got a short with plenty of "lip 'n' tongue action!"  Speech:  Using Your Voice gets the episode off to a rousing start with a small instructional film that is really just a gift from the heavens.  There is so much to comment on here, as it's constantly using exaggerated speech examples which, to be honest, are kind of funny on their own.  It doesn't take much for Joel and the Bots to latch onto these examples and give them a good working over.  Plus the introspection of the short is properly played with, as they add on to the advice given in their own fun ways.

The host segments are a bit rocky for me, with a few high points.  The first obvious one is Crow's Earth vs. Soup sketch, where Crow decides he wants to be a screenwriter and delivers his first screenplay (which would be revisited in a big way in The Incredible Melting Man).  I also enjoyed the Invention Exchange, which sees Frank playing with the Cheese Phone, and thinking it's delicious (which culminates in a hilarious ending in Deep 13 for the episode).  I also enjoyed Crow's report on Bert I. Gordon at the end.  I'm a little more weary of the Spidorr segment which sees the SOL crew starting a band and being interrupted by a space janitor, which is a reference to a scene in the movie that hadn't happened yet (Poopie?).  Even after the reference comes into place, I found I didn't care for the segment that much.  The Creeple People segment is okay, but largely goes nowhere.

But given the strong riffing, I can forgive a few host segment duds.  The question is that since the balance between movie and commentary so harmonious does that make it one of the best of the series?  I'm going to be a little restrained and say no.  It's a fun episode to watch, though my favorites usually feel to be a step higher than this.  But as far as these solid but not exceptional episodes go, Earth vs. the Spider is fairly high up on the ladder.

As fer the ratin'...well, I thin::cough:: I think that I liked this episode quite a bit and you get the feeling that I should give it some sort of positive rating so I just might have to call this...Good

The DVD and Blu-Ray

It was MST3K vs. the Spider on Shout Factory's Volume XXXIII set.  Audio and video were exceptional, while bonus features were led off by a ten minute documentary hosted by Tom Weaver called This Movie Has Legs:  Looking Back at Earth vs. the Spider, which briefly covers a bit of director Bert I. Gordon's career and the making of the film.  Rounding out the disc is a set of MST Hour wraps and a theatrical trailer for the film.

This episode was also one of the few episodes released on blu-ray, where it was featured as a bonus feature on Shout Factory's release of The Spider (the film's original title).  The episode presentation is equal to that of the DVD (the episode was filmed in standard definition and not HD), and the main feature is a pretty pristine cut of the unriffed feature.  The only othe bonus features are a photo gallery and a trailer, so those who are interested in a documentary and the MST Hour segments over an HD version of the film should stick with the DVD.

The short, Speech:  Using Your Voice, was compiled into Shorts Volume 3, which was released by Rhino as on online exclusive with The Essentials DVD set.  Shout Factory later rereleased Volume 3 as a part of The Singles Collection.

The Alien Factor (Cinematic Titanic)

Film Year:  1978
Genre:  Science Fiction, Horror
Director:  Donald M. Dohler
Starring:  Don Leifert, Tom Griffith, Richard Dyszel, Mary Mertens, Richard Geiwitz, George Stover, Eleanor Herman, Anne Frith
CT Number:  9

The Movie

A spaceship crash lands in the woods near a small town.  Several aliens are unleashed and begin murdering local citizens and leaving local law enforcement perplexed.  An out-of-towner soon arrives to help with the investigation and track down and kill these creatures.

The Alien Factor was the debut feature for cult Z-grade director Don Dohler.  MSTies would probably know him best not for any film that was ever directly featured on the show, but rather one of those Film Ventures opening credit sequences that used footage of other movies for the openings of entirely unrelated films.  Pod People's was taken from Dohler's other alien invasion masterpiece, Galaxy Invader, which was later used as a target on Rifftrax.

Who'd have thought The Alien Factor would have been the better of the two.  Yeesh.  Hell, who'd have thought Pod People would have been better than both.

The Alien Factor's only real virtue is that it plays around with a fair few ideas which could potentially create an entertaining budget film in the right hands.  The origin of the aliens is neat, and the creature designs themselves are not without promise, though need to be refined (the use of stilts for one toward the end is actually a fairly effective way of portraying it's satyr-like legs).  But if there is one piece of advice I'd give to any filmmaker with limited resources:  Finding a way to work around your limitations is admirable, but not accepting when they're a detriment to what you're trying to achieve is a mistake.  The Alien Factor is made by novices with very little money, and they aren't up to the task they've set out to do.

One thing that could have saved the film is if the human storyline were anything special, but it's rather rudimentary, dull, and meandering.  These characters are just a drag, and they aren't fun to watch.  The Alien Factor becomes a sour experience because we linger on actors who mostly feel like their experience lies with dramatic readings of Lord of the Rings at their local library on the weekends.  I find myself tired of this film while waiting for any alien action to happen, and when it becomes clear that the aliens aren't worth wading through the rest of the film for, it's time to change the channel.

The Riff

About two-thirds of the way through The Alien Factor, J. Elvis explains to the audience that the big fault of this style of comedy known as riffing is that sometimes you just have to sit there and watch people walk through the woods.  A lot.  Boy, aren't we having fun?

It's points like these where I wish riffing projects would avoid films like these because while there is a lot of dead air, if all you can do is comment on how much dead air there is then your riffs need to be a home run, because I'm mentally checking out.  The Alien Factor is at risk of losing me at multiple points during its duration, usually during its lengthy dialogue scenes and endless walking sequences.  Attempts by the Titans to keep these sequences jovial is appreciated and sometimes successful, but there is just so much of it.  The Alien Factor at times makes me not roll with laughter but rather want to roll over and take a nap.

Like the film itself, the Titans liven up when the aliens are onscreen, and the weak action sequences and poor plot development prove to be great fodder.  When action finally comes to a head in the third act, our group is firing on all cylinders and I find myself with the riffing experience I've been waiting for.  One of the biggest laughs of the entire live show happens during an encounter with an alien after a lengthy wood walk, in which characters lug around a can of gasoline for their entire trip (presumably to light the aliens on fire), but when faced with the alien, they toss the entire can in its face and run away.  Points like this really shine in the live format, because reaction to the film itself can be just as much of a trip as the riffing.  But credit where credit is due, the movie didn't provide the biggest laugh of the evening.  That honor goes to Trace, who brings the house down with the simple uttering of the words "Uh-oh..."

There seem to be more line-flubs than usual with this live show, which doesn't quite help with the slower sequences.  Joel and Mary Jo in particular seem to be saying their lines prematurely at several points and/or messing up and just leaving the gag hanging.  It's a small price to pay to get to the golden material, though The Alien Factor isn't the most refined offering.  But I'm not convinced its weak points are at the fault of the comedians, who at the very least turn this downer film into a good time overall.

Good

The DVD

The Alien Factor was released on DVD as an online exclusive through the now defunct cinematictitanic.com.  The DVD had decent audio and video, and no bonus features.

Years later, Shout Factory acquired Cinematic Titanic's entire run and released it in stores through The Complete Collection set.  The Alien Factor's transfer remained the same, and the disc also didn't contain any bonus material.  It did, however, share a disc with the following episode, Danger on Tiki Island.

Home of the Future (1999 A.D.) (Rifftrax Shorts)

Rifftrax Year:  2016

Riffers:  Bridget Nelson, Mary Jo Pehl

"Sitting on your ass is a snap in 1999!"

This is one of those WONDERS OF THE FUTURE shorts that was all the rage way back when, which incorrectly guessed and/or overestimated how advanced humanity would be by the turn of the century.  1999 didn't have half the things this short promised, though the promise of computers running everything comes the closest.  But even then, not everything was fully automated in 1999, and logging on to AOL took at least five minutes in of itself.  In 1999 we thought the computer world of The Matrix was amazing, and that's mostly because it didn't have a loading screen.

A lot of the gizmos on display are obvious props that clearly don't do what the short advertises them to do.  All they do is look pretty as our family pretends that they're useful.  Computers are represented with blank screens that have images projected onto them in post, as our family glares at them with dead stares but glowing smiles, not quite aware of what they're looking what they're looking at but certain that it's AMAZING!

"They could only be futuristic up to a point!"

"Mom not making lunch...completely unimaginable!"

Bridget and Mary Jo take a tour of the Home of the Future!  There are probably quite a few ways one can compare the made up FUTURE of the past with the future that resulted, though it doesn't seemed adequately mined this time around.though the really hard truth about shorts like these are that they're monotonous and tedious.  Even worse, this short is twenty-five minutes long, and it makes us feel every minute.  It weighs down the effort of my personal favorite Trax team as they just aren't offered much diversity on the screen.  The ending gets a bit revved up, though, as they're presented an out of place Puerto Rician song and dance number that gets some solid laughs, but that's about as diverse as the short gets.

What holds this one back for me is that it drags.  It's too much short, and the comedy feels a tad bit sparse.  There are some big laughs, but not enough for me to recommend sitting through the near half hour runtime.

Thumbs Down

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