Wednesday, June 17, 2020

320-The Unearthly


Film Year:  1957
Genre:  Horror
Director:  Brook L. Peter's (Boris Petroff)
Starring:  John Carridine, Tor Johnson, Myron Healy, Allison Hayes, Marilyn Buferd, Arthur Batanides, Sally Todd
MST Season:  3
Shorts Featured:  "Posture Pals," "Appreciating Our Parents"

The Shorts

Sit up straight, you worthless sack of crap!  Miss Martin is here to make sure your posture is up to scratch!  Our first short has her nitpicking her entire class and body shaming them, by doing silhouettes of each child on the board.  Not wishing to be ridiculed, four children take it upon themselves to improve their posture and suck up to the teacher.

Posture Pals is the type of educational short you'd see in school about making you appearance more proper, likely because in the 50's all teachers were afraid their students would grow up to be no good, dirty greasers.  This one spends an ungodly amount of time to simply tell its students to stand/sit up straight, deciding to build a narrative around it in the four children who become "Posture Pals."  It"s exactly as lame as it sounds.

Did it work?  Did the children who watched it become Posture Pals?  I doubt it.  It's a stupid thing adults will try and convince children to do because they think children are stupid, and think coming up with "with it" ways of learning to make learning "cool," though secretly kids are like "This is so stupid."  The Posture Pals short works best when it's simply relaying information, such as linking posture and appearance to mood or relating it to plants and buildings.  That's solid information getting lost in a worthless attempt at message camouflage.


Our second short is all about appreciating your parents, which is presumably why it's called "Appreciating Our Parents."  In this short, worthless freeloader Tommy decides to ask his parents for a raise in allowance, but overhears a conversation between mother and father about how hard they work during the day and where their money comes from.

When one is a child it's easy to overlook what goes into "adulting," so you may need to forgive your child for not understanding.  After all, they have people waiting on their every beck and call until a certain point in their lives.  One day that changes and it's like "Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?!  I didn't want this!"  This short tries to help children understand that adult's aren't there to serve, but to try and provide.  It's a well-meaning message, but one I don't think will sink in.  Not when a child's main goal is "MORE!"


The Movie

If you love a good mad scientist movie...too bad.  This one features the great John Carridine as the mentioned mad scientist trying to create immortality through artificial glands.  He takes in troubled people with little family into his mansion to experiment upon, but his latest guest, presumably a fugitive, gets a little too snoopy.

The best thing that can said for The Unearthly is that it's short.  I can't exactly say it doesn't wear out its welcome, but it could be a heck of a lot longer than it is.  The movie is very dull, as it's a budget feature filmed on minimal sets inside of a house.  But its drama is so stilted and uninteresting that it can't play up it as a strength.

The film can't play camp to its strength either.  While the film has its share of goofy looking creatures to HORROR at, there aren't really enough and there are seemingly more shots of the actors simply staring at the "Unearthly" than there is of the "Unearthly" itself.  The one exception is brute minion Logo, played by Tor Johnson.  He is the most fun thing in this movie because, of the silly things in this movie, he has the most screen time.  And when you consider that he spends most of that stumbling around and grunting, that's pretty sad.


The Episode

The one thing I can't help but note about The Unearthly is just how dialogue heavy it is.  Because of the film's limited locations, it relies on character interaction to make itself compelling (and fails).  While I can't say that Joel and the Bots don't assert themselves enough during this film, it's a very busy episode full of layers of commentary on top of dialogue scenes.  And since dialogue largely leads nowhere in this film, it's easy to give up on this episode, as you feel every minute of the movie's by-normal-circumstances-seemingly-brief runtime.  It's a drab and slow movie that they can't liven up with their jovial approach, though they do try.

The one thing they successfully latch onto in the theater is Tor Johnson.  Tor has limited dialogue, and is just a simple oaf of an assistant for John Carridine.  They take advantage of his lack of dialogue and personality and just fill in that gap with some decent laughs.  More often than not, when I think back on this episode, I can't remember much about the movie or the riffing, but I always remember Tor Johnson, and there's a reason for that.

"Time for go to bed!"

While the main course is undercooked, the appetizer is delicious.  The short's that begin the episode are a delight, with the exhaustive attempt at "posture is fun" in Posture Pals raising some wonderful quips at the expense of our nerdy gang of posture freaks.  The enthusiasm of the young cast comes under fire for being a bit too enthusiastic, while the gauntlet of posture reminders offers up some creative zingers ("Miss Martin!  Tommy drew a bong!").  Appreciating Your Parents is just as good, as the crew mocks young Tommy's naivete quite effectively, as well as relating a much harder look at middle class life (such as dad going over bills and Joel groaning "Oh man, we're in trouble!").  There is a lot of fun had with the innocence as well, with young Tommy sneaking out of bed after hours as Tom Servo proposes that he just might find mom and dad doing the nasty in the kitchen instead of the dishes.

The garnish is exquisite, as well, as this is an episode in which every host segment is a winner.  The Unearthly board game is a favorite of mine, with the rules trying to adhere to the film being a huge laugh for me.  There is a fun "retrospective" on Tor Johnson ("She Tor a Yellow Ribbon"), as well as effective parodies of Appreciating Your Parents and America's Funniest Home Videos.  The Invention Exchange is a riot, with the uproarious Hard Pills to Swallow and the delightful Celebrity Novelty Products.

This episode backs me into a corner.  We have two great shorts and excellent host segments, but that feature is dour downer that just threatens to drown the episode.  A third of this episode is worth recommending, but the real meat of it is rotten.  What do I rate it?  I guess I'll meet in the middle.

Average


The DVD

The Unearthly will live forever as a part of Rhino Home Video's Volume 3 collection, with solid audio and video.  The episode's sole bonus feature was B-roll footage of the cast filming the host segments.

Shout re-released the episode in an online exclusive single disc many years later.  There were no special features.  They then re-released Volume 3 in its entirety, with the B-roll footage also featured.  They also offered the MST Hour bumper segments as bonus features.

Are you still here?  TIME FOR GO TO BED!

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