303-Pod People

Film Year:  1983

Genre:  Science Fiction, Horror

Director:  Juan Piquer Simon

Starring:  Oscar Martin, Concha Cuetos, Manuel Pereiro, and Trumpy as himself

MST Season:  3

The Movie

The 1980's meant two things for motion pictures:  Lots of horror movies and the dominance of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial as the then-highest grossing film of all time.  I guess it's only natural that there is a movie that exists that tries to cash in off of both of them.  Pod People, originally titled The New Extra Terrestrials in Spain and Extra Terrestrial Visitors in the US, was originally a horror spec script about an alien killing people in the woods.  After E.T. hit it big in 1982, it was hastily re-written to include another plot involving a boy befriending another alien named Trumpy...because they wanted to attract families to their movie about an alien killing people?

Incidentally E.T. itself was originally scripted as a horror film called Night Skies.  But Steven Speilberg was smart enough to know that if he were going to go into a more family friendly direction, horror elements would be muted to a "creature is misunderstood" presentation.  Pod People wants E.T. fans and Friday the 13th fans, and fails to find a satisfactory midpoint and can't cater to either.

Because it's trying to be two movies at once, it's littered with way too many characters that are hard to keep track of.  In addition to the alien-befriending boy and his family, the movie introduces a band of teenagers as canon fodder for the evil alien, and because there are so many of them it becomes hard to get a feel for them as individuals.  Their characteristics are on the back-burner, often coming up briefly in a scene only to not matter later because the alien is just going to kill them anyway.  And as if all of this isn't enough, there are antagonist characters in the film as well.  They serve a purpose to rile up the killer alien, but one wonders if it was possible to simplify this a lot more and drop some of these characters.

The movie does find a natural collision point for all of its storylines, as the misdeeds of the evil alien is naturally blamed on the much more gentile Trumpy as nobody can tell the differences between the two.  The conclusion becomes solidly bittersweet, which shows that this type of story had promise.  And as fake as Trumpy and his evil alien parent may look, the Trumpy design, which looks more than a little like the titular aardvark in those old Ant and the Aardvark cartoons, is distinct.  One wishes the final film weren't as confused as Pod People is.

The Episode

Finally!  After all these years of writing for this blog, I am finally covering Pod People!  The fan favorite episode that leaves all MSTies rolling with laughter!  Nobody on earth could ever dislike an episode as perfect as this, so surely my review will be glowing with just how amazing the episode is!

My thoughts?

Okay, time to peel this Band-Aid off.  I hate this episode.

Maybe "hate" is a strong word, but I am weirdly conditioned to dislike this episode   I recall buying the VHS of it years ago, as I was going through the history of the show the best way a fan from the Sci-Fi could, through Rhino's VHS tapes.  I popped this episode in and gave it a watch, and it was the first episode I watched of these Rhino episodes that I really didn't care for.  "Oh well.  That was a waste of money." I thought to myself, moving on to the next episode I purchased hoping I'd respond more positively.  Then when I started to get further into the online MST fan community, I discover this one is very beloved.  Just about every fan wouldn't hear a bad word against it.

Here I am, a clueless teenager jumping into the message boards.  "Hi!  I'm new here!  I like Hamlet and hate Pod People!"

::duck and cover::

I spent years hearing about how wrong I was about this episode, and how I just needed to watch the episode again to really get what makes it so good.  It's twenty years later and I still don't like it.  How many times do I have to watch it before it stops sucking?

My passive aggressive bitterness aside, why do I dislike this episode?  It's a bit more than the simple "It's just not funny" response (though I do confess I don't find it very funny).  The movie is overwhelmingly gloomy and the riffing response just can't penetrate it.  They never find a vibe for this movie, which gives the episode an overwhelmingly dull atmosphere that makes me tired.  I wish I could confess I see where people enjoy it but I really don't.  A lot of the humor just doesn't hit, and most of the delivery feels half-hearted and sleepy.  There is the "Chief?" "McCloud!" running gag that seems universally praised and quoted by fans, but it starts out randomly thrown out and they just keep riding it.  It's a reference for the sake of a reference, not utilized as an effective gag at all and it leaves me cold.  It's a draining episode that just never revs up its engine.

What comedy that does hit is usually during the scenes featuring the little boy and Trumpy, likely because that's the closest thing to a fully formed plot in the movie and it's easy to latch onto.  Trumpy makes for a pretty solid target, especially since the costume is so goofy.  Crow does some swell work in projecting a voice on Trumpy, especially during the most humorous portion of the episode, where Trumpy looks at a row of pets like a buffet and the production is so amateurish that a kitten starts playing with Trumpy's snout aggressively.  This is really the only riff portion that tickles my funnybone at all.

The host segments in this episode are also widely praised, often considered some of the best of the series...but, yeah, I'm going to be a bitch about them too.  The host segments are largely a huge dog for me.  The only one that I enjoy on any level is the Idiot Control Now song parody, which takes the in-film criticisms of the song performed and creates a crazy satire of it.  Gypsy, in particular, cracks me up here, as she is so blatantly late for all of her lines in it.  The attempt to parody the film spreads to another segment later on, where "Trumpy can do magic!" and Joel and the Bots flail around in trying to mimic the magic segment in the movie...and it bombs hard.  It does the worst thing a parody can do in that it spends too much time trying to imitate the film instead of actually having anything humorous to say about it.  It's not funny and it certainly isn't fun.  Also not impressing is the synth music demonstration, which starts nowhere and just dwindles off until movie sign.  The Invention Exchange, quite frankly, sucks on toast.  Public Domain Karaoke isn't strong as either an invention or a gag while the "Monster Chord" is just an excuse to set off a squib.  Even the conclusive Clown in the Sky song, a fan favorite, just doesn't do anything for me.

Pod People fans are so feverish that I spent years listing this as my least favorite episode of the series, if only because people got so angry over the fact that I didn't enjoy it and I would get a constant tongue-lashing out of it.  Having seen the whole series since and looking at these episodes objectively, that is no longer the case.  Pod People has more going for it than episodes like Moon Zero Two, Superdome, or It Lives By Night, or even season three's big rough one The Castle of Fu Manchu.  That being said, the episode is still an unpleasant experience that I get bored during and detached from.  There are more than enough people to go to bat for it, so I'm not going to.

Not Recommended

Look, while I am very honest in my review of how I feel about this episode, I also need to concede defeat in that I am in a very minuscule minority when it comes to what Pod People represents in the larger picture of Mystery Science Theater 3000.  It's an iconic episode that everyone has to watch.  While I don't personally recommend it, there are enough people out there that love this episode for me to honestly say you should watch it.  I hope you like it more than I do.

The DVD

Rhino Home Video released Pod People as a part of their Volume 2 DVD set, with strong audio and video.  There were no special features.  Shout Factory eventually rereleased Volume 2 and Pod People along with it, also with strong audio and video.  This edition, however, featured MST Hour wraps as a bonus feature.