"Court Case" & A Tribute to Hobgoblins (MST3K Special)

The Short

Another Short of the Month already?  Why it feels like we had one just yesterday!  And oh boy!  I love legal dramas!  I can't wait to see what Court Case has in store!

Oh.  It's about tennis.  Wrong court.  Fine, I guess.

This is an industrial short made by Penn Racquet Sports to show off how they make tennis balls and how they pop them into that tube and seal them up like Pringles.  Yes, they actually give a reason for that in the short, to avoid cutting fingers or something.  Though if your pack is severing customer fingers, you might need to rethink it.  But the majority of it is about ball manufacturing, and how important that Penn name is!

I never really thought about how tennis balls are made, so some of this stuff is actually interesting.  I do wonder about the differences between manufacturing tennis balls compared to baseballs to basketballs to footballs, hell maybe throw in a bowling ball in there too.  As someone who has worked in a factory setting like this, I also recognized some of the rush rush rush techniques people are imprinted with by management while they just kind of drone in their head "Eventually it will be five o'clock" over and over again.  That is not so pleasing, but I imagine most of these people's jobs have been replaced by machines since then, so yay?

Court Case is Emily's crew's second short (except Kelsey, it's her first) following the short the riffed for Turkey Day 2020, and they do a solid job.  It's a fun, low pressure short that mostly gets by with factory gizmos, of which Emily's team is always playful enough to meet.  They also have fun at the expense of the narrator and some quality barbs float in his direction, especially the hilarious reaction to his mentioning a "Threeway proposition."  They also have some fun at the odd shapes off the various pieces of a ball, as Crow notes that discarded pieces of the interior will be turned into "Muppet eyes" while the narrator notes that the green outer layer comes in shapes like a "dog bone," to which Emily responds "I was going to say Maxipad, but sure, let's go with dog bone."  First Maxipad reference on the show?  It's a joke that wouldn't hit as hard coming out of the mouths of the other hosts, so kudos to Emily for stepping into that territory.

This whole short can be perfectly summed up by Servo's line:  "This is a lot of work for something your dog will chew on."

This short doesn't list specific puppeteers for the Bots in the end credits, but it feels to me as if Kelsey Ann Brady's Crow has a more natural dialogue flow in this short than was featured in her first full episode.  I'm not going to presume Nate Begle didn't perform Crow in this (he is listed as a writer on it at the very least), but I'm leaning toward believing Kelsey is the one under the puppet here because it doesn't sound like a strange overdub.  If that's the case, I'm more confident with her playing the role here than I was in Beyond Atlantis as it feels as if she's allowed to perform Crow her own way by not trying to match his lip movements in post and she does seem to have a solid footing with the character. (That being said, there are still more episodes where she has to dub over Nate in the future, so let's brace for those too.)

So far none of the shorts have been a home run, but this one is decently funny and is probably the best of the lot so far.  At the same time, it kind of washed over me.  I laughed, but a lot of it left my head as soon as it was over.  That's unfortunate, but I'm having fun in the moment and that counts as a success.

Thumbs Up

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The Livestream

"I've almost got my flea infestation under control!  The pill is great, it tastes like beef!"

Pearl and Synthia are looking for the most foul little critters to sick on Jonah and the bots in tonight's tribute experiment, so of course they settle on Hobgoblins (my original review here).  This was always a torture-favorite of Pearl's, so it makes sense she'd want to make Jonah watch her torment of Mike and his Bots.  Jonah takes the time to prattle off some knowledge of the 80's punk rock scene and gives us some info on what happened to Club Scum, though the Bots are not having it ("I don't remember asking to hear any of this," Crow observes).  We also close with a hilarious bit where the Bots can't tell the difference between Mike and Jonah.

Matt McGinnis is in luck because all the mics are working tonight!  That doesn't stop Mary Jo from screwing with him a bit when she's introduced.

Tonight's live stream has several special guests, including original series Crow Bill Corbett and original series holdover Mary Jo Pehl.  Not only that, but we also have somebody who worked on the film itself, Kenneth J. Hall, the man who designed the Hobgoblins themselves!  Kenneth happens to be a MSTie himself and reflects on seeing the episode on TV for the first time and how elated he was.  Notable absences tonight are Joel Hodgson, who was scheduled to attend but wasn't feeling well, and Emily Marsh, who was never stated to be attending but has often stated her fondness for this episode.  Oh well, the show must go on!  But having such a Sci-Fi era centric live stream is a joy for me, because that's my era of the show and am happy to see Bill and Mary Jo discussing the episode with someone who worked on the film.

Not to shortchange her, but Rebecca Hanson is here too.  But she also shuns Eegah and I feel I need to shun her in return.

Nah, I'm kidding.  As someone who doesn't care for Pod People or Final Sacrifice, it's perfectly fine to not respond fully to a popular episode.  Just not that one.  SHUN!

Discussion on this one is more episode centric than it was for Future War, likely because the participants are less rowdy than Emily and her team, leading to a calmer presentation overall.  Mary Joe reflects on the evolution of Pearl and how diverse a character she is, of which Bill states he loved writing for her.  Bill and Mary Jo discuss the things they remember about the episode, as well as the movie itself.  A question does ask if they were hesitant about using Hobgoblins since it's raunchier than your average MST3K movie, to which Bill doesn't feel the had any hesitancy to it at all, since the attitude toward sex is what he calls "juvenile," like it was made by somebody who has "heard of sex but doesn't understand it" (Bill can't fathom "Donkey Mud Wrestling").  Another question asks if they consider it the Manos of the Sci-Fi era, to which Bill and Mary Jo think it's incompatible with Manos because Manos was a more serious attempt at filmmaking than Hobgoblins was.  In my opinion, it's hard to find a movie from the Sci-Fi era that's as bad as Hobgoblins.  Overdrawn at the Memory Bank maybe, or Horrors of Spider Island.  Hobgoblins is a bit of a next-level find that they seemed to have mostly avoided during those seasons, as they tended to shy away from films like Manos, Monster A-Go Go, or Red Zone Cuba.  It's probably most comparable to The Wild Wild World of Batwoman, an aggressive attempt at goofball filmmaking that isn't really all that fun or funny.

In terms of popularity, since Matt brings it up but it's not discussed, Hobgoblins is an episode brought up a lot from the Sci-Fi seasons, but it's likely trumped by Space Mutiny or The Final Sacrifice.

Questions directed at Kenneth range from his work on the film, to which he says they just hired him to make the Hobgoblins because they couldn't afford to hire him as a puppeteer (he describes the puppeteering in the film as "doll waving," which made me fall in love with the guy).  He also says the same dolls were used for the legacy sequel Hobgoblins 2, and Sloane wanted him to patch them up so he could make a Hobgoblins 3 but he turned it down (I'm always rooting for the underdog filmmaker no matter how bad, so I hope Sloane does get to make a Hobgoblins 3 someday).  His one experience on the set was during the sequence where Nick lights himself on fire at Club Scum, where he describes the surroundings for such a scene not being ideal.  He also talks about his other work, including puppets for the new Nicolas Cage film Willy's Wonderland and a pair of burlesque puppets he's made that he says he's very proud of, as well as his directorial effort The Halfway House.  Discussions also turn to other people who worked on the films that reacted positively to MST tackling their stuff, like Kim Cattrall from City Limits, Arch Hall Jr. from Eegah, Reb Brown from Space Mutiny, Jackie Nayman Jones from Manos, and the entire crew of Time Chasers.

As this stream comes to a close, as well as a full week of Gizmoplex coverage that I've been doing here that has knocked the wind out of me, we are reminded there will be no live event next week to my near relief (and then I realize I have RiffTrax and the Mads to catch up on).  Our next stream will be two weeks from tonight for a new episode, which will be followed up by two more episode premieres as the next short and tribute event will be in July.  It's weird to think how the Short of the Month concept hasn't exactly worked out as monthly, but I'll ride with new MST content no matter how I get it.  Even if it is Munchie, which is our next movie.  Bill seems tickled by the magical imp voiced by Dom DeLuise movie that he hasn't heard of, but Mary Jo leaves us on the most horrifying joke of the night as she casually drops the title "50 Shades of Munchie."  I can't top that sign-off, so I'm not going to try.