"Cavalcade" & A Tribute to Secret Agent Super Dragon (MST3K Sepecial)

The Short

At long last, Mystery Science Theater 3000 has enough clout that it can feature a Best Picture Academy Award Winning film.  Kinga should be proud.  That film is Cavalcade, the 1933 film that tells a generational saga of life in England...

Hold on a second...I'm being told that this Cavalcade is actually something different.  It's actually an industrial short showcasing various livelihoods in rapid succession (a "cavalcade," if you will).  We get to see those great American workers as they build communication towers and automobiles, work with lead, and, most importantly of all...ostrich racing.

Cavalcade is just a ten minute salute to American ingenuity, hitting you so hard with constructive achievements and moving onto the next one before you get too bored.  It has a sort of "Gee whiz!" enthusiasm underlining it that might get someone curious about one subject or another.  Basically these sort of shorts accomplish what can be done in a quick YouTube video today, except you don't have to search through all the cat videos and engagement grifters to find it.

Still...those ostriches came out of nowhere.  Is that still a thing?  I might change careers if I can get in on that.

On the riffing end, we have a bit of a surprise, as for some reason this short is selected for Pearl Forrester and Dr. Lawrence Erhardt.  A curious selection to be sure, but a welcome one.  The former Cinematic Titanic performers of Mary Jo Pehl and J. Elvis Weinstein hit the theater to show off their chops and they hit a home run with what is easily the best short the Gizmoplex has offered yet!  Mind you, these Gizmoplex shorts haven't quite been series highlights (as Court Case has been the best one so far, and that was only fairly good), but I will say that Cavalcade successfully brings in that classic short flavor into the theater and it offers up a lot of retro outdatedness to successfully mock.  Mary Jo and J. Elvis are quite exceptional here, offering up quality quips that bring plenty of belly laughs.

"The Paradox of Lead."

"If it's so dangerous, why does it taste so good?"

If I were to nitpick one thing, I'd say the ostrich segment, while funny, never takes off with its brazen oddness.  It feels like it should be the epic and memorable conclusion, but it winds up just more of the same.  I guess I'll have to settle for this being quite funny instead of hilarious, though what Cavalcade does make me desire is to see more of Mary Jo and J. Elvis in the limelight.  These are two exceptional talents and Cavalcade shows off just how much they bring to this franchise.

Thumbs Up

👍

The Livestream

I've been doing what I can to keep my finger on the pulse of these new Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes and special events, but this one was cursed.  I was all set and prepared to watch it the night it streamed live, but my internet completely collapsed from under me.  I tried to get it steady throughout the short, of which I was initially under the impression that it was Joel and Emily in the theater because I was only seeing frames of it and not hearing dialogue.  The minute I finally heard a riff I finally realized that it was actually J. Elvis and Mary Jo and I was missing something special.  But my internet would not cooperate and I had to give up for the night.  Since I had already missed the short and I'm not too fond of Secret Agent Super Dragon (review here), paired with how the last few tribute events only offered DVD bonus features as the aftershow, I retired for the night instead of watching on my phone.  I finally watched what I had missed during my lunch breaks during work that week.  I missed a great short and an improv RPG event, and now I was irritated.

Making matters worse was I was going to watch the event in full this weekend for review, but my laptop completely went belly up, which means I'm typing all of this on my phone until I can get it fixed and you better appreciate me right now because this suuuuuuuuuuucks.

Anyway, tribute event.  Excellent short, not so great episode, excellent aftershow.

Listen, the episode selections for the tribute shows aren't going to please everybody.  I'm sure there are some fans who aren't crazy about some of the episodes already selected and are probably ecstatic that Super Dragon is at the center of attention here.  This event is for them.  And whether of not I think Super Dragon is that good or not, there is some interesting presentation experimentation going on.  Instead of the "surgically enhanced" look that Pumaman was going for, they do play around and try to work the episode into filling HD screens in a way that might please more people.  This time they do something similar to what old Disney Blu-ray discs would do for movies like Snow White and Dumbo and add theater curtains to the side of the picture where the full frame black bars would be.  This is a smart use of it, because it would look good in the Gizmoplex virtual theater, adding to the Gizmoplex experience.

The added new content with Jonah and the Bots sees them mocking the jazzy Secret Agent Super Dragon theme host segment, relating the Bots still hear from Mimzy the Atomic Powered Robot, and Crow claims he has given up screenwriting to grift books on screenwriting to people who think they can do it.  Emily and her Bots have a segment, where Emily is being given spy gear by her Bot quartermasters is a fun idea, but the weird decision to constantly have the group change their accents in extremes (shifting from suave British to Cockney to Scottish ect) makes it very odd and a little unpleasant.  The show concludes with a new rap from Ross Bryant, the brilliant mind behind Mother Crabber, who takes Joel and the Bots' failed attempt at a theme and builds an actual song around it.  It's no Mother Crabber, but it's fun.  And there is even a bonus surprise, as they advertise our next episode, The Shape of Things to Come, and it's introduced by that classic Comedy Central announcer from the 90's, Penn Jillette!

Thrown in are some pre-recorded segments of Emily, (Kelsey's) Crow, and (Conor's) Servo thanking select Kickstarter backers, and Crow also reads a fan letter.  Whether this is the new way they're doing the name reads, I'm not certain, but I think it's an improvement over the stop-and-halt way they were doing it during the livestreams.

It's also possible they're just doing this specially for this stream because they wouldn't have been able to during tonight's show, which is a special role playing game called DIY Spy hosted by Tim Ryder, who puts rookie spies played by Emily, Conor, and Kelsey through hypothetical scenarios.  Like a lot of improv, it can have its ups and downs based on what the performers have to work with, but Emily, Conor, and Kelsey are game to see everything through to the end.  Emily is the MVP of the night, who brings us a character named Missy Livingston, who is obviously inspired by the Cockney homeless Eliza Doolittle from My Fair Lady.  Emily is seemingly the most mentally prepared and the most suggestive, throwing out more ideas of how to proceed than her teammates.  She seems to know that she is overwhelming the stream a bit too, sometimes refraining herself so Conor and Kelsey can influence events as well.  But Emily's ideas are so colorful and interesting that most of the time they'll default to what she suggests.  If nothing else, it makes me want to see a performance of My Fair Lady starring Emily.  Conor's character is Danny Landon, who is an excitable and nerdy rookie, while Kelsey goes femme fatale, puts on a ridiculous sunhat, puts on your stuffy southern belle accent that we heard so much in Demon Squad, and names herself Miss Chevious (get it?).  It can get a little confusing telling "Missy" and "Miss" apart as Tim refers to them, but whatever.  It's just fun and games.

Biggest laugh of the night goes to Emily (of course it does), who describes how she's going to use a bicycle pump to create and EMP grenade, which causes Conor to turn red in the face and fail at stifling his laughter.  Emily makes matters worse by seeing just how much she's affecting Conor and continually pumps it to make him laugh harder.  Flub of the night also goes to Emily, who says on air "Have you seen this shi...Have you seen this?"  I heard that, Emily.  You're on notice.  Random moment of the night goes to Kelsey, while they're assigned to eat sentient enemy pickles, who just reaches off screen, grabs a jar of pickles she happens to have lying around, and starts eating.  Now that's method.

After a couple of stale livestream events which just gave us an episode and a DVD bonus feature most MSTies have already seen, this event was a breath of fresh air.  It was fun, it was creative, and it was out of left field.  It also shows that they can still surprise and delight and just deliver a good old fashioned good time.  I don't know if they have anything else unique coming up, but this was certainly one that promises exciting things.  And all of this built around an episode I don't even like, so kudos.

1309-The Million Eyes of Sumuru

Film Year:  1967
Genre:  Thriller, Spy
Director:  Lindsay Shonteff
Starring:  Shirley Eaton, George Nader, Frankie Avalon, Klaus Kinski
MST Season:  13

Host:  Jonah

The Movie

*I HAVE SURVIVED WATCHING THIS MOVIE UNRIFFED*

Many might be familiar with Sax Rohmer's infamous villain creation Fu Manchu, though fewer might be familiar with another series of novels he wrote with another antagonist named Sumuru.  Sumuru is basically Fu Manchu again, only sexist instead of racist.  To the surprise of nobody, the producers of the 60's Fu Manchu films starring Christopher Lee also decided to bring Sumuru to the big screen, with less yellowface and more bare skin.

Sumuru is a lady criminal mastermind with an army of women at her disposal.  Her master plan sees her agents to marry the leaders of the world and murder them.  However her plans are threatened by a pair of smarmy and horny agents from America.  Their misadventures continuously come to a head (pun intended?  I don't even know anymore) as these guys make love and kick ass all the way to Sumuru herself.

In the more sexually liberated world of the 1960's, spy films of the era were shameless about utilizing women who used their curves as a weapon to distract from their own deviousness and, more importantly, sell tickets to men, because bad girls were hot.  The Million Eyes of Sumuru is something of a inevitable peak of that, as all women featured are dangerous, shapely, and very ready, willing, and able to show off their bodies.

Million Eyes of Sumuru isn't unentertaining, as there is a very primal 60's pop entertainment value at play (and, let's face it, the mostly female cast is hard for any male to resist).  It's a bit problematic in that it pretends to be about female liberation and empowerment, yet as the plot moves forward we see Sumuru's plans thwarted by women in their army who seemingly just discovered their lust of male body parts, and turn on their master simply out of desire for the male leads in the film.  In the end we get a movie that clearly thinks its feminist but feminist in a way that still has men dominating women.

Of course, if you want to deep dive into those themes you can argue the film is anti-Sapphic as well.  If you think about it, the film is about a large group of alienated women who only trust each other and don't wish to be associated with men, while being subservient to their queen dominatrix Sumuru.  If that doesn't scream lesbian undertones, I don't know what does.  Not to mention a fear of homosexuality in general, as these women are inherently evil.  Then going back to the men of the film turning the women through sex, one can definitely say the ultimate message of the film is that all that's needed to turn a gay girl straight is the male member.

The movie's humor can be a bit of a double edged sword too.  The main characters have so many wisecracks and are so unphased by the violence happening around them that they almost border on parody.  This isn't exactly a James Bond-ian suave one-liner type of dynamic that's in play (though it might be intended) as they see people they've interacted with moments before get killed and even crack jokes at their expense, which is weird and tacky.  This movie might even have been intended to be seen as a parody because of this, as there is a certain argument that can be made for its off-center tone.  I don't think it quite works in either direction, because it just winds up offputting.

But, if you're into 60's adventure flicks, Million Eyes of Sumuru has its pleasures.  Action is abound, and intrigue is in play for a while.  I'm charmed by the idea of the girl power premise, even if it doesn't quite deliver on that.  If someone were to debug the idea of a femme fatale spy organization seeking world dominance and make it less problematic this could be a fun idea for a franchise, but as is Sumuru doesn't hit the mark.  I was almost entertained, though I probably would never be interested in watching it again.

Million Eyes of Sumuru was followed by a sequel several years later called The Girl from Rio.  There is a RiffTrax for this movie, as well as Sumuru, so there's an easy way for fans to double feature these flicks without having to watch them straight.

The Episode

Another film prominently featuring lady abdomens and navels so soon after The Batwoman?  Why, Mystery Science Theater, I'm flattered and bashful all at once.  But I'm not going to say no!

"This one sounds familiar."

"Shhh."

The new seasons of Mystery Science Theater 3000 seem to fulfill a pattern of bringing in a movie selection as a nostalgia play from a series fans recognize from the show and also picking a movie that was already used for riffing fodder by sister project RiffTrax.  For season 11, the nostalgia pick was Loves of Hercules while the RiffTrax pick was Wizards of the Lost Kingdom.  For Season 12 they combined into one with Ator, the Fighting Eagle.  In season 13 we received Gamera vs. Jiger for our nostalgic warm fuzzies while we also have The Shape of Things to Come down the pipeline, which was already given the RiffTrax treatment.

Then there is Million Eyes of Sumuru.  The thing about Sumuru for all us seasoned MSTies is that it was featured on MST back in the KTMA days, so this in essence is like "Nostalgia Pick 1.5" for this season, after seeing Gamera's return a few episodes ago while also calling back to the KTMA reriffs of Season 3.  One could also argue it's the candidate for "RiffTrax Did It" film of the year, but MST had this movie first, so I'd argue a veto might be order of that title.  Maybe we should meet in the middle and say it's two flavors in one bite, like Ator!

"Who was the man?"

"You da man, my lady!"

I'm happy they picked Sumuru because the KTMA episode is half fun and half dead.  But even if it were a great episode, there was plenty of room for improvement over what KTMA had to offer.  And it's a weird movie that offers a lot of strange stuff to showcase, so it would be interesting to see what a scripted commentary could mine from it.  And whatever can be said about the episode, it's certainly an upswing from the first one.  Humor is solid, and there were some jabs that got me to bark a laugh at many points, though I hesitate to name anything that made me roll.  But this movie tends to wander around and stumble into its plot accidentally, which gets Jonah and the Bots to amp up its more absurd elements to colorful results.  There is an assassination scene late in the movie that is a domino effect of nonsense sequentially tumbling in motion, and as it gets crazier, a character shouts "It's a girl!" at the would-be assassin, prompting the trio to just yell "CONGRATULATIONS!" like they were at a gender reveal party.  I don't think this riff normally would have gotten a reaction out of me, but the chaotic nature of the scene just kind of set it up as a punctuation to absurdity, and I laughed more than I probably should have.

I'm tempted to restate my criticism of Batwoman and say there are some easy wells to tap in this movie that the rebooted show always seems nervous to take advantage of.  But if there is one advantage Sumuru has over Batwoman it's that Jonah's crew is a bit more adventurous with where it sails than Emily's was in the previous episode.  While humor isn't quite as risqué as it could be (and believe me, this movie is asking for it), riffs do cut deeper into the sexist/sexy themes of the movie without getting too naughty or trashy.  Throughout the movie Sumuru's army are depicted as Karens, slumber party girls, chattering cheerleaders, southern belles and the like, while sexual situations are tip-toed and given a few catcall-style jokes to push it a little.  They can get a little randy if they need to, as during a scene midway through the film we see George Nader pass two giant doorknockers and Crow just lets out the on-the-nose line "WHAT KNOCKERS!" which I will freely admit made me laugh.

The host segments have ups and downs.  I found myself most amused when the fraternity energy between Jonah and the Bots was at its fullest.  I really enjoyed the segment where the Bots are obsessed with how tall Jonah is (likely because they have the more petite Emily to compare him to now) and just roughhouse with him.  By comparison, the segment where Jonah plays a prank on the Bots (with a wig) is kinda lame, but Crow's aggressive reaction toward Jonah at the end is hilarious.  More movie-focused, they taunt just how aimless the heroes of our movie are and play with coded messages in acronym, both of which are cute ideas that didn't really land.  Down on Moon 1, Dr. Kabahl has notes and Kinga gets a song honoring all the lady supervillains throughout history.  The Invention Exchange includes coffee that wakes you up with your deepest, darkest fears and mundane workplace Skittles.

Sumuru is an upswing from the little-too-straight-and-narrow-but-spirited Batwoman, though I'd still advise against using films like this unless you're going to fully commit to what they have to offer.  It feels like there is something of a Girl-in-Gold-Boots-like minor-gem to make in this movie but they won't handle it the way it's asking for and it's frustrating to see movies like this wasted.  It's a funny episode that rests on the lower end of offerings of the season, though this season has been largely consistent, so saying it's a lesser offering isn't really raking it through the coals.

⭐⭐⭐

Good

The Livestream

This livestream almost seemed like a direct response to my complaint about the last one, where I said it was too fluffy and not substantial, in particular noting the lack of real production talk.  This time Matt McGinnis gathered up a group of people from the writer's room, some of which we haven't seen before on the stream, namely Devon Coleman and Tammy Golden, and it was absolutely lovely to see the duo live and on camera after all the social media interaction I've seen them do.  Also here is Tim Ryder and, finally guesting on a stream for more than five minutes, Felicia Day!

This is a very fun, very substantial conversation about the writer's room.  They answer a lot of questions about joke writing, filling up allotted time, and how many times they watch the movie.  They talk about having any desire to watch films again after using them on the show, to which Devon sings praises of Doctor Mordrid and Kinga describes very colorful things that she would do if she had to watch Munchie again.  They even discuss the Sumuru's prior usage on MST, which Tim says he decided against screening because he didn't want to cement himself to previous jokes like he did during the Eegah live tour.  I would say that since Sumuru's previous episode was a KTMA show, he didn't really have much to worry about.  However Matt does provide a comparison between the openings of both the new version and the KTMA version, of which both feature a reference to supermodel Twiggy.

Of note:  Matt claims they have no master copies of KTMA episodes, which is unfortunate though it's contradicted by the quality copies of Invaders from the Deep and Revenge of the Mysterons from Mars that were released, as well as high quality KTMA material that has been released in general (admittedly before Shout purchased the show from Jim Mallon).  Perhaps they don't have copies of all the KTMA episodes or they got lost in transition?  Dunno.  But the KTMA clip they use is definitely recorded from television, though it feels cleaner than my personal copy of the episode.  Don't know where they got it from, if they did their new remastering process on it, or if it was just a taped copy for the MST archives.  At any rate, Tim is happy they don't have to display time and teperature anymore, to which Ivan Askwith provides a Cambot style joke at his expense.

The writers have this sort of weird fondness for this movie that they'll dog but do so with such warmth.  They have fun dissecting the weird creative choices of this movie and postulate some theories.  Sometimes they come up a blank, and Felicia can't figure out why everyone is indifferent to death in this movie (which is admittedly very odd).  They get a few good digs in at the height differences between George Nadar and Frankie Avalon while also trying to figure out just what the hell was up with Klaus Kinski's weird role in the film, prompting the biggest laugh of the stream from Devon who claims Klaus told them "You get a day to shoot with me because that's how long it takes for Werner Herzog to track me down."

Fan questions are a lot better during this stream than the previous one, and they prompt some delightful discussion and joking around.  Matt and Tim react to some of the user names, including "Bob Dole" and "Q" (the latter gets an absolute homerun response from Tim, "You can't just switch forums like that!").  The stream's final question is a bit of a fizzle and pop, as they revert to one of those hypothetical questions that haunted the last stream and it's a not very interesting one (though it doesn't help that Matt misreads it).  Basically it's about board spaces on a potential MST Monopoly, but nobody can really run with the idea.  Tim does host a mini-rant about how much Monopoly sucks, and Felicia wonders if MST Clue could work, but the question is almost granted a mercy killing as the stream runs out of time.

They also announce a new cosplay contest for Halloween, with the winner to be announced during the livestream of The Mask.  I've already lost.