House on Haunted Hill (Audio Commentary)

Film Year:  1959
Genre:  Horror
Director:  William Castle
Starring:  Vincent Price, Carol Ohmart, Elisha Hook, Carolyn Craig, Alan Marshal, Julie Mitchum, Richard Long
Commentator:  Michael J. Nelson

The Movie

*I HAVE SURVIVED WATCHING THIS MOVIE UNRIFFED*

Vincent Price is at his Vincent Price-iest in this tale of the horror master throwing a spooky birthday party for his reclusive wife.  They invite guests that they have never met before for...reasons, I guess...and offer them a large sum of money if they're able to spend the night without getting murdered (maniacal laugh implied here).  But there seems to be weird things going bump in the night.  Is the house really haunted, is Price fucking with them, or is there something else at play?

Or if you're feeling clever do all three.  Be forewarned that if you decide to do so chances are you're not as clever as you think you are.

House on Haunted Hill seems to be a favorite among golden oldie horror aficionados like myself, but I've never particularly cared for it.  Price is an astounding screen presence that adds a lot to the film, this can't be denied, but it's so damn stupid.  The premise of the film is quite solid, though the plot is convoluted and messy.  Once revelations start piling up one after another the movie just stops trying to make sense and just twists itself for the hell of it.

I've also never been one of those people who looked at an old horror movie and laughed with disbelief that anybody in history could ever be frightened by it, as I always contextualize my film-going.  House on Haunted Hill is an exception, because it's scares are so stale and silly that even if I had seen it in 1958 I couldn't imagine myself being frightened by it.  Occasionally there will be a cool shot of otherworldly haunting, such as Carol Ohmart's scenes of being strung up in a noose, but these are few and far between.

But regardless of how silly I think this film is there is one thing I can always say in it's favor:  It's nowhere near as bad as the 1999 remake.

The Commentary

As par for the course on Legend Films colorized DVDs, Michael J. Nelson is back to give these discs some flavor.  He opens by pointing out he and his MST cohorts have never riffed a William Castle film, and given his schlocky but popular catalog there's certainly a lot to play with there.  Being Castle's most popular film, House on Haunted Hill might be as good a place as any to get cracking on.

Mike embraces the macabre of the film, relishing Vincent Price and his seemingly sensual love of all things involving death.  Mike takes the opportunity to get as dark as Price, dropping gags based on poison, guns, nooses, and various other death techniques.

The film's loopy characters also come under fire.  Our creepy little character actor in Elisha Cook is given appropriate riffs for his neurotic performance, including calling him a leprechaun, which has somewhat carried over into every time this film was riffed on Rifftrax.  Richard Long's Lance character gives him great material with his libido and clumsiness, while Carolyn Craig's Nora gets some laughs as being both a victim to the haunted house and Lance's sexual advances.

One great thing about reliving these commentaries after all these years is that since these commentaries eventually evolved into Rifftrax you can definitely hear jokes that lasted in the various future riffs this film received, up to the Live version in 2010.  House on Haunted Hill has quite a few of these that have been repeated word for word elsewhere.  They were funny then and they're funny now, even if Mike has no back-up commentators with this particular release.

Good

The DVD

This disc is brought to us by Legend Films, mostly as a demo of their colorization process, which is about standard for Legend's colorization.  Inanimate objects often look good, as if they had always been colored (the wet pavement in the opening scene is actually impressively real looking), though flesh tones look waxy and awkward.  I'm also not too impressed with the color on the titular house itself, which for the most part almost looks like it's still in black and white.  I'm not sure if this was a stylistic choice, a realism choice, or a minimalist choice, but most scenes outside the house look ugly.  Otherwise House on Haunted Hill is given a pretty crisp color master and good audio.  The black and white version of the film is included as a special feature.

There's also a press book, which gives us two and a half minutes of promo material for the film.  Also included are a trailer to the film, both black and white and colorized.  Trailers for other colorized Legend releases are included:  Carnival of Souls, Night of the Living Dead, Reefer Madness, and The Three Stooges in Color.

You're the Judge (Rifftrax Shorts)

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

A pair of horny teenage girls try to win over some cute boys by baking a cake for them.  When the boys refuse their cake, instead of assuming that they might be gay like a normal girl would, they get pissed and challenge them to a bake-off.  Challenge accepted:  and both teams head to their kitchens for preparation.  The girls follow their recipes to the letter, including the use of lots of delicious Crisco.  But since the boys didn't use Crisco their baking is of course a disaster.

I pondered about the intended use for You're the Judge while it was playing out.  The closest I can figure is that it might have been a film showed in Home Economics class to teach the importance of following baking instructions and the dangers of substitutions.  It doesn't really teach it very well, more or less detouring into the wonders of Crisco several times, but it's quirky and cute and it's decently made.  I imagine teenager girls of the 60's may have enjoyed it.

That said, the short displays a bit of an outdated philosophy of women bending over backwards to please their men.  The climax of the short has the girls switching their baked goods with the boys to save their egos, and to cheat a way into winning their affections.  This is a pretty lousy moral on several levels, because it teaches girls to be submissive and always let the man be superior.  In other flaws, its setup doesn't come off too well, as the jarring switch between dialogue to exposition narration playing over dialogue saying the exact things the characters are supposed to be saying brings back horrific memories of The Creeping Terror.  But it's hard to hate on something that for the most part is just trying to be pleasant.

"Huh.  Crisco was involved with this film?  Didn't show."

The riffing of this short is light-spirited.  It mostly just emphasizes what's there instead of making fun of it.  When Crisco is onscreen the boys make no short work in pointing it out.  They also take the boys incompetence to the next level by adding more blunders to their effort, my personal favorite being instead of using flower they used "the good cocaine."  When they go for a joke at the expense of the short they tend to be hit and miss.  Kevin starts out the short with a long and drawn out impression of Alice Cooper's "School's Out for Summer" which isn't really that funny, and portions with the girls baking tend to be a bit dry because they aren't as fun to make fun of as the boys.  But they do have a tendency to try and remind these girls that if they are so hot for these guys then they have other attributes that may get the job done.

You're the Judge is made for a bygone age of squishy teenage girls who believe nothing is more important than impressing the guys.  Times have changed and the Rifftrax version is made for the modern day of comedians who believe nothing is more important than getting a laugh.  You're the Judge isn't perfect, but laughs are given and a pleasant time is had by all.

Thumbs Up

👍

K02-Revenge of the Mysterons from Mars

Film Year:  1981 (edited from a 1967 television series)
Genre:  Adventure, Science Fiction
Director:  Robert Lynn, Ken Turner, Brian Burgess
Starring:  Francis Matthews, Ed Bishop, Liz Morgan, Donald Gray
MST Season:  KTMA

The Movie

For years the title to the movie in this formerly lost episode seemed to be mistranslated as Revenge of the Mysterians.  I had assumed that it was some sort of unofficial sequel to the Toho alien invasion movie The Mysterians before discovering the name of the Mysterons was misspelled and that it was actually cobbled together from an old Gerry and Sylvia Anderson marionette series called Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.  Boy was my face red.

Or...scarlet...

::snicker::snicker::

This series is about an alien civilization on Mars called the Mysterons as they wage a war on Earth, meanwhile a color-coded team of special agents are assigned to prevent any attack the Mysterons might perform. While it's not quite explained in the film itself (that I recall) but some interesting context I found while researching this film, in this series Captain Scarlet is a recreation of a dead agent made by the Mysterons to kill the President, but is reprogrammed by his agency to regain the original Scarlet's personality, making him a practically indestructible weapon.  Boy, how's that for a backstory?

This film consists of four edited together episodes that have little to do with each other, leading to an episodic back and fourth between Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.  At various points we are forced to contend with a duplicated scientist planting bombs, shady goings on in a rogue moon colony, blowing up a Mysteron complex, and an attempt at a truce between Earth and Mars.

Initially I was a bit baffled by Revenge of the Mysterons from Mars because it assumes we're familiar with the Captain Scarlet story for the most part, so I wasn't really that engrossed by it.  With a bit more knowledge of the Scarlet character and it's mythology this show is starting to seem slightly more interesting.  There's kind of a neat Invasion of the Body Snatchers type of story going on here, with certain characters being turned into Mysteron agents as the stories go on and I was starting to grow more into it.

That said, out of what few Anderson marionette shows I've seen, this is probably the one I like the least.  It's not very interesting to look at and because of that when it drags it's a slog.  I'm not sure if it's because I'm unfamiliar with the series, but the product as a whole doesn't seem to work for those who aren't.  But Anderson fans will likely eat it up.

The Episode

Previously lost as MSTies had no taped copies to circulate, the great and wise Joel Hodgson was kind enough to share a copy of this episode in 2016 as a big "thank you" to the backers of the wildly successful Kickstarter campaign to relaunch Mystery Science Theater.  While not all fans are enthusiastic about seeing more of the sparse and improvised KTMA era, I love to watch and study evolution of various artists and filmmakers and am a firm believer that the preservation and availability of our film history is important, regardless of quality.  While it's a shame that there is still one episode that is lost (hopefully Shout Factory, the current owners of MST's library, have a tape of it rattling around in a box somewhere), having Revenge of the Mysterons of Mars back in the hands of the fans is an event worth celebrating.

In historical context this is an important episode for two reasons.  First it's the first appearance of Servo (later dubbed the first name "Tom") on the series.  Josh Weinstein had controlled a puppet named Beeper in the pilot but it's fairly clear a non-verbal character would have been ill-advised for this particular series (Beeper was mentioned in passing in Invaders from the Deep, however I attribute this to reusing the pilot's script for the host segments).  The Beeper puppet was reconstructed into the silver-turned-red Bot we know and love today and he makes his debut here, starting a legacy passed on to Kevin Murphy and Baron Vaughn.  It has always been known that in these early episodes Josh struggled to give the little bot a distinctive voice, and here he's given a not-very-subtle drawl.  His voice is entirely different in the next episode fans have access to, Gamera vs. Barugon, leaving us to wonder if the lost episode of Star Force:  Fugitive Alien II saw a transition of some kind.

The second point of importance is a bit more minor, but is certainly notable:  This is the first episode in which Trace Beaulieu puppeteers Crow T. Robot.  I say this is minor due to Trace doing the puppet work for Crow in the pilot episode, but since that was unaired this is his true debut on the series.  In the previous episode Crow was played by Josh, presumably because the Beeper puppet was scrapped and Trace was unavailable for filming.  And thus Beaulieu's soon brilliant and inimitable run with the Crow character begins as well.

As for the movie segments, I consider this a step down from Invaders from the Deep.  But that's partially because I find the film less imaginative and aesthetically interesting than the previous.  That said I found some good laughs early on when I noticed Joel and Crow in the first theater segment emphasizing physical reactions to the movie.  During the odd back-and-forth, drumbeat transitions Crow juts his head around in confusion, Joel looks around the theater to search for the disembodied voice of the Mysterons, and there's a cute moment where they try to dodge a landing spacecraft that's heading to their position.  This is pretty wonderful stuff for such an early episode.  However their enthusiasm for providing visual gags for the audience subsides when Servo enters the theater, to which they mostly seem content in watching the movie and commenting on select things.  Crow however does ride on reacting to the transition switch every time it occurs, making it perhaps the first running gag of the series.  We also get a mildly amusing gag where Joel fills Servo's head with popcorn because why not?

The first two episodes of Mystery Science Theater aired on Thanksgiving Day, 1988, cementing Thanksgiving as an important holiday for the series.  The show would later commemorate the holiday as "Turkey Day" and hold marathons of the series on Comedy Central, which continue to this day online via Shout Factory.  While Invaders from the Deep's host segments didn't acknowledge the holiday, Revenge of the Mysterons seems aware of the holiday it's airing on and provide us with a Thanksgiving theme for the host segments.  These segments mostly involve Joel trying to explain the holiday the best he can to the Bots, to minor amusement.  These segments usually go on a bit too long and end on a weak gag, such as Servo's self-awareness of segment padding.  There's also a particularly strange segment in which Joel tries to turn a seemingly clueless Gypsy into a canopy centerpiece.  We also have drawing hand turkeys and a final Thanksgiving dinner.

What can I be thankful for at Thanksgiving?  Well at the very least I can be thankful that we have this episode at all.  It was very closed to being locked away in a vault and never being seen by fan eyes again.  It's not particularly memorable, with a riff pace that dwindles by the end, but it's a piece of the show's history that has been re-established.  Maybe it's for completists only, but I definitely am one.

Average

Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume 6 DVD Retrospective

Release Date:  October 26th, 2004

Re-Release Date: October 17th, 2017

Buy Rhino Set Here!

Buy Shout Factory Set Here!

Features the following episodes:

Attack of the Giant Leeches

Gunslinger

Teenagers from Outer Space

Also featuring:

Mr. B's Lost Shorts

Plenty of people might be put off by the fact that these MST DVD volumes have only four episodes per set, making collecting the show on physical media a hobby of the die hard collector.  Even still, some of these sets sting just a bit more, offering only three episodes and a bonus DVD of shorts instead of another episode.  But if you were to only buy one of these sets that features a shorts disc then Volume 6 would get my vote.  A definite classic is included in Teenagers from Outer Space, while the other two episodes are quite jolly as well and the shorts disc offers up a strong selection (though I think Shorts Volume 2 is overall more well rounded).  Mike fans should be warned that this set is for the most part an all-Joel affair, as the second host of the series is only present for two shorts in the compilation disc.

Average Rating (episodes only, out of four):  3.33

Presentation of the episodes is pretty solid across the board.  Mr. B's Lost Shorts looks to be from a weaker master than the actual episodes, but all of the shorts themselves can be seen with the released episodes in later volumes in better condition.  Rhino's release of the set had no special features, however Shout Factory's re-release features an interview with Rick Prelinger, the archivist who provided MST with these short films.

The theme of this Rhino set is drive-in theaters.  The cover to this set is pretty gorgeous, with the silhouettes of Joel/Mike, Servo, and Crow sitting in a convertible and watching a movie screen with the MST logo on it.  On the inside we see theater marquee's for the "Satellite Drive-In Theater," which gives us an episode list as well as letting us know it stars Joel Hodgson, Tom Servo, and Crow.  The disc art replicates the cover image, though behind each disc is a theater screen with a still from each episode playing on it.  Moving on to disc menus, Attack of the Giant Leeches gives us a greyish-green look at the titular leeches lugging around a row boat, while footage from the film plays against the side of a cabin.  GunslingerOffers silhouettes of Servo and Crow wandering around in a color background that's reminiscent of the film's opening titles.  Mr. B's Lost Shorts gives us a classroom chalkboard while clips from the shorts play on a projector screen.  Finally Teenagers from Outer Space closes us out with a 3D shot of a flying saucer that looks to be flying over a desert (maybe even Mars).

Shout's set is standard for their re-releases.  It's in a slimmer DVD case and cover art is the theater silhouettes looking up at a centered MST logo against a starry backdrop.  Disc art is just a starry backdrop and the title of the episode.  Disc menus combine the two by having the theater seats at the bottom looking up at the episode title against a starry backdrop while the closing theme plays.

In presentation of the episodes, the sets run about even.  Rhino has the better packaging, while Shout offers up a bonus feature.  Personally I was very interested in Prelinger's occupation so I'd personally favor Shout's release, though for those who don't care I'd say pick whichever one is more opportune.

Mr. B's Lost Shorts (MST3K Special)

This shorts compilation brings the one MSTies have been asking for since the these compilations began:  Mr. B Natural.  It's the short so popular that they named the entire compilation after it.  Also included is Hired! Part 1, which wasn't yet on home video.  Part 2 is not included, since I imagine those who put this compilation together assumed you already had Rhino's VHS of Manos at the time.  Oddly enough, Design for Dreaming is a short we find double dipped, since it was also included in Shorts Volume 3.

The shorts selection is pretty solid.  Despite the popular opinion, Mr. B isn't a favorite of mine, however there are three more great selections making up for my lukewarm response to the opener:  Hired!, Design for Dreaming, and, in my opinion the real star of the set, Are You Ready for Marriage?  X Marks the Spot is pretty solid, while Mr. B and Johnny at the Fair bring the laughs but cover the rear.  Mr. B's Lost Shorts isn't the short compilation powerhouse that Shorts Volume 2 was, but there are some must sees here.

Mr. B Natural

Original Episode:  War of the Colossal Beast

The androgynous music sprite Mr. B Natural appears to a socially awkward boy named Buzz to turn him on (?!) to the wonders of music.  Mr. B gets him to toot is own horn (?!?!) by going out and buying a trumpet.  And with no practice necessary, he is awesome at it.  Mr. B then goes into hibernation, awaiting to be called upon once again.

This weird short has been a long time favorite among MSTies for being something of an oddity.  And it lives up to the oddity part.  It tries to make children interested in music by creating a magical character out of it, but this storyline comes off less encouraging than intended.  Mr. B is a bit of a high pitched annoyance and Buzz doesn't really experience much of a growth.  His story arch pretty much consists of buying a trumpet and reaping the rewards.

Remember kids, being instantly good at music makes you popular.

Like "Manos" The Hands of Fate, Mr. B Natural is one of those "discoveries" MST made.  When it aired, the fan base exploded with adoration for the ripe slice of WTF they had just watched.  It's one of those pieces of riffing that every fan had to see and love.  Being a fan from the Sci-Fi era I was very late to the party on Mr. B, but I had heard a lot about it, how weird it was, and how funny the riffing was.  Finally watching the short I found myself disappointed.  Maybe I built the thing too much in my head, but I think the short kind of overwhelms them.  At times they just react to it, and in the moment that's the right approach, but as the short goes on it becomes clear the majority of the short is reaction.  Reaction is great for a shock laugh, but repeating the shock over and over loses it's charm.  They ride on maybe one too many run-on gags in Mr. B Natural:  sexuality confusion over Mr. B's gender, Buzz being a loser, and just saying "Huh?" and "Oh wow" at it. And once Mr. B leaves the picture the riffing becomes a bit dead.  It's decently funny short, but not one of the greats in my book.

X Marks the Spot

Original Episode:  King Dinosaur

Lunkhead Joe demonstrates improper driving safety and winds up ascending into traffic safety heaven, where his driving habits are put on trial for final judgment.  Of course, this is all the gods and angels take into consideration before allowing one to pass on, which finds me pitying those poor schmucks born before the invention of the motorized carriage.  Without one, they must be stuck in limbo for all eternity!

The short does what it’s supposed to and drives home a point about driving safety.  It’s an important point to make and you can easily forgive the film for being a tad somber about it.  But there’s an inordinate nature of the production, taking place with angels and the like.  It doesn’t want to simply tell the audience what it’s stating, it wants to scare the crap out of you while doing so by taking you beyond the grave.  Shorts like these aren’t scary anymore, with the silly depiction of a crude afterlife, so anything it says gets lost.

Last Clear Chance does it better.  “Why don’t they look?”

X Marks the Spot is the first non-serial short of the series, and while it’s irritating that the series has now abandoned its second serial in a row, it’s for the best.  X Marks the Spot is a liberating experience for the series, because they’re given a program ripe with melodrama but with cheap and silly production values and an inflated sense of self-importance.  There’s plenty of opportunity to make fun of it and they jump on it.  It’s little wonder they rarely looked back on serials after this point (Undersea Kingdom notwithstanding).

Hired! (Part I)

Original Episode:  Bride of the Monster

Chevrolet's automobiles can't sell themselves, and they've got salesmen to do it!  But customers seem to be hesitant of buying the product, but it can't be that they're selling a commitment of thousands of dollars door to door.  It's the salesman's fault!  Or is it?

This vintage training film was split in two, with Part II being featured in "Manos" The Hands of Fate.  It's hard to get invested in this portion of the film because it distantly concentrates on failure without going into the portion that attempts to contextualize it and correct it.  This short doesn't quite go anywhere, but becomes better when viewed back to back with it's followup.

Hired! is a MST classic, though when most say this most point to Part II, which is not only hilarious but paired with one of the most infamous movies of the series.  It must be said that Part I is no slouch either.  It's not as funny as Part II, but it's quite fun and the riffing keeps great momentum with the short.  You can't go wrong with either in my book.

Design for Dreaming

Original Episode:  12 to the Moon

Did those salesmen from Hired! just not sell you on buying a Chevrolet car?  Well the good people at General Motors are here to try to sell you more!  In Design for Dreaming a dancing couple head to the FUTURE...of the past, and tour Motorama, looking at a bunch of neat gizmos and some shiny new automobiles.

There's not much meat on the bones of Design for Dreaming.  It's a song and dance number that's trying to sell product.  It's surreal and imaginatively shot, and the beat is catching.  Try not to get too weirded-out by it and you might enjoy yourself.

There is a companion short called A Touch of Magic.  This short was riffed by Rifftrax in their Summer Shorts Beach Party Live show.

Design for Dreaming is constantly in motion and giving Mike and the Bots different and weird imagery to work with.  This is pretty much T-ball, but a home run is a home run.  This short is the equivalent of a sugar rush and once the ball is rolling there is no stopping the energy in the room.  This is one of my favorite shorts in the series, with catchy musical numbers, eye candy, and hilarious riffs perfectly in tune with the material.

Johnny at the Fair

Original Episode:  The Rebel Set

This short subject is mostly just a package showing off the wonders of the fair, with a few celebrity cameos as well.  It’s showcased through the eyes of a little boy who has wandered away from his parents, bounces from stranger to stranger, while nobody really questions why this little brat is unattended.

I’m kind of a small-time short subject buff, someone who likes watching these little appetizers that used to play before the main feature.  Stuff like Johnny at the Fair ranks among my more disliked short genre, as they’re just hapless filming of things that really aren’t that special that are only heightened by pointless celebrity cameos.  The attempt at a storyline is a bit inane, showing inept parents not paying attention to their child and the little whippersnapper just kind of wandering around aimlessly.  It’s not that interesting.

As we open this short, Joel warns the bots to not “get too dark.”  This is perhaps more of a warning to the audience, as they really don’t seem afraid to riff in a dark place during this piece.  There’s a lot of jokes about the psychological trauma of being a lost child all the way to something as random as the assassination of John Kennedy.  Mostly what makes Johnny at the Fair worth watching is that Joel and the bots take an “innocent” story and adult it up, with references that can get political, critical, and even a bit blue.  On that latter subject, this short does feature one of my favorite riffs of the series, which sees a baby horse trying to nurse from his mother only to jerk its head away, prompting Crow to spout “Oops!  Sorry, dad!”

Are You Ready for Marriage?

Original Episode:  Racket Girls

BOING!

This educational short evaluates the relationships between man and woman and what it takes to build a successful marriage (my sister should have taken tips from it, as she was on her third husband by age thirty).  Larry and Sue plan to get married right after high school, but after their parents scoff at the idea they decide to elope.  Discussing it with marriage counselor Reuben Hall, they discover they might have a lot to learn about marriage compatibility.

Almost a companion piece for Is This Love?, Are You Ready for Marriage? isn’t nearly as melodramatic, a bit goofier, and features a moral hammered into the heads of all that watch it instead of acting as a discussion piece.  Like Is This Love?, the material here is to sway youngsters from getting married too soon, and likely didn’t work because nothing can overwhelm the power of a 50’s teenager who is squishy.  This particular short lends itself to riffing far better than Is This Love?, given the bad acting, lackluster “Just rappin’ with the kids” lecture, and overall overstaged oddness of the production.

One of the best shorts of the series.  Are You Ready for Marriage? (“Yeah, I’m sick of sex anyway.”) is a likable lunkhead of a film, and the boys hold nothing back on it.  They go after just about every aspect of it, specifically our two leads, enhancing their boneheaded peabrains into two of the most memorable characters ever featured Oon the show.  Plus the short gave us one of the best stingers the show ever had…

“IT’S GONE!”

“WHERE’D IT GO?!”

The DVD

Mr. B's Lost Shorts was released as the fourth disc in Rhino's Volume 6 collection.  There were no special features.

Shout Factory eventually re-released this volume with Shortsighted, an interview with Rick Prelinger, who is a short film archivist who provides both MST and Rifftrax with their various short films.  He discusses how he got into the archival business, how he makes a living off of it, and his love of Mystery Science Theater.

406-Attack of the Giant Leeches

Film Year:  1959
Genre:  Horror
Director:  Bernard L. Kowalski
Starring:  Ken Clark, Yvette Vickers, Jan Shepard
MST Season:  4
Featured Short:  "Undersea Kingdom:  Chapter One - Beneath the Ocean Floor"

The Short

This serial's about to get soggy!  It's the Undersea Kingdom!  Life under the sea has seemingly been discovered.  Is it the lost city of Atlantis?  A generic batch of gung-ho, rag-tag serial adventurers goes exploring, only to be attacked in the process.

Undersea Kingdom is more Commando Cody than Phantom Creeps.  And yet an attack from Atlantis seems a bit more colorful than a rocket man punching the space men over and over again.  I'm not entirely sure how Undersea Kingdom played out, because we saw a lot less of it than we did of Radar Men from the Moon, but this first chapter is daffy fun.  It won't win any converts into the serial fan club, but those who like them will enjoy this tasty spoonful.

The Movie

Produced by the mighty Corman sibling moguls, Roger and Gene, Attack of the Giant Leeches is pretty self explanatory based on just knowing who made it and its title.  A bunch of rednecks in Florida find themselves terrorized by giant leech people (GASP) where they are drug underwater and slowly drained of their blood for days.  Its up to people playing with matches and dynamite to do the American thing and blow them straight to hell.

About what you'd expect for a Corman funded film about blood-sucking monsters, Attack of the Giant Leeches doesn't hold any surprises.  It's a very small scale film that takes place in only a handful of locations.  Given how remote and tucked away the titular leeches are, it seems like it would be plenty easy to avoid them.  But no, people just keep walking right into their territory because we have to have some sort of body count.

Of minor note, the movie actually does offer a minor disturbing scene in which the leeches' victims, too weak to escape, are trapped in a cavern and fed upon at will.  It provides a situation that in a better movie could have been claustrophobic and haunting.  Attack of the Giant Leeches doesn't do a lot with it, but it gets points for providing an almost unsettling idea.  The movie on the whole is a bit of a dry bore full of unlikable characters.  Suck 'em dry, who cares.

Creature from the Black Lagoon this is not.

The Episode

Serials are back for the first time since they gave up on The Phantom Creeps in season two.  This time they choose Undersea Kingdom, a fantasy romp that gives them a lot of ripe cheese.  It's apparent how much more confident they are with this than the were with previous serials as they fire on all cylinders at such a rapid rate of funny that there are very few moments without a laugh.  However it must be said there is more event and less monotony in both the first and last chapters of just about any serial you can name, so the challenge of riffing such a thing has hardly presented itself.  The real hurdles would have been latter on, however they only riffed one more chapter before giving up on serials entirely.

The proceeding feature film portion isn't quite as lively and fun as Undersea Kingdom, but with a movie this dreary and dour the pace was always going to slow down.  Luckily Joel and the Bots are still jazzed up from the short and it's going to take more than a slow-paced public domain film to get them down!  They keep the mood fun, probably more fun than this movie deserved.  Even when the film gets dark the riffs stay light and playful, and while full on laughter doesn't quite ensue there is a constant stream of giggles put forth.  This riff is consistent and fun to watch.

The host segments lead off with an unexpected, and quite hilarious, part two to the final segment in Being from Another Planet, in which Joel has been attempting to shut off his clown simulation on the Hexfield for three weeks!  The clowns have since grown creepy and agitated, BUT THEY WANT TO LIVE!  This segment is a favorite of mine.  There's also a great song in this episode, "A Danger to Ourselves and Others," which keeps the lighthearted spirit of the theater mocking the stupidity of the film alive.  The other segments are more casual, but entertaining.  The Invention Exchange provides a movie-based gag where a leech is attached to Frank and grows to tremendous size, while the Insty-Adolescent Kit is more or less just an excuse to make teenager jokes (though I do love Servo's "I DON'T CARE!  I DON'T CARE!  I DON'T CARE!" as he enters the theater).

Attack of the Giant Leeches doesn't provide enough laugh-out-loud moments for me to consider it a season best, there's a lot of clever wit to the episode.  I'm impressed that they did this well with this particular movie because this could easily have been one to stumble on (much like the following episode, Killer Shrews).  Giant Leeches is an episode I don't think about often, but when I watch it I find myself enjoying it quite a bit.

Good

The DVD

This episode was released on Rhino's Volume 6 collection.  Picture and audio were both exceptional and there were no special features.  Shout re-released this volume also without special features.

The Undersea Kingdom short was featured on the Serial Variety Pack bonus disc with Volume XXVII, along with its sequel.

Hollywood After Dark (The Film Crew)

Film Year:  1968
Genre:  Drama
Director:  John Hayes
Starring:  Rue McClanahan and a bunch of other women you don't want to see strip

The Movie

Initially titled Walk the Angry Beach, Hollywood After Dark is the tale of a pre-Golden Girls Rue McClanahan who moves out to California to be an actress and gets sucked into the sleazy world of stripping instead.

Fueled by the mindset that anything involves sex is disgusting and all female body parts are evil entities of hellish desire, Hollywood After Dark finds itself being a bit hypocritical since it wants it's audience to look at the half-naked women and get mildly turned on by the sleazy voyeuristic presentation.  So I'm confused whether the film is pro or con on all of this.  Regardless, it's a lackluster drama with no real storyline to speak of.

I can't really say too much about Hollywood After Dark, because if I had anything to say about it then that would imply that it gave me any actual content to mull over.  It's softcore exploitation, with a bit of violence thrown out there in case any male gaze was wondering when lady parts aren't onscreen.  Nowadays I can easily access porn through the internet and violence by going to Wal-Mart on the weekend, so this movie offers me nothing.  Maybe it served a base purpose way back when, but now it's just trash and riffing fodder.

The Riff

I've always had a fondness for the Film Crew.  Their run was brief, but there was something very charming about this ill-fated riffing series.  What I particularly enjoyed was the working stiff approach, distancing from the sci-fi concept of Mystery Science Theater and the professional comedian personas of Rifftrax, and playing blue-collar characters just trying to make it through the day.  It's a premise we can relate to and I personally would have enjoyed seeing a bit more of it.

"Uh, did we order an ass?"
"Well I have a standing order, personally."

But moving on to the star of the show, the Crew is thrown into the shady world of nudity, rape, and violence that is Hollywood After Dark.  As riffing fodder, this movie has a lot going for it.  It's about nothing, has a lot of silent scenes filled with inane choreography to harp on, and gives us a bunch of unlikable characters to make fun of.  Rue McClanahan is zeroed in on especially, as they make no secret about how she's the last person they'd want to see nude.  They're aggressive on her, with lines such as "She's actually less sexy than when she was on The Golden Girls." and "Rue's McClana-CAN!"  But Rue's actually the least sleazy character in the movie, so as tough as they can be on her it's really because she's the only recognizable person here.  The dreary world this movie portrays needs to be lightened up, and the Film Crew does exactly that.

The host segments kind of ease us into the Film Crew "lore," so to speak.  The opening gives us some context about the guys working for a man named Bob Honcho who believes every film should have a commentary track, regardless of whether it's a knowledgeable one or not.  It also establishes one mid-film host segment called a "Lunch Break," which is pretty self-explanatory.  Today's Lunch Break has Bill trying to get an unenthusiastic Mike and Kevin to throw out ideas on how to improve their work performance.  The finale consists of Mike and Kevin wishing to reenact a scene from the movie on Bill where the villain's head is bashed by a lamp, but Bill (though surprisingly eager to go through with it) questions the validity of the scene.

Hollywood After Dark runs a bit more blue than most of Mystery Science Theater, and that might be due to the film's subject matter.  This release isn't for the kiddies, but riffing fans may like what they see.  This first direct to video offering is quite promising and quite funny.

Good

The DVD

Originally slated for release in 2005 by Rhino Home Video to help cater to demand for more MST product, The Film Crew actually ran into a snag when Jim Mallon considered the production of this direct to video series a competitor for MST's DVD sales and threatened to pull his license.  The Film Crew sat on a shelf, finished but unreleased, for a few years until Shout Factory purchased all four episodes in 2007, a point in time where Mike, Kevin, and Bill had already moved on to Rifftrax.

The presentation of Hollywood After Dark is a bit ugly.  The film itself looks okay, though the Film Crew segments are a bit hard on the eyes.  Filmed in widescreen but presented in non-animorphic standard video (probably to work better with the full screen movie), these segments are fuzzy and look washed out, as they cause a bit of eye strain.  It's almost a relief to get back to the movie.  The audio sounds soft as well, and contains a bit of a quickie dubbing job where the Film Crew's boss Bob Rhino is redubbed "Bob Honcho," to further eliminate the connection to Rhino.

The sole bonus feature is an extra host segment called "An Ode to Lunch."  This simply has Bill walking out and speaking a sonnet to his lunch.  It runs about a minute and a half and is decently funny.