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Weekend Discussion Thread: Stock FootageOur episode guide discussion focused on a movie with LOTS of stock footage and that’s a topic we’ve never gotten into, so let’s do it.
Let’s hear about your favorite/most memorable use of stock footage in a MSTed movie. And while we’re at it, are there any movies that didn’t stock footage where it might have helped? Discuss. For my favorite use of stock footage, I need only say two words: Hitler building. Have at it! 66 Replies to “Weekend Discussion Thread: Stock Footage”Commenting at Satellite News
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Brief, but hilarious, was the insertion of a scene from
Mole People into TWWWOB (where they find a giant cave with a city
while they’re going through a small cave) where it’s the girl in bondage
and captor having a few comments to make it “relevant.” Something about it
showing what a genius the professor was by experimenting with sentient beings.
Real Africa…Hollywood Africa!
“Stock footage is hell.” One of my favorite quotes from The Begining of the End. It must have been sort of a pain for cheap producers when B and W films went away. It destroyed their ability to use old war footage.
You want stock footage? Try King Dinosaur.
Look at the dinosaurs over there. Oh, and
let’s nuke the planet while we’re at it. We’re SCIENTISTS!
Hey, I’ve got a song about stock footage… it goes like this:
Dah dah, dah da da da: EAT IT MOVIE!!!!!!!!
Starfighters, for two reasons:
1. Enough refuelling stock footage that the guys actually run out of innuendo, and
2. The stock footage is at least as interesting as the “plot” (which is to say, not very much.)
The octopus in Bride of the Monster.
The first one that comes to mind are the model tanks, jeeps and planes vs. stock footage in Godzilla Vs. Megalon-“Real…. Fake…. Fakey…. Real…. Real fakey….” Especially as one of the model planes is used later as a model plane. Kinda surreal moment.
As for stock footage insertion, you could have all kinds of fun cutting away to clips that represent what the characters in Mitchell are thinking-John Saxon would have a hunter taking aim at a deer, Linda Evans would have money and bills and weed on the brain, Martin Balsaam dreams of some small Mexican seaside village far away from Mitchell and the mob, Mitchell thinks of beer and porn, of course, and Merlin Olsen always pictures Pick-Me-Up Bouquets. And the speedsuited FTD guy, sometimes.
You can do this with a lot of MSTed movies, so I may be back. :)
Invasion USA. Watched the non-MST version once for a college history class and realized that it is almost 50 percent stock footage.
Bobby @9:
A history class where they make you watch bad movies? Was your professor’s name, perchance, Dr. Clayton Forrester?
The dinosaur fights from “Robot Monster”. Because, really… what do they have to do with *anything* in that movie? There are no dinosaurs even mentioned at any other point in the flick; the fact that they use the footage *twice* is just icing on the cake.
And then, of course, there’s all the “Battlestar Galactica” footage from “Space Mutiny”…
Any film by Ed Wood has some good stock footage usage, so I have to go with the atomic explosion at the end of Bride of the Monster…
Who can forget the Hitler Building?
I’ll go with Starfighters also, but not refueling…
The Bob Dornan rescue sequence was traumatic (for viewers, of course) watching him ignite orange smoke bombs in the middle of a desert to hot, smooth jazz.
However, the destruction of the Christo installation was the best!
“It’s Gekko-Roman Wrestling!”
“It’s the USS Walter Payton!!”
The stock footage from “One Million Year B.C.” (Not to be confused with the remake starring Raquel Welch in a fur bikini) spliced into “Robot Monster” springs to mind.
Plus, I have to agree with the “Battlestar Galactica” footage put into “Space Mutiny.”
And how can anyone forget the Hitler Building?
Of course Space Mutiny goes without saying, which is probably the reason I’m the first to say it. Hooray for Battlestar Galactica!
Any movie that has Godzilla screaming “NOOOOOOOOOOOO!” and then jumping into the sea.
“Planet of the Prehistoric Women”: Football shaped space ship flying over miniature jungle- “FAKEY!” / Shot of real jungle from the air- “REAL!” / Shot of same space ship crashing into a puddle in the neighbor’s drive-way- “REALY FAKEY!”
The stock footage of a nuclear test explosion used in so many films (e.g., King Dinosaur) where you can see the exhaust trails from the rockets fired next to the bomb explosion as part of the test. Why would those be there in situation where the bomb was used against something rather than in a test? They wouldn’t be, but the film makers hoped you wouldn’t notice.
Then there’s the stock footage of captured V-2 tests done here in the US as part of our early post WWII rocket program, footage that was used in so many SF films (King Dinosaur, Rocketship X-M) to show a rocket lifting off (and reversed for landing!) in those films. In some cases, the model rocket used for some SFX shots in the film looks nothing like the V-2 stock footage used with it, making the stock footage really obvious.
The Lippert films from Season 2 MST3K are some of the most guilty of these types of problems because they relied so heavily on stock footage to pad out their running time.
The stock footage of the pilot ejecting in Riding with Death is awesome.
Mr. BIG and his use of atomic tests in The Amazing Colossal Man. Mr. Big again, and the use of the locust moovie in “The Beginning of the End” (not to mention all the war footage).
So much stock footage, so little time.
Swamp Diamonds – the alternating footage of the alligator swimming and the girlfriend in Corman’s swimming pool. Seamless editing?
Wow, no one’s mentioned “Manos” yet? That snake near the end of the movie is obviously stock footage. The give-away is that those few frames have a much higher picture quality than the rest of the film.
I must also throw in on all the footage from Battlestar Galactica, but only because it still bugs me that M&TB let it all go by without acknowledging what it was from. Maybe none of them watched the original series? I was in grade school then, so it was required viewing for me, but they, being 10-15 years older, probably had better things to do with their evenings.
Real Africa!
Hollywood Africa!
-Leech Woman
were there even any original scenes in ‘King Dinosaur”? and as for ‘Space Mutiny,’ would Lt. Lamont’s reappearance on the bridge post mortem be considered as some bizarre stock footage experiment gone horribly wrong, or was the director assuming that the audience had fallen asleep or walked out and therefore never noticed?
When Fingal was “doppeled” in “Overdrawn At The Memory Bank.”
How about Lost Continent? Which used footage from Robot Monster and Rocketship X-M.
Ed Wood is the king of stock footage. Of course, his finest misuse of stock footage is the use of the buffalo in Glen or Glenda?, but the octopus in Bride of the Monster is pretty good too.
I also enjoy the fight scene between Ed Wood and Conrad Brooks during the Sinister Urge counts, since it was leftover footage from another Wood project.
When Trumpy “does magic things” showing Tommy different stock footage shots through his telescope, I cringe. Terrible.
Stock footage nuclear explosions abound as noted @20 above. The most memorable (worst) use of the nuclear explosion — the ridiculous ending of “Cave Dwellers,” which also has what appears stock hang-gliding footage as well.
Okay, favorite odd/nonsensical bit of stock footage, and nobody’s mentioned Lizard Interruptus, from “Eegah”?
(“What? Can I HELP you?”)
As previously noted, Ed Wood raised the inappropriate use of stock footage into an art form. GLEN OR GLENDA was indeed his masterpiece –Two-thirds of the movie feels like he found a clip he liked and wrote something to try to tie it into the rest of the film– but I also like in, I think, THE VIOLENT YEARS, when he simulates a car crash when a car drives offscreen, glass is superimposed being hurled back onscreen, and a crash-noise is dubbed in. Was he the one who also had a car go off a cliff, transform into a completely different car, roll down a hill, and burst into flame?
And we can’t forget the insertion of THE MOLE PEOPLE into THE WILD WILD WORLD OF BATWOMAN. “You got your Mole People in my Batwoman!” “You got your Batwoman in my Mole People!”
I think of the giant paper towel rolls on the giant spinning dish in “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians”, and other related footage to show how they would monitor UFOs. It helps that I have no idea what that stuff is…
And oh yes, Daisy and the other drunk animals.
“You got your Mole People in my Batwoman!”
“You got your Batwoman in my Mole People!”
I think they coulda spiced up “Hamlet” by superimposing that famous footage of running buffalo that Ed Wood used in “Glen or Glenda” over any scene in which Hamlet pauses to think. Also, some stock footage of tanks and machine guns during the sword fight would have been lovely.
It makes no sense, but perhaps some stock footage of shy ghosts in fab costumes would’ve helped out “Hamlet”–it would help explain why the ghost of Hamlet’s father refused to be filmed while talking.
Speaking of stock footage used in previous episodes, one of my favs, “Lost Continent”, started with stock footage used in Rocketship XM!
“Oh no!”
“Seen it!”
My favorite is the stock footage of refueling planes that made it into Santa Claus Conquers the Martians… and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Stopped Worrying and Loved the Bomb.
Everyone always forgets it in comparison to the Epic Refueling Sequences from the Starfighters.
I still can’t believe they never mentioned anything about ‘A Night to Remember’ being used in ‘The Castle of Fu Manchu’. Not even one Titanic crack. First time I saw it I was like, “Wait, isn’t that a Titanic movie?” And I still don’t get the point of it in the movie.
Also gotta love the opening credits for ‘The Pod People’ having been taken from ‘Galaxy Invader’. Then again, the title ‘The Pod People’ has nothing to do with the movie either, as Forrester notes.
In OVERDRAWN AT THE MEMORY BANK when Fingel gets doppled, and there’s all that anteater business…..funny stuff.
There should of been some stock footage used in ATTACK OF THE THE EYE CREATURES, maybe they could’ve cut to a movie that was made by people WHO JUST DID CARE?
Let’s not forget in “Jungle Goddess”: as George “Superman” Reeves and Ralph “Dick Tracy” Byrd are landing the plane, stock footage is used featuring the shadow of what is clearly a helicopter–not a plane!
Also, as they looking at the ground from the plane, through binoculars, the stock footage used in the effect is shot at ground level!
There’s a similar situation at the end of the “Amazing Transparent Man,” as the federal agents are looking at the exploded house site, the stock footage keeps changing its point of perspective!
The Blood Waters of Dr. Z. It was stock footage that was relevant to the villain’s narration.
“Sargassum, the weed of deceit. Segassum fish . . . “
Special mention has to go to the nature stock footage in “MANOS” that’s better lit, better framed, and better focused than the entire rest of the movie.
I have a DVD of newsreel stock footage from late WWII aircraft, mostly strafing Nazi supply trains, factories, and airfields. Some of that was used in “Invasion, USA,” and it is disquieting if you are paying attention and notice that a) it’s real and b) showing horrific damage. The original was released with narration by a young Ronald Reagan, and by itself makes for a much better movie than Invasion.
I can’t think of any that haven’t been mentioned but I DO love how the footage that runs under the opening and ending credits of both Cave Dwellers and Pod People is from competely different movies. And as a bonus, Rifftrax riffed the movie from the opening of Pod People which I think opens some weird, trans-dimensional doorway allowing Trumpy and the other alien creature into our universe which makes it possible for the movies to exist in a never-ending causality loop.
I’d like to see stock footage of a chimpanzee washing a cat (look for it on You Tube – it really exists) randomly throughout “The Dead Talk Back.”
Anybody who mentioned the BG footage in “Space Mutany”,; I clearly remember the last fifteen minutes of the pilot movie being interrupted by the announcement that President Jimmy Carter and Anwar Al-Sadat and Menachem Begin, had reached a peace treaty between Egypt ans Israel. I said to my parents (I was 16) it was purposely done because they knew the largest audience was watching.
Also, did South Africa even know Battlestar Galactica existed?
Maybe the folks at MST3K were so Counter Culture that they didn’t want to remark on the BG footage.
Yep, the BG footage. First time I saw that I think I lost a few brain cells trying to comprehend it.
The baking soda submarine my brother had when we were kids was more realistic than the one in DANGER! DEATH RAY. “Don’t go up there. You’ll turn into a toy.”
If the producers had waited a few years there would have been plenty of stock footage of helicopters being dumped into the South China Sea.
Don’t look now but I think my age is showing.