This week’s thread about non-sensical lines got me thinking about things that made the movies MST did truly cringeworthy (as opposed to being arduous because they were boring). Even things that get riffed can penetrate and affect the viewer, causing there to be some basis for Dr. F’s experiment to work. The hurtful way that horrid kid in Hobgoblins pretends to be a rock star in the opening minutes does it to me.
I’ve still got to go with the peeper privates in “Attack of the the Eye Creatures.”
Keep those suggestions coming!
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Droppo. Just. . . Droppo.
:alien:
And how can I forget Krankor & his chicken men brigade & their inadequate wardrobe….
…Please, HOW can I forget?! Somebody help me here!
Quest of the Delta Knights, I find the entire portrayal of Leonarda da Vinci pretty cringeworthy, but especially the point where he’s trying to act like a big shot, in front of a child, by putting the whore in her place. What makes it worse is the actor just refuses to even try and sell the scene (good on him, I guess? though he probably just lacks any talent), so he comes off as just some sort of immature jerk with no real reason to want to put Athena (which i guess is too hard to say, so she instructs everyone to call her just ‘thena. talk about pointless.) back into slavery.
johnny at the fair. the kid wonders about the fair and no one seems to care that a kid is by themselves. also anything that tries to use racial humor to get a laugh always gets me.
Currently watching Robot Monster. I know! The whole movie! lol But how about the part where there are suddenly gator/lizard and stop motion dinos going at it!
“I had a pretty MIIind!”
In fact, pretty much all of Girl in Gold Boots is cringeworthy: the stereotypical drunk father figure, the lame currency jokes, the even lamer dune buggy ride bridge, the drug kingpin, the drug theft plot, and to cap it all off the cheesy morality-play ending in which everything works out because good always wins over evil.
Racket Girls. All of it, especially Peaches’ roadwork. And the gym. And Rita’s passionate speech about besmirching the purity of the sport. OK, all of it.
Then, Sinister Urge. All of it, especially Jean Fontaine’s outfits, which my wife has a difficult time watching. And the little perv skulking in the bushes. And the Irving Klaw wannabe with the oriental screen on the wall. And the dialog: “Pretty kid.” “Doesn’t look much like a kid now.” “Maybe she grew up in that moment of truth.”
OK, all of it.
You know, I wish you hadn’t brought this topic up. I have a sinister urge to take a bath in kerosene to get rid of the shame.
@#7 (Your New Best Friend) — Ah, Robert Easton: to me he’ll always be Klingon Judge from Star Trek VI.
The first thing to come to mind is JC strangling Paisley to death in The Sidehackers. The whole movie is so ugly and depressing that I kept it out of my regular rotation for a good seven years, but I recently watched it again, and I still couldn’t bring myself to watch that scene. It’s one of those moments (all too frequent when it comes to MSTed movies, it seems) where I wish I could leap into the screen and punch a character in the face.
The baby oil. All I’m gonna say.
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Here are a couple from the shorts;
THE SELLING WIZARD the model with leg bruises that panty hose could not cover.
UNCLE JIM’S DAIRY FARM I thought the part when the country cousin was explaining how they ensure fresh clean milk by wiping the cows teats off with a filthy rag hanging on a nail really made me cringe.
About wiping the cows teats off with the rag…
Now you know why General Ripper drinks only distilled water, or rainwater, and only pure-grain alcohol.
Why, do you realize that 70 percent of YOU is water.
Every character from Future War that wasn’t the skinny Belgian idiot or Sister Ann…
How about Tormented, when Tom the overrated jazz pianist/killer tells Sandy, Meg’s younger sister, she’s the other woman in her life. Then again, she seems to be interested in marriage more than the typical nine-year old.
Or Joel being a bit too interested in Mr. B Natural? That really worried the bots.
off topic
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LOL, love that @65!
Joel:[whoozy]”Oh yeeaahhh…”
Servo:JOEL!
Puma Man flying like a moron.
No one’s mentioned Jim Stafford’s singing in “Riding With Death”, particularly that creepy, borderline homoerotic “Thank You Sam” number at the end?
I cringe right along with Servo when Stafford tries (and fails) to get that high note. Ugh…
And another thing, Agent for H.A.R.M. Just… all of it. Smarmy hero, women as sexpots and/or bimbos, and one very squicky manner of death.
the wild world of batwoman at the end with the girls dancing. there was no point to that. as tom said, END, END!
I’ll second Agent For H.A.R.M. When our “hero” first meets the sex kitten, as well as the end just before she’s officially arrested are just soooo distressing to watch. I mean, he’s just so much older than her, that I can’t help but just cringe and think “ewwwww”! Of course at the same time I’m thinking “I’d like to get me some of that, with the exception of the attempted murder!”
A couple that haven’t been mentioned (I think):
At the beginning of Merlin’s Shop of Wonders where it briefly becomes a Lifetime movie as two women discuss infertility. It isn’t the subject matter that is the problem. The dialogue is just so bland, forced, and whiny.
– At the end of 501 Warrior of the Lost World when the woman from the Star Trek movie makes out with the Paper Chase guy for at least 45 minutes, if not longer. That and anytime that horrible motorcycle says anything.
– Pretty much every performance in Angels Revenge is cringe inducing. I’ll cut Jack Palance some slack. I find myself rooting for him. Same thing in Outlaw. Hope the scotch was worth appearing in that turkey.
But I think Warrior of the Lost World wins the cringe award
re 64.
What you wrote actually made me think of something that I kind of liked about Future Wax. I like that it has the two huge roomates, without making a big deal out of the fact that they are huge guys. Unlike in ep 206 when the fat people are there just to make fun of them, here the fat people are there for no reason at all. Sometimes there are big people in the world and they can exist without having their hugeness being a plot or character device. They just are. Unless I am forgetting large parts of the movie from that episode. Which is entirely possible. And this fact didn’t really help the movie not be a boring turd anyway.
A Date with your Family. Creepy simulacrum family tries to approximate human interactions with hopefully unintentional incestuous undertones.
Great topic, this one. To many to mention but I’ll go with:
Teri’s underwear scene in Giant Spider Invasion.
The Waitresses sagging hooters in the same.
Cousin Billy in the same.
Aw hell, the whole movie.
And Mr. B Natural’s dancing numbers. Noooooooooo!!!
@73 – They are ridiculously detailed with describing the flavor of ice cream they have though, which always makes me laugh. He describes it (I think Mocha Almond Fudge?)lovingly and in such a genteel manner.
Since it hasn’t been mentioned (or I missed it) – poor sweet Carrie (maybe one of the sweetest MST3Ks characters ever) getting strangled (and possibly worse) by Jesse in The Girl in Lover’s Lane. The tone of that movie is all over the place – Sunday picnic by the lake… city full of roughnecks and hookers… cheery mom and pop diner… psycho stalker with clearly vile intentions… kindly old pop who will give a drifter a chance… drunk old lout who possibly abuses her daughter….
It’s an infuriating mix and I see why they felt the need to end follow-up that experiment with a re-write of the ending.
Ugh. Even thinking about The Girl in Lover’s Lane makes me mad. How vicious to make such a kind, innocent character and then put her through such pointless suffering. And for what? A poorly acted, poorly written crummy movie. It makes me appreciate directors and writers who can actually pull off dark and bleak stories without making them seeming cheap and manipulative.
@77 The worse did happen to poor Carrie. I found the uncut movie on YouTube and it does show Jesse grabbing her and starting to kiss her (Carrie was apparently afflicted with the same “Don’t bother running from danger that the cast of The Creeping Terror had), and later on when that guy tells Danny and the truck driver what happened in Sherman he clearly says Carrie was raped and murdered. Those words get riffed over in the MSTed version. So if you really want to be infuriated it’s right here: http://bit.ly/1C6HiZL
I know this has been covered elsewhere, but the gun joke in reference to Hunter S. Thompson (in Hobgoblins) just seems tacky now. I know it wasn’t so when it was written, but man, unfortunate foretelling, there.
Even heavily edited, The Incredible Melting Man is hard to watch. Any of it.
And just be glad they cut the attempted rape scene from Zombie Nightmare (I know there’a also one in Sidehackers, but I’ve never seen the uncut version of that, so I can’t attest to just how completely inappropriate and ill-advised it is).
Pretty much all of Manos. I just don’t understand how turning young girls into sex slaves is funny.
Wow, so many people don’t agree that it’s wrong to treat children that way (See 10). That’s sad. It really is. I don’t know if people should be ashamed, but it is sad.
@77 – Thanks for the information, I think.
The one in “Time Chasers” where Crow mentions Thomas Jefferson “doing time” makes me cringe a bit.
Though also, considering what happens in Robot Monster is all in that boy’s head – he imagines his older sister having sensual banter with the one guy, then kidnapped and ‘attacked’ by Ro-man…let alone the death of his younger sister. That boy ‘just ain’t right in the head!’
I know this makes me kinda’ weird, but I actually crave the cringeworthy in MSTied movies and gravitate toward it: Dr. Cortner’s body hunt and the stripper catfight in Brain That Wouldn’t Die; Puma Man’s moronic flying; the Bellarian priestesses playing with a cheap electric party light from Spencer’s Gifts in Space Mutiny; the Master’s child bride in Manos; Paper Chase Guy kissing Persis Khambatta in Warrior Of The Lost World; Lloyd Bridges hitting on the woman astronaut in Rocketship XM; pretty much every scene John Agar was ever in; the peeping-tom Air Force guys and the oily drifters in Attack Of The The Eye Creatures… god, I love it. I love it.
littleaimishboy says:
September 20, 2014 at 5:08 pm
…But of all the squicky bits in A.R. I still think Arthur Godfrey playing HIMSELF as a squicky old perv (“I’m having a party in my room. All the big stars in Vegas will be there. Come up around 2 a.m.”) is the squickiest moment in MST history.
Oh, god, yeah; I totally forgot about that. Hell, I was cringing when he first appeared on the screen, looking drunk off his ass, clapping along with the band arhythmically, looking about ready to fall off his chair: “Somebody stick a ukelele under his tongue, quick!”
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Oh, and how could we forget that fop who plays the Devil in Out Of This World? Every time that guy opens his mouth, it’s “eeeewwwwwww, yyyyeeeessss…”
“I’ll win a Tony one day!”
“I’ll do community theeaaahhh-taaahhhhhh…!”
Peggy Weber’s underwire overwire power bra in “The Screaming Skull”.
I also have to name something from “The Incredible Melting Man” … not anything that happens in the movie, but the host segments. I’m aware that they were prompted by the Brains’ experiences with Hollywood during the making of “MST3K: The Movie”, and I’m sure the segments were cathartic for them to an extent. But the first time I saw the episode, unaware of all that backstory, I thought the host segments were visceral and angry and a bit off-putting. I enjoy them a bit more today, but I still find them uncomfortably at odds with the tone of (most of) the rest of the series.
Actually the “Good and the beautiful” skit during Phantom Planet makes me cringe now.
Anna Nicole Smith is dead.
Tawny Kitaen beat the crap out of her husband.
In hind site these may NOT have been the best examples of beautiful.
So I’ll make my own up: A plate of fettucine alfredo and a picture of Scarlett Johanssen. Good, beautiful, and current.
Hey, the previous would make for a good discussion topic!
Agree. And what about a SaladWorks combo of salmon salad and
vegetarian Chili, served by Angelina Jolie (good, substantial,
and proceeds going to adoption of needy children).
Re: Agentmom.
Well in all fairness, most riffed movies were already at least a decade old by the time MST3K got hold of them so the ‘kids’ referenced were no longer kids.