First shown: 6/27/98
Opening: Unintentional on-turning
Intro: M&TB mistreat Pearl’s couch, and soon regret it
Host segment 1: Crow presents: “Let’s Talk Women!”
Host segment 2: Bobo calls Crow’s crisis hotline
Host segment 3: Pearl is only briefly fooled by Mike’s cutouts
End: Servo has solved the Rick Sloane problem…or has he?; Pearl expresses her disappointment
Stinger: The hobgoblins go for a ride
(200 votes, average: 4.52 out of 5)
Loading ...
• Wow. Well, there are bad movies, there are really bad movies, and then there are bad movies like “Hobgoblins.” It’s one of those movies where somebody is sure to say “even the riffing couldn’t save it.” If nothing else, it’s memorable. The riffing is as good as it’s been all season and the segments are all pretty strong, and all that adds up to a great episode.
• Paul, who was doing these a lot at this point, offers thoughts here.
• References.
• Producer Rick Sloan famously lobbied to get this movie on the show, something that didn’t happen often.
• Sloan revisits the movie in this video.
• The whole “on-turning” thing is great, and Mary Jo, especially, does a very funny bit when she when gets turned on.
• The intro is also a gem. We can’t have nice things.
• Crow, it’s pronounced “cerberus,” not “cerebus.”
• Among the more memorable credit sequences, a topic we discussed a few weeks ago, is the opening credit sequence, in which Mike is forced to corral the bots as they attempt to flee the movie.
• In segment one, Mike is reading Dickens’ “Bleak House” at the scene opens, while Tom is reading a Richard Scary book “What Do People Do All Day.”
• That’s Beez in the grainy photo Crow shows during segment 1.
• I like that the TV says “Stony.”
• Once funny, now dead references: JFK Jr.; Hunter Thompson.
• I was completely taken in by segment 2. Never saw the twist coming.
• Is my disk defective or does the sound cut out during the door sequence after segment 2?
• Naughty riff: “You’re the expert on that.”
• The run of “parking” riffs just gets funnier and funnier.
• Segment 3 is particularly funny to me because of the reaction of Brain Guy, Pearl and Bobo. Reminds me a bit of some comment threads… 
• I wonder if Rick Sloane began to regret offering this movie, after the infamous “interview” at the end of the movie.
• The closing bit is probably the weakest of all the segments, but even that one is pretty funny.
• Fave riff: “Aha! And what brisk witticism will this chappie have to offer?”
I have to say this is one of my favorite episodes of the later years. It’s often been said that the worse the movie, the better the riffing – and this movie fails so spectacularly on ALL levels that it must have seemed like Christmas morning for Mike and the bots. The host segments are pretty funny, and the cardboard character sketch still leaves me and my friends laughing. I can honesty say I have all due respect for the MST3K crew – had I been in on their writing/screening sessions I would probably have just been staring, mute, at this train-wreck of a movie getting progressively worse and worse onscreen. Bravo for sticking it out, and for delivering one memorable MSTie…
The secret origin of the on-turning bit:
http://www.mst3kinfo.com/guide/ep706.html
For me, this was a “lost” episode of sorts, because I had a friend tape it for me and I didn’t get the tape until several months after the episode actually aired. When I actually sat down to watch it, I was baffled in the best possible application of that word. The riffing’s amazing, the segments are strong. The movie…the movie is one of those so historically bad that it cements a place in the show’s history. I think the Manos comparison gets tossed around a lot, so I won’t use it. Instead, Hobgoblins makes its own milestone, becoming an easy yardstick for movie quality in the Sci-Fi era.
every time i see this episode i myself am tempted to give Rick Sloan a swift kick to the shin. and the sad thing is if this movie only had better actors, sound effects, cinemetography, coordination, editing, puppetry,soundtrack, scriptwriting and catering it might not have been as bad as it was.
Fun fact: the Club Scum M.C. is Daran Norris, who has gone on to be a prominent voice actor (Spiderman, Fairly Oddparents) and was Cliff the attorney on Veronica Mars.
Absolutely one of the best episodes ever. It may seriously be the worst film they’ve ever done. Incompetent science fiction films are one thing, but an unfunny comedy is a monster all its own. Also, segment two provides one of my favorite lines: “Watch out now, you little doodad!”
Given that Gremlins was made a few years before this,
it’s a pity that TS didn’t ask Rick Sloane whether
he made his film to profit off the earlier film’s
popularity.
“So, Rick Sloane, is it true that you employed Chinese
children as slave labor to make rip-off Gremlin puppets
for your cinema that would help U.S. army recruiting?”
“Yes. That’s a very insightful observation. I had hoped it
would be the first in a long series of horror/army
recruitment films, not unlike the WWII ‘Why We Fight’ series.”
The words “bad movie” and “worse movie” are relative. If the MST movies were any good, they wouldn’t be MST worthy.
As for HOBGOBLINS, it fits right between my first two quotes, so it’s pretty good! Crow’s segment on “Women” makes the entire episode one of the best.
“Can we make a point next time that films need to be made by film makers?” A funny line from Crow.
This movie was of course painful to watch but with Mike and the bots, it was downright funny! They earned their paychecks that week!
Crow: Can we have a law that in the future, films have to be made by filmmakers?
Oh Hobgoblins, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways…
Yes, this film is offensive, not only to women, but also to men who love women. And worse, it offends those who love Gremlins, and its excellent sequel. But the greatest offense of Hobgoblins is that it was all intentional. No complaints about a low budget or studio interference apply here. This was this the film “auteur” Rick Sloane set out to make. Not since Attack of the Eye Creatures have we seen a movie where the director clearly hated ALL of his characters. Only here, he “did care” about the final product: the audience are meant to hate them too.
Some positives:
• The notion of alien creatures manufacturing a human’s deepest desires is a good one. Despite having seen this episode a few times, I’m always surprised when the phantom characters disappear. But I’m left wondering what the Hobgoblins motives really are…
• Amy stripping down to her Jane Fonda workout gear. Gotta agree with Roadrash, she’s a “HIT.”
• The Club Scum house-band: “Basque separatists” or not, The Fontanelles sound pretty good to me, a pleasant goth-new wave hybrid with aggressive guitars. There is a torrent featuring three songs (including “Kiss Kicker 99″ and “Passion Kills” from the movie) that a MST fan posted from his mint vinyl copy of the band’s 7″ single.
………
At the beginning of 1008 – Final Justice, Servo says “Greydon Clark, the producer of Hobgoblins, we’re doomed!” but IMDB does not support this statement. Any suggestions as to how this rumor got started?
………
Four stars from me: 3 for the riffing, plus 1 for “combat pay” for the boys having to endure such a brutal affront to good taste. Plus, the host segments hit me where it hurts:
• Robert Palmer’s “I Didn’t Mean To Turn You On” is a legitimately good song, catchy in that “Prince/Jam & Lewis/Minneapolis 80′s electro-funk” kind of way. Mariah Carey covered it in Glitter but don’t hold that against the late, great Palmer.
• The “Let’s Talk Women” short film by Crow is a MaSTerpiece. One of Bill Corbett’s finest moments.
• The couch-jumping bit is funny too. Crow: “Watch you guys I’m gonna do something cool. You can see my legs!” “We can’t have nice things,” is called-back to in CT’s Danger On Tiki Island by Mary Jo herself.
Sampo alluded to this possibly now-tasteless riff: “It’s not that complicated.” JFK Jr. could do it.
Favorite riff:
Crow: Just as long as Demi Moore doesn’t come out and start shaking her saline bags.
This is easily the most misanthropic movie they did. EVERYONE is either a jerk, a slut, or a whiny loser. No one is a redeemable character, and no movie (except maybe Batwoman, Maybe) seems to both loathe its characters and its audience as much.
Little Trivia: Daran Norris is one of the few people to escape this film with a respectable acting career. He was the awesomely sleazy DA Cliff McCormack on Veronica Mars — a role he knocked out of the park every time he was on. Anime nerds might recognize his voice as Cowboy Andy on Cowboy Bebop, or Vincent in the movie.
The other one is Tami Bakke (aka Tamara Clatterbuck) who did some soap operas afterwords. She was the horrific phone sex operator, and yes that really is her voice. My respect for her grew infinitely once I saw the little documentary they made about the film — she’s one of those who can laugh at the experience. Maybe it just keeps her from crying.
About the only thing that barely makes “Hobgoblins” tolerable is the fact the people behind it clearly weren’t taking it seriously. If this had been played straight, it would’ve been insufferable.
The riffing is great, and the host segments are top notch. I didn’t see the twist in Bobo’s call coming, either. And who was the lucky so-and-so who ended up with the cast cut-outs at the prop auction.
And the bad feelings towards the 80′s continue: “It’s the 80′s! Do a lot of coke and vote for Ronald Reagan!”
Sorry Mark, I didn’t mean to duplicate trivia — I’m just a little slow on the uptake today.
And “Fishpicker!!” is easily my favorite MST song. “Chord, Chord, Chord, Chord, Other Chord” is my favorite riff of the show.
I love the fear M&tBs have at the start of the flick, and then at the first scene – “a badly lit warehouse, I feel better already”. That’s the spirit we like to see!
The opening segment, aside from being ridiculous amounts of fun, shows off one of my favorite transitional elements of the show: Though the bots can’t express facial emotion, when Mike does something, in this case intense worry, it somehow reflects in the bots’ unemotional faces.
We get another “Doc” from Crow. I absolutely love all documentaries or reports (as done in pre-Sci Fi days) that are horribly inaccurate. Great mustache, Crow!
It seems as though every episode now has a bit that further endears Bobo as a lovable simp. Great bait and switch bit.
Gotta love Pearl calling Bobo and Observer, Pinky and Brain.
This episode truly is terrifying. It’s one thing when the movies are just goofy on their own (often unaware of it), but this is one of those movies that are so uncompromisingly incompetent that even with the absolutely fantastic riffing it’s still painful. Starting from the writing it seems as though it was penned by a forty year old who just learned English five years ago, has the mind of a twelve year old, and was recovering from a recent head first fall down the stairs. In fact this is a go-to movie to explain; just because you really, really want to make movies for a living, doesn’t mean you should. The only redeeming quality it has is that beginning to end it is an exercise in how not to make a movie.
BTW – Rick Sloane’s wiki entry is very revealing and comforting with such facts as:
While in film school at Los Angeles City College, Sloane was singled out among his peers by a number of instructors and deemed the least talented student in the bunch. His directing teacher dropped him from the class on the first day, weeding out people that didn’t belong in film making. He waited a year for another teacher to take the course.
Favorite riffs
Crow: The true story of Neil Pert.
Tom: So what, now he becomes a Jedi Knight? Why am I sitting here?!
Crow and Tom crying and trying to run away from the movie.
Mr. McCreedy: This is what I was telling you about. (holding a gun)
Mike: Used it to kill Arch Duke Ferdinand.
Mr. McCreedy: Did I ever tell you what I did when I was in the Army?
Tom: I was Tokyo Rose.
Crow: Sentence fragments… just phrases.
Mr. McCreedy: There’s been an accident at the studio.
Crow: We made Hobgoblins.
Finnias #10 – Cool! I’m glad someone else thinks that the “Pig Liquor” song from the movie is actually decent. I love the agressivie guitaring and lead-in harmonics. I must find that torrent.
“I had the popular Jerry Orbach hairdo back then….”
“Paint my muscle car PRUNE COLOR, please!”
“They’re having a ‘girl’s’ night.”
Meet the Hobgoblins! Frankie, Sniffles, Bounce-Bounce and the Claw!”
One of the greatest episodes-EVER.
@Kenneth Morgan (#12): And the bad feelings towards the 80’s continue: “It’s the 80’s! Do a lot of coke and vote for Ronald Reagan!”
Yes! I completely forgot to mention my favorite line! I was born in the ’80s, and for me, the combination of the dancing, inspid music and Mike’s lyrics summarize the whole decade.
If anyone ever says to you, MST was never any good after Josh/Joel/Frank/Trace left, just show’em Hobgoblins.
Favorite Riff “Yuk, there’s a girl touching me”.
Despite many years of searching, I have been unable to find a Casio rake. Those things were amazing.
Oh, I forgot to mention that the scene in Club Scum when Pixie finds out the kids are underage and summons Roadrash, who asks how many fake ID’s they need, is actually very funny!
Anyone else think the first junior security guard (who dies as he lives his rock and roll fantasy) looks like Mike McCready from Pearl Jam? This is odd since he died while performing music AND the elder security guard is named “McCreedy”. Just a thought.
1998 might just have given me my fondest memories amidst interminable suckitude of the ‘90s. I finished my first year of college, and returned to my first job at the local family-run dairy/restaurant, where a milk crate full of half-gallons of ice cream gave me my first concussion. That last bit happened a few hours after I saw the X-Files movie…I think. I also rented half of the old Godzilla movies (including Rodan and Mothra), and in the wake of what was likely the best season of any Transformers cartoon ever, Kenner was churning out the best Beast Wars toys ever, and we all got to enjoy what was even more likely MST3K’s most consistently excellent short-season ever the whole summer long.
But was it Season 9 as a whole that defined the time? Not quite. For anyone who had even the most passing interest in MST3K 12 years ago, the summer belonged to HOBGOBLINS.
The legend spread at an alarming rate. Whenever the MST came up in conversation, the phrase, “Oh my GOD, did you see when they did that movie ‘Hobgoblins’ a few weeks ago?”, was spoken no less than a minute after. As great as the previous season had gotten at the end, it seemed that here the Brains had finally tackled their first true Maw-of-Hell caliber movie of the SciFi era.
And still, after all of our discussion of it in other threads, I wonder if it really was that much worse than any other flick they tackled in those 3 seasons, or if it was partly Hobgoblins hitting me below the belt. You see, I naturally discussed it mostly with people around my age, with childhood memories of the ‘80s. Memories which I believe, if precious to said person, it dredged up, spray-painted neon colors, defecated upon, and reburied in a variety of humorous positions. Thanks to said Beast Wars reigniting my Trans-passion and Toonami rerunning an astounding variety of other beloved cartoons from just after Reagan’s lift of the great ban on toy-tie-ins, Hobgoblins didn’t have to dig very far either, and hundreds of thousands of my generation who saw this must have felt the same. To this day, for about 24 hours after each viewing of #907, I can’t quite clearly recall any movie, TV show, or toy franchise that I really loved back then.
I’m also not sure just how isolated this effect was to children of the ‘80s. The intro segment of M&TB regressing to childhood to jump on the couch in their feety pajamas until they’re abruptly traumatized by the announcement of the movie channels this sentiment so strongly that I doubt it’s a coincidence; if the Brains didn’t feel it themselves, they must have realized it would have that effect on a lot of us.
And yet, as we all know from our favorite show, any such defilement of a facet of pop-culture is in some small part a celebration of it as well. I’ve sung “…Do a lotta’ coke, aaaand vote for Ronald Reagan…” during several viewings of the Junkion dance party in Transformers: The Movie, and the first time I watched this with a group (my college comic creator club), during the Fontanelles’ big number, I found myself complimenting their music with, “We’re COLD…SLITHER, you’ll be joi-ning-us-soon. A BAAAND of VI-PERS, play-ing-a-tune”.
By the end of that particular showing, we all agreed the best riff was: “There’s been an accident here at the studio” “We made ‘Hobgoblins’…” Of course, traumatized as we all were, this group was also a bunch of hardened MST veterans who just hadn’t followed the switch to SciFi that closely, so we were all still laughing through the pain. The SECOND group I subjected to Hobgoblins on the other hand…well, that’s another post.
@11,
I did not even notice that when I looked up the English voice actors for Bebop.
“Boy, that sure is a bad movie, won’t you?”
“It sure is, you know.”
5 stars, no doubt.
The movie couldn’t deserve it more. Absolutely perfect vehicle for MST.
The riffing is top notch throughout. This is one that never drags for me. I can just hit play and let it run. Club Scum is probably my favorite sequence because of the deserved hatred heaped on the emcee. But, the rake fight is right up there. I love every riff about the characters’ nonchalance to Nick’s gruesome murder. And anything involving the old man. The Jerry Orbach hairstyle riff, making fun of his non-reaction to the Hobgoblins’ reveal.
Most of the host segments are strong. Crow’s documentary is great….”I don’t remember.” And I love the cardboard cutout segment. I’m not crazy about the Bobo hotline segment, but, it’s not offensive. The entire opening is great. I love the expression on Mike’s face when he defiantly sprays the juice box at the camera. And it’s just as funny when it cuts to his terrified reaction after Bobo’s scream.
Easily in the top 3 Sci Fi Era shows and up there with the all time best.
If it weren’t for Space Mutiny this would be the best episode of the SciFi years, maybe even the series.
I thought Rick Sloane missed an opportunity by not adding a rich black girl to the cast in the sequel. (Uhh, I MEAN the sequel that I made up in my mind and doesn’t actually exist because it never happened! Yep, please don’t throw any rocks at me now.)
The second group of people I exposed to Hobgoblins was the one close circle of friends I had in college, Junior year. I showed them a lot of MST3K for the first time, starting with Rhino’s VHS releases, including Manos, Eegah, Batwoman, and Red Zone Cuba, all of which they endured rather well. I’d also shared much else with them, from the fact that I remembered the powers of specific Super Globe Trotters, to my most-bizarre-substitute-for-toilet-paper-I-ever-resorted-to story, to explaining who Priapus is, to confessing strong attractions to various female cartoon characters at 2:00 AM. Point is, by the time I showed them #907, I had both exposed them to about half of the absolute worst MST experiments, and freaked them out so routinely that they’d just gotten used to it, something you must understand to get the full impact of their later unanimous reaction.
We were watching it on a Friday night in the spring of 2000, so we paused at the 1/4 break to watch Space Ghost, and the halfway break for Gundam Wing. It never occurred to me that giving them a break just like M&TB might have been essential to their being able to sit through it. So after the SOL escape attempt, as I simply fast-forwarded through the commercial, I was surprised to hear a perfect 3-part harmony of “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” behind me. I turned to find the 2 oldest unblinking and seemingly out of breath, while our lone freshman was curled up in a fetal position, shivering. I thought he might be having another one of his “episodes” of suspended animation which I later learned were some sort of seizure caused by a rare form of hypoglycemia, so being the humanitarian that I am, and having just learned that he went to a Catholic middle school for some reason despite being Protestant, I had my boxing-nun along to try and spur him back to life.
But it was a moment about 5 seconds after I put the puppet away that will be forever burned into my memory, for in response to my next sentence, I suddenly saw pure horror on the faces of other human beings for the only time in my life. Anyone who didn’t hear said sentence but saw their expressions would’ve assumed it was something like, “Well of course live puppies SEEM hard to chew at first, but after my dog had her THIRD litter…”, or a confession that they all had just 10 minutes to live thanks to something I spiked their drinks with, but all I actually said was, “I guess I’m kind of desensitized since I’ve already seen this one 4 or 5 times”.
We all watched the last quarter, and still technically hung out after that, but things would never be the same between us again. Innocence can never be regained but through the cycle of death and rebirth, and I had opened a chasm that destroyed the most meaningful social circle to which I’d ever belonged.
And yet, my core fascination with MST3K has always been how strongly I identified with Dr. Clayton Forrester, so ya’ know what? It was worth it! To see likely the ultimate destructive effect a film can have on the human psyche, and bring me one step closer to my dream of finding a way to use art to actually, directly, PHYSICALLY hurt people, ohhhhhhhhhhhhh was it ever worth it!!!
But there’s always some more innocence out there to be lost, and as Russ Meyer taught us, violence doesn’t only destroy; it creates and molds as well. And as luck would have it, the THIRD time I showed Hobgoblins to a group of people…
I considered this the worst film ever until I saw “Troll 2.” Though “Monster a Go Go” is really awful in a different way.
Every actor is awful, every character is loathesome, every plot point, line, camera shot and special effect is wretched and clumsy. And the “comedy” aspects make me want to puke. This film has nothing to redeem it, and deserves the whole setup Pearl, Brain Guy and Bobo give it. It certainly MAY cause blindness and death.
And the less said about the Fontanelles, the better.
Tom’s Rick Sloane interview at the end of the movie is TOTALLY made by Crow. Bill’s dead-pan deliverance of topics regarding cocaine and rat droppings has me rolling every time.
So many great riffs I don’t know where to begin…
Probably the absolute finest of the Sci-Fi era and second only to “Angels’ Revenge” in my affections. Maybe it’s the sheer offensiveness of it or the attempts at self-aware goofiness that fail. Both are excellent examples of what happens when porn directors try to make non-porn movies. This one, though, was way stronger host segments. To this day, I find myself quoting the “cardboard cutouts” one in various situations.
I wonder if they had trouble writing for some sections of this one. There’s a lot of “other business” (running out during opening credits, cardboard cut outs, Servo bouncing, interview with Rick Sloan) to distract from the action (or lack thereof) occurring on-screen.
I happen to think that Tom Servo reading “What Do People Do All Day?” is hilarious.
“Sentence fragments! Just… phrases!”
It cracks me up that they try to de-age the security guard by 30 years in the flash back. The man is presumably in his 60s and then they dye his hair and try to pass him off as being in his 30s. *I’m* in my 30s; if I looked like that I’d never be able to leave the house.
The scene of the Hobgoblin’s “ship” opening cracks me up every time. There should have been a call back to “Douglas was very short, pear-shaped and stood the whole way” from MONSTER A-GO GO.
Central idea of what you want can ultimately destroy you is decent but pretty much ignored. I mean, the rock’n'roll lifestyle ultimately kills you at age 45 with a busted liver… not from falling off the stage at your first gig. Having a fantasy woman kills you of a venereal disease… not because she randomly decides to push you and your car off a cliff.
The Zookeeper scene. Servo’s reaction of “Mother! Get out of there, PLEASE!” is hysterical.
Is the army superior real or a hallucination? I’ve never been able to figure that out…
Anyway, great episode. One of my favorites. A great one to put on to cheer you up.
This is one of my favorites too. I love when they tackle 80′s movies – and this movie is sooo 80′s it hurts.
Bolem – I grew up in the 80′s too, and have fond memories of it. I’m a little older than you (attended college in the mid 90′s), so I don’t know if its the extra years or what, but I don’t find “Hobgoblins” to be the abomination to the 80′s that you do. In fact, I think it fits in perfectly with that whole direct to video vibe. Sure it’s probably worse then a lot of stuff that came out direct to video, but the whole mixed genre thing is pretty typical.
Anyway, I don’t think it’s anywhere as bad as “Red Zone Cuba” or “Monster A Go-go”. But I will readily admit that my love for all things cheesy and 80′s may overwhelm my good judgement.
Check out my full review here:
http://romansreviews.blogspot.com/2010/03/hobgoblins-mst3k-review.html
I give this episode 5 Hobgoblins out of 5.
Colossus Prime #15: Gotta love Pearl calling Bobo and Observer, Pinky and Brain.
One is a genius, the other’s insane. So what are we going to do tonight?
My favorite riff was, “I’m gonna break into Jack Benny’s piggy bank.”
“It’s the ’80s / do a lot of coke and vote for Ronald Reagan!”
Reprehensible movie, one of the worst ever. The Brains made this almost enjoyable, but I still don’t watch this one very often, it’s just too horrible. At least when I do, the riffs make me laugh:
“The Army was looking for a few good men, and Nick qualified.”
“When threatened she gains the strength of a thousand trollops.”
And one of those riffs that always catches me off guard and makes me laugh out loud: When the hobgoblins escape, the old guy say, “The vault. I tried to warn you. Those creatures. The vault. I tried.” Crow responds with, “Sentence fragments. Just phrases.”
The Club Scum dance scene still makes me laugh all on its own. That blonde woman waving her arms around like a windmill is on a par with Steve Alaimo’s dance moves. And the “scum” in the club are much like the beatniks in The Beatniks…more wannabe than actual.
As for the third time I watched #807 with a group, I was originally going to just watch it with a friend from work with whom I watched an ep every week. He’d seen even more of their worst than my college pals, but something told me to bring a back-up tape just in case (this was still before volume 8). I told him him about how it was probably their most painful ever, but took his word for it that he was up to it.
Then his girlfriend came over, intending to hang out with us for a change. At some point in the next few minutes, as I heard him explaining the premise of MST3K, it suddenly dawned on me that she’d never even seen part of a single episode.
Now, my college friends were one thing, but this opened up an even more horrific possibility than I could’ve imagined. I can’t remember what that back-up ep was, just that I pleaded with him over and over to pop it in instead, but he just took the attitude that they’re ALL bad movies, and looked forward to a challenge.
And so, I got to see someone make HOBGOBLINS their introduction to MST3K. Of course, there was no way to guage just how damaging that was at the time on someone being introduced to the very concept of intentionally sitting down to endure a bad movie. The only new thing I learned is that people have slightly different points at which the wretchedness fully overwhelms them and they emit an “Uuuuugggghhhhhh…”; For my college friends it was when The Fontanelles took the stage, but these 2 actually like ’80s music as much as I. They’d seen so many lame pseudo-martial arts movies on the other hand that “But first, I’m gonna’ hit mah-self with road-flares.” was the moment that pushed them over the edge.
The next time I saw my friend, I learned that because his gf’s mind was not fully prepared to process Hobgoblins, it had indeed been horribly warped. She’d seen the uncut DVD in Borders and wanted to buy it to torture their other friends with, despite his protests that they just barely withstood it with the Bots. You know, like how vicitms of abuse often go on to perpetuate it themselves. All I could say was, “Look: I WARNED you…”
Ah well, she technically recovered. I assume.
I would not like to drink pig liquor.
Which gang of unappetizing ’80s post-adolescents is worse, the kids here or the creeps from Zombie Nightmare? Compare and contrast the big-haired psycho teens in each movie and their respective weapons.
“You can’t say this is a worse movie than say ROAD HOUSE!”
“Hm?”
Hey, when Mike is towing the Bots back into the theater, look at Crow’s beak. I swear it looks like something is attached to his snout, but it’s hard to tell. Anyone know WHAT that is?
“Pepe Le Pew came in from the back door!”
“Paint my muscle car PRUNE color, please!” – Far and away my fave riff for this episode. Nothing else even comes close.
As Sampo noted in his introduction, some folks think the riffing can’t save this, and I’m one of them. Unlike a lot of folks here, for me it’s just not an episode I enjoy. Yes, the movie is so incompetent it’s easy to ridicule, but I always find the best episodes are where the director (and at least *some* of the actors) think they are creating something worthwhile (and fail).
Here it seems clear that everyone connected knew this was garbage — probably the reason Sloane didn’t mind lending it to MST3K. Unlike some, I think he knew *exactly* what he was doing, knew he couldn’t make a good film no matter how hard he tried, and was simply creating drudge for the money. Forgive me, but the only person who slightly seems to be making an effort is the old security guard (as a result, his sequences are the only ones I really get a laugh at).
It’s a little like trying to make a joke about Cheech and Chong saying they are stoned. “So what?” they’d ask. I get the feeling that if Rick Sloane were in the room when they were making fun of his cardboard cutout he’d just smile and say “Yep, biggest piece of crap ever. And they PAID me for it. Ha, ha.”
The host sequences are wonderful, yes, but the rest is so nasty in its intent (simply going through the motions) that I can’t enjoy it. I don’t skip it in my rotation (I’m too faithful to the process) but while it’s on I tend to do other things (like read or eat) and let it be background.
Overall, I’d rate it two stars (for host sequences only). But I’m glad it brings enjoyment to many (and, truth be told, it’s actually nice to have a MST3K episode I kind of hate, because it makes the other ones all that much better).
“Ivan Lendl look-a-like night?”
http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/2020/daphnivan.jpg
@10: Thank you SO MUCH for letting me know that there’s a torrent out there for the Fontanelles. I agree, they’re actually pretty good, sort of a holdover from (what my friends and I referred to as) the death rock scene like TSOL, 45 Grave, early Cult, The Nuns and a whole lot of other far more obscure bands in California and England who were somewhere between punk/new wave and all-out goth.
As for the episode, what more really needs to be said? It is a classic.
Definitely one of my top Mike/Sci Fi eps. The movie, I don’t even know where to start. The host segments are all really great, lot of fun. Just an instant classic from first viewing.
This movie. THIS MOVIE.
Watching Hobgoblins is like making a pact with the devil. You get good-to-excellent host segments; hilarious, sidesplitting riffs; and, overall, one of the funniest episodes that MST has ever produced. But BOY, do you pay the price.
Red Zone Cuba is nihilistic; Monster A-Go-Go is aimless and droning. But Hobgoblins takes a part of you, something treasured and important, and you are never quite the same after staring it down. I’m not sure when I realized it – I think it was sometime during the club scene – but I just felt so degraded. I can’t explain exactly how, but I knew that I’d lost some part of my innocence, and that I’d never get it back.
Now on to the movie:
-As mentioned above, great host segments. Accidental on-turning, the spot-on “Raiders of the Lost Ark” parody, the cutouts, and one of my favorites, “She’s a chimpanzee and her name is Emily!”
There are too many excellent riffs to count, but they include:
-The opening sequence with the security guards, particularly the concert. (“Ladies and Gentlemen: Flat Butt!” “Oh, just sing the St. Elmo’s Fire theme and get it over with!” “We’re on the road to nowhere – I’ll say,” etc.)
-Everything from Kevin’s arrival home to the end of the “gardening tools” fight.
-Everything from the beginning of the dance party (“It’s the 80s – do a lot of Coke and vote for Ronald Reagan!”) to the part where the shorts kid makes the sex call.
This is probably the best riffing in the entire movie, and stands up to some of the best they’ve ever done.
-One thing I’ve noticed about the MST3k Theater crew: They make hilarious riffs when they pretend to be the “animal creatures” in a movie. This is true no matter the era of the show. And some of their best riffs come when they’re “voicing” the Hobgoblins. (“Just tell us how to change the record!” “We’ll take your literature, but we’re trying to watch our program!” “I don’t know, maybe it’s the child lock!”)
So it’s hard to pin down an original riff when there’s so many to choose from, but I think my choice would have to be, “Their garden tools make little Casio keyboard sounds.” When my sister and I watched this episode for the first time, we actually had to pause the DVD for a minute after that riff because it made us laugh SO HARD.
First off the club scum MC (Daran Norris) and RoadRash (Duane Whitaker) are the only two actors to survive this movie. Daran is a voice actor on too many things to list and Duane played in pulp fiction and many horror movies. With that out of the way oh man is this a bad movie. My bunch just loved this episode when it came out cause they really stick it to this movie. The cardboard cut outs and crows film about women are just great segments and who can’t love the line on the coach “you can see my legs”. I don’t think that the ending attack on rick sloane was a low blow as he has much to answer for. As for favorite line “It’s the eighties…Do alot of coke and vote for Ronald Reagan.”
Just a couple of questions.
Damn it why aren’t you old?
What WAS that stain?
Favorite Line: “Death guaranteed for upto fifty-thousand DIE!!!”
This episode is unquestionably one of my faves. So many of the riffs hit with deadly accuracy. Host segments had me on the floor, especially #2, #3, and the credit sequence.
“I just want to be brave for my horrible, frigid, non-supportive girlfriend.”
“They should really add an S to that.”
“I’d like to tell you about my problematic urethra if you’ll follow me.”
“She looks like Michael Bolton!”
“They made love in their Chevy Van and that’s NOT alright with me!”
“Now that move really requires the cooperation of the flip-ee!”
“Filipino push-fighting!”
“Someone’s rubbing puppets on us!”
“You feel a hand inside you? Uncomfortable, huh?” “Sure is.”
“Did you know that Nick went on to play…Pong in his underwear while drinking beer?”
Bravo!
A few other random notes:
-Did anyone else notice the movie’s “Singin In the Rain” parody? It was the part when three of the characters, after fighting the hobgoblins, collapse onto the couch at the same time. It looked eerily like the end of the “Good Morning, Good Morning” dance sequence from the Gene Kelly/Debbie Reynolds movie. I’m not sure if Rick Sloane intended that or not, but I’m surprised that M & TB didn’t riff on that.
-I loved that Servo was reading Richard Scarry’s “What Do People Do All Day?” So cute!
-Everybody always talks about Joel being the daddy figure to the bots, whereas Mike was more like a pal. In this episode, though, Mike definitely plays the nurturing guardian. It’s actually sweet to see him comfort Crow and Servo throughout the movie, like when he was patting Servo’s back after the latter broke down in anguish. Yeah, yeah, I know, I should really just relax.
-Sampo, you’re definitely right that the JFK Jr/Thompson riffs are awkward when watching the episode today. That isn’t MST3K’s fault, of course; they didn’t know that JFK Jr. would die in a plane crash (“It’s simple. JFK Jr. could do it”) or that Thompson would commit suicide with a handgun (When Kevin sees the pistol: “When found, please return to Hunter S. Thompson.”) It’s just par for the course when you’re riffing on current events.
-Yes, the characters are repulsive, but I strangely liked Mr. McCready (the old guy). He seemed to be the voice of reason. Plus, Frankie, Sniffles, Bounce-Bounce and The Claw were a lot more lovable once they got those names.
-To me, Amy (Kevin’s frigid girlfriend) is a BEAUTIFUL young woman. Absolutely stunning. I was really struck by that the first time I saw this movie, and the fact that, looks-wise, she and Kevin (the main character) made a gorgeous couple.
-And finally, I have a crush on a guy who strongly resembles Kevin (the protagonist), so I’m partial to his character for that reason. Tragically, though, the real-life Kevin has never defended my honor in a rake fight.
‘Hobgoblins’ was the ‘Manos’ of the Sci-Fi Channel era. Sloane must have misheard peoples demand for a sequel.
This one ranks amongst my all time favorite MST3K episodes. A lousy rip-off of “Gremlins”, it is prime riffing fodder for our heroes. This is one of those episodes I recommend to friends who are casual fans of the show and interested in why I love it so much. This is the show at its very best and proof the quality of the show didn’t deteriorate when it moved to Sci-Fi and Trace left, at least during the first two years on that network.
It’s also my son’s favorite episode. He was eight when this one was first broadcast and it was the first one he watched where he laughed all the way through. He especially loved the bit where Servo names the Hobgoblins. One of my favorite memories of his childhood was watching that particular episode and seeing him in stitches every time the Hobgoblins appeared. Wonderful stuff! Five out of five. Classic episode.
Wretchworthy movie, great episode. It jostles to be in my top five, so the riffing isn’t absolute best of the best (mostly because of quantity issues, not quality), but hell, a true spectacle to behold.
Incidentally, my friends and I devised a game, called “Yes, Yes,” where you assume a pompous “Rick Sloane” voice and try to explain how two random concepts are intricately related while attempting to sound like you know what you’re talking about. It’s fun.
As for this movie being so horrible . . . well, yes, but soul-destroying like so many people here had said? Hobgoblins is offensive on a lot of levels, but Sidehackers, Monster-A-Go-Go, and especially Manos – among others – are definitely bleaker and harder to watch on their own. Hobgoblins makes me cringe, but at least it doesn’t make me assume a fetal position. It’s too goofy.
In fact, I routinely use this episode to introduce people to the show, and they have loved it every time. It’s so out-and-out silly that initiates grasp the true meaning of MST3k immediately and intuitively. Along with Puma Man and Giant Spider Invasion, its part of my trifecta of “if you don’t see any others, see these” episodes (at least for people of my generation).
Classic stuff.
Thanks CG (#50) I forgotten that they were given names. Good stuff!
From 5 :”Fun fact: the Club Scum M.C. is Daran Norris, who has gone on to be a prominent voice actor (Spiderman, Fairly Oddparents) and was Cliff the attorney on Veronica Mars.”
Bonus fun fact: Road Rash (whose actual name escapes me) went on to be Zed of “Zed’s dead baby” fame in Pulp Fiction.
Definitely a love/hate episode: Like others I hate the movie but love the riffs.
Movie:
* When I found out that Daran Norris went on to do voice acting, I noticed he married his wife, another voice actor who’s done a lot of video game roles I recognize, in 1988 and they’ve done several series together. I am happy to report that she was NOT also in Hobgoblins.
* If anyone else thinks that Amy was cuter BEFORE she turned slut, raise your hand.
* After seeing a video review of the uncut version of the movie (which is actually even more repulsive than the MST3K version) I learned that McCreedy blew up the vault as a means of petty revenge against the head of the studio for firing him. The reason why it was so important that no one was on duty was because the insurance company wouldn’t accept any claims for the studio’s policy in that case. With that great mystery solved I’m… going to go cry in the corner for even thinking about it that long.
* Much like the enemy fighter ships in Invasion of the Neptune men, no matter how many Hobgoblins they killed, they neither added to or took away from their numbers.
* Favorite riffs:
“He wanted to crowd surf but no one would catch him.” – Mike
“What just crunched?!” – Crow
“The puppeteer’s knuckles must be pretty bloody by now.” – Servo
Host Segments:
* Crow apparently lost all memory of the various women who the crew encountered during the Deep 13 days.
* When Mike begins dancing in his Hawaiian shirt, he bears an UNCANNY resemblance to Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. It scares me.
* Favorite line: Any time Bobo screams when Pearl is introducing the movie.
Things I Learned From This Episode:
* The rake is mightier than the sword.
* Killing people by turning their fantasies and desires against them is potentially doing them good.
* This is still easier to watch and far less offensive than the Star Wars Holiday Special.
Er, my mistake a few posts back. Road Rash was the shop owner in Pulp Fiction. Or, “The Spider” if you will. Hopefully I got that one right, it’s been awhile
Sampo: “even the riffing couldn’t save it.”
No, that dubious honor belongs to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Even the combined efforts of Cinematic Titanic and Rifftrax wouldn’t make that movie watchable.
I’ve seen a few people mentioning the Fontanelles music in here. You might want to search for them on eBay; Rick Sloane actually sells Hobgoblins soundtracks on there that include all the Fontanelles songs from the movie and a few that weren’t used. The “Buy It Now” price is about $5, and Rick autographs them.
#7: Of course it didn’t come up in the episode, but it has come up elsewhere. An earlier version of Hobgoblins was written before Gremlins, but the hobgoblins were supposed to be a more nebulous unseen threat. When Gremlins got big the little guys were added in; it was much easier to get funding and distribution by being more like Gremlins.
#32: Believe it or not, but they actually used makeup to make McCreedy’s actor look older for the “modern” points in the movie, so his regular look was probably somewhere between the versions we saw in the movie.
#40: A favorite riff of mine, too.
Admission: I own ricksloane.com. I bought it last year on a whim, but when Rick emailed me I actually started putting a bit more into it and boning up on my Hobgoblins knowledge. Haven’t updated anything in a few months, though.
I don’t suppose it matters, but 4 Hobgoblins escaped, and at least 3 were killed, right? So how could there have been more than one to rush back into the vault at the end? Parthenogenesis, I guess.
So after 30 years of guarding the Hobgoblins, McCready blows them up. Just think, if he’d done that IN THE FIRST PLACE he might not have wasted so much of his life. Then again, he MIGHT have, but at least he would’ve had more of a fighting chance…
I love the host segment with the Pearl’s couch. You would think Pearl would know better but no. Crow in feety PJ is SOO cute. Nice see his legs.
“Look at that guy wave gel in front of the light” is my favorite riff from this one, if only because of Mike’s intonation and delivery. For me season 9 is middling episodes (Projected Man, Phantom Planet, Deadly Bees, Space Children) peppered with a few home-run episodes (ThePumaMan, Werewolf, The Final Sacrifice, and, yes, Hobgoblins). Dynamite host segments and riffs. When I first saw this episode, I was afraid they were going back to the whole “every week every movie is the worst movie ever made” that finally played itself out in “Being From Another Planet,” but this movie is AWFUL. Someone earlier (I’m too lazy to go back and look it up) claimed this was the first true Maw-of-Hell episode of the SciFi era; I disagree, after all there was “Giant Spider Invasion” and “The Incredibly Strange Creatures…” and “parts: the clonus horror” (by e.e. cummings). I consider all of those movies maw-of-hell caliber, though really only GSI can rival Hobgoblins for loathesomeness.
I always enjoy Crow’s “Cerebus” faux pas, as it sounds like he is a big fan of the long-running indie comic Cerebus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebus).
I found the accidential turn-on segment kinda unsettling. I don’t like to imagine any of the MST3K characters being turned on sexually.
OW! MY FAJITA PLATE WAS REALLY HOT AND I TOUCHED IT!!!!!!
“If anyone else thinks that Amy was cuter BEFORE she turned slut, raise your hand.”
*both hands shoot up*
“Much like the enemy fighter ships in Invasion of the Neptune men, no matter how many Hobgoblins they killed, they neither added to or took away from their numbers.”
I’ve counted the total Hobgoblins in the film, and if memory serves, the minumum number is 11. The three or so that arrived in the capsule must have been busy in those 30 years.
“This is still easier to watch and far less offensive than the Star Wars Holiday Special.”
True that . . .
—–
“#32: Believe it or not, but they actually used makeup to make McCreedy’s actor look older for the “modern” points in the movie, so his regular look was probably somewhere between the versions we saw in the movie.”
Aha! Just as I suspected. I knew he looked more normal without his winter eyebrows.
—–
“I found the accidential turn-on segment kinda unsettling. I don’t like to imagine any of the MST3K characters being turned on sexually.”
For God’s sake, do NOT watch Girl in Gold Boots. For your own protection.
Colossus Prime wrote: “Starting from the writing it seems as though it was penned by a forty year old who just learned English five years ago, has the mind of a twelve year old, and was recovering from a recent head first fall down the stairs.”
But I’m pretty sure Tommy Wiseau *didn’t* write this screenplay!
(And it’s tearing me apart!!)
“#56 * If anyone else thinks that Amy was cuter BEFORE she turned slut, raise your hand.”
Sort of like Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club. Way more attractive on the first 95% of the movie vs. the end when Molly Ringwald helps doll her up.
#67
I don’t know if I’m happy or sad that I know what you’re talking about.
This episode is fun to watch… it’s horrible, yes, but entertaining in its horribleness; not one that puts me to sleep if I watch it on a lazy Sunday afternoon, like some other episodes I could name. Favorite two riffs are both centered around Daran Norris’ character: “he looks like one of those cat clocks!” I never caught that line until I’d watched the ep multiple times, but I knew exactly what they were talking about. And, of course, the little “nnggyuh!” grunt they vocalize when he makes his spastic arm gesture just cracks me up.
Great episode for any MST3K era. The rakes of death dance was certainly hilarious with the great back ground music spurring the taut action forward.
As mentioned previously, there is a fairly recent docu with most participants present. Props to those folks who rolled with it. The only one that remains a mystery is the actress who played Amy. Anyone have any information?
And of course, how could I forget one of the naughtiest riffs I ever heard on the show:
MC: Sorry, the donkey mud wrestlers must use the REAR entrance…
Crow: Well, you’re the expert on that…
Dieser Blog sieht wirklich sehr gut aus. Um sowas richtig geiles zu entwerfen muss man sich schon lange Zeit nehmen und ne Menge Ahnung haben.
I’ve actually had the pleasure of having met Rick Sloane when he was screening a few of his other films in Los Angeles last year.
He seems overly proud of the fact that ‘MST3k’ did ‘Hobgoblins’ and that it’s considered one of the worst movies ever made; “its better than being totally forgotten”, I believe is what he said. He also said that he submitted a few of his other films to ‘MST3k’ and was really pushing them to riff on his ’86 flick ‘The Visitants’, but Best Brains passed on it to do ‘Hobgoblins’, claiming they didn’t want to riff on a blatant comedy…though, in regard to ‘The Visitants’, “comedy” is a term used loosely.
I always liked ‘Hobgoblins’…it’s sleazy, but I found it easy to watch straight, though the MSTied version is definitely one of my favorite episodes. ‘The Visitants’, on the other hand, was incredibly hard to sit through, and would benefit from a riffing if nothing else.
I wish I had more money in 1999 – I really wanted to buy that creepy cardboard Mike when they did the prop auction.
Member F.D.I. MURDER! Death guaranteed for up to fifty thousand DIE!
Maybe I’m just desensitized after years of watching crappy movies, but I’ve never been able to understand the disgust that people show for this particular “film”. I find it colorful, silly and grungy but it doesn’t offend me or chip away at my soul. Same with “Red Zone Cuba” it actually keeps me interested even without the riffing for some odd reason.
If any characters disgust me it’s the teens in “Zombie Nightmare”. They kill a guy then go on their merry way making out in hot tubs or actually enjoying the taking of a life. The “Hobgoblins” gang are just broad stereotypes, completely harmless.
I’m actually inflicting this episode on my more than willing “Test Subjects” this Sunday as a part of my own weekly experiments in the LROL (Living Room of Love) and you can bet I’ll be singing along to “It’s the 80′s, do a lot of coke and vote for Ronald Reagan!”
I’m so happy I was able to find a copy of Volume 8 this year so I could finally watch this episode. It’s become one of my all time favorites.
This is one of the worst movies they ever did, everything about this movie is AWFUL. I didn’t blame the Bots for trying to escape during the opening credits, or when they and Mike put the cutouts in their place to fool Pearl so they could escape the movie.
For some people this one is so bad the riffing doesnt save it, it did for me and I was laughing my ass off. “There’s been an accident at the studio…” Crow “We made Hobgoblins!”
The host segments are good too, with Crow’s “Let’s Talk Women!” being one of the funniest segments ever. I also loved how Pearl, Bobo and Brain Guy sold how god awful Hobgoblins was, esp with Bobo’s girl scream for emphasis.
5 stars from me.
Great episode.The worse, the better.I give it a good old Time Chasers “Rockin!”. ck #7 very funny! But i have one question, Sloane did Porn?! Makes sense, I guess.haha.
a great episode with great riffing and solid host segments! Mike’s line “Its the 80′s, do a lot of coke and vote for Ronald Reagan” has always been one of my favorites of all time
Also, who let that German animal lover on here. You wacky European Zappa fans with your loud music,fax machines,hoola-hoops,you know the kids today.
Meh. I found the accidental on-turning segment to be contrived and probably the most unfunny host segment of the entire show. And I find it very hard to watch this one because it’s obvious to me that the makers of this movie knew they were just making a cheesy movie. For me, that makes the movie itself harder to watch, and the riffs tend to ring hollow. Contrast this with Time Chasers, where they truly thought they were making a masterpiece.
I may get a few objections, but I believe that this episode is to the Sci-Fi era as Manos is to the Joel/Comedy Central era. By that I mean that the movie is the worst of the Sci-Fi eps(how good can it be if the director offers it to them?), right up there with Manos as the worst of the whole series. As such, this makes it(along with Manos) one of the best eps of the series. All of the segements work well(though the intro is probably the weakest) and the riffing is some of the best I’ve heard,in particularly the Fishpicker song. I gave it five starts. Some of my fave riffs:
Crow: ‘Paint my muscle car prune color, please!’
Mike: ‘The army was looking for sharp people, and Nick qualified.’
Tom: ‘Meet the Hobgoblins: Frankie, Sniffles, Bounce-Bounce and The Claw.’
Also Tom’s counting parking scenes and the garden fight riffs.
That was starts, not starts. Oops.
Stars.
Aagh!
Fish Picker? No, no…Pig Sticker? Fig Licker?
Club Scum isn’t just for scum, it’s for the truly vile at heart!
Casio rakes make a great stocking stuffer!
And if the van is a rockin’, feel free to barf on your shoes for an hour or two.
Randy
I’m sure it’s been mentioned already, but “Paint my muscle car prune color, please!” is one of my favorite riffs ever. And it’s so useful in everyday conversation.
“Member, F-D-I-MURDER!”
This episode gave me my barely-considered, spur-of-the-moment handle: “Here comes this guy. What’s he up to?” It remains a classic, despite the added difficulty of the attempted humor in the movie. A few observations:
- I continue to be baffled by the protagonists’ insistence at the club that they’re “all underage.” Either they’re telling an incredibly feeble lie that “Pixie” just chooses to believe, or it’s a major case of Dawson Casting, because they all look to be in their late 20′s at least.
- After the thug at the studio taunts Kevin by saying he (Kevin) doesn’t know how to use a gun, Kevin fires the gun in the air. Doesn’t that just prove the thug’s point?
- #63: Maybe Crow’s “Cerebus” mention was intentional–after all, Dave Sim is a deranged misogynist, so he’d fit in well with this movie. Also, ‘kipedia says that the title came from a misspelling of “Cerberus” in the first place.
- Taking a cue from the epic garden-tool fight scene, I’d suggest a weekend discussion about “best and worst fight scenes in a MSTed movie,” but there really aren’t any good fight scenes I can think of, so it’d be more like “worst and least bad fight scenes.”
- Crow’s “In Search of…” style documentary is delightfully insane. I love those signs that indicate that 500 years of solitude may have driven poor Crow completely ’round the twist.
- Apparently, the standard reaction to a hobgoblin attack is to grab the hobgoblin and hold it to one’s face as tightly as possible. This brilliant technique was also seen in one of the movies with bats in it, possibly It Lives By Night. Victim: “Aaaaargh, get it off me!” Creature: “Hey, I’d love to oblige, if you’d just let go!”
Also, “Just let go of the puppet!” is not only funny, but sound advice in numerous situations.
I’m clearly in the minority in saying I don’t like this episode. It violates Mike Nelson’s creed that a MST movie has to be bad, but can’t be purposely bad (“There has to be some intention of quality by the filmmakers” is the quote I remember). It’s just waaaaay too campy and intentionally awful for me to enjoy it being MSTied.
Eeewww…in the “Revisited” clip, Sloan is rockin’ some major forearm veins! They look like they’re gonna pop through his skin! Yuk.
“Burgess Meredith is in there reading…”
“That blonde woman waving her arms around like a windmill is on a par with Steve Alaimo’s dance moves.”
=================================
She dances like one of the chimps from Lancelot Link.
Favorite riff sequence:
Servo:[disgusted]Eeeuugh…
Crow:I wonder if he knows his face looks like that?
Mike:He can’t…
Crow:Someone should tell him.
@89, I’m convinced that the film is purposely campy, but not purposely “bad”. It seemed like there was an sincere attempt to make an actual, enjoyable horror-comedy, albeit on a severely low budget (‘The Visitants’, for instance, cost $8,000), only it turned out…well, the way it did.
“Hobgoblins 2″, on the other hand, tried way too hard to replicate both the campiness and the incompetence of the original in a way that can be described as intentionally bad, and it was absolutely awful. If you watch the two of them together, you can definitely sense that “Hobgoblins” is not “deliberate”, compared to a film that is.
God, am I actually *defending* ‘Hobgoblins’?
Dennis! Dennis!
I wanna play Tennis!
This is my favorite episode ever, ever, ever. Almost every single riff is pure gold. Also, Hobgoblins fascinates me with its badness.
I agree that I don’t think this movie was intentionally bad. I think some of the humor was supposed to be corny, but that’s not the same thing as an intentionally bad movie.
Some films really capture their time. As “Angels’ Revenge” is to the ’70′s, so “Hobgoblins” is to the ’80′s. Trust me, I was there.
My favorite naughty riff: “Oh boy, this is going to be gr- oh, I’m done…”
This movie hates you personally, and leaves you asking, “what did I ever do you?” This movie makes me look forward to the extinction of the human race. Andrew Dice Clay would be embaressed at the mysogeny, which is almost ugly enough to distract the audience from the hateful depiction of everyone and everything else. Not even Leech Woman, High School Bigshot, or Beast of Yucca Flats were this pointlessly misanthropic. I mean, I hate the human race as much as the next guy, but you don’t see me going around and making films like this. Other MST films are just incompetant bad, but Hobgoblins has a moral compass that falls somewhere between Boxing Helena and Cannible Holocaust. I just realized that this is the first critique of an MST3K movie where I dont even mention anything specific from the film. The riffing is good, but with so many other episodes to watch I rarely subject myself to this one. Rick Sloan, may God have mercy on your soul. And I don’t even believe in God.
Kiss Kicker ’99
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0DPvBFqBPg
As one of the posters there says, it’s silly and incomprehensible but I like it.
“Someone’s rubbing puppets on us!”
I’ve only seen two movies where I was actively convinced that the movie itself hated me and was out to hurt me. This was one of those movies. As such, it ranks #2 on my list of Worst Movies The SOL Crew Watched. None of the characters are even remotely likable (even Mr. McCreedy only blows up the vault because it gives him childish, petty revenge against the studio owner), no one’s even attempting to act, the plot has more holes than the average sieve, and the ending shows us that the whole stupid thing could have been prevented by just blowing the damn things up in the first place (it’s almost a reverse “Monster A Go-Go”). Do NOT use this one to break people in to the show, as it will invariably end very, very badly.
The host segments are fantastic. The involuntary on-turning bit is awesome, both because I like the Robert Palmer song AND because there’s nothing sexual about the on-turning until Pearl’s entrance. It also shows just how far Bill’s come as a puppeteer; the eye roll and various little twitches here really convey aggravation on the part of Crow, which is a nice touch. Crow’s documentary on women is my 3rd favorite Bill Crow moment, and the mustachioed man cracks me up every single time. Bobo’s bit is cute, and the attempted luau escape is nice, especially for letting Observer play the obviously-most-intelligent one, something oddly rare.
The guys’ hatred of the movie is palpable, and it shows in the riffing. Brutal shots at the movie and the director at every turn; given that the movie deserves them and worse, it never feels overbearing, as it did at times during Overdrawn at the Memory Bank. Probably my favorite thing in the whole movie follows the infamous “Well, you’re the expert on that” line. You can hear the other guys chuckle, and Kevin lets out a seemingly shocked “Wow.” Another one of those little things that make it feel like you’re among friends (as they say, misery loves company).
While people may be able to make a case that the Comedy Central years were more consistent overall, I could counter that the Sci-Fi years contained the best episodes of the entire series. Hobgoblins is one of them. This is a another “scummy” teen horror comedy like Zombie Nightmare, but this time the repulsion is adequately delivered by Mike and the ‘bots.
“So what, now he becomes a Jedi knight? WHY AM I SITTING HERE!?”
As an addendum and kind of a tangent, I wanted to mention the riff “Why ‘hand grenades’? Are there foot grenades?” It’s a nice jab at one of the main pitfalls of observational humor: the comic attempts to point out something he thinks is ridiculous and nobody could possibly understand why it is that way, when anyone who does a few seconds of research could figure it out. It wouldn’t take your average Google-armed person long to find out that there are grenades used in grenade launchers as well as rocket-propelled grenades. The Simpsons also poked fun at this by having Krusty, who was just beginning to try out modern-style comedy, complain that he couldn’t understand why there are both white pages and yellow pages in the phonebook:
MARGE: One’s residential, the other is business.
KRUSTY: (thrown off) Uh… well, what’s next? Blue pages?
LISA: They have those.
MARGE: They’re government listings.
A real-life example, as mentioned by Douglas Adams, was a comic (one of many) who talked about “black box” flight recorders from airplanes and how they were supposed to be near-indestructible, so “Why don’t they just make the plane out of the same stuff?” Delivered, of course, as though the people who design aircraft are drooling morons who never conceived of such an idea. Well, Mr. Comic, that would reduce crashes, but only because the plane would then be too heavy to get off the ground.
I don’t know whether it’s supposed to be intentionally funny or not, but I can’t help laughing when the badass silent film villain (what’s there to steal?) gingerly/awkwardly hands over the nunchucks to Kevin.
“Ha-ha…we drank your bong water!”
“That’s not a woman, that’s David Lee Roth!” Love it.
This is one of my all-time favorite episodes!
Hobgoblins is just too tough to watch much even for me, and I can watch Manos repeatedly. The movie is just so bad, so irritating, so annoying, so deliberately horrible, with failed humor, bad acting, bad everything and in no place is it the good kind of bad, it’s just bad. I can only watch this one once in a while. It doesn’t have that fun accidental badness that a lot of movies have like Plan 9 From Outer Space or Robot Monster, it’s just bad bad.
And in response to the Greydon Clark comments above, he was responsible for Angel’s Revenge as well as Final Justice, but I also can find no evidence that he had anything to do with Hobgoblins.
TS: “Mike, if I run out of vomit, can I have some of yours?”
I totally love the “accidental on-turning” sketch, it’s in my top 20 funniest host segments, reminds me of the hilarious one where the bots question Joel about the meaning of the “Pina Colada” song. The squirting of juice boxes on the new couch in the opening was funny too. Plus, the cardboard cutout sketch produced the iconic image of the silhouettes used on many of the DVD releases.
Personally I like this episode even though the movie is annoyingly silly, & I don’t revisit it very often. Good riffing though. I’d give it a solid 4 stars.
Mike (singing) “It’s the 80′s, do a lotta coke and vote for Ronald Reagan”
Crow: “It’s a Bonsai Bigfoot”
“pig sticker?” “”iced chicken?” “Fish Picker!”
This comment isn’t about the episode at all. Instead, I’d just like to say that I love to read The Bolem’s wonderful comments every week. Good stuff, sir.
Well you KNOW this film is a favorite when you get 107 comments in the first day of its blog posting.
With that said I think M&TB get a LOT of laughs from “Hobgoblins” but I still didn’t like it as much as I thought I would. I was alive during the 1980′s and even I wouldn’t get THAT nostalgic for a film like that.
FWIW I think this would be a GREAT double feature with “Pod People.” Basically “Hobgoblins” & P.P. try to mutate hot 1980′s movie trends into one film. With “Pod People” it’s “E.T.” + “Halloween” + some type of vapid teen flick. With “Hobgoblins” it’s just “Gremlins” + a vapid teen flick. I think “Hobgoblins” would also work well with “SoulTaker” and was a little surprised that Shout Factory didn’t put the 2 together on one of their recent DVD box sets.
This ALSO gives me a great chance to point something out. Most people I know think Robert Palmer actually wrote “I Didn’t Mean To Turn You On.” He did NOT and he didn’t even cover it first either. R & B/Soul singer Cherrelle sang it first and had the hit with it first. Welcome to your own personal On-Turning-Palozza! (courtesy of YouTube:):
1. Cherrelle’s orig. version – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8luxaT0JRs&feature=related
2. Robert Palmer’s version – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRd4hWfmmNw
3. Mariah Carey’s version – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1C6gI2qklFE&feature=fvw
Now if anybody here wants to post clips of the Mike & The Bots discussion of “on-turning” or if you’ve got a clip of the Rifftrax on Mariah Carey singing this tune in “Glitter” please do.
“Ooh! What just crunched?”
re. Cherrelle’s orig. version
I did not know that. Very nice. That video beats Peter Jackson’s bloated “King Kong” by a mile. Breakdancing Kong = awesome. And I’d never heard the extended Robert Palmer version, either. His series of videos with the mannequin/models define the 80′s for me. The Mariah Carey one seems to be glorified karaoke job, as it sounds just like the original, complete with piercing synthesizer stabs and solos.
Damn, now I had to go watch the Glitter Rifftrax (Mike and Mary Jo) to find that scene. If you are a Pod People fan you’ll get a kick out of it: as Mariah sings in the recording booth, her producer/boyfriend gives her the “OK” hand symbol. Then Mary Jo says, “It sucks!”
The prune colored muscle car makes laugh out loud every time. I also liked, “Camaro: The official car of peaked in high school.”
When I watched this week I, for the first time I noted Daran Norris’ name in the credits as the Club Scum MC (“he looks like a cat clock”). As pointed out above he has carved out a solid career in voice acting and a bit of live action as well. He does a great job with his characters on “The Fairly Odd Parents” (Cosmo, Pa Turner, Joergen von Strangle), which is a favorite of my daughter (and it’s pretty clever).
After checking on imdb to be certain that this was indeed the same Daran Norris, I looked at the rest of the cast. Again as noted above, Roadrash and Fantasia have been in plenty of stuff. But it really was the four principals who went on to do nothing else; most of the other cast members (even Nick) went on to continue working…and carved out decent careers. Don’t expect to see any of them at the Academy Awards (unless they are “seat fillers”), but given the number of people who completely fail to make it at all, being a working actor in Hollywood is no small feat.
Rick Sloane also gave some of these folks repeated roles in his other “films.” Most notably six “Vice Academy” movies (which based on the descriptions, appear largely based around the precept of “Police Academy” meets “Showgirls”).
I’ve largely regarded this as one of the worst films ever made, and a terrific MST episode. Even if one accepts the idea that the movie is played for camp value, it is still a complete and utter failure on that front. Honestly, I feel embarrassed for the actors while I’m watching it. I can only assume Amy did not appear at the reunion out of sheer shame.
It’s 1980s trash-but having grown up in that decade I can’t hate it. If it was 1990s trash then I’d hate it. I always enjoy this despite the scum and the silly puppets. I wonder how Kevin Murphy felt about the joke ‘imagine getting beating up by a guy named Kevin’. Very bad but I still like to watch it and don’t get tired of it. Lastly-”enough with the Count Chocula music!”
Favorite riffs: “Pewee Herman, casual wear.” “You should know you’ll have to apply a series of ointments to me regularly.” “Paint my muscle car prune please!” The rake scene would have needed no riffing to be ridiculous. Easily top 3 worst movies ever MST’ed, making it one of the best episodes of all time. Rick Sloane interview is priceless. 5 stars
I think my favorite riff has to be, “Tell ‘em Larraine Newman’s in town.” Just a perfectly-timed, perfectly-executed celebrity look-alike gag.
Five stars from me. A regular in the rotation–like the best MST3K films, it may be frequently horrendous, but it’s never boring. You are transfixed by the events on-screen like a deer in the headlights.
Favorite part of this episode (and trust me it’s a hard decision) has to be at the very end of the opening credits.
“Now we’re going to sit down and watch this movie.”
*cut to commercial*
“D’oh!”
Definitely one of the best episodes ever.
Oh, and is this where we leave ideas for Weekend Discussion topics? If we haven’t done it already, may I suggest “Most Quotable Lines from MST’ed Movies”? Hobgoblins itself is full of quotable lines, as are countless other MST’ed movies.
Not my favorite episode. The movie knows it’s bad, which is a big no-no for MST3K enjoyment. I was baffled at first by the episode’s popularity, but now I think it’s mostly a generational thing. All the episodes the newer fans rave over – Werewolf, Hobgoblins, Space Mutiny – are newer movies (relatively). I chalk the entire thing up to that.
“Let me tell ya about our drink specials tonight!”
“Don’t park in the alley or you’ll get towed!”
“While I’m up here let me point out the restrooms!”
LOLZ
Wow. I forgot how HILarious Hobgoblins is. Everything about it is great. Great opening segement; “we can’t have nice things” is something I say on a daily/weekly basis. And Crow’s footie pajamas (“You can see my legs!”) are just adorably cute. And the way the Mads introduce the movie, bringing it out in a crate with green glowing inside is totally awesome, reminds me of the old CC days with Dr. F and Frank. Segment 1 is the best, has a retro feel. Crow’s mustache is great. I’m still waiting for proof of women existing myself… I was prepared for segment 2 to suck, but to my surprise, it did not. Bobo is very funny, and a great reveal that he’s actually in love with a chimp. The way Servo casually and unenthusiastically says “Movie sign” at the end of the segment is subtly hilarious. Go back and watch it. Segment 3 is a classic. “Boy, that sure is a bad movie, won’t you?” All in all, strong segments, solid riffing in the theater, and one of the most mind bogglingly bad movies they have ever done. Hobgoblins has just rocketed to the top of my season 9 list, and it might stay there, unless Final Sacrifice has anything to say about it.
Fave riffs: “You’re listening to old guy radio. O-L-D Radioooo!!”
“Part of me is laughing. The part of me that hates life.”
After Fantasia shows up: “It’s Robert Plant!”
Outdated riff: “He’s found Ben Stein’s money!”
Even though it’s been said, many times, “It’s the eighties, do a lotta coke and vote for Ronald Reagan!”
“C’mon, let’s get back out there and wreck another scene.”
Possible future discussions:
1) Best song in a skit
2) Worst performance by a “name” actor
(you can get good odds on a Castaway veteran)
3) Worst cameo performance
(you can get good odds on a Castaway veteran)
Wampa Joe (@100): “While people may be able to make a case that the Comedy Central years were more consistent overall, I could counter that the Sci-Fi years contained the best episodes of the entire series.”
Totally agree. The best of the Sci-Fi years blows away most of what they did during their time with CC, in my opinion. For me, the show really started kicking it in Season 7 (their last with CC), and they carried that momentum over into their last three years with Sci-Fi.
Mike in Portland (@118): “I was baffled at first by the episode’s popularity, but now I think it’s mostly a generational thing. All the episodes the newer fans rave over – Werewolf, Hobgoblins, Space Mutiny – are newer movies (relatively). I chalk the entire thing up to that.”
The ENTIRE thing, huh? Yeah, we just love the hell out of these garbage movies, as long as they’re fresh. That’s really all it takes to get a five star rating out of us undiscriminating young ‘uns. Was there any hilarious riffing going on during these episodes? I didn’t notice, I was too busy being floored by the technicolor.
@120 “O-L-D….” semi-obscure riff, Harry Chapin’s (RIP) W.O.L.D. used to crackle through my parents STYLUS (you kids out there, ask your folks) & speakers. Harry Chapin was one of there favorites, and now he is one of mine too. Thanks for the memories.
just can’t type well today…that should have been “their” favorites.
Even if Hobgoblins was meant to be bad, it turned out worse than Sloane or anyone probably intended. He may well have been going for So Bad It’s Good, but he ended up at So Bad It’s Horrible, which makes it fair game under the standard MST3K rules.
Sure Rick Sloane is comically incompetant, but is this movie really any less competent than “Castle Of Fu Manchu” or “Double 007″? He seems like just a harmless goofball who wants to make movies, and he obviously knows he sucks at it. George Romero’s a freakin’ icon and “Land of the Dead” was at least as ridiculous as “Hobgoblins” Good Lord, this movie looks like an epic masterpiece compared to “Transformers”
John Seavy @ 116: “Five stars from me. A regular in the rotation–like the best MST3K films, it may be frequently horrendous, but it’s never boring. You are transfixed by the events on-screen like a deer in the headlights.” Yeah, deer in the headlights. With the same outcome. Wrecked car and dead deer.
“Oh no, the car fell off the cliff and turned into a Lincoln.” Or something to that effect.
I’m one of those that thinks riffing works best when the movie is watchable.
I just didn’t find this movie watchable. It was just, well, unpleasant. (Same reason I don’t like Manos)
Anyway, I guess the producer did really love MSK3K, because due to the popularity of this episode, he was able to do a sequel.
This episode convinced me to own Volume 8.
Here is what I posted when I came across an anouncement at Amazon that Hobgoblins 2 was going to be made available:
You have got to be kidding me! The original was almost too bad to turned into an MST3K episode. If this movie is half as bad it should be treated like toxic waste and disposed of as such.
I ordered that signed soundtrack from Sloane.com (so maybe I’m an idiot?) but I’ll post here again when I hear those other Fontanelles tunes and watch the original movie, and it’s sequel. BTW, the chorus goes like this:
kiss kicker
99 girls 99 boys
boot licker
99 reasons to live
kiss kicker
99 girls 99 boys
boot licker
kiss kicker 99
and the last time, they sing:
99 reasons to die
#127 raises an interesting question: Sure Rick Sloane is comically incompetent, but is this movie really any less competent than “Castle Of Fu Manchu” or “Double 007??
My answer is “absolutely,” but having thought about this for most of the weekend I am having a hard time quantifying why exactly. I think “Hobgoblins” really just fails and pretty much every front; acting: bad, effects: laughable, dialogue: stilted, locations: unconvincing, action sequences: sleep inducing…I could go on, but you get the idea.
I’ll bet that this was not an especially well funded movie, and it quite frankly shows. I think something like “Operation Double 007″ at least had somewhat of a budget and they sat down and put some thought into how they would shoot the thing. When I watch “Hobgoblins” I just get the sense that it was done without much preparation or thought (you stand over there and be slutty, and you, wear these hideous shorts and mince around…..great, that’s a take). The result of all this carelessness is cinematic ipecac.
As an aside, I would agree it is certainly possible to make a bad movie with lots of money (insert your favorite turd here–I’m going with “Battlefield Earth”), but would better effects or better actors have turned this into a good film? I’m gonna say no. Might it have made a slightly better movie with more money….I guess. The bottom line for me though, is that “Hobgoblins” is the perfect storm of bad film making.
And on a separate topic, how does Servo kick?
I fall in the “this movie it too camp, winks too much at its audience, uh…camp”. In a recent interview, Joel mentioned how important it is to pick a film to riff on that is very very earnest and doesn’t “wink” at its audience. I agree. For that reason Hobgoblins is just a so-so ep.
There are some funny bits, though, so it’s still a pretty fun watch. Even the movie I kind of enjoy watching. But an intentional train wreck is never as much fun as an intentional one.
And what the hell is a kiss kicker anyway?
My grade: B
This is in my top 5. I personally think that the biggest reason this is such a horrible movie is the fact that the characters are all so awful. I mean, disgusting. They even make normally good qualities (chastity, responsibility, etc.) seem somehow bad or demeaning.
And I’m in the camp that the worse the movie (no matter how bad) the better the show. This is one of the top 3 worst movies they’ve ever done (imo). The only problem I have with this one is that I can’t watch it with my daughters- too many cringe inducing moments.
Ah, yes. The hilarious riffing, and the lovely Kari French as Pixie. What’s not to love. 5 stars from Bob-o (aka Jimbo).
People have covered alot about how I feel towards this movie, so I won’t duplicate their words. I just want to say that in spite of the punishment the movie by itself puts upon its viewer, M&tB do a helluva great job with the riffs, and the host segments are classic! Even my wife – who’s not a huge fan of the show but puts up with it because she loves me – laughed at several jokes. The fact that it was an obvious knock-off of Gremlins helped, too.
Hi I enjoy your article I though I would allege Ive been a telephone set sex person for years and enjoy the job you can check me at This Site. Im always online there and would like nothing more to please and flirt.. Keep up the posts I enjoy chatting about this line of work.
Last year, a website called the Agony Booth did an interview with Rick Sloane. He admitted that he thought it was an honor to be mocked on MST3k, and says that the jokes about him didn’t affect him because he’s learned not to take himself too seriously.
Link: http://agonybooth.com/agonizer/Interview_with_Rick_Sloane.aspx
It was funny; the first time I saw this episode I really started to feel like the Bots during the opening credit sequence about midway into it. It just felt to me like the riffing couldn’t keep up with the horrible dragging-down effect the movie was having on me. The damn rake-fight scene gave me a serious douche chill and I almost stopped watching it then and there. But thankfully, the episode really picked up when the Hobgoblins appeared (four hours in!).
Crow’s sudden verbal ejaculation of “Robert Plant!” when Fantazia appears on screen in hideous form-fitting spandex nearly made me fall out of my chair with laughter, and the entire Club Scum sequence and the riffs therein really paid off after sitting through the first half-hour of the movie.
After repeat viewings, I can really say with confidence that this is one of my top-ten episodes. I give this episode 4-and-a-half rakes out of five.