Movie: (1994) A man who was enslaved by aliens escapes to contemporary Los Angeles, where he is hunted by cyborgs using forced-perspective dinosaurs as trackers.
First shown: April 25, 1999
Opening: The bots calculate how many times a lady Gypsy is
Intro: Pearl conducts LSD experiments on the bots
Host segment 1: Tom makes a pair of legs so he can kickbox, but Gypsy has a leg up on him
Host segment 2: M&tB thank Pearl for not killing them, which puts a crimp in her plans
Host segment 3: Droppy the Water Droplet visits
End: Mike has a biiig chin; Pearl explodes Bobo and Brain Guy’s plans for going on the road
Stinger: The future warrior’s shirt is head-butted right off
(330 votes, average: 4.45 out of 5)
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• We’re still in a stretch of good-not-great here, seems to me. A mixed bag of host segments, a movie that is simultaneously watchable and incomprehensible and riffing that kind of rises and falls with the movie.
• Mary Jo’s thoughts are here.
• This episode appeared on the MST3K 20th Anniversary Edition, aka Vol. XIII.
• The opening segment is almost a textbook example of an opening bit. It’s apropos of nothing, takes a silly idea and takes it just as far as they should but doesn’t belabor it. Witty, fun and it’s over.
• The intro segment isn’t a laugh-riot, but Brain Guy and Bobo are hilarious.
• Filmmaker Dave Eddy revealed that this is another movie that kind of collapsed halfway through production and got taken over by another director (him). The original director, Tony Doublin, was battling with the movie’s producer, who felt the fight and action scenes weren’t being done correctly. (He might have been right!) Ultimately Doublin quit and Eddy and his team (dubbed the “Damage Control Unit”) was hired to salvage the movie as best they could. This is the result.
• He also noted that, while they did so, he and some of the crew remarked that it would be great if some day their movie would show up on “Mystery Science Theater 3000”!
• Then-current reference: Kim Wilde. Yes, I know she was actually popular in the ’80s, but at least in ’98-’99 people still remembered who she was!
• The characters cuss a few times and Sci-Fi Channel felt it necessary to insert silences.
• What IS going on with the “car visor cam” effect in some of the shots? (A “gradiant filter” was kindly explained to me in comments.)
• Segment 1 just kind of lays there. I think they’ve attached all the body parts to Servo that are possible.
• The guy with the magazine in the park who gets eaten by a dinosaur is none other than writer, editor, agent and movie fan, the late Forrest J. Ackerman.
• Callbacks: “Warwoolf”; “Tusk!” (Werewolf) “Would you dopple me into that movie, Mike?” (Overdrawn at the Memory Bank)
• Particularly amusing movie moment: the TV cameraman who is clearly holding a cardboard box sloppily made to look a little like a camera.
• Last time around I mentioned that the “Warren Moon impression” joke escaped me. I don’t follow the off-field antics of footballers. It was explained in the comments, as was the Mandy Patinkin reference.
• Segment 2 is a cute idea taken from the movie, but they belabor it a bit.
• On the other hand, segment 3, featuring a visit from Droppy the water droplet, is classic MST3K.
• This movie must have been extra-tough duty: The Brains had to come up with TWO sets of riffs for the same sequence–the one in which the rag-tag band infiltrates the dinosaurs’ lair — which is shown in its entirety TWICE.
• The subject of Joel comes up when Mike tries some forced perspective fun during the closing credits.
• Mike’s big chin is funny in the closer, but Pearl calmly blowing people up when they annoy her is not really a new concept.
• Cast and crew roundup: Robert Z’Dar was also in “Soultaker.” That’s it.
• CreditsWatch: Directed by Mike. Fred Street Post Audio get a special thanks in this and only this episode.
• Fave riff: “An actor prepares…to suck.” Honorable mention: “Z’dont!”
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Future War also might have been the movie Mike was referring to when he and Mary Jo appeared on “Sci-Fi Vortex”.
This episode has the one MST3K movie quote that pops into my mind more than any other. I’m referring of course to the line “Monsters in the hood.”
This episode is one of the thirty or so that I keep in my top ten.
Certainly a solid episode. Not so much because of slam dunk riffs that floored me as much as constant and solid riffs. The police dispatcher with the femme voice is classic, “Coptin Pullarith…” Fave riff, crow: “What is this a halfway-house for huge guys?”
It’s fun to watch the really exciting faux-Terminator assaults the police station segment and just watch how pathetically the filmmakers handled firearms. The one old cop, who’s handling an Uzi or a Mac-10, don’t know which: check it out, when he shoots, the editor just inserted a brief snippet of white space to represent gunfire! It’s priceless!
Monsters in the hood, y’all.
Speaking of that gang, they must be really good at what they do because they have all survived into their 30s.
The fight scenes in the movie are funny on their own. “Whaaaa!” Chaaaaaa!” Cracks me up even without riffing.
Since no one has mentioned it yet another favorite riff of mine “Son of Moe Howard.”
“Y’know I could point out that this isn’t the future and it’s not a war, but you know me, I don’t like to complain!” Does this strike anyone else as being the “Werewolf” of season 10? Just the most incompetently produced film on every level from everyone involved swirling to make a perfect storm for MST, or as Kevin Murphy referred to Werewolf “a gift from God.” I for one LOVE the “Thank you for not killing us” host segment. Hilarious through and through. All in all a great episode. On to Dr. Z!
Did anyone notice that when you watch the “stinger” scene, Runaway actually rips his shirt off with his hands? On first viewing, it isn’t noticeable, but watch it again and you can’t miss it.
Agree with Sampo’s analysis of this one. The movie has its moments and the riffing certainly rises with those, but there are parts where the riffing also falls flat. I really think the final season hangover was affecting the Brains by this point as their riffing seemed to lack its usual sparkle and snap over the course of this season. If they’d done this one in Season eight or nine, or even in the earlier years of the show, I think the results would’ve been better. Overall it’s not bad, good but not great. 3.5 stars out of five.
#55, It’s probably from all those wild flowers they pick.
“He studied under Lee Strasberg…’s car.”
Daniel Bernhardt did indeed go on to appear as Agent Johnson in The Matrix Reloaded. He was certainly better off in a movie that had a good fight choreographer and didn’t require him to do any actual acting.
I really liked Tom’s “vomitorium” riff because it means the Brains, unlike most people, actually know what a vomitorium is.
Droppy the Water Droplet seems to hearken back/forward to Wally the Waffle and Coily (who originally inspired Wally, of course.) The sketch is sort of the inverse of the famous “dihydrogen monoxide” prank.
The “nun with a troubled past” story is a pretty straightforward redemption tale, but nobody seems to bat an eye at the fact that she’s doing business with illegal arms dealers and drug pushers. She’s just outright supporting their activities.
It seems like a great many cyborgs and androids in movies have supposedly enhanced vision that looks much, much worse than ordinary human vision. It’s typically in false colors that don’t seem to convey any information, horribly pixellated, and jerky.
Another movie this one seems to have ripped off: the credits sequence reminds me an awful lot of Alien^3. The names are intercut with scenes of chaos aboard a spaceship followed by the launch of an escape pod.
A brilliant episode, with an utterly bizarre and inept movie that’s begging to be ripped apart by these guys. I still have trouble keeping a straight face just thinking, “Ladies and gentlemen… Fred Burroughs.”
My only nitpick is that they somehow missed attacking the endless repetition of the “Four days ago, a man fell from the sky…” line. ‘YES. We KNOW. You TOLD US EARLIER, THANK YOU.’ :razz:
Didn’t Mortal Kombat Conquest air around or just after season 10?
The ending of the movie confused me. The first few times I thought the nun didn’t make her vows and ended up with the runaway.
“I’ll hit you so hard with this, that you’ll go flying over there – ”
Actually in agreement on this one as being good, not great. The riffing is solid, but I think they’re kind of hurt by the fact that the movie is SO disjointed as to be hard to follow. Forget continuity across the length of the movie, there’s barely any continuity from scene to scene. Hell, I had a harder time following this one than I did Overdrawn at the Memory Bank or Monster-a-Go-Go, probably two of the most incomprehensible movies ever made. There’s still plenty of good stuff, though. Probably my favorite part, though, is when the first dinosaur busts through the window at the halfway house for huge guys, White Huge Guy runs at it and it just knocks him over, and Mike and the bots crack up.
Host segments, as has been mentioned, are a mixed bag. The opening is great (“Gillian Anderson herself is only a 2.9”), and the intro, while pretty predictable by their standards, did provide the awesome acid rock name Narcotic Casserole. The other segments are mostly forgettable save Droppy, who foreshadows Coily by 8 episodes and is an absolute riot (in large part because the uses for water have seemingly no correlation and are in a totally haphazard order), and Gypsy in the kickboxing sketch (there’s something about her singing “You Shook Me All Night Long” that kills me).
On an unrelated note, I think the whole “once they found out they were canceled they stopped trying as hard” bit is completely ridiculous, particularly since we’re still a ways from most of the best episodes of the season (Blood Waters, Track of the Moon Beast, and Horrors of Spider Island) and one of their top 5 shorts (the aforementioned A Case of Spring Fever). My guess is that it just seems like they’ve lost a little steam because there are a few clunkers spread throughout this season, whereas seasons 8 and 9 had theirs primarily at the beginning and then went on runs of great episode after great episode (particularly true of season 8, where basically everything from Giant Spider Invasion on was gold).
Never really got along with this one much, it just feels like the riffs could’ve been a bit sharper and the movie a bit sillier. Yeah, it’s a tough balance I know!
Has it’s moments, but not enough of them.
#64 I think it’s universally agreed upon though that HAMLET is a sucky season 10 episode.
#66 I wouldn’t say universally, but yes, Hamlet is generally viewed as pretty sub-par. That’s kind of what I meant by “clunkers spread throughout the season;” it’s not that there weren’t episodes that weren’t entirely up to snuff, it’s that rather than having those episodes be clustered together near the beginning of the season as in seasons 8 and 9, there’d be a couple good-to-great episodes followed by a less-than-stellar one, followed by a couple more good ones, then another weaker one, and so on. Because the mediocre ones are more spread out, people tend to think of the season as a whole as more mediocre than they would if they all came at the beginning. In fact, I think a large part of the reason season 8 is so widely hailed (save, of course, those who never got over Trace, or even Joel, leaving) is because that string from episode 810 on is pretty much all fantastic episodes, which helps people forget that most of the first 9 episodes were pretty iffy.
#66:
Actually, it isn’t, in accordance with Sampo’s Theorem. I really like that episode.
Oh Z’no!
I didn’t watch this one much after the show ended, so when the DVD came out, all I remember was a lot of boxes and and that shot of the guy’s shirt falling off.
Is that scene of the “van’s emissions” the worst day-for-night shooting ever seen?
Is that old man with Monsters comic someone famous, or supposed to look like someone famous? I couldn’t figure that scene out at all.
The worst thing about the cardboard camera is that they use the cardboard to make it look a film (as opposed to a video) camera… which is being used for a TV live shot.
So, why do they get arrested half way through the movie? What law have they broken?
I’d put this one as Good But Not Great(tm). It has some fantastic moments though. I really like the half-way house for huge guys.
There’s no “universal agreement” about ANY MST episode, not even Hamlet.
“Drive! DRIVE!!!”
#70, Dark Grandma, you said a mouthful. It’s hard to get “universal agreement” on episodes even here in my household, must less in the world of Misties. I rather enjoy pork-filled German Hamlet.
Hey! I kind of like Hamlet (especially Max’s over the top acting).
But I’m still looking for some of those Hamlet action dolls.
Talk about great Christmas presents.
P.R.I.N.C.E. H.A.M.L.E.T Hooray for Prince Hamlet!
I wonder if the writers had a lot of ..ideas, with that line, “I am tool”…
Johnny Ryde says: “So, why do they get arrested half way through the movie? What law have they broken?”
That has always infuriated me! I wonder if the explanantion was cut from the MSTing for time, considering Mike and the ‘bots never bring it up.
Fav lines:
SERVO: What other random things can I say? “Lamp?” “Elephants in the street?”
CROW: Hi. I’m the director. Please accept this small, inaccurate model of what we’d like to imply just happened.
MIKE: The stuff my stereo came packed in flies through space!
“Everything he wanted was everything I needed.”
CROW: “…so neither of us actually GOT anything.”
I also like during the third segment when Droppy comments on how the movie “made much of the propensity of dinosaurs to gather near water” and Servo mutters, “I remember ONE line.”
Hey, I like Hamlet, too, as I like the play, I like Ricardo Montalban, and it’s not so much bad as it is bleak (“hell, even a stick would cheer this place up”). Again, though, I’m simply stating what seems to be a general opinion; time and again on here, whenever the question of least favorite episode gets posed, the answers are inevitably a bunch of Hamlets, a bunch of “movies that even the riffing couldn’t save” (i.e. Neptune Men, Starfighters, Monster-a-Go-Go, Fu Manchu, Batwoman, etc.), and a bunch of “they really hadn’t found their footing yet” episodes (all of season one, most of season two). NOT my opinion, just trends I’ve noticed on these boards. There are ALWAYS exceptions to these; there are no universally derided episodes just as there are no universally beloved episodes (you’ll always get someone who knocks even stuff like Manos and Space Mutiny).
#73: I wonder if the writers had a lot of ..ideas, with that line, “I am tool”…
I also wondered why they didn’t riff on that and guess that maybe “tool” wasn’t yet a popular slang term in 1999?
#69: So, why do they get arrested half way through the movie? What law have they broken?
I’m guessing Fred (Burroughs) called the police after the dinosaur attack at the halfway house and gave them descriptions of Runaway & Sister Anne. The fact that Tool knew something about the recent dino-attacks makes him a “person of interest” for the cops. Almost makes sense, except for that inexplicable train ride to nowhere.
This movie actually has a couple of self-referential riffs. Or at least riffs referencing the continuity/universe of the show. Over a shot of someone going through a door that looks vaguely like one of those from the door sequence, Servo says, “Hey, they’re coming into the theater, Mike!” And at one point, Mike says of the first cyborg, the one with the mustache and the mullet, and is wearing white makeup at first: “Brain Guy looked like this in high school.” My favorite riff from the film: “Well, that was easy! Maybe it was butterflies that wiped out the dinosaurs.”
Future Wax!
@Finnias ‘Critter’ Jones, #76
But from what I remember, they are arrested and thrown in the back of a police car… So it’s not like they’re being asked nicely to help the police with their inquires. They’re arrested, handcuffed and sneered at…
(n) x ‘a lady’=funny
I happen to love LSD unapologetically (not as a party drug but as a tool for introspection, *not recommended for everyone) so the ‘secret government LSD tests’ sketch is one of my favorites. However, I have never mistaken a Milky-Way for a Snickers bar while tripping.
Pearl: “Who wants vegetables? You do! You do!” Bill sounds genuinely disoriented when he says “wha .. you mean you’re not a clown, or ..”
This to me is only a fair episode (3.5 stars) but it really has some stellar moments & riffs.
– All the stuff about the empty boxes fight cracks me up. “Boxes of air shipped anywhere overnight”, “Maybe they ship fully inflated balloons” “he’s BOXED in” “well I’m Card-BORED”
– Nun: I have a past i’m not proud of – Crow “That’s why i made this handy scrapbook”
– the cardboard movie camera!! Oh jeez!
– Crow: “I could point out that this isn’t the future and it’s not really a war but i’m not one to complain”
Bomb ticks really fast – Crow in announcer voice: “INTRODUCING NEW FASTER SECONDS!”
“hi i’m the director, please enjoy this small, inaccurate model of what we’d like to imply just happened. thank you”
Forgot to mention:
Servo’s new legs are really funny and his speech about expecting constant kickboxing action is hilarious.
Droppy the Water Droplet(tm) is a great character and i love the randomness in their selection of water facts
“Just call me Bruce box-liker”
#63: Wait, she did take her vows? I totally thought she gave that up to marry Runaway or something. This movie, jeez.
I like this movie because it’s so solid. It’s a good background movie — doesn’t put me to sleep, but I don’t feel like I have to just sit and watch it.
I thought this episode was utterly hilarious the first time I saw it. The next time the laughs were more sporadic.
All in all I’d say this is a pretty average episode from the seasons 9 and 10 period. The host segments are forgettable, but with just a few exceptions I feel that’s sort of typical of the Sci-Fi era; the riffing seemed to become the main priority of the show after they were dropped from CC, so at this point in the series the host segments don’t really factor into my judgement of an episode.
I love season 10, by the way. It’s probably not as solid all-around as season 9, but there are some absolute knock-out episodes and I feel the writers continued to go full-bore, as evinced by SQUIRM, which was one of the best episodes in the Sci-Fi era and the penultimate episode of the series.
I think it’s unfair to the writers to say they would have done more with this film earlier in the series or when not under the gloom of the show’s demise. One thing I notice a lot on these boards is MSTies openly lamenting the failure of the writers to make jokes out of certain moments or lines from a movie which seems like obvious riff-fodder. Comedy writing is hard, and sometimes even a whole room full of writers can’t make a joke work. Most comics realize that no joke at all is better than an uninspired one.
This is a middle of the road episode for me. The theatre segments are good not great. I’ve only seen this one a few times since it aired. Maybe I’ll have to give it another look. ;-)
*Jean-Claude Goshdarn shrieks while throwing an empty box at Robo-Mullet*
TOM: “Carboard boxes aren’t working…try throwing a piece of paper or a cotton ball.”
During the ensuing fight (both characters, repeatedly): “EEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!”
The worst grammatical offense since Cave Dwellers’ “What do you intend doing?” – Captain Polaris: “Hey, what do we’ve got?”
“A Macy’s balloon! Oh, it’s you.”
During the panicked call by warehouse employees to Puffy Hat Dispatcher, a guy in the background is being handed things to block the door from an implied dinosaur attack. EMPTY CARDBOARD BOXES OUGHT TO DO THE TRICK!
During the “Cha” scene – MIKE: “He’s warming up to sing the Big Country song.”
Another Callback – to SanFrancisco International
at the end Brain Guy says
“Sorry man, I don’t follow you, no way”
Quoting the hippie kid with a guitar being interviewed by airport security.
#80:
Yeah, I don’t get the “faster seconds” the characters used on their timer. Sure, nothing’s stopping them for using whatever time intervals they please, but… why? It’s formatted like a standard m:ss timer and everything.
I forgot to mention that the lady at the first dinosaur-attack crime scene (cop? EMT?) reminds me a lot of Yeardley Smith–in appearance, not in voice or in talent.
Note to would-be fight choreographers: Don’t have the combatants pause every few seconds to shout “YEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAARRRGGH” at the top of their lungs. If Yuen Woo-ping saw this movie, I’m sure he’d just be shaking his head sadly throughout.
#76: “Tool” in 1999 pretty meant the same thing it means today. I think they kind of passed that one by in order to keep it a family show. I remember they did laugh when the Runaway said, “I am a tool”.
#62 I’m pretty sure Crow said, exasperatedly, “THAT’S BEEN ESTABLISHED!” I missed the original episode premiere so it was a awhile before I got a chance to see this. Now I’ve probably seen it 20 times. I think when Annie got on the train she was already planning to see her aunt (if I remember the dialogue accurately) but apparently she never showed up. It can be hard to follow. Anyway, this one never gets old. I do have an explanation for the last ‘huh?’. Runaway Tool put the exploding collar on the cyborg and that’s why he was on-fire. Why the cyborg didn’t just vanish into smoke like the dinosaur (no wonder fossils are so rare!) is anyone’s guess. I think most of us lament the loss of Terry Joe. He was a good python. One last thing: Pearl cancelling her intended killing of M&TB shows that she’s not as evil as she thinks. She’s too ditzy and short-sighted. If she was truly evil she would’ve said “don’t thank me, you’re going to die very soon anyway MWA-HA-HA!”
When I’ve come across a phrase like “that guy’s such a tool,” the meaning seemed to be “that guy’s an idiot, he’s a loser, he lets people [or maybe society in general] manipulate and use him…like a TOOL.” The word also has a sexual implication, of course — it has since at least Shakespeare’s time — but if they’d decided to do anything further with the word, I’d expect the former, not the latter. They did use the word’s most common meaning a few times, saying he was a screwdriver or something like that.
Some sources claim that the character is stating that his name is “Atool,” which doesn’t work in the context of him saying “I have a job. I’m a tool.” What he’s saying is that he’s a slave, an object, property. He never seems overly excited about becoming a free person, but I guess that’s just his acting level, I mean, personality.
#69 Johnny Ryde asked who the old guy that got munched by the dino was:
It was Forrest J. Ackerman, famous for his ginormous collection of science fiction memorabilia, and general efforts to promote the science fiction genre. I remember he used to show up as a guest at science fiction conventions in the 80s and 90s. I think the sci fi magazine he’s holding when he got eaten is a stab at an in joke.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forrest_J._Ackerman
I always crack up at the part where they show the cyborg with the
curly hair and white make-up, and Mike says “thats what Brain Guy
looked like in high school”.
@I’m Evil, #91
Ah ha! Thanks! The scene was so random (even for this movie), that I figured it had to be an in-joke of some kind…
The Elusive Robert Denby #67: I wouldn’t say universally, but yes, Hamlet is generally viewed as pretty sub-par.
I would say there’s a more or less even split between those who like it and those who don’t. It’s just that the naysayers are more vocal and therefore seem more numerous.
Exactly, Sitting Duck! The discussion of Hamlet should be _______ (supply your own adjective); looking forward to it!
Oh, and I saw one person comment on it, so I figured I’d clarify:
The boxes aren’t meant to be empty. They’re intended to be full of heavy stuff, and the main character and his cyborg opponent are so strong that they toss them around as if they’re empty. That’s why you see extras in the background pretending to lift them as though they’re really, really working.
Of course, the problem is that an empty box flies through the air differently than a full one, and so the effect comes off so badly that everyone just says, “Why are they throwing around empty boxes?” But it’s meant to be super-strength.
“Brandon says:
May 13, 2010 at 7:41 pm
#64 I think it’s universally agreed upon though that HAMLET is a sucky season 10 episode.”
Hamlet actually made me despair of life for awhile. When looking through my pile of MST-3k DVDs I usually grimace and shuffle it to the bottom of the pile.
Good episode, solid riffing, but the movie was poorly made that it sometimes drags it down.
The shirt falling off sequence, I think, is our hero removing a shirt that might have restricted proper fighting techniques. That or the filmmakers wanted another scene of the hunky hero shirtless.
I imagine that the screenwriter was a young first time writer asked to cobble something together that used elements from recent successful SF films. The question of faith seems like the writer was dealing with his own questions of Roman Catholicism, settling on a take care of orphans and sacifice yourself for others. I suppose he thought that he was sending a great and inspiring message (and it is), that the message was deep and would cause us to think, but maybe a kickboxing cyborgs film with two different directors helming wasn’t the best showcase for promoting the social gospel. I suspect that the writer can look back on this and (hopefully) say he has gotten better.
Fave riffs are the religious ones near the end.
“The Lutherans create a cyborg.”
“Jesus was a kickboxer, right?”
Future War at least proved that it was possible to make dinosaurs that were even cheaper than Carnosaur.
http://www.badmovies.org/movies/carnosaur/
( Another solid vote for Hamlet )