Movie: (1966) A report of drugged chewing gum in Michigan sends a suave super agent to Amsterdam to investigate a sinister crime organization.
First shown: 8/7/93
Opening: Crow and Tom build a robot, who soon becomes annoying
Invention exchange: Frank demonstrates virtual comedy until Dr. F. programs in a few hecklers, J&tB demonstrate micro-golf
Host segment 1: Joel, Crow and Tom are a jazz trio playing the “Secret Agent Super Dragon” theme
Host segment 2: J&tB read through Crow’s latest screenplay: “The Spy Who Hugged Me”
Host segment 3: J&tB discuss spy movie post-kill puns
End: Dr. F.’s holds a super-villain conference call
Stinger: Jumping the Super Dragon, with xylophone accompaniment
(150 votes, average: 4.19 out of 5)
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• I don’t watch this one often, but when I do, it always surprises me all over again. It’s really a solid episode. The host segments are clever and the riffing is very good. My biggest gripe is the awful awful condition of the print.
• This episode is on Rhino’s “Mystery Science Theater 3000, Vol. 12.”
• References.
• Minsky the robot is an actual vintage toy, and that is what it really says. BBI named him Minsky in honor of artificial intelligence guru Marvin Minksy.
• Tom invokes “WKRP in Cincinnati” with the mention of “Chy-chy Rodragweez.”
• Callbacks: “I killed that fat barkeep.” (The Beatniks) Also: “Any talent to declare?” (Warrior of the Lost World), a mention of Ward E (Stranded in Space), “…but there was no monster” (Monster A-Go-Go).
• Joel wears his glasses in segment 2, which tells me he’s actually reading his lines off that script.
• Then current: “Herb from Burger King.” Also: “I ate the last Frusen Gladje.”
• Naughty riff: “We’ll be covering you from behind.” Crow: “You’ve been in prison too long.”
• Plot question–why did the bad guys choose a college town in Michigan to test their drug, when it’s fairly clear all their operations are in Europe? I don’t think the movie ever says.
• Frank is great in the ending segment, humming: ” …I sing whenever I sing…” and doing the exact minimum required to assist Dr. F. “Eagerly.”
• A very small cast and crew roundup: Set designer Arrigo Equini also worked on “Danger! Death Ray.” In front of the camera, Marisa Mell was also in “Danger: Diabolik,” Carlo D’angelo was also in “Hercules Unchained” and Benito Stefanelli was also in “The Pumaman.”
• Creditswatch: Host segments directed by Trace Beaulieu. Clayton James does hair and makeup for the last time in season 5.
• Fave riff: “Emo, avec lute.” Honorable mention: “Remind your engineers to use coasters on me.”
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Right on, Sampo. I’ve found that to be true of this and other episodes … not so fondly remembered, but when I do watch it, there’s usually some good laughs.
I wouldn’t call the Herb campaign “Then Current”. It was seven or eight years old in ’93 and had already been long forgotten.
I agree with Sampo and swh1939 that this is a sleeper episode. This one grows on you in a BIG way. Heck, I didn’t realize how in love I was until I got the DVD.
Speaking of the DVD, watch the fight scene at 1:20:05 between Dragon and a henchman. The fight ends with Dragon falling down a staircase, but right before that, both actors flinch away from each other (as if they’d just been punched) at the exact same time! Hilarious!
My complete review is here.
Naughty riff: “We’ll be covering you from behind.” Crow: “You’ve been in prison too long.”
Or maybe working at Grace Brothers.
Excuse me, Sitting Duck, are you being served?
I liked Frank’s Virtual Comedy invention exchange, especially after Dr. F tampers with it. “You’re not funny!” How many times have I heard that one…
Actually, when I first saw this, I thought it was hysterical. “Wow, I’ll bet this guy’s really cool. He smokes, he carries a gun, and he… makes a lot of phone calls.” Since then, Agent for H.A.R.M. has shown they can riff a bad spy film even better. As a result, this seems kind of laid back in that Joel sort of way, but it’s still amusing. It comes off best when they make fun of a) the goofy spy accoutrements, like the pen-phone, and b) Baby Face’s idiot comic relief.
The final ball has some great moments, too: “He’s got a big old hole in his head!” “Waitress, there’s a squeeze toy in my drink!” “The meeting of the society of men who can make a W will now begin.”
As for the host sketches, I like their take on the repetitious vibraphone music. Crow: “I only know two notes!” And I’ll agree that Frank is the funniest part of the final sketch, although Clay writing everything down on his Dry-Erase board makes me laugh too.
I dunno, I’ve always loved this episode. Top notch riffing and hilarious host segments as well. The only problem I have is not that the print is awful (heck, those missing frames provided some good laughs), but that the film appears to be cut by quite a bit. Oh well, what’s there is first-rate.
Favorite exchange:
Super Dragon–“Holland is beautiful in the fall”
Agent Fulton–“And Baby Face?”
Crow–“He’s beautiful any time”
I could be misquoting, but you get the idea. :wink:
Ahh, yes. The evil chewing gum. Reminds me of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich by Philip K. Dick.
I agree, this is a lousy print of the film. But, aside from Clint Eastwood movies, has anyone seen a good print of an Italian color film from the ’60s?
What, no love for Minsky, the atomic powered robot, who gives his best wishes to everybody?!
Well, I love Minsky, the atomic powered robot. Please give my best wishes to him.
Seriously, I do. I don’t know what it is, but that bit kills me.
Gotta’ agree with Sampo and others on this. I’ve watched this episode at least a dozen times and every time I think, “Well, here goes…meh… Golden Girls isn’t on tonight, so I suppose I’ll watch this episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Wow, I should really stop talking to myself.” And, I’m always thoroughly pleased with this episode, and laughter abounds. I think for me, I just don’t care for spy movies on their own. Sure, when MST3k does spy movies, well, that’s something different entirely. But I always have the same negative feelings before I watch them. I never gravitate towards the spy movie episodes, yet they are all so wonderful… ‘scept for Mighty Jack… But I wouldn’t classify that as much a spy movie as a floating turd.
Ya’ know… Speaking of spy movies, it drives me nuts that people get tingly every time another Bond movie comes out. “Did you hear? The new Bond movie is coming out?!” Well, who gives a rat’s ass?! Kill him! Kill him! The only reason that James Bond films were ever watchable was when Richard Kiel portrayed the lovable, but gruff Jaws in the films. I always wanted Jaws to end up with the lovely ladies, so he could paw at them like in Eegah! Is that wrong?
there was robot toys that did that. i knew kids growing up in the 80’s got one of those. i don’t recall if they said that phrase. they would walk and light up.
this a episode is a very good one They did better with the other james bond wannabe films.
i like bond films. they are very good films. they would not have made so many over these years without them being any good.
This riff kills me every time: “The meeting of the society of men who can make a W will now begin.”
I wait for it in rapt anticipation.
My favorite host segment moment is when Joel tries to spice up the boring Secret Agent Super Dragon theme song by smooching his base fiddle, though the post-kill pun workshop, The Spy Who Hugged Me and, yes, Minsky the robot are pretty funny too. Above average host segments overall, I think.
Did anyone understand the villian’s nefarious plan? I got that the chewing gum was drugged (sorry, Sampo; no idea why they needed to test it in Michigan) and then it turned out some vases were made from pressed drugs, and then, somehow, they will rule the world. Did I miss a step somewhere?
It had been years since I’d seen this episode before it hit DVD.
After a few viewings, and fairly recently… I remember about as much of it as I did before I got the DVD. It took me a while to remember if there was even an action sequence in the damn thing. The Brains… really don’t have much to work with in this movie, though they try. The movie just doesn’t have the stand-out goofiness of your Operation Double Double O-Sevens or Danger! Death Rays or Agent for H.A.R.M.ses or your Kloovan of Planet Ba-haaaaaaaaaalses. What I remember most about it was people walking around Europey places talking at length in goofy dub-voices about confusing things. That the host segments are largely more about spy movies in general than this one in specific doens’t help the movie be any less unmemorable.
Joel’s jazz-spaz is most certainly a highlight. And it’s always fun when someone does one of those stilted, clearly bored reads from a script they’ve been forced into. Frank was really settling into being able to act by now, heh.
Honestly, despite solid host segments, this will go towards the bottom of my stack… next to a bunch of the Herc movies and some of the Sandy Frank joints.
This and Operation Double 007 are gems in the Bond rip-off genre, sure the plots don’t make sense and the acting isn’t great but they do make us appreciate the actual Bond films all the more, ok maybe not gems but shiny ornate turds.
jason: “i like bond films. they are very good films. they would not have made so many over these years without them being any good.”
Jason, its just my opinion… but for argument’s sake, they also made 7 Police Academy movies… So, unless you want to defend those, I don’t think quantity equals quality.
Hey, I like the Police Academy movies! Um, okay, not really… just playing Devil’s advocate. :mrgreen:
What I found interesting about the DVD was the original trailer for “New York Appele Super Dragon.” It seemed that the majority of what’s in the trailer doesn’t appear in the MST episode.
The unedited movie might have made (a little) more sense, but it’d have to be about 6 hours long.
Anyway, I love the cheapie Bond-ripoffs. They just seem to take all of the “cool” ideas they can come up with and chuck ’em at the screen without consideration for coherency or logic. And that’s what I call good cinema.
-bb
My favorite part of this episode, and the part I remember best, is the post-kill puns sketch. I always enjoy the sketches where Joel teaches the Bots something about the world of entertainment.
The Super Agent Super Dragon theme song skit is one of the few things i like about this episode. It starts off clever, becomes funny, gets really annoying, redeems itself, gets annoying again, and then it becomes one of my favorite host segments. So fun to sing at work.
WITH BOATS!
Morgan the Robot
But is that color scheme right? That’s not how I remember it, but it’s been a little while.
Actually, I believe it was a Toby robot: http://www.theoldrobots.com/toby.html
I remember getting a gold Toby robot when I was 6 from my Grandmother at Christmas and I think I still have him somewhere. He walked (well, shuffled), lit-up, had a little gun and puffed out smoke. I’ve contemplated turning him into a Minsky replica, but my nostalga for the little guy is a bit too much for me to go through with it.
As for Secret Agent Super Dragon, I hadn’t seen it for quite a number of years until it came out on DVD and I had forgotten how good an episode it was.
Favorite Riffs: “Hey, he fits! Last time we had to cut the feet off!” and “So you killed yourself for no-thing! Nyeah-nyeah nyeah-nyeah nyeeah-nyeeeah!”
Are there really 7 Police Academy movies??? :shock:
I really didn’t know that….and now I feel dirty somehow for having that knowledge. :sad:
I don’t remember them actually being called “Minsky”, but I had the white and copper versions of that robot when I was 6. They did actually say, “I am the Atomic-Powered Robot; please give my best wishes to evv–rybodyyy!”. The copper version also blew smoke out his mouth when you put a few drops of oil in his head; yes, the box actually instructed you to do this. I think my Voltron finally decided he’d had enough of them after about a year and sent them to that great mecha-scrapyard in the sky-‘er, my basement.
This last season of Robot Chicken, in the same ep where Bob Barker neuters Snoop Dog, there’s a sketch where lame superhero “The Table-Smasher” busts up the “Council of Evil Tables”. Could that have been loosely inspired by the evil table mastermind in this experiment?!
Nah…
Perhaps more inrigueing than Tom and Crow’s toy robot is Baby-Face’s super-dragon toy. Were there ever commercially abailable walking toy monsters that actually breathed fire? Man, toys in the ’60s really were dangerous.
Bolem…..don’t say that too loudly, they may quit selling things like Lawn Darts!!!
( I humbly suggest that ‘Chy-chy Rodragueez’ is a reference to Ted Baxter and the Mary Tyler Moore Show )
Hanging around in apartments, lingering poolside and arranging blocks on a table, everything I look for in a spy thriller.
Randy
After watching the trailer on the DVD, it seems like the movie must have made more sense unedited. I remember thinking, “The only reason I understand this is an evil plot involving chewing gum is because they explained the movie in the ACEG.” Has anyone seen this movie unedited? Does it make more sense, or is it all just a jumble? I’m recalling Sampo’s thoughts about BBI having to overedit Hercules to make it fit.
( I humbly suggest that ‘Chy-chy Rodragueez’ is a reference to Ted Baxter and the Mary Tyler Moore Show )
Nope. In a Season one episode of “WKPR in Cincinnati”, Les Nessman botches the name Chi-Chi Rodriguez during a news bumper. But it does sound like something Ted Baxter would do.
Randy
http://www.danefield.com/alpha/robots/talking.htm
( more on the talking robot )
I noticed something VERY interesting about this episode the other day: the *voice,* not the actor, the *voice* of SASD is none other than Rex Reason, aka Dr. Cal Meatchum from This Island Earth.
Compare them yourselves… you’ll see what I mean.
Re : “Plot question–why did the bad guys choose a college town in Michigan to test their drug, when it’s fairly clear all their operations are in Europe? I don’t think the movie ever says.”
They’re Ohio fans ?
Re #32 : You sound like you know what you’re talking about, so I’ll research it myself. I’ll also take the coward’s way out and suggest that it IS a funny enough joke to have been recycled from WJM by WKRP/WKPR.
Mhael #34 – Wow! Is that really who it is our are you speculating? I definitely hear the resemblance, though!
Graboidz #26 – I’ve seen “Police Academy 5” more times than I’ll admit too. Who feels dirty now? :oops: You’d be a fool not to ask for a helicopter.
So…although Ray Danton was an American actor, they dubbed him nevertheless?
This one didn’t age very well for me at all – I had the opposite experience as Sampo: I remembered it fondly but then didn’t enjoy it as much when I re-watched it. Maybe the poor condition of the print is part of it.
Still, it does contain an all-time favorite riff: “I’m a naughty little cheesy blintz!”
A couple of my fave lines:
Joel: “Oh, they’re in America, ’cause, look, there’s a flag”.
Further on into the movie, as Servo notes the seemingly aggresive tourist industry plying their wares on the street: “Do you have any dolls or postcards?” (And about a half minute later) : “Oh, hi, do you know where I can find some knickknacks or curios with kind of a Holland theme?”
Annoying commercial on my taped version: Dr. Ruth (???!!!) extolling the virtues of the show “Dream On” — The HELL?
The best part to me was seeing Joel smacking the table, then taking swings at Minsky. And then casually dropping the bat, denying any violent actions taken toward the robot, as Tom & Crow remark:
“I saw that!”
I enjoy this episode, it’s easy for me to watch. To me it’s funny through and through. :grin:
“Secret Agent Super-Rude, if you ask me.”
And when the sex scene is interupted by the power outage and the music skips off, “Oh, that happens to everyone once in a while.”
First so what they made 7 police acedemy movies. they made bond films since 1962. do you really think they would made these films for 46 yrs without them being any good?
Hollywood doesn’t care about ‘good.’ It cares about ‘profitable.’
I noticed something VERY interesting about this episode the other day: the *voice,* not the actor, the *voice* of SASD is none other than Rex Reason, aka Dr. Cal Meatchum from This Island Earth.
No. It isn’t. The voice you are hearing is Ray Danton’s own.
It does sound uncannily like Rex Reason’s (and like Rex’s brother, Rhodes’), but if you check out some of Ray Danton’s other works you’ll hear the exact same voice you’re hearing here. Admittedly, most of his acting work is hard to find on video and DVD, but if you run across one of his many guest spots on TV shows* you’ll hear his voice. He has a bit in The Longest Day, but it’s really only a couple of lines.
I really love this episode, but I was like Sampo. For a long time, this one was just a blur of “ehh, okay.” The only line I remembered for a long time was “Conrad Poo and his inflatable knees.” I was always much fonder of all of the other spy movies. Now, this one has pulled even.
I probably rediscovered this one around 1999/2000, and yes, “Emo. Avec Lute.” is a breathtaking riff. I’ve become really fond of Joel’s heightened disgust of SuperDragon to the ending, “Jeez, what a jerk! He just wanted to get the guy’s goat before he died!”
“Gee, she’s sure wearing a funny bathing suit.”
*The one to look for is his turn on Surfside 6 – he plays this menacing cross between Jerry Lewis and Frank Sinatra that has to be seen to be believed. Unfortunately, hardly anyone runs those old Warner Brothers shows much anymore.
The Chi Chi Rodriguez joke originated on WKRP.
The great thing about that scene is that even after Johhny Fever corrects him, Les continues to deliberately mispronounce the name.
As for this episode, it’s not a standout for me, but it’s not bad, either.
I love Minsky and “The Spy Who Hugged Me”.
Another top notch episode. Was Joel trying to go out on a high, knowing that he was leaving the show soon?
Fave riffs: The description of Comfort: “Secret Agent Mary Kay!” and the party: “The Fred Mertz Mystery Cafe!”
I liked the names of the characters for “The Spy Who Hugged Me,” especially Gary WyndhamHill. That was a great skewring of the touchy-feely New Age-y vibe of that time.
Another fave riff: When SASD gets jumped over the xylophone, Joel says, “Hurray! I’m Super Clown!” Loved that they used that for the stinger.
I wonder, since most of the writers were stand-up comics, if they tapped into personal experience for Frank’s invention. Did any of them have to put up with hecklers as bad as poor Frank?
One more fav riff: “The little town of…” “Bethlehem!” I always love when the music sounds like Christmas carols and the crew starts singing along. This is a variation on that type riff.
I know that this is off topic…but can anybody tell me which episode ended with the Mads “Pushing the button” and nothing happens?
We now resume our regularly scheduled forum…
Actually, the main thing I remember about the movie is the way SASD shamelessly rips off Flint’s suspended animation trick.
And I’m pretty sure the ACEG mentions that the Virtual Comedy invention was based on the cast’s experiences doing stand-up.