Movie: (1957): Two hitchhiking sisters are sentenced to 30 days labor at a cotton farm run by a scheming, corrupt boss.

First shown: 1/27/90 (unconfirmed)
Opening: Joel explains the premise, again; Tom has a tape-worm
Invention exchange: Joel shows off the “never-light” pipe; the Mads have invented tongue puppets
Host segment 1: J&tB perform a pageant dedicated to Greg Brady
Host segment 2: Crow recalls when J&tB rigged up Cambot so they can see what Gypsy is thinking
Host segment 3: Gypsy’s sick, and Tom is no help
End: Joel tries to explain the goofy guy from the movie, and reads some letters
(133 votes, average: 4.29 out of 5)
Loading...

• The episode has some things going for it. The movie marks a real departure for the series: It’s the first non-horror/sci-fi movie of the national series. (In fact, all the movies in season one except this one would have fit easily within the restrictions Sci-Fi Channel initially imposed on the Brains.) Then there’s Mamie. All in all, it’s reasonably watchable, but the riffing is really only so-so and the host segments, like last week, seem to be either long marches to nowhere (segment 1) or disjointed messes (segment 3). If feel like it could have been better.
• References.
• This episode is included in Mystery Science Theater 3000: Vol. XXIX.
• Crow still has the thick chin twine.
• Tom Servo observes: “That’s the only torso I have.” That would not be true for long.
• Joel again tells the bots to “look downcast.”
• The bots wince in pain when Joel strikes a match on them. Nice touch. And Joel doesn’t seem to care! Why? Why were the bots created to feel pain?
• Born Joan Lucille Olander, you might remember Mamie’s appearance on the 1994 Turkey Day bumpers hosted by Adam West. You can read about her life in her autobiography “Playing the Field.” Mamie’s also very tech-savvy: You can visit mamievandoren.com, visit her Facebook page, visit her YouTube page or follow her on Twitter @mamievandoran. Mamie’s now semi-retired from film. But she’s still singing, and in 2010 she put an album called “Still a Troublemaker.”
• They may not have made a cotton picker out of him, but Tom’s wrong: they WERE able to make a singer out of him. That’s rockabilly star Eddie Cochran, playing a character named “Bong” (it was a simpler time). He was only 19 here, but sadly only a couple of years away from his death in a car crash at the age of 21. (Cochran holds the dubious distinction of being the youngest person to die in our MSTory database.)
• “Untamed Youth” was condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency, but reportedly it only increased the film’s popularity.
• You can definitely see the blue tinting in this one.
• Strange line from the movie: “I’ll give ya an Italian haircut.” Several commenters say it means slitting a person’s throat.
• There was a certain type of MST3K fan who, when you asked them why they liked the show, would say something like “because that guy Joel was SO HIGH.” Why that would be a positive attribute of a TV show escapes me, but that’s just me. At an appearance more recently, Joel stated categorically that he was never stoned while shooting MST3K but, I gotta say, in host segment 1, he sure LOOKS it. I’m going to attribute it to Joel’s acting skills.
• Joel also almost falls over as the segment starts (though, to be fair, there was only a very small platform behind the desk for the host to stand on–the rest was an open trench where the puppeteers stood; I once stood there, and I can attest to the fact that it would be very easy for even a completely sober person to accidentally misstep and almost fall).
• I was never that much of a “Brady Bunch” fan, so I don’t really get why the detailed minutiae about the show they spout in segment 1 is funny. These season one “pageants” don’t really stand up well to repeat viewings.
• I wonder why they added the flashback element to host segment 2. Doesn’t seem necessary and certainly doesn’t add anything. To add time?
• LOTR reference: “Sauron’s dark army?”
• Callback: “No dancing.” (Crawling Hand); SPACOM! (Project Moonbase).
• We get several more uses of “Wonder what (s)he wanted…”
• Gypsy enters the theater for the first time (not counting KTMA) in this episode: Joel calls her into the theater to produce cotton in response to Tom Servo’s query (apropos of NOTHING, by the way) about what real cotton feels like (though how exactly Tom Servo would “feel” the cotton is unclear–I know, it’s just a show). Joel tells her to use her “teledyne vector” to perform this function, whatever that is.
• Gypsy’s lips fall off during a very hectic segment 3. They keep going. Then when she spits out a new Tom Servo, there’s no hand on his left arm. Either it wasn’t there to begin with, or it fell off during the fall. They keep going.
• While we’re more used to Joel stumbling over his lines, in the last half hour in the theater, Trace commits a doozy of a line flub with: “Hey, it’s Grg-brg-grg-Greg Brady!” They keep going.
• With this episode, the MST3K “Fan Club” becomes the “Information Club” in the end-of-show announcement.
• I think a brief explanation of the final musical number is called for: It feels shoehorned in, because it is. In 1957 (as this movie was being made) Harry Belafonte scored a HUGE hit with “The Banana Boat Song.” The song was mostly a hit because of its different sound and of course Harry’s charming singing style. But music promoters, as music promoters so often do, completely misread the public and decided that what the teeners wanted was calypso, calypso and MORE calypso. They didn’t, and the whole fad folded in a matter of weeks, but not before Les Baxter threw a little calypso number into this movie. (Also THIS travesty got made. Needs to be seen to be believed.)
• Stinger suggestion: Goofy guy dancing.
• Cast and crew roundup: This week they’re all in front of the camera. Lori Nelson was also in “Revenge of the Creature.” Lurene Tuttle wqas also in “Parts: The Clonus Horror. Yvonne Lime was also in “I Was A Teenage Werewolf. Robert Foulk was also in “The Indestructible Man.” Michael Emmet was also in “Attack of the Giant Leeches” and “Night of the Blood Beast.” And, of course, Mamie was also in “Girls Town.”
• CreditsWatch: Additional production assistants, again, were Melanie Hartley and Neil Brede; and the additional production staff was Jim Erickson. Audio post production was, again, by IVL Post in Minneapolis.
• Favorite riff: “Wait…so you’re my grandma, my sister, my mom … did you marry Bill Wyman?” Honorable mention: “And who are all these guys on the floor?”