Movie: (1979) A disgruntled former refinery worker starts a city-wide conflagration and a star-studded cast, each with their own subplot, must cope with the disaster.

First shown: 3/19/89
Opening: The Mad Scientist League threatens to revoke Dr. F. and Dr. E.’s licenses. Seems they’re merely “mildly peeved researchers.”
Host segment 1: Servo and Crow pull the old “telescope black eye” prank on Joel
Host segment 2: Joel demonstrates his new anti-theft device, “hell in a handbag”
Host segment 3: J&TB perform a military cadence
End: Joel again shows the stuff you get when you join the MST3K Fan Club
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• References.
• The “hell in a handbag” invention in segment 2 would be re-used in episode 103- MAD MONSTER.
• The Brains apparently thought they had done some of their best work in this episode. Portions of segments 1 and 3 and a couple of segments of theater riffing (the “good morning!” sequence and the childbirth scene) were included on the compilation pitch tape that sold the show to The Comedy Channel. That compilation tape was included on the “MST3K Scrapbook” tape that was sold to fans by the Info Club.
• A portion of segment 3 also appeared in the Comedy Central special “This is MST3K.”
• A commercial advertising Joel Hodgson’s stand-up comedy act (with a voice over by Kevin Murphy) aired during the original broadcast of this episode, and is included in many fan copies.
• This is the first reference to the “Mad Scientists League” that is forever checking up on Dr. F and, later, Pearl.
• Local reference: “I haven’t been in research since I was at the U doing kitchen cabinet analysis for Ken Keller’s house.” Keller was president of the University of Minnesota–known in the Twin Cities as, simply, “the U”–in the 80s. He was nice enough to reply to an email I sent him and explain the joke.

“In 1988, renovations to the university president’s house (Eastcliff) were the hot scandal of the day with lots of talk about a $600,000 kitchen. Aside from the fact that there was no such kitchen (that was the price of the whole renovation, but that’s a longer story), it made great headlines for a couple of months. Since I was the president at the time, the headlines were about me and “my house.” So Twin Citians at the time would have known the reference.
Never thought of hiring researchers to do the kitchen cabinet analysis. We did it the old-fashioned way: you buy the cabinets and you hang them.”

• There’s no “movie sign” sequence at the beginning of the movie. It goes right from the Mads, into the movie.
• In the theater, Joel and Servo start talking at the same moment, but this time Joel doesn’t give way and finishes his joke. Instead, it’s Servo who gives way. Joel asks him what he was going to say. Servo tells him what it was (it isn’t very funny). Joel says “I’m glad I interrupted you.” Crow adds: “Hey, we’re beginning to annoy ourselves! Cool!”
• Crow mistakenly identifies the kid who starts the fire as Brandon Cruz of “Courtship of Eddie’s Father.” He does look a little like Cruz, but it’s actually another child actor, Steven Chaikelson. He had a very short career, and with his terrible acting in this movie, you can see why. By the way, the little girl playing his sister Debbie is his real-life sister Janice. Her career was a little longer–but not much.
• You can see that Henry Fonda and Ava Gardner pretty much phoned their parts in. Probably were on the set for a day or two at most.
• It’s almost spring in Minneapolis and it was a balmy 34 degrees when the show started, moving up to 35 later on.
• Coming back from Segment 1, the Barry Newman character is talking about unintelligible symbols and Joel says “sounds like viewer mail.” Wow he’s only started getting mail for a few weeks and he’s already jaded?
• The sound mixing is a little rough in this one: during some of the louder movie scenes it’s hard to hear the riffers.
• After segment 3, Joel again runs down the hallway and is run over by Cambot.
• Servo uses the term “kindler gentler”–a popular, if mistaken, phrase in 1989.
• Crow sneezes in the theater.
• Cast and crew roundup: Special effects guy Thomas L. Fisher, sound effects editor Dennis Drummond, sound recording mixer David Appleby and dialogue editor Martin Ashbee all also worked on “The Last Chase.” In front of the camera, we’ll see James Franciscus again in “Space Travelers.”
• CreditsWatch: Todd Ziegler gets the director credit. Brian Funk is listed as an “additional” writer. Alexander Carr gets the audio credit. Clayton James would do makeup for this episode and the rest of the season.
• Fave riff: “Boil some newspapers! ” Honorable mention: “It’s the creature from the gross lagoon.”