[Recently], several of us [commenters in a certain thread] were commenting about how silly the spam messages were, which you’ve since deleted. They sounded like something weirdly translated into English, and I said this might be a good WDT, perhaps call it, “Say WHAT?” — sentences spoken by an MST3K character that make no sense whatsoever. I don’t mean sentences that are hard to hear or understand, like Buffalo Bill’s “New England journalists!” in “Riding with Death” (which I think was a redneck accented way of saying, “You act like you’re enjoying this,” by the way).
My “Say what??” would be from “Agent for H.A.R.M.” when Adam Chance says, “You think you can’t get hurt, Doctor, because this is America? Apple pie and all that jazz? Well, it’s my job to keep the pie on the table, and nobody asks me how I do it!” Why pie? Why does Chance have to keep it on the table? Where else would it be? My brain hurts…
I’ve got a classic: “Flag on the moon. How did it get there?” WHA? Ya wanna unpack that one for me, there, Coleman, buddy?
What’s your pick?
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I’ll go with “Pretty, you may be!” from The Projected Man. It’s just so odd and abrupt, it really seems to set the tone for the rest of the movie. And as far as Coleman Francis goes, almost EVERY line of ‘narration’ from Beast of Yucca Flats could quality. “Flag on the Moon…” was a fine opening choice.
Although the rest of the movie is crystal clear and well thought out, the last line of ‘Red Zone Cuba’ “He ran all the way to hell, with a penny and a broken cigarette.” just didn’t have the impact for me as a closing line. Maybe I’m the only one who just didn’t get it. A slight improvement might have been if oh let’s say Coleman falls down next to a sled and whispers “Cherokee Jaaack!” “Cherokee Jaacck!”
So, basically, every weekend discussion will have (and has, so far) the response “Flag on the moon. How did it get there?”
Seems to be the default.
My favorite “sentence that makes no sense” is from “Fire Maidens of Outer Space”: as the two astronomers are in the observatory (built inside a bus station), smoking like fiends and discussing the possibility of life on the 13th moon of Jupiter, the Anthony Dexter character says “It’s probable, but highly doubtful.” What???
#3, is that such a bad thing? It certainly fits this week’s topic.
Maybe it can be our version of “I thought you were Dale.”
Overdrawn at the Memory Bank is full of these: “The whole world’s in sixes and sevens, sonny!”, “Your navel’s very deep, Fingal! So deep I can’t even see to the bottom!”, etc. The whole script sounds like it was written by someone who didn’t have English as their first language.
Another one of my favorites comes from Time of the Apes, when Catherine is concerned about the earthquakes, and the doctor says “Yes, but nothing will happen suddenly.” What the hell does that even mean?
“…and traffic accidents…”
In Leech Woman, Mala talks about her dreams of blood (presumably to tie in with the movie’s title) and yet there is no real bloodshed involved. Shouldn’t it have been dreams of pineal fluid?
I have to go with Mikey from “Teen-Age Strangler”
“And he didn’t steal no bike neither…I did, he just wanted to..!”
Can be assessed best by Mike’s response (as the Police Officer) “Good Lord, who is this clown?’
Wow, the poorly translated and dubbed Japanese movies are a whole other level of dialog that makes no sense. It’s like they took a bad Google translation, chopped it up with scissors, and pasted it onto the movie at random.
For me, it doesn’t get any better than the press conference at the beginning of “Gamera vs. Guiron”:
Reporter: “Does that mean … people on Solar … are the same system planet?”
Dr. Shiga: “No. That’s hard to say.”
:-?
I have another one… from “The Human Duplicators”
Professor Dornheimer: “As you have already seen, my life is not the dull routine the general public might imagine”.
Glenn Martin: “No, your niece is lovely”.
Summed up best by Joel: “What the HELL Is that supposed to mean??”
All I can think of is Akio’s fixation on Traffic Accidents in “Gamera vs. Guiron.” That was always a “What???? Traffic Accidents??, to me! Oh heck, 7 beat me to it!
I’ll go with the Phantom of Krankor when he threatens to “kill some differin!”. Oh, yes, shooting the Prince over and over and over again despite the obvious uselessness of their weapons. I could go on and on and on …
“Everybody who goes there, doesn’t talk!” Puma Man
I am going to go with whatever the trumpeter said in Hellcats (they even made a stinger out of it.) It was a running joke (almost literally) but I would also nominate Timothy Van Patten’s inner mono logue in Master Ninja II (the union episode…I mean half of the movie.)
Mine is from Pod People. When renaissance guy is chasing the boyfriends girlfreind, the old Lorne Greene guy yells “well you’re a jerk”!
I realize the question is about MST3K specifically, but I can’t help but offer this:
“If we learn to care for others, to respect others will learn how to care for, to respect our country.”
Mine is from The Robot Vs. The Aztec Mummy, when The Bat refers to his creation as a human robot. The hell?
That whole “Pretty Mind” speech from “Girl in Gold Boots”.
How about “Watch out for snakes” from EEGHA! It totally comes out from nowhere.
“This is where the fish lives.”
-Touch of Satan
Uhh… huh? What does that have to do with anything? Why one singular fish? Why is that fish’s habitat so important to mention? I can’t even begin to make sense of this line and why it exists. I’m so glad it does, though, as it and all the riffs concerning it are part of why that episode is my absolute favorite.
“This is where my TONGUE lives…”
“My Fish moved and didn’t leave a forwarding address.”
From Red Zone Cuba – “She’s been blind, ya know, since her husband got killed in the war.” Quite possibly my favorite line from any MSTied movie, and no riffing was even needed.
Honorable mention from Werewolf – “You and Noel is in it for fame and fortune?”
The entire movie Monster a Go Go, especially the closing narration. “Say whaaaat?”, indeed!
I have to agree with “traffic accidents”… especially since, as I understand it, those were the actual lines in the Japanese original as well, so that’s not even Sandy Frank’s fault.
Also, the opening narration in “Why Study Industrial Arts” tends to get a “wait, what?” reaction out of me. Mike and the bots have it pegged–that kid is one pissed-in-bed away from being a potential serial killer.
The whole cracker thing in episode 704 is pretty out there.
“Once you two are married it won’t be fun to watch anymore.” – The Thing that Wouldn’t Die
“Nothing bothers some people, not even flying saucers.” (???!!!) – Beast of Yucca Flats
Best though comes from Sam the Keeper: “I just found out Count Dracula was a f*g. You don’t have to believe me, but that’s the facts.” – Werewolf
The father from “Sampson vs. the Vampire Women” inviting the inspector to his home and then refusing to explain anything about the situation was hysterically funny riff-wise, but made no sense on its own.
Has to be one of the biker gang (in Hellcats?) who is thrown into
the stream and yells out some gibberish, I believe the actual line was
“You chums have behaved bloody cheeky tossing me in this bucolic stream,
what?” Wasn’t it the stinger in that episode?
The first one I thought of was the doctor in “Amazing Colossal Man”, who told us that the heart is made up of a single cell. That certainly puts to shame every biology text book ever written.
#26: If the upcoming “Dracula Untold” doesn’t portray Vlad Dracul’s homosexuality as per Sam the Keeper’s theories, I’ll have to call shenanigans.
From “Sinster Urge”
Lt. Matt Carson: Mr. Taxpayer the smut picture racket is worst then kidnapping and dope peddling.
Crow: No it isn’t!
A little OT, but did we ever get a transcript of the lyrics of the song in Pod People, or any information on whatever it was in the original (Spanish?) version?
That’s like the boring but informative Mirror Universe version of this thread, I guess- misheard/mumbled dialogue reconstructed or explained. Could also be expanded to plot threads from movies before they were translated/dubbed or edited down.
Anyway, my vote is for the explanation of the Interocitor from The Movie. Granted, it’s shown as a communications device and also a weapon, but Cal also says it (or a bigger version?) could lay highway at a mile a minute. Yes, alien superscience, but still. The hell?
Everything that VanPatton kid says in the Master Ninja movies is a ‘Say What!?’.
Every. Single. Line.
Scabbaflabbadabbadee…
In “Phantom Planet, when Lt. Makonnen gives his “best and wisest” speech. Uh, what?
Even Frank Chapman can’t understand it.
One thing no one ever notices in “Fire Maidens of Outer Space” because Joel riffs right over it… Anthony Dexter and the Fire Maiden are talking.
HESTIA: Here the only sound is of the ripple of tiny waves on the lake.
DEXTER: What’s the name of the lake?
HESTIA: Prossus holds us all prisoners! He has the power of life or death on New Atlantis!
Fire Maiden apparently didn’t even want to bother answering such a boring question.
Mr B. Natural: “Knew your father I did.”
Um, what does she/he/it mean by that?
@#35: I noticed that, too. Later he also asks her “Do you have seasons here?” (which, of course, Joel spins into a “Seasons in the Sun” riff). What I think is happening in that scene is that they’re both keeping their voices low as they discuss Prasus and their escape plans, while he peppers the conversation with mundane questions spoken more loudly, in case Prasus is listening in. It doesn’t come across very well on the screen, but then, nothing else in “Fire Maidens of Outer Space” comes across very well, either. A cut to a hidden microphone or to Prasus listening through his ring or something would have clarified it, instead of just a lazy static shot of Anthony Dexter and Susan Shaw. I blame Cy Roth.
From Soultaker, one of the cops at the scene of the car crash says, “So what do you figure the chances are of a door opening by itself on impact in a head-on collision?” Um, is this his first car crash? Crow correctly observes that the chances are actually “quite good.”
Is that stud coming?
Remembered another favorite from Puma Man: “So, the dinosaurs became extinct because they forgot how to love.” I always think to myself, What the hell book is she reading?
I’m going to echo the niece line from The Human Duplicators. Cause, wha’?
Not related, but similar, watching Monster-a-Go-Go the other night once again has me wondering where the “um-da-do-do-do hu-ah, hu-ah” thing comes from. It’s my biggest show mystery! It probably doesn’t help that it’s the “Sent Email” sound on my phone, too, so I hear it a lot.
“I’m comiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing!” from Quest Of The Delta Knights. Not sure why we needed to know that.
Of the entire argument between Mitchell and the kid who skateboards past: “You’re lying through your teeth!” Who is? It was a completely random comment in a completelyer randomer conversation.
“Come on boys and carry my bananas!”
-from Untamed Youth
–
Sure, it’s from a song (the closing calypso number), and song lyrics can sometimes be nonsensical and still carry weight, but in this case I find myself having the same reaction as Joel does: “WHAT does that mean??”
:-/
Untamed Youth:
(girls’ catfight) “C’mon, if you want an Italian haircut!”
Servo: “Extra mousse? I dunno…”
Would stemlo be considered a word or just a sound? Seems like something Eegah said quite a bit,doesn’t it?
And of course there’s the old warhorse of these things from Ed Wood’s BRIDE OF THE MONSTER…
“Monsters! Hah! This is the Twentieth Century!”
“Don’t count on it!”
Or even from GAMERA VS GUIRON…
“Gaos is a different color! He must be a space Gaos!”
Um… Okay… I suppose…
The censored lines in Final Justice. “Son of a what? A sailor? Son of a preacher man?”
Most of the plot for Wild Wild World of Batwoman is non-sensical, but if I may go off topic slightly… What the hell is going on with that horseshoe?
In Space Mutiny, when the mutineers are talking about landing the ship:
And I strongly second #34 – that speech about “the wisest and best” in Phantom Planet really comes out of nowhere, and seems apropos of nothing.
Finally, Pod People has a lot of truly awful dialog, so it was inevitable that they’d have at least a couple of these kinds of lines:
Sheriff to Johnny Longbow: “Whatever.”