One of the laziest methods of presenting exposition in a movie is to have a voiceover guy read it off. So naturally this technique is used in several MST3K films. So which of these voiceover guys do you think particularly sticks out. I’m going with the one from Robot Holocaust. That guy was cropping up everywhere in the film.
I’m going to expand this to include all narrations and voice overs, and let’s include the shorts too.
I gotta go with Ted Husing, Ross Allen’s “boyfriend” in the short “Catching Trouble.” He seems almost as appalled by Ross as we are.
What’s your pick?
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When I think of clumsy narration, “Creeping Terror” immediately comes to mind.
Beast of Yucca Flats – “Flag on the moon. How’d that get there?”
Angel’s Revenge – “you’re listening to K Plot…”
And not MST3K, but gotta mention Mother Nature in Wild Women of Wongo.
Yup. You’d have to move pretty fast to beat the narration of The Creeping Terror. :-/
And didn’t Father Nature (or someone) chime in on TWWoW?
A possible weekend topic: Best and worse mst3000 dances/dancers. GOR and WWoW (Film Crew) immediately come to mind.
i’ll go with ‘The Sword & The Dragon.’ getting Mike Wallace was quite a coup.
The narrator from A Date with Your Family is probably my favorite, whether it’s Hugh Beaumont or not. He seems so deeply invested in this dinner. His cheerful reporting on daughter’s flower arrangement, and how the boys greet their father “as if they’re genuinely glad to see him” make me imagine him as a visiting uncle, who likes to stand in the corner and comment on his relatives’ lives.
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On the other side of the narrator spectrum is the guy from Monster-a-Go-Go. Yeah.
“Watch out for snakes!”, naturally.
Santa Claus: “No, Lupita!”
The classic battle between evil and the narrator.
The tag team voice overs from the ending of Teenage Caveman. First we get the old scientist in the Night of the Blood Beast suit explaining the twist ending. That would be enough for most directors, but not Roger Corman, who has an unidentified narrator take over. Perhaps he did not think the audience would get his “nuclear war is bad” message.
My mind leaps to The Dead Talk Back. It reminds me of why “show, don’t tell” is so important.
How about the unabashedly lecherous narrator from The Atomic Brain. Guy even had the nerve to hit on Magic Voice, the perv.
I would nominate the narrator of Jack Frost since even Mike and the Bots seemed surprised when she starts talking.
Also if we can include Rifftrax, how about Criswell and Plan 9? After all it’s the sundown of the old man’s heart.
For bad voice-overs, I would have to go with Horror at Party Beach. The professor’s daughter is dubbed in so badly, that it’s like she’s standing off to the side of the movie screen. When Elaine asks “but what makes all the smoke and steam, daddy?” Crow looks over after to the right side of the screen, like he expects her to be standing right there. He calls her “the living dubbed.”
I would say it is between SANTA CLAUS, “No Lupeta!”, and THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS, “Flag on the Moon”.
The Rifftrax short ‘Patriotism’ hosted by Bob Crane got really creepy when he wasn’t narrating.
Kevin: “Uh, Mister Crane? You’re really quiet. You’re not ‘filming’ something right now?”
The one from Robot Holocaust has yet to be mentioned, so here he is!
A few folks have cited examples of bad dubbing, so maybe that’s another good discussion topic. As for bad voice-over narration as a means of exposition, there are so many great choices but for me the crown jewel in this department is “The Dead Talk Back.” To begin with, you have dueling narrators in Krasker and Lt. Lewis, both of whom are clearly just winging it as opposed to reading from a script – which sets up some great riffing. Lewis: “I’m a police lieutenant in charge of the investigation.” Crow: “I probably should have told you that earlier, I admit it.” And it gets sloppier as the movie goes on: Lewis: “I saw no harm in the idea, and I… um, uh, had heard from before that such a radio had been worked on by other men.” Oh yeah? Who? How’d it go?
-ANY- of the educational shorts.
From CHEATING (very ominous and creepy narration there), to WHAT TO DO ON A DATE (how do you discuss hooking-up in the ’50s? Sterile gloves and a sugar-coating of naïveté.)
By the way, thanks to WTDOAD short, every time my boyfriend and I decide to go out, we quote that goofy kid:
“Maybe we can go to a scavenger sale, or a weenie roast…”
It’s hard to top the guy from The Creeping Terror. “He’s a renegade narrator on the loose!”
But since no one has mentioned this one yet, I will give a shout out to the safety-conscious pastor from The Days of Our Years. Who else could make you care so deeply about “the faces of the people who weren’t even there”?
Peter Graves Narrating the classified film in the beginning of Attack of the the Eye Creatures!!!
One that really puzzles me is the 10 minutes of narration-over-stock-footage that opens Deadly Mantis. It’s such a great cheesey movie on its own, I don’t know why they felt the need to open with a radar history lesson.
“With the telegram, one cloud lifts, and another descends. Astronaut Frank Douglas, rescued, alive, well, and of normal size, some 8000 miles away in a lifeboat. With no memory of where he has been, or how he was separated from his capsule. Then who, or what, has landed here? Is it here yet, or has the cosmic switch been pulled? Case in point. The line between science fiction and science fact is microscopically thin. You have witnessed the line being shaved even thinner.”
Monster A Go-Go by a country mile.
The Dead Talk Back almost feels like someone tried to sync up footage to an already-recorded radio play. Man, how I love that odd little movie.
Nobody’s mentioned Blood Waters of Dr. Z yet, so I’ll go with the creature doing creepy narration of his own story.
“Sargassum. The weed of deceit.”
Easily Monster a Go-go, and his hard work to fill in all that missing footage (“Evidently I was mistaken, the shocking horror must have been elsewhere…”), but I’ll give second place to Catching Trouble, and Ross’s “boyfriend” being more cheery than appalled.
The narrator in Catching Trouble was Not the one they referred to as the “boyfriend” That was the tall,oddly dressed character that resembled Emo Phillips.
My choice is the narrator in “The Creeping Terror” as someone else said. Without him there would almost no soundtrack in the movie.
How ’bout the narration from “Winter Sports Cavalcade?” It’s pronounced SHE-ing! I’ve learned my lesson and have never pronounced it skiing ever ever again no matter how oddly people look at me.
@ #16: Actually, he was mentioned at the very beginning.
Bloodwaters of Dr. Z’s voice-over was just plain creepy and unsettling. But I have to go with The Creeping Terror. About 95% of the words spoken in the movie were by the narrator.
Don’t know if it counts but Peter Graves at the end of “It Conquered the World”
“man is a feeling creature…”
@25 – No, the Emo Philips guide was “Old Sourpuss”, unquote–
As for Ross, the narrator talks about “My boyfriend” knowing his job twice, once as Ross chops down a treed wildcat, and once as he tries to wrangle a rattler: http://youtu.be/bfKxTu4PLWI?t=6m43s
I love it when the CREEPING TERROR narrator starts psycho-analyzing the characters, explaining the back-story, etc. You get the feeling even if they’d used dialogue in those scenes no one would have mentioned most of this stuff.
But one that hasn’t been mentioned yet is the singing narration in ‘Design For Dreaming’. “I dreeeeeeeeeamed at night, the moon was so bright….” It’s so over the top it falls over the other side.
EASY. The guy doing the voice in Progress Island U.S.A.
SANTA IS NOT AFRAID OF THAT DOG!
Let’s not forget, “I’m Cherokee Jack” from “Red Zone Cuba” or Debbie from “Manos”.
I would have to say any of the shorts would work. on the Graham Norton Show, Seth McFarlane said he developed Quagmire’s voice from some of the old radio commercials in the 1940’s and 50’s. You could really hear that in the Snow Thrills and Here Comes The Devil…I mean Circus.
The Jr. Rodeo Daredevils narrator was just Quagmire as a Cowboy.
On the other hand, Lorne Greene was great as the booming voice in Johnny At The Fair.
The cheating voiceover was so horribly sad that Mike’s gunshot sound effect was perfect.
Does the alien’s labored, Vader like breathing in Being From Another Planet count??
One that creeps me out is the narrator from “Atomic Brain” Brrrr
The Narrator(s) from the ACI At Your Fingertips series of shorts done by Rifftrax. When they have long silences you can tell they don’t know how to explain the insanity unfolding on screen.
The “golf announcer” narration from Rocket Attack U.S.A. always made me chuckle. Especially with Crow’s assistance…”guerilla girl, hard and sweet”.
Most of them have already been mentioned, but the narrators from LAST CLEAR CHANCE and DAYS OF OUR YEARS deserve some props.
“Would you please, PLEASE LEAVE!?”
“Yes, it’s America’s favorite Deacon of Death!”
One of my all-time favorite episodes is TERROR!!!! FROM THE YEAR FIVE THOOOOOOUSAND!!!!!!!
“I must be mistaken, the terror is in a later scene”
“You must be wondering where the terror is. I admit it is taking rather long, but we’re trying to pace ourselves!”
“There, that was terror. Thanks for waiting! Here’s a coupon for more Terror From the Year 5000”
“A culture rich in heritage…”
“… is not here!”
The “free burial” monologue at the start of The Screaming Skull. That movie is said to be slow and tedious, which it is, but that one moment makes the entire episode worth sitting through. Those kinds of gimmicks were a thing for a while apparently, and I’m so glad the guys had a chance to tackle it on the show.
The soft-core porn music in The Brain that Wouldn’t Die and The Horrors of Spider Island deliver a narrative that a narrator couldn’t have.
The narrator in Quest of the Delta Knights is David Warner’s THIRD role in that movie.
For me, it’s gotta be Dr. Z and his “ATTACK!!” for giving us one of the best host segments of Season 10.
“Shoe-polishing human, sooon you will pay!”
“I’m comeeeeeeng!”
The Creeping Terror has been mentioned several times, let me just add one…
The deputy and the startlingly young scientist are talking (silently) as the narrator blathers on and attempts to sketch in what was said. Then Crow pipes up in a perfect imitation of the narrator:
“It was a very interesting conversation.”
The inflection and stilted delivery cracks me up every time.
Since no one has mentioned it, i’ll go with the voice -over guy in “The Phantom Planet”.
Stop asking things!
Adding to this fun is the fact that I strongly suspect that the Krasker business (both the narration and his scene at the start) were last-minute additions.
So, not only were they using narration to patch the film together, but they needed to add a second narrator after having failed to adequately do the patching the first narrator was meant to do.
Goodness, I can’t believe no one has mentioned the full length narration by Casey Adams in “Indestructible Man”. Lon Chaney quit talking after the first scene, and Casey Adams never stopped talking throughout the whole film.
#613 Sinister Urge w/short, Keeping Clean & Neat:
“People of the ’50s responded well to authoritative, disembodied voices.”