In The Golden Turkey Awards (which Joel has cited as an influence on MST3K), the Medved Brothers stated, “We know our choices will not please everyone -— least of all the actors, producers, writers and directors who are honored in the pages that follow. We further recognize that the number of bad films is so enormous and the competition for the very worst is so intense, that all decisions reached here are subject to considerable second-guessing.”
So let’s do a bit of our own second-guessing and name MST3K films we think should have been nominated. I would pick “The Corpse Vanishes” for Most Awkward On-Screen Marriage Proposal.
For reference, a list of the Awards and their “winners” (as well as the MST3K films that were nominated) can be found here: The Golden Turkey Awards.
Have at it!
Keep those WDT suggestions coming!
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‘worst performance by a Marine’ ‘Private Pain’ or whatever from Slime People
‘worst boyfriend…who really wasn’t a boyfriend’ Jesse from ‘Girl in Lover’s Lane.’
Boggy Creek II –
I nominate Boggy Creek II for Worst Wardrobe Malfunction. Janet Jackson had nothing on Old Man Crenshaw’s dangling overall strap.
Worst excuse for a prop: The cardboard camera from “Future War”.
Least convincing performance by a corpse: Lt. Lamont from “Space Mutiny”.
..but what if there was no Monster a Go Go to nominate!?
Worst Sound Effect: the human phone ring in “Monster a Go-Go.” https://youtu.be/5dKiaRUKgmA
And to add to the “faking it” idea, Worst Attempt at Pretending to Use a Non-Existent Prop: the scientist pretending to lock the door with no key in his hand in “Agent for H.A.R.M.”
Least F***s Given For A Movie award goes to ‘Attack Of The The Eye Creatures’, obviously.
And a special Worst Movie Monster award to the eponymous Eye Creatures for not even bothering to show up fully suited.
Meta Award for Most Incomplete Title: this thread, AKA “Weekend Discussion Thread:” (revoked when/if corrected)
Least Incomplete Title: “The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies”
Worst Movie Done by MST3K: “Monster a-Go-Go”
Worst Case of Deja Vu in a Movie Title: “Attack of The The Eye Creatures”
Most Renamable Hero in a Sci-Fi Film: Dave Ryder in “Space Mutiny”
Best Dave Ryder Name in Riffing: Big McLargehuge
Worst Monster in a Worst Movie Done by MST3K: There was no award for Worst Monster in a–
OH, SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
;)
Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of offering additional nominations for existing GTAs. But coming up with new categories works. Here are a few more I’ve though of:
Most Embarrassing Movie Debut: Clint Eastwood in Revenge of the Creature
Most Ridiculous Movie Monster: The Crawling Hand
Worst Performance as a Clergyman or Nun: Russ Conway in The Screaming Skull
Most Ludicrous Racial Impersonation: Christopher Lee in The Castle of Fu Manchu
Most Obnoxious Child Performer: Kwang Ho Lee as Icho in Yongary
Worst Film You Never Saw: The Dead Talk Back
Most Preposterous Romantic Pairing: Doug McClure and Caroline Munro in At the Earth’s Core
Worst Performance as a Nazi Mad Scientist: Marshall Grauer in Blood Waters of Dr. Z
Worst Performance by a Politician (an actual category!): Robert Dornan in The Starfighters
Worst use of baby oil in a movie; Mitchell.
Nooooooooo!!!!!!
Worst Musical Extravaganza: Most of ‘The Incredibly Strange Creatures, Etc. Etc.’
Worst use of a telephone in a movie; Hobgoblins
Least convincing use of foreigners as Americans in a movie; tie…..Devilfish and Werewolf.
Worst fight scene: Ed Wood vs Conrad Brooks in “The Sinister Urge”.
Lamest attempt to upstage a better movie: “Laserblast” for destroying the Star Wars sign.
Runner Up: “Giant Spider Invasion” for implying their spider was scarier than the shark in Jaws.
Off topic-ish, but I can’t stand Michael Medved!
He’s so smarmy and he’s on the political far right.
His legacy is that book and that awful movie review show he did with the insufferable Jeffrey Lyons in the 1980s.
Not sure if that would be eligible. IIRC the other nominees in that category had already established their political careers. When Starfighters was filmed, Dornan was still in the Air Force.
A Golden Turkey award guide:
-Worst actor
-Worst actress
-Worst director
-Worst film
-Worst film you never saw
-Most embarrassing film debut
-Most ridiculous movie monster
-Worst performance by a popular singer
-Worst title
-Most brainless brain movie
-Most badly bumbled bee movie
-Worst casting
-Worst performance by a politician
-Worst two headed transplant movie
-Worst rodent movie
-Worst performance by a novelist
-Worst cinematic exploitation of a physical deformity (P. T. Barnum Award)
-Worst musical extravaganza
-Worst performance by a clergyman or nun
-Worst performance of Jesus Christ
-Worst blaxploitation movie
-Worst credit line
-Worst vegetable movie
-Biggest ripoff in Hollywood history
-Most unerotic concept
-Worst performance by an animal
-Most ludicrous racial impersonation
-Most obnoxious child performer
-Worst line of romantic dialogue
-Most inane technical advance
Whew
Time for go to coffee.
I would be lying through my teeth if I didn’t nominate the BUZZ OFF kid from “Mitchell” for the Most Obnoxious Child Performer award.
That one deformed guy from Time Travelers who did absolutely nothing to advance the plot.
Worst Performance by an Animal: Alex the chimpanzee in Carnival Magic
Most Ridiculous Movie Monster: The Creeping Terror
Lifetime Achievement Worst Director: Coleman Francis. He only made three movies, but what movies they were.
Most Irrelevant Song Number: Arch Hall Jr., singing about a hot dames named Vickie or Valerie to a hot dame most noticeably NOT named Vickie or Valerie.
Most unerotic, unfunny, and irredeemably disgusting scene: Roxy shaving Eegah in the cave, with Roxy’s dad coaching on the side (and subsequent “seduction escape” interaction. I am now going to have a shower…
New category: Worst Buffalo Shot.
The nominees are:
Lt. “Armadillo” Lamont, “Space Mutiny”
Science dude going down ladder, “Devil Fish”
Watney and most of the fighter extras, “Outlaw (of Gor)”
Using some of the actual Golden Turkey categories, but very tongue-in-cheek…
Worst Director: That porn director in “The Sinister Urge”
Worst Film You Never Saw: “The Amazing, Stupendous Charred Mibbit”, because that movie never existed. However, it will be riffed on MST3K, season 93, show # 13.
Most Ridiculous Movie Monster: Mr. B Natural (it fits if you really think about it)
Worst Cinematic Exploitation of a Physical Deformity: Torgo (“Torgo’s a Monster?”)
Runner up: Gumby (that deformed top of his head!)
Worst Rodent Movie: “The Girl in Lovers’ Lane”. Almost every person in it is a rat!
Worst Performance by a Novelist: that writer guy in “The Slime People”
Worst Performance by a politician: The President of the United States who wouldn’t ever face the camera while on TV, in “Invasion USA”
Worst Credit Line: All of the credits at the beginning of Manos: The Hands of Fate, for not even appearing at all and making that endless scenery so… endless.
Most Badly Bumbled Bee Movie:
“The Deadly Bees”
(I hit that Staples “Easy” button on my desk and nod in agreement.)
I nominate Creeping Terror for BEST Wardrobe Malfunction. Right there at about 58:10–the only 100% certifiable NSFW moment in the entire MST universe.
“Deadly Bees” is the easy winner of the “Most Infuriating Flushing Away of Ten Million Dollars’ Worth of Talent” category. I’ll tell you THAT for free.
Worst Wardrobe – Uncle Fester in Space Children
Also, he’s a raging homophobe. I hate his remarks about Ed Wood in that book.
And his national right-wing radio show where, to his credit, he did manage to hound Kevin Williamson’s career into the dirt because he thought the “Scream” movies were icky and bad for teens and “went against family values”. (Although he also succeeded in blowing the whistle on the one script that Williamson had illegally plagiarized off of another Lois Duncan novel, which finally stripped the boxers off the screenwriting emperor.)
Both Medveds were funny to read in ’79-’80 because literally no one TALKED about bad movies–and Roger Ebert’s sardonic pan-reviews weren’t nationally syndicated yet–so the idea that anyone could crack jokes about bad movies was new and trendy, and learning that somebody had made a movie called “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” got the same cultural goofball giggles that Troll 2 gets today.
The problem was, the Medveds and the GTA didn’t actually seem to do anything with the bad movies: They just sat there for our amusement, and we were supposed to join in the Medveds’ own jolly tomato-throw at the prisoner in the stocks. The whole puzzling “Immortal Dialogue” excerpts they would put in their Fifty Worst Movies listings, I would read out of context and think, “What, what? What am I missing?..Why is that “Horrendously, howlingly, screen-meltingly bad’?”
(Medved had pretty much snubbed off and given up his Golden Turkey career by the time he was into his Snotty Previews gig with Lyons:
They tried doing a special episode where Medved revived his GTA act, and he was pretty much going through the old-shtick motions–He did try to add “Mothra” and “Wild Women of Wongo” to the pantheon, and I can think of no other reason besides Official Medved Approval that those two would end up in Film Crew and Rifftrax.)
I always got the impression that Michael was gay right-wing (he even stuck that fake religious-Right urban-legend of the “Biblical gay-porn movie” into the GTA as a “real” movie) and if you’ve ever gotten annoyed with the Razzie Awards, it’s the gay audience that tends to get childish glee out of piling payback on box-office flops or overexposed industry celebrities that “deserve” it. If you’ve ever listened to Rex Reed on those reviews where he thinks he’s a hoot, you know exactly what I mean.
Which explains why MM seems to take personal bloodthirsty delight in jokes about Ed’s taste for angora sweaters.
MM.’s rollicking hyperbole seemed to give the extra “schoolyard” feel to the idea that we were supposed to “beat up” on Lost Horizon or Exorcist II till it ate playground sand and ran home crying.
That became a big, BIG influence on the M&tB era, when they were running out of bad movies, didn’t really seem to give their own personal crap about which movies were Good or Bad, and just fished the iconic Ed Wood titles–and the funny-titled mention of Incredibly Strange Creatures–out of GTA chapters, because, hey, we’re the guys who do Bad Movies, so it’s up to US to carry on Medved’s legacy and do every single famous bad movie you’ve heard of!…Join us for this week’s schoolyard dogpile! They’re Bad Because We SAY So!
I’m not a fan of Kevin Williamson’s non-Scream work but if his “career is in the dirt” someone should notify him because he was VERY successful with The Vampire Diaries show, which ran nearly a decade.
(I didn’t watch it myself.)
Williamson still had “Dawson’s Creek”, which kept him in CW Serial TV, but “The Faculty” had already taken enough shine off of his feature-script career for this to deliver the kill-blow.
(As “crusading journalist” Medved brought Duncan on the show to point out, apparently Williamson hadn’t thought up his dopey Heathers-clone “Teaching Mrs. Tingle” out of his “own high-school experience” like he went around claiming, but had tried to buy the rights to Duncan’s own straight-YA-thriller “Killing Mr. Griffin”, and Lois had refused the rights for his adaptation being too goofy and violent–And that was from before the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” movies hadn’t helped the issue any either.)
Riding With Death –
Riding With Death gets the Golden Turkey Award for “Most Egregious Overuse of the Word TURKEY”. Turkey Volume Guessing Man (TVGM) estimates you turkeys could fill an 18 Wheeler with the number of turkeys mentioned in Riding With Death.
Which reminds me. I was rewatching The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, and there’s some awfully gross transphobic riffs about the drunken dancer in the beginning of the movie. That might be a good discussion topic. Riffs, host segments or episodes that have not aged well.
Worst misuse of hot women: Tied between Angels Revenge and Wild Wild World of Batwoman.
Most Ineffectual Hero: a tie between Lt. James and Dr. Ted Erickson in “The She-Creature”. In each case, they spend the movie constantly one or two steps behind the villain, they’re constantly outwitted, and the ultimately do nothing to bring about the bad guy’s doom, leaving such heavy lifting to others. They just seem to whine about how they know Lombardi’s a bad guy, but they’re utterly powerless against him. I mean, at least Puma Man actually did fight the bad guys at times, even if he wasn’t as good at it as Vadinho.
Oh, and Erickson gets extra credit for being a total zero as a character. He’s barely even there.
So true, especially the lead “Batgirl” in the leopard print outfit. And I agree with Grim Specter of Food that we need a category for “Riffs that don’t age well.”
Would “Outdated Riffs” work for you? https://www.mst3kinfo.com/?p=23521
Worst Line of Romantic Dialogue:
“Won’t everybody have sex tonight!” from “Hobgoblins.
A line best used as an ipecac! Bleh.
No, that was “90’s Cable/Clinton-era Outdated Riffs”. This is trying to figure out how to do “Squicky socially-outdated riffs” without getting all SJW about it.
(Like Grim’s idea that using “she’s a man” riffs just for M&tB to do high-school-misogynistic “ugly drunk chick” jokes might be taken out of context by viewers expecting something more.)
First, “Mothra” is a well-made and enjoyable movie, but there’s still riffing material there. I thought the RT version turned out OK. As for “Wild Women of Wongo”, I’m sure FC would’ve found it without any help from the Medveds, and it is certainly riffable.
Next, if movie history has taught us anything, it’s taught us that they’ll never run out of bad movies. There are more than enough bad movies to go around. Plus, “bad” is still a relative term, so what one person sees as bad may not necessarily agree with another person’s view. (A look at the widely varying opinions regarding “The Last Jedi” are a perfect example of this.) And the guys at RT even plainly say that some of the movies they do are, indeed, well-made and enjoyable (like the upcoming “Krull”). But that doesn’t mean that they can’t make jokes about it. Hey, if SNL can makes jokes about “Citizen Kane”, then we may safely allow RT to riff on “Mothra” or “Starship Troopers” or even “Casablanca” without any problem. At least that’s how I view the situation.
Back on topic…
Worst Blaxsploitation Movie: For that one, I’ll have to go with “The Guy from Harlem”, which RT featured. Great riffing material, but a lousy movie. (If I recall correctly, the Medveds chose “Scream Blacula Scream”, but the presence of William Marshall raises that movie’s standing just enough.)
Good Lord, how many different ways can you say, “We heard ya the first time, knob, now go away”? Or, “Quiet now, Skippy, the grownups are trying to enjoy themselves”?
Most Ridiculous Movie Monster has to be The Creeping Terror; in fact, the award should be retired with it and a new one created.
Most Obnoxious Kid–the whelp in Cry Wilderness. Never before have I so wanted to see a child eaten alive by coyotes.
Worst Performance of a Clergyman or Nun: Sister Doper-Hooker fighting “monsters in the hood” in Future War. Along with everything else, there isn’t a drop of spirituality in that bony little body–it’s like she’s playing dress-up at a party she didn’t want to go to in a costume she didn’t want to wear.
Worst Film–Whew, my choice changes daily for this one; for right now it’s Carnival Magic, with about a 50-way tie for second place.
I’ll try to weigh in on some of the other categories later. The thing is, there are so many choices for ALL of them . . .
BTW, this weekend, I got to describe MST3K to a Czech friend who happens to be a film studies scholar. Naturally, she got very excited and enthusiastically wrote down all the info I gave her. On that note, in case you were wondering what a description of MST3K in Slovenian looks like, I give you this: https://sl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_Science_Theater_3000 This is what I do, folks. Well, some of what I do . . . There’s the mando and the 3b, too . . . And then there’s . . . Oh, never mind . . . I’m soo tired, I’m just going to log out now . . .
Chicken of Tomorrow –
Previously I nominated Old Man Crenshaw’s dangling bib overall strap for Greatest Wardrobe Malfunction. On the advice of my attorney (get ready to hear that phrase a lot on the nightly news) I change my vote to the wretchedly defiled pants of the chicken house worker in Chicken of Tomorrow.
Still, it goes back to Trace during the CC days saying that the Brains didn’t even want to bother with the Killer Tomatoes or Plan Nine, since they’d both become such overexposed Medved pop-cliche’s at that point (and AotKT was too self-consciously obnoxious to be riffable), and Robot Monster would have been just as overexposed, if it didn’t happen to have good riffing fodder hidden inside.
The GTA’s had become a big, merchandised pop-cultural machine at that point–like the Tim Burton Ed-Wood movie–and although MST3K hooked the Turkeys up to a cart and gave them something to do, the whole goofy “reputation” of all the Medved movies (especially after “It Came From Hollywood” stuck Dan Aykroyd and Cheech & Chong jokes on them, no less) just felt like it brought the conversation down.
With the Mike-era and RT, it was the exact opposite: There was this need to stamp their OWN narcissistic signature on every single goofy-bad movie fans knew from reputation, and whether it was Twilight, the Star Wars Holiday Special, The Violent Years, or AgonyBooth.com mentioning “Santa & the Ice Cream Bunny” on their website, they seemed to be promoting the Inspector #12 message of “It’s not a Classic Bad Movie until WE say it’s a Classic Bad Movie!”
At which point, they had to go back and dig up every single overexposed-reputation title out of the Medveds, including Incredibly Strange Creatures getting a mention in the book and “It Came From Hollywood”. They didn’t seem to care or know the difference for what made a bad movie Bad anymore, it just had to be Famously Bad enough for them to do it: Village of the Giants gets one paragraph in the GTA, line it up for Season 5.
Unlike the original Brains, would RT ever turn down Attack of the Killer Tomatoes for being too “goofy”, “overexposed” or “inflated reputation?…You tell me. They’ve already done enough versions of Plan Nine.
When they were doing the original Fifty Worst Films, the Medveds admitted they were picking the worst movies they’d seen (few had heard of Mr. Wood or Mr. Warren back then), and that Robert Hooks in “Trouble Man” was the worst Blaxploitation movie they…KNEW of at the time. Just as Lee Van Cleef in “Return of Sabata” was the Worst Spaghetti Western that sprang to mind from their own personal experiences.
They also wrote the first 50WF in ’77, which is about the only possible reason I can think of that the original ’76 “The Omen” would end up on the Fifty, although ’73’s Lost Horizon and ’75’s At Long Last Love were still fresh in the memory.
Eric J.:
Now you’ve descended to writing doctoral thesis sized comments about your usual shtick.
“Joel good. Mike bad.”
You need to either meditate or medicate yourself.
Perhaps both.
I can’t believe that one didn’t occur to me right away.
And the image of Trash (Escape 2000) comes to mind: he’s just fallen and he’s shaking the debris off, and Crow says in his “Cave Dwellers” Crow-Magnon (sic) voice: “Uhhh, boards baaad”; same approach to public discourse, in any case. I’ve been in academia all my life (for better or worse) and I didn’t know you could get a separate doctorate in Pompous Dickweed Studies; there are plenty of pompous dickweeds in academia, of course, but all the ones I know do other, useful stuff, too.
Anyway . . .
Worst Actress: Natalie in Werewolf; second place Jayne Mansfield in The Loves of Hercules.
Worst Actor: Paul/Lizard Guy in Track of the Moon Beast; second place–Mickey Hargitay in same as above.
Most Unerotic Concept: Vorelli with his fake beard getting it on with Butt Lady as Hugo the Devil Doll watches; second place–imagining Arch Hall Jr and Roxy getting it on anywhere; third place– … ick, no, I’m done with this category . . .
Technically, Killer Shrews can’t be the Worst Rodent Movie, since the “shrews” were actually dogs.
Worst Title: a tie–Manos, the Hands of Fate (“Hands, the Hands of Fate”); Future War (actually it’s the present-time & there’s no war); The Thing That Couldn’t Die (it wasn’t really a “thing”, it was technically already dead, and it becomes a skeleton after 5 minutes of menacing people and with very little effort from them).
Worst Film: I’ve thought about it, and now in a tie with Carnival Magic I have: Monster A Go-Go; The Beast of Yucca Flats; The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t; Hobgoblins; Invasion of the Neptune Men; The Castle of Fu Manchu; Pod People.
More later. It’s really one of those WDTs!
Oh, Gawd, how could I have forgotten to add Starcrash to my short list of Worst Films? As awful as all the other movies I put on the list are, none of them have pissed me off nearly as much. What did TV’s Frank say to Forrester right before the swing choir competition? “It made ya mad! It made ya MEAN mad!” You know, now that I think about it, Starcrash IS the Worst Film in the MST3K canon: Carnival Magic just made me feel bad and want to cry; Starcrash almost made me throw my computer out the window then go on a Zombie Nightmare rampage in the quaint Maine town where I live . . .
Thanks to a riff about him in Time Chasers, he will forever be remembered as “Pink Boy” to me.
His book “Hollywood vs. America” might be better titled “Hollywood “vs.” People Who Share Michael Medved’s Tastes and Absolutely No One Else.”
He’s known for being one of those “violent films cause violent behavior” agitators, despite the obvious fact that any given film (Natural Born Killers as a not very random example) that might have “caused” a dozen or so people to commit crimes was watched by MILLIONS of OTHER people who came through it just fine so, you know, maybe it’s that SPECIFIC dozen or so people who are just really suggestible.
How many really suggestible people has The Bible “caused” to commit crimes? A noticeably larger percentage, I suspect.
I’m not immediately remembering other Blaxploitation films that have been on Rifftrax but I’m sure they’re there. ;-)
Anyway, sure, it was a lousy movie, but how lousy was it by the standards of its time? 1970s exploitation film genres had notoriously low standards. I’m not sure who the Ed Wood of Blaxploitation was but I don’t doubt that there was indeed a director who “earned” such a title. ;-)
I’m either not remembering them correctly or am just an insensitive jerk (possibly both) but I didn’t perceive transphobia. I thought those riffs were about “female impersonators.” Sorry about that, folks. :-|
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Most gratuitous and disturbing death in a host segment: Goosio in “Final Justice.” Seriously, they created a “history” for a whimsical parade float (for those who, as I did for years, took the riff at face value, there was no pre-existing “beloved Maltese children’s character”, they just pulled that out of nowhere), turning it into a character instead of a mere prop, just so they could “kill” it? As I’ve said any number of times before (I at least recognize when I’m repeating myself), the Brains just got MEAN during the Sci-Fi era. Joel would NEVER have allowed that. :-|