Which got us to thinking: What if MST3K: The Movie had been released in 2,000 theaters instead of 50? What if, promoted properly, it had become the hit we all know it could have been? What if (as I like to think happened in some alternative universe) it became the first of a long-running series of MST3K movies. If that happened, what movie do you think they should have chosen to riff in “MST3K: The Movie 2”?
Remember the formula: It needs to be something where the rights won’t be break the budget, something that will be accessible to non-MSTies, it can’t be too terribly long or OVERLY painful, but wacky enough to inspire plenty of great riffs.
My pick: A*P*E* Color, horrible, short (and cuttable), big stupid monster, equally stupid humans. Perfect fodder.
What’s your pick? Show your work!
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Just about anything from the catalog of Sci-Fi Channel original movies would work. And that’s not a slam at the channel based on some long-running grudge. It’s a slam on their horrible original movies. I mean, Mansquito? Sasquatch Mountain? Really?
Hmmm….
Actually, my first choice would be “Space Mutiny”. It’s got all you’d want for a MSTable movie: fairly low budget, action, broad performances, non-sensical plot, and ready-made targets (the railing kills, Chunk HardPec, etc.).
If I’m limited to movies that weren’t done later in the series, I’ll have to think about that.
Out of a twisted sense of revenge: “Barb Wire”. Maybe that’s a little too big budget of a flick, but a little payback would be nice, don’t you think?
“Night of the Lepus.” Giant killer bunnies? Fried gold.
Barring that, I’d say “Them.” Another well-regarded sci-fi classic about giant mutant ants.
Okay, how about this for a choice that didn’t appear in the series later on?
“Yongary, Monster from the Deep”, a Korean-made giant monster movie from 1967. It’s got the appropriate Matchbox-size sets, some pretty laughable effects, bad dubbing and the most annoying “monster child” this side of “Invasion of the Neptune Men”.
Or, if you still have access to Universal’s library, there’s “Invisible Invaders”. A no-budget B-movie featuring pre-Romero walking corpses, John Carradine, loads of stock footage, and John Agar at his smuggest. And it only lasts about an hour, so the Grammercy guys won’t object to the length.
I’d go for 1958’s “Monster on the Campus” – absurd idea (contact with prehistoric fish “fossil” turns people & animals into monsters) is couched in questionable scientific method, law, & general goofiness. Recognizable as a movie but not a very good one. I’d love to see this with the MST movie treatment.
It should be a string of shorts and epic all-singing-all-dancing host segments in-between like “MST3K: The Broadway Musical”.
i agree that any on sci-fi’s orig programming is right in there for the honor. on top of that i have always wanted to see them ravage Blair Witch. aside from the fact i hated it, its low budget, has annoying and unlikeable characters, a stupid and pointless plot, etc, etc.
Metal Storm: The Destruction of Jared Syn!! Its Perfect, or perhaps Megaforce… Both of them are so silly and laughable, I hope these get released on regular DVD just so Mike, Bill and Kevin could have a go at them with a RiffTrax…
In the vein of This Island Earth, how about another beloved 50’s science fiction extravaganza…i’m thinking Forbidden Planet. Leslie Nielson being all super serious, Robby the robot, slightly pretentious plot…nothing but good stuff there.
as to the Sci Fi channel movies, they seem almost too obvious to me :)
what would be good is if they strung together bits and pieces of all the movies about giant snakes attacking teens/college students out in the wilderness but in 5 minute increments and you’d end up with a cohesive movie since they all have basically the same plot.
This one would be a winner:
http://forum.rifftrax.com/index.php/topic,9035.0.html
It Came From Beneath The Sea
Creation of the Humanoids
Garish 60’s color sci-fi, BIG themes, trick ending, second class acting, all around goofiness.
I think it is natural old-school MST fodder.
( Comments above not withstanding, i LOVE this movie, or at least I loved it during my teens, the last several times i saw it. I wish they would re-make this bad movie, instead of remaking all the good ones )
The Giant Claw
I always dreamed that MST would do “Tourist Trap”, a horror movie from the late 70’s that was Tanya Roberts’ first film. It also starred Chuck Connors and Jocelyn Jones. The plot: A bunch of friends on vacation blow a tire and end up in an abandoned wax museum run by a kindly old man (Connors) who has to take care of his crazy brother Davey. Now Davey is psychic and can control the mannequins with his VERY MIND. The movie has some interesting plot twists and a really cool ending but is VERY B-grade so it’s perfect.
If you’re going to go with a classic bad-but-not-too-bad 60’s film, how about “Queen Of Space”? It’s a movie about a group of people exploring other planets. One of the planets they explore has a green woman with gold hair on it and they decide to bring her back home with them. Turns out she’s a VAMPIRE! She kills most of the crew but is easily dispatched when a crew member SCRATCHES her and she bleeds to death because she’s a hemophiliac! They find a bunch of eggs she laid in the ship and the science-y guy won’t let anyone harm them. Perfect for an MST sequel.
Oops. It’s called “Queen Of Blood”, not “Queen Of Space”.
I have to shout this from the house tops:
THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS!!!!!!!
(I mean, c’mon – a giant brain with big eyballs floating in mid-air, aliens possessing a dog, John Agar – what more can you ask for?)
My choice, though I have not seen the film is Misfit Patrol or Smokey and the Hotwire Gang. Both are directed by everyones favorite bundle of energy, Tony Cardoza. Would be great fodder at the same time painful to watch.
Hideous Sun Demon. A man that can’t go out during the day without turning into a monster. It’s hilarious.
Okay, I know merely doing the episode of it caused a revival, but…Hobgoblins. That one released to theaters would’ve killed, I know it.
Two words: Star Crash (okay, it might be one word). A cheesy 1979 Star Wars ripoff complete with quasi-disco soundtrack and leather bikinis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzfuNSpP0RA
Any Uwe Boll movie.
My dream choice would be: “Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?” Not that they’d ever get the rights to it, but you never know…
I also have a fondness for the technically professionally made but hilariously stoopid 40’s type melodramas like “I Accuse My Parents”. Had the Brains done another one of those as a feature film, I think it would have been pretty accessible to non MST3K fans.
But probably they’d have simply done another sci-fi ‘classic’ to continue in the vein of This Island Earth, like the already mentioned Forbidden Planet.
Oh, and it David Hasselhoff!
This one is easy “Terror Train” a silly slasher flick. It stars Jamie Leigh Curtis, A Fraternity is going on a train trip It’s a New Years eve masqurade ball so they’re all dressed up in costumes, also “stars” David Copperfield as a swarmy magician. Perfect fodder for riffing to shreds.
Maybe ‘Day of the Animals’. I haven’t seen much of that movie, but I do know that at one point, Leslie Nielsen wrestles a bear. That is nothing short of pure gold.
Invisible Invaders, absolute perfect as stated above. Of course there is always
“TROG”
Here’s another vote for The Giant Claw. Classic bad cinema.
I would also like to put up for consideration Food of the Gods. This movie has it all! Rats on cheesy miniature sets, giant chicken puppets and Marjoe Gortner. Enjoy!
“Max Magician and the Legend of the Rings”. I worked on that piece of crap, and it would provide any number of riffing opportunities. The film itself is unintentionally hilarious, and the riffs would make it even funnier.
STAR WARS.
but seriously, I’d like to see Ator the Fighting Eagle (the first Ator movie with Miles O’Keefe in all his glory).
Assuming this would have happened before Rifftrax, I would love to have seen the crew tackle “Plan 9 from Outer Space” on the big screen. If we are including more modern movies, “Anaconda” is SO in need of a good riffing.
I was going to say Smokey and the Bandit II, III, etc. (not the original, that was rather interesting and not unenjoyable). But I like #1’s idea above about the SciFi Channel. Trouble is, there are so many bad ones to choose from. maybe the one where Cloris Leachman is the mad woman feeding her giant pets in the lake.
I’ll go with The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. Classic sci-fi about a ferocious dinosaur on a rampage. Has some MST-worthy moments though.
Ed Wood’s craptacular firt movie “Glen or Glenda” would definate warrant the MST treatment. However if we’re looking for something a little more recent, at least from the 80’s, I’d go with “Krull”, “Starchaser: Legend of Orin” (an animated Star Wars rip-off),or even “Mac and Me”.
Well, I seem to recall an interview where Kevin said that Angry Red Planet was an also-ran for the first MST3K movie. It was axed on account of the annoying red lens filter used throughout the film, but it’s still good MST fodder.
My personal favorite “this-should-be-MSTed” movie at the moment is called Prison Ship (DVD box title: Star Slammer). It’s got some gratuitous T&A that would have to be edited out, but it’s got Ross Hagen as a cyborg psychopath villain, Soultaker‘s Vivian Schilling as one of the imprisoned women, and John Carradine in his pentultimate role as the Justice. Directed by Fred Olen Ray(Also featuring Aldo Ray, Johnny Ledgend and a Tommy Chong impersonator as Gandalf-y priest.)
Number9 (as comment #7): I fondly remember YouTube comment threads discussing that very thing. It gets my vote.
Forbidden Planet
For Sci-Fi flicks, I’d say “Kingdom of the Spiders.” Perfect vintage 70s killer spider schlock, starring William Shatner! Rife with riffing possibilities.
For non Sci-Fi, I’d offer “Enter the Ninja.” A horribly acted 80s vintage Ninja movie with the beefiest, whitest, mustachioed ninja lead ever! :razz:
I second ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space.’ Not only do I feel that Plan 9 really should be part of the MST3K canon(the RT version doesn’t count), but I think it would be great fun. Most people know the movie by reputation, if not from actually sitting through it, so I would have thought the audience would be in the most part preapered for the awfulness (in a way that they wouldn’t with some of the lesser known films they featured). Which in turn means they can concentrate on laughing at no-doubt fabulous riffs.
Taking a slightly different spin on things, why not take the season 3 approach and revisit an earlier movie which didn’t quite get the mauling it deserved on first run? ‘Robot Monster’ perhaps?
Yep, the Sci-Fi Channel original movies are good choices, but that crap should never see the big screen, even riffed. So those are out.
I think a movie from my childhood in the ’80s should be riffed. It’s a very cartoony, yet somehow cool, sci-fi action movie called The Eliminators. The title alone can spawn various poop jokes.
It’s a movie about a mad scientist who invents both cyborgs and time travel. He uses cyborg he created as a time traveling guinea pig. The cyborg escapes and the mad scientist sends rednecks to capture him. It’s a pretty good movie but still cheesy enough for good riffing.
Speaking of “what ifs”, I have a suggestion for a future topic. I was watching Time Chasers recently, and I got an idea.
What would MST3K have been like if it was Eddie instead of Mike through seasons 5-7? The first thing that would change, if only slightly, is the theme song.
It would be hard just to pick one bad movie,since there are so many,so I’ll say THEY SAVED HITLER’S BRAIN…Hitler’s head in a jar would make for some great riffs!! Here are a few more: FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE SPACE MONSTER and FRANKENSTEIN’S DAUGHTER(starring John Ashley) There’s a movie out there,though I haven’t seen it,called THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF OZ…How about FROM HELL IT CAME??? There are so many,i know.
I have always wanted to see “The Green Slime”. I know it’s one of the lost eps that nobody has seen because they said it’s so poorly done. I think that a new movie would be a great way to redo it right. It’s one of the old cheesy scifi movies that I’ve actually seen and really enjoy.
Frankenstein vs. the Space Monster or Bloody Pit of Horror. And to blazes with the general audience’s unsophistication.
You know, my first vote woulda been for “The Giant Claw” but then I thought “will todays hip teens sit through a black and white monster movie in the theater” and then I thought “Why is Will Geer’s voice in my head?” But then I realized, only Hobgoblins II and MST3K II make real sense together!
I still have my copy of “The Green Slime”. I didn’t realize it was considered to be lost. Aren’t there still people trading these?
The Sci-Fi movies are certainly riffable, but I think for an MST theatrical movie, they aren’t well-known enough. I would choose either “The Thing with Two Heads” or “Night of the Lepus’.
THE GREEN SLIME. Lots of fun, and easily riffable.
Breakin’ and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo! why have these not been touched yet by rifftrax?
How about another Godzilla movie? Destroy All Monsters is a classic! Plenty of material for riffs!
Night of the Lepus, Them, Giant Claw, The Green Slime are all fantastic choices. Two of them are even in color. I’m afraid that color will be a factor. Black and white classics are not going to be well received, by the general public. (I really would like to see Them!)
In no particular order; I would love to see either Deathrace 2000 or Vincent Price’s classic “War Gods of the Deep” (aka The City Under the Sea). Both in color and neither in the Ed Wood category.
I have two other suggestions, one classic bad movie and one half-way decent movie. The classic bad one is “Queen of Outer Space” sarring Zsasa Gagor. It was sort of a sequel/ripoff of Forbidden Planet – they used the same uniforoms and some of the same sets. It features classic 50s sci-fi movies stuff – brainless busty women, insipid dialogue, harrassment of the fairer sex, and if course Zsasa in all her glory. And it’s in color! Truly one of the worst things ever to come from a bigtime Hollywood studio!
The other option is Robinson Crusoe on Mars – a decent, color movie with Adam West. A good choice too!