Short: (1946) A look at the Clyde Beatty circus, featuring legendary clown Emmett Kelly.
Movie: (1959) Nordic fantasy tale, based loosely on the Kalevala, about a wicked witch’s schemes to get, and later regain, a magic mill.
First shown: 1/16/93
Opening: J&tB try to pose for a family photo
Invention exchange: J&tB have invented Snack-tion; The Mads show off their “unhappy meals”
Host segment 1: The bots have some ideas for clown acts but Joel is no help
Host segment 2: So, what’s a sampo?
Host segment 3: Gypsy’s presents her one-woman show: “Gypsy Rose…Me!”
End: The bots are imprisoned wind, Joel reads a letter, Frank is also wind and still mad
Stinger: “What’s going to happen to us now?!”
(232 votes, average: 4.53 out of 5)
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• I just love this episode. Fun, goofy, watchable movie, great riffing, great host segments, one of this series’ crowning achievements and the beginning of what became known as the “Russo-Finnish trilogy,” a memorable trio of terrific episodes.
• This episode was included in Shout’s “Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection: The 25th Anniversary Edition” aka Vol. XXVIII.”
• As you might have guessed, this episode had a big effect on me. For a long time it was my all-time favorite. Up until this point, on the Prodigy MST3K boards I had just been “Chris in Phila.” The night this was shown (or maybe the next day, I forget), I officially announced that I was taking the handle Sampo, and I’ve had it ever since.
• How do robots spit? I know, I know…
• The unhappy meals are truly an evil invention. I love Dr. F’s Charles Nelson Reilly laugh as he describes them.
• The announcer says “pamalino horses.” The hell?
• The circus in the short is never named, but it’s the Clyde Beatty Circus.
• The acrobat is both Dag Hammarskjöld and Albert Speer. Both references are pretty out of the blue…
• In the short, during the part toward the end when the lady is dancing with the elephants, you can easily see that one of the elephants has rolled in some poop. Gross.
• This movie (originally titled “Sampo” but cheesily renamed to trick American audiences into think it was sci-fi) was based on the Kalevala, the national epic of Finland. (As an aside, J.R.R. Tolkien was heavily influenced by the Kalevala, and his “Silmarillion” was originally begun as an attempt to create a sort of British Kalevala.)
• Increasingly obscure reference: “Hey, it’s Skylab!”
• The “Scandinavian sketch” is obviously drawn from their personal experiences. What I find amusing is how much those Minnesota accents sound like the accents of folks in the Northeastern corner of Pennsylvania, where I now live. There’s probably a linguistic explanation.
• As I noted in 1993 when I introduced this episode on national TV during Turkey Day, the movie DOES explain what a sampo is. J&tB are just in mid-riff when the explanation comes. I wonder if they did that on purpose, just so they can do the “what’s a sampo?” sketch?
• Local riff: “Mini golf at Crosslake.” It’s still around.
• I was very amused by Servo’s grumbling about “Half & Half.” This sounds like a disgruntled husband speaking from a real-life experience.
• Another obscure reference: Crow’s silly voiced: “I thought it was a costume ball!” is a reference to a movie called “Start the Revolution Without Me.”
• In the ’94 Turkey Day, in his introduction, Adam West mistakenly says that this is episode number 424.
• Callback: “I sing whenever I sing…” (Giant Gila Monster)
• Naughty riff: “HE’s got delusions of grandeur.
• There are not one but two Ross Perot references in this episode. I guess it counts as “then-topical” but I would hope most people would remember who he is.
• Of course, one highlight is the classic “failure” song. Joel even gets up to dance!
• Jim gives a real tour de force in “Gypsy Rose ME!”
• Tom gently joshes fellow Minnesota entertainer Garrison Keillor’s “Prairie Home Companion” during the long, tedious harp attack.
• Cast and crew wrapup: Russian director Alexsandr Ptushko also directed “The Magic Voyage of Sinbad” (originally “Sadko”) and “The Sword and the Dragon” (originally “Ilya Muromets”).
Georgiy Millyar was in “Jack Frost,” Mark Troyanovski was in “Magic Voyage of Sinbad,” the narrator, Marvin Miller, was also the narrator of “King Dinosaur” and “Phantom Planet” and Valentin Bryleyev was also in “Jack Frost.
• Creditwatch: Host segments directed by Trace Beaulieu. “Gypsy Rose Me” was written and arranged by Mike, with lyrics by Mary Jo.
• Fave riff from the short: “You know, don’t laugh, but, in a way, this is this town’s Passion Play.” Honorable mention: “A rogue elephant snaps its tether and kills a coolie.”
• Fave riff from the movie: “Great wedding. You get half a buzz on and you’re sent home with a torch.” Honorable mention: “I’m relative humidity. It’s not so much the heat as it is me.”
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To add to what Sampo mentioned, this movie is just a tiny portion of the Kalevala. From what I’ve read of it, the rest of it is pretty cool, too. There is even a story that concerns a romance between Lem and Louhi!!!
Yes, Yes, YES!! This is for me, hands down, THE best Mst3k episode. It has the highest RPM’s of any of the episodes and the host segments are a PERFECT cross-section of what the show is about; “Picture Day” shows them as a family, the inventions are funny, “Joel the Typist” is dark, “What’s a Sampo” is a nice round-table, “Gypsy Rose Me” is a rare focus on Gypsy, and the end segments are creative. Plus, there’s a great short. Perfect, PERFECT, PERFECT.
“Let us be gay, for he is a dickweed!”
Personally I hated the Gypsy Rose Me host segment and always fast forward it whenever I rewatch this one. A low point in an otherwise fantastic episode.
Servo got one part of the Prairie Home Companion shtick mixed up. It’s where the women are strong and the men are good-looking, not the other way around. The rest of it is perfectly accurate though.
Whoa, Sampo was on the old Prodigy MST3k board? I was semi-voted “President” of the message board club there when I was 14. We got totally spam-attacked by the evil Monty Python’s Flying Circus message board club.
More on topic: great episode. I’ll second your “Let us be gay, for he is a dickweed!”
I spent a good chunk of my childhood playing minigolf in Crosslake…
Of course, I’ve been to many exotic locations, such as Normandale Community College.
I couldve done withouy Gypsy Rose Me too, and it seems the MST crew dislike Jim Mallon..
This was a solid episode anyway..
Sometimes Manos would air after this show, but Bride of the Monster was the show after this..
Heres hoping these find their way to ShoutFactory…
I just hated when Joel would admonish the bots for being “dark.” I found it really irritating, because those “dark” jokes were the funnier ones, and his response was like a wet blanket to the humor. Though, in this instance, Joel gets it back when Tom Servo makes fun of one of Joel’s lamer riffs.
Speaking of the Kalevala, the dubbed version is nothing like the original Kalevala (I don’t know about the original Finnish version). Anneke (sp?) is barely in the original epic, if she’s there at all. Vannamoinen (Crow: “Is there another wise man we could talk to?”) has a much bigger role. There’s also a lot more to the story. It would be like if they filmed a movie called “The Bible” and only focused on a few chapters of Genesis — oh, wait, they did.
The group Magenta has song called “Lemmankinnen’s Lament”. It’s a very sad and pretty song, but I can’t help listening to it and thinking “We’re in the house — take your BIKE HELMET off!”
Although it’s a folk tale, I agree with Joel and the bots’ commentary on how the rules of magic almost seem to be made up as the story goes along (“Wait a minute, if he could make a horse, why did he have to cut that tree down?”).
Add me to those who aren’t fond of the “Gypsy Rose Me” segment. It has nothing to do with the film and it’s incomprehensible. Gypsy’s had better moments later on in MST’s run.
Last but not least, Trace’s Bullwinkle impression is hilarious. (“Will somebody put me out, I seem to be on fire!”)
Tolkien fans should take note that the Kalevala by Elias Lonnrot, like many pieces of folklore and mythology, was very influential on J.R.R. Tolkien when he was writing Lord of the Rings. It’s a wonderful book and it is still in print for anyone who is interested; you can buy a copy from Amazon or any good book seller. The magical Sampo is given a clearer explanation in writing than it got in a dubbed version of the movie about it.
When I heard the girl’s name, my first thought was the Japanese word “aniki”, pronounced the same way. If anyone cares, it means “boss”, but is generally used in a brotherly way.
Yes, Sampo I remember who Ross Perot is.
“Oh… ei-dee-di-dee-di-dee-di-dee-di-dee-di…
Who’s the little man
With the giant ears?
I voted for him years ago
He bought me lots of beers
He was a millionaire
And he had lots of cash
And he uded to use it all
He never bought me hash!”
I love “Whose Line?” just as much as MST3K.
This is definitely one of the best ones in the series. Actually, the movie looks good enough to watch unMSTed with equal enjoyment (even if it does seem goofy as anything).
Another then-topical reference: Nastassia
(OOPS! Hit the “submit” button too early, there!)
This is definitely one of the best ones in the series. Actually, the movie looks good enough to watch unMSTed with equal enjoyment (even if it does seem goofy as anything).
Another then-topical reference: Nastassia Kinski is mentioned during the scene with the snake (noting her once-controversial photo session).
The short is one of my favorites, particularly how even Joel seems taken aback at the “clown style” sequence.
As for host segments, I liked them, and that includes “Gypsy Rose Me”. Nice to have her in the spotlight. And my favorite Sampo explanation is “high-engergy prop comic SAMPO!”
By the way, what’s this “box” that Forrester threatens Frank with?
The Russian fairy tales are some of my favorite episodes. The Day the Earth Froze has a man getting his butt kicked by an animate cape, a hilarous bullwinkle impression, and a ridiculous sequence when the hero’s mother goes from object to inanimate object to ask for news of her missing son. The road’s lengthy reply inspires Crow’s comment, “Now I know what they mean when they say the road goes on forever.”
Side note: Emmett Kelly eating a sandwich just isn’t that interesting. Didn’t he have some kind of routine they could show us?
The Box is an illustration of the Lovecraftian technique where a writer keep the details vague and allow the audience to fill in the blanks with their imagination, as they’ll probably come up with something more horrible than the writer could.
I thought the box was a nod to the scene in 1984 where Winston Smith is tied to chair, his head covered by a box linked to cages stuffed with hungry face-eating rats, his worst fear.
My worst fear is having my head covered by a box linked to screens where Coleman Francis films play in a never-ending loop, no riffs, no popcorn. Just pain.
Randy
Ah…the Prodigy (aka P*) boards…man, that seemed like eons ago….oh wait…it WAS!
I went as FordBB (Ford Beebe! Ford Beebe!) back then, but decided to change because too many people asked me what kind of Ford Big Block truck I had.
One of my favs as well. To this day, any morning I walk outside in the winter and I can FEEL my nose hairs…I utter the line “it was just so ding-dang cold, the stuff in my nose just freeze right up!” Ah, the Scandahovian sketch….
“Kids come runnin’ for the rich taste of Sampo!”
By God, one of my most favorite episodes. The Russo-Finnish Troika (or is it a Quadrology – does Jack Frost count too?) Are all great episodes: beautiful to look at, insanely goofy throughout.
He failed to bring back the Sampo
Sampo!
We will die of starvation
Sampo!
I studied the Kalevala in college and have to say that it’s one of the most repetitive things I’ve ever read, and I really like all that European mythology stuff. The same story gets retold about five times… Benefit though is that I do indeed know what a sampo is. ;)
Oh, and my professor actually mentioned this episode in class once, telling us that there’d been a film made and that it’s only available through MST3K “if any of you have heard of that.”
Great guy and otherwise great class.
“As I noted in 1993 when I introduced this episode on national TV during Turkey Day, the movie DOES explain what a sampo is.”
Okay, hot shot. So, just what is a sampo?
Jedzz: In the movie, it’s a magical machine, kind of a mill that produces gold, salt and flour (three handy things if you live in a pre-agrarian society above the Arctic Circle). In the stories, it’s described a lot of different ways. But the point is that when a community gets a sampo, good fortune follows. So if witchiepoo steals it, go get it and don’t screw it up!
The Kalevala is repetitive because it is actually entirely a collection of oral tradition stories. Lonnrot went around Finland writing the stories down to ensure they wouldn’t be lost. So they are really not meant to be read, but heard. For all those people who like Lord of the Rings but hated how the book often stops in the middle of the action and lapses into a song, you can at least partially blame the style of the Kalevala for that.
The Sampo is a magical machine forged by Ilmarinen that produces grain, salt and gold in unlimited quantities.
I always like your comments on the commercials on your tapes, Sampo.
Even though I have lukewarm feelings about a LOT of Joel-era host segments, I’m going to play devil’s advocate for “Gypsy Rose Me”. On one level, I appreciate it as a well-deserved satirization of pretentious one-person shows, but on another level, sometimes when I feel desperately in need of self-affirmation I find myself humming a few bars, and it helps a little.
The movie itself goes to show that there’s no magic formula for what makes a movie good riffing fodder; especially compared to “Bride of the Monster” and “Manos”–and most especially “Monster A-Go-Go,” which I find almost unwatchable even with the riffing–this movie is very good in its own right. I wish I could see the original version (only with English subtitles).
It’s difficult for me to pick out a favorite riff because I’m not detail-oriented that way, but apart from the Bullwinkle stuff probably the moment that always makes me laugh the most is when Joel says in his best Margaret Hamilton voice, “Poppies will make us sleeeeep!” and Crow whispers “they’re tulips!”
They don’t identify the circus in the short? I thought the announcer gets to introducing it, although it’s obscured by Joel’s riff about nobody telling a Navy man when he’s had too much to drink.
They didn’t identify the circus in the short? I thought they had. The announcer seems to be saying something about the circus, although it’s buried under Joel’s riff about nobody telling a Navy man when he’s had too much to drink.
Some really great stuff in this one. Most of my favorite episodes are in the 400-500 era. That the film is intersting in its own right, at least for the folklore, and that it is a perfect breeding ground for MST fodder is in itself a wonder. This era is definately when the Brains were in the zone, functioning at maximum warp riff speed. :lol:
“Yeah, I’ll go get your flippin’ sampo”.
You mentioned that it was titled ‘The Day the Earth Froze’ for American release to sucker people into thinking it was a sci-fi film…well guess what, it worked. My parents saw this movie in the theater when they were dating, and yes, they did buy tickets thinking they were seeing a revival of the sci-fi classic ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’. Decades later, they still remembered it as a downright terrible movie, and I remembered calling them during the Turkey Day marathon saying, “You’ll never guess what they’re showing!”
I was called in as an authority after that to referee an age-old dispute between my mother and my aunt as to which was worse, ‘Plan 9’ or ‘Day the Earth Froze’. (I voted for ‘Manos’. I’m no dummy.)
Wow. I really, really hate this episode.
Hmm… something must be wrong with me.
BTW, the unMSTied version of this film is on NetFlix. It’s a double feature with The Magic Voyage Of Sinbad. Bonus!
“Ron Wood on any given morning.”
The movie starts slowly but once it ramps up, wow, what hilarity.
This episode contains my favorite MST3k riff ever: “Yes, dear I’ll get your Half ‘n’ Half dear. Can’t have one little cup off coffee without her Half ‘n’ Half!“
Hey Sampo, I though you produced Pfefferneus as well.
Ding! Sampo’s up!
One of my all-time favorite MST3K episodes. The riffing during the short AND the movie has got “classic riffing” written all over it.
In the short alone there’s a reference to Dag Hammarskjold (U.N. Secretary General 1953-61) and there’s “C. Everett Kook.”
The riffing gets really good in the movie:
* – Boat on fire. Crow (as Bullwinkle): “Will somebody please put me out? I seem to be on fire!”
* – Lemminkainen arrives home minus his Sampo. “It’s…” “I hate Mondays!” “Now wipe your feet before you come into Finland!”
* – J&TB’s “Failure Song” during the wedding dance sequences.
* – Garrison Keillor-style riffing when characters play their musical instruments.
I could go on and on, but no sense taking up too much space. Classic MST!
BLIND Lemon-Kaiman….
“Lemminkinnen in your rinse cycle…a terrific epiosode, one of my favorite of the Joel era. “The Adventures of Fjord(sp?) Fairlane, a now very dated reference to an Andrew Dice Clay film. As several have noted, Crow’s Bullwinkle riff is about perfect.
As I mentioned in my comments on Attack of the The Eye Creatures a few weeks back, this is my absolute favorite experiment (at least of Joel’s run). I started laughing out of the gate at “Heeeeeeeeeeere comes the Devil!” :evil: /”It’s Beelzebub the Clown!” :twisted: , and by the time the “Failure” song was in full swing, my lungs were etc. Most of my favorite riffs have been mentioned already, so I’ll just add “It’s Thomas Edison and his electric child” and “She’s talking to a Mills Brother!” to the tally.
“Gypsy Rose Me”? Meh. Sometimes I watch it, sometimes I hit FF. I don’t like the way Gyps glibly responds to Joel’s compliment at the end and just goes off to rinse out some things. Very anticlimactic.
I’ll have to rewatch my copy (from April-Mayish of ’93) and make note of any commercials worth mentioning. (I think it’s amusing that Sampo’s copy has the very Sally Struthers commercial riffed in the experiment…”Do you want to be Swedish? Sure, we all do!”)
I Loved the Bullwinkle jokes(Pardon me but I seem to be on fire!!!)One of my favorite episodes of all time. It’s just so darn goofy it’s hysterical. Oh, Shout Factory this one would be awesome in set # 1 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Another 5-star episode, of the run at the end of season four. I think people should show 419 through 424 to recruit new fans to the show.
Mentioned my favorite riff in a mistaken post a few shows back, but I’ll repeat it here since no one else has yet(though the others mentioned are classics as well): When the townsfolk prepare to fight the witch, Crow says, “Ladies and gentlemen, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Mountain Boys!” I also loved Joel’s reaction: “Crow, you are out there, man!”
The short is also another dark one: circuses must have created bad memories for one or more of the writers.
How do robots spit? Ask Crow, with his tobacco in a season 9 or 10 episode, I forget which season it was in.
Another fave riff: Crow, in the clown-spanking scene: “And Madonna thinks she’s innovative!”
To Brandon: The Ross Perot Drinking Song is my favorite one, though they bleeped out “hash.” Big Whose Line fan also, it’s my second favorite show.
I’ll take up for Gypsy, I thought “Gypsy Rose Me!” was one of the best host segments of the season. It’s nice to see others besides Joel/Mike and the ‘bots involved, like Magic Voice in The Atomic Brain.
The failure song, Santa entering the lodge, Leatherhead, I could go on and on. Truly a classic.
I love me some Bullwinkle too. I liked how they also included a riff concerning the ubiquitous Chauncy and Edgar.
I liked this episode. I laughed watching it. “Gypsy Rose Me” was fun. It was good.
What a great episode! There’s something about these Russo-Finnish movies that are both entertaining to watch while giving the ‘Brains so much material to work with. Kevin Murphy mentions this in the ACEG, these movies are both brilliant and goofy. Never a dull moment though.
Another killer short, too! Second week in a row that it’s circus-themed, and it’s just as awful as last week’s. I love the part where one clown hits another on the behind while suspended in mid-air; you can hear the agony from J&TB, with Joel exclaiming “Please tell me this isn’t happening!” Am I alone in thinking this, or is it that whenever there’s a funny-as-hell short that it bodes well for a hilarious movie treatment too?
Fave riffs: the “Failure Song” is a great song-within-the-theater segment, and the extended dig on Garrison Keiller’s duller-than-dull “Praire Home Companion” during the “showdown” with the witch and her henchmen.
One more thing: I love how everyone is weighing in on the “Gypsy Rose Me” segment. It’s by no means their best sketch – amid a season with great sketches it’s rather lackluster – but at least it shows that the writers were willing to do something different by giving Gypsy a chance to perform. What they should’ve done was place this in an episode like “Monster a Go Go”, where there was just no way to do any segments relating to the movie, it may have been a better fit.
What was in that swan foil? That’s a significant memory from that episode…
I (finally) watched this gem for the first time on my Wii’s Opera browser via Youtube (being able to go from a large collection of classic Nintendo games to queing up streaming MST goodness any time I want = bliss) and it is easily a new favorite. The folks who say this episode excels in RPM factor are dead on, whether it be the circus short (C. Everett Kook = genius) or the movie itself, Joel and the staff were really firing on all cylinders with this one. My favorite riffs that come to mind now are the failure song, Trace’s hilarious Bullwinkle-on-fire line (great impression too, as always) and the Raiders reference. Gypsy Rose Me was a fun sketch, although I will agree with the poster who said it would have worked better in a more “standalone” fashion in slower eps such as Monster A Go Go, ect. OTOH, any time Gypsy gets some focus is just fine by me. Absolutely loved the family photo opener (Crow’s “slicked back” hair/dome was a nice touch) and Tom and Crow’s “death circus” writing diatribe was great stuff. The cinematography of the movie was surprisingly good, there’s something about the soft colors and backgrounds of the Russo-Finnish groaners that draw you in gently. Anyways, I enjoyed this with a pizza and some liquor before heading to bed saturday night and added this to my collection of “greatest personal MST memories.” :)
My guess on the box is that it’s a reference to Cool Hand Luke where the prisoners are threatened with spending “a night in the box.” Though the idea of letting our minds run wild also works for me.
Frank seething is very funny.
Joel’s comment “How can it be American and international?” is very similar to one of my favorite riffs from MST3K:TM, “Doesn’t the fact that it’s universal make it international?”
Favorite riffs:
Crow: “Hey, my other log’s a redwood!”
Tom: “Have you thought about praying to me: God? The big G-meister?”
I count 3 Wizard of Oz references.
Joel: “Poppies will make us sleep.” Crow: (whispered) “They’re tulips!”
Crow: “Fly monkeys! Fly!” (When the witch releases the winds.)
Tom: “Surrender Ilsa!” (When the witch flies over the forest, referencing the WWotW writing “Surrender Dorothy” in the sky.)
Here’s my submission for the box: The Skinner Box.
At one point, during the snowstorm, Crow says “It’s not a fit night out for man nor beast!” This is either a reference to a line Yukon Cornelius says in Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer, or, most probably, from the classic W.C. Fields short “The Fatal Glass of Beer”. In the end it may be a moot point, ’cause the line from Rudolf was probably a reference itself to the Field’s short.
Just catching up on some old stuff here, and had to add myself as one of those who have this episode at the tippy-top of the list.
The Bullwinkle “I seem to be on fire” is the only thing my girlfriend knows from MST3k–and it’s my ticket to making her watch other episodes!
Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but a band called Happy Flowers released an album in 1989 titled “Oof”, with a track called “Unhappy Meal”. Unfortunately it’s a rare album nowadays, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the Mads used it for an unhealthy round of DEEEEEEEP HURRRRRTINNNNNNNG!
Though if you have usenet access, you can find Oof in alt.binaries.multimedia.slack, nudge nudge wink wink.
I’m a bit behind on this classic as I just saw it for the very first time only last night and I kick myself for not having watched it sooner.
Short:
* “Heeere comes the devil!” – Instant win for the short.
* Emmet Kelly is far more funny in riffs that refer to him in later episodes. “Oh no she’s chasing down Emmet Kelly!” – Eegah. “Poor Emmet Kelly, he didn’t age well.” – Incredibly Strange…
* Wouldn’t those clown antics have been considered obscene in the 50s? That’s how I felt at least.
* Favorite riff: “Nobody needs to tell a Navy man when he’s had enough to drink!”
Movie:
* Lemminkainan is the best name for a hero ever. I challenged my fiancee to say it 10 times fast as another tongue twister.
* Another semi-reference to the Wizard of Oz is how the WWotW and Lohki tend to overact.
* My family owned the same kind of Sampo that’s shown in a letter at the end of Eegah. That’s always a hoot to watch.
* I had to pause the video because I was laughing so hard after the Bullwinkle impression, but I also noticed at that point how Lemminkainan is trying to put on a fierce face but looks really stupid at the same time.
* Picked up on more than one S&M-based riff on this one, which was a bit surprising.
* Aside from constant references to “Sampo!” in later episodes, I recall Crow saying “I am the north wind!” at least once. I think it’s done in Wild Wild World of Batwoman.
* Another great pair of riff that are almost lost between the two Bullwinkle impressions are Servo’s “Log flume rides gone horribly wrong!” and “There’s a flaming moose on I-35.”
* Hopefully the “Failure!” song will be included in the next MST3K Jukebox if the episode isn’t included in one by then. ‘course personally I’d love to see a box set with this, Magic Voyage of Sinbad, Sword and the Dragon, and Jack Frost all in one (another good quad of episodes would be the four Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds ones).
* Favorite riff: “Save me, Rocky! Help me!” “Again?”
Host segments:
* They capture the annoyance of family portraits all too well in the prologue.
* The only thing better than Trace’s Charles Nelson Riley laugh is his Bullwinkle impression.
* “Gypsy Rose Me” was pretty good, in my opinion, especially since she talked about how some people see her as stupid.
* Favorite segment: Crow and Servo ideas for new clown acts, only to get shot down by Joel (he certainly one-ups them a lot more often than Mike ever did).
Another of my all-time favorite episodes, and holds a rather personal soft spot. This was the first episode I had my wife watch with me. Up until then she only caught snatches of the episodes I watched and would just shake her head, not quite getting the charm of MST3K. I convinced her to watch an episode with me one Friday night and this was it. We spent most of the evening in hysterics, and at one point my wife laughed so hard she fell off the loveseat! From the wonderful short Here Comes the Circus (“Heeeeerreee comes the devil!” “Oh no, they’re doing it clown-style!”) to the main feature itself, this is another tour de force from the brains. My wife’s favorite segment was when Lemonkinen is rafting down the rapids and Joel and the bot’s are singing faux surfer tunes.
“Let’s go surfin’now, even Sven’s learning how”.
“If everybody had a spruce tree, across Finlandia”.
“Wish they all could be Norwegian girls”.
And the kicker line: “The adventures of Fjord Fairlane”.
Oh, yeah, and the Flaming moose: “Could somebody please put me out I seem to be on fire!”.
Good times, wonderful memory, great episode. Thank you, Best Brains, for providing a means for my wife and I to laugh and love together…again. :wink:
I LOVE this movie! This ranks up there with “Jack Frost” as my favorite in the genre of weird, dubbed foreign movies that they riffed. The “Failure” song had me laughing till my hair hurt! I wonder if this movie is available undubbed, but with English subtitles.
The short was strange and funny, as they all were… Did kids really like these mini-films? Would anyone be inspired to join the circus (or even want to see one) after watching this?
You should have noted “Oh no, they’re doing it clown-style!” as a Vaguely Naughty Riff. :smile:
A very funny episode. But Jim’s Gypsy has always irritated the crap out of me. I can’t stand it when Gypsy is on.