What is the most ill-thought-out plan a villain/hero has come up with on MST3K?
Obviously, we can’t include any of Mike’s numerous attempts to escape the SOL. Also, this pre-supposes that the villain(s) of the film actually have a plan that doesn’t involve lumbering around, randomly killing people until they get shot/electrocuted/disappear for no reason.
My personal favorite is Q from Mighty Jack, with his evil torture box that can blind you… unless you keep your eyes closed.
I’m going to go with Bela’s plot in episode 105- THE CORPSE VANISHES. As Servo (I think) notes in a host segment, abducting a bride on her wedding day is, you know, bound to get noticed.
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I don’t know if this counts, but in Puma Man, title character Tony Farms’s plan appears to be bouncing around and ogling the girl.
The runner-up is a tie between all of the Japanese films where the bad guy kidnaps the child friends of the most powerful hero who has been known to beat the crap out of enemies. (Gamera/Godzilla/Space Chief/Prince of Space)
I just watched this episode, so it’s still fresh in my mind. I’m talking about Ben Murphy’s 20 mile truck trip that seems to take all day in Riding With Death. He seems kind of clueless throughout the whole thing – he is asked to make an unscheduled stop at another warehouse. “Duhhhh, Okay!” When there they switch bags and monkey with the paperwork. “Duhhhhh, Okay!” He stops at a garage asking Carl the Mechanic to check the shocks. Carl cuts the brake lines, leaving them to drag in plain sight on the ground. “Duhhhh, Okay!”
As groovy and mellow as Ben Murphy is on the movie, he seems to succeed only by pure dumb stupid luck (and the whim of the scriptwriters).
Wild Wild World of Batwoman
Stealing an ATOMIC hearing aid? …really? And then having the one material that reacts with it not only in stock, but right next to it?
Oh RatFink.. You scamp..
“you got your mole people in my batwoman!!”
Baldar’s plan in “Santa Conquers the Martians” is to kidnap Santa from Keymar(?) so Mars will have no joy and happyness. He’s too dimwitted to realize Santa is actually Droppo in disguise and then becomes overwhelmed by toys, bubbles, and spankings.
The Rebel Set’s bank robbery plan was really stupid. They’re supposed to take a train from L.A. to New York, stop in Chicago, rob the bank by holding up an armored car on a backwoods road (which they do by putting on cop uniforms and getting into a fake police car), then take the money and GET BACK ON THE SAME FREAKIN’ TRAIN IN CHICAGO and continue to NYC where they split the cash. Dumbest plan ever! I love this episode, but it begs a lot of questions. How did coffee shop owner Mr. Tucker plan this thing? How did he have a fake police car waiting for them? Why did he choose a bunch of out-of-work actors, musicians, and socialites for his team? Why did he dress as a priest for the trip? Why did that guy bring his wife? Why the light summer casket? And the most important question of all: WHO IS MERRITT STONE?
The whatever-the-hell-plan-that-was in Red Zone Cuba.
I think Dr. Z could have devised a more direct, less convoluted plan to gain revenge on his friends. Turning yourself into a fish monster and polluting the planet’s water one drop at a time while whacking your colleagues seems like excessive multi-tasking. Of course, he did end up with the girl, so maybe his plan worked perfectly.
The Head That Wouldn’t Die plan – the swaggering Doc hasn’t exactly had amazing success grafting body parts (look at his poor assistant, not to mention the mutant in the closet!)and now he’s going to fix his fiance? Meet your new bride, Jan in the Pan!
Pulatso #6: You’ll have to ask Peter Falk, The Bay of Pigs was his idea.
I am watching “Deathstalker & The Warriors from Hell” as I type this and Truxartus’s plan would have worked if Nissssisssss had “TALK!!!”ed
This is a lesser ill-conceived villainous plan, but it always made me wonder: what exactly were Madam Estrella & Ortega trying to accomplish by turning people into “zombies” and stuffing them in the closet? Was she spurned by THAT MANY men? How many did she use to kill people for her, besides Jerry? Why did she keep them in storage? Was she building an army? Did she forget they were there? Was she a hoarder? So many questions….
For me, the most ill-thought-out plan was in Village of the Giants. The giant teens seemed to have no concrete ideas for using their enormous size, except to gather up all the guns, force the townspeople to bring them fried chicken & Cokes, and talk about making the “grown-ups” obey teenagers. Uh-huh.
This is 100% off topic, but there is a MST3k boxset on Amazon’s deal if the day for $25!!!!!! I think it’s xvii.
In “The Giant Gila Monster”, Chase Winstead comes up with a plan to take his prized hotrod (complete with new paint job), load it with nitroglycerin, aim it at the big bad monster and hope the car travels in a straight line long enough to collide with the target. His plan works, but what guy in his right mind would sacrifice his own beloved car to save a town of about twenty people? Shouldn’t the sheriff maybe have done that with his car? (“Sorry, that’s out of my jurisdiction.”) Oh well, Chase was such a good guy, “the railroad will be glad to buy you a new one.”
I’d have to go with the plan in Red Zone Cuba. It appears as if the plan was to be caught and executed by a Fidel Castro impersonator.
Parts: The Clonus Horror was also really ill-concieved. Putting all your human rights violations in a loosely guarded area in California close to civilization means they really wanted to be caught.
City on Fire- some numb nutz sets a huge fuel depot, thats located in the MIDDLE of a city, on fire because he didn’t get a promotion and to impress a girl.
Prince of Space- so many plots that go nowhere in this one;
“Release the caustic vapors!”-Can farts exist in a vacuum?
“Get me the Laser Canon!”- So it can fail like every other weapon.
“My giant will take care of him!”- By bumbling around and falling over.
“Have a GOOD night’s sleep! HE-HE-HE-HE!”- Will not happen cause we’re laughing so hard!
@6 & 13 I thought the con and ex cons were signing up with the secret militia cause they would be getting a thousand bucks each, in cash, and then they were going to take off after they got the cash (you know how cons are, always running from something). Cherokee Jack confirmed the rumor so he could get a kick back. This was why Curly Joe con wanted to throttle Cherokee Jack. I’m not sure I want to be right on this?
I think the second half of Riding with Death. How is the Eusive Robert Denby’s plan to blow up face cars by remote control advancing the interests of the Soviet bloc anyway?
Krankor comes to mind. The chicken people didn’t seem to have much of a plan for taking over the world, except to use gigantic Purdue Over Stuffer Roasters. Prince of Space just seemed to skip a lot. “You’re weapons have no effect on me!”
#10: “For me, the most ill-thought-out plan was in Village of the Giants. The giant teens seemed to have no concrete ideas for using their enormous size, except to gather up all the guns, force the townspeople to bring them fried chicken & Cokes, and talk about making the ‘grown-ups’ obey teenagers. Uh-huh.”
You said it. It’s one the reasons I think the movie, despite its promise of goofy fun, is actually rather dull–nothing much seems to happen largely because Beau Bridges and his friends have no ambitions to make anything happen. But, I suppose if your chief characteristic as a giant is moving really realllly slowly, maybe you think slowly too. Maybe being a giant is like being incredibly stoned.
So many wretched plans, so little time. The law-enforcement strategy of the “Desert Patrolmen” in Beast of Yucca Flats must surely rank among the worst heroic plans in any MST3K. I don’t think Jim and Joe were real cops at all, just weekend warriors with a few hours of instruction who set themselves up as vigilante protectors of Coleman Francis Mountain. Joe was probably always begging Jim to go up in the plane. “Look how high that is!” “Well, you can see there’s a road round the other side–” “No choice, gotta JUMP!” “Look, we can just drive–” “I WANNA JUMP FROM THE PLANE!!”
Worst villainous plans are many in MST3K but it’s hard to match the Krankorians for sheer incomprehensibility and stupidity. Mike sums it all up really, when the Phantom has commanded his men for the umpteenth time to shoot the Prince of Space: “Brilliant new plan, sir!” The Krankorians fly untold distances to steal a rocket-fuel formula (from a scientist without two brain cells to rub together, no less); they kidnap some humans and leave Earth, only to return immediately; the Phantom plans to keep the scientists hostage “for quite some time”, only to announce a few minutes later that he’s going to kill them in the most ridiculously convoluted manner imaginable (“wouldn’t it be easier just to bludgeon them right here?”) Not once in the entire movie do the Krankorians ever seem to know what they’re doing for more than thirty seconds at a stretch.
Yuri’s plans in Wehrwulf don’t make the most sense to me. If you really want to turn someone into a wurwilf so you can capture him, exhibit him and proclaim the discovery to science, is it really the best idea to choose a victim who already wants to kill you, then go out all by yourself inadequately armed and equipped to grab him? Warwelf Paul, despite being the weakest monster in almost any MST3K movie, takes out the ill-prepared Yuri in about five seconds.
Very little about Mighty Jack makes any sense, least of all using the “hot ice” for bullets. If you want to be secretive assassins, does it make any sense at all to make your bullets of a substance that is instantly traceable to one of only two people in the entire world?
“Why did he choose a bunch of out-of-work actors, musicians, and socialites for his team?”
I suspect because the film-maker had just seen Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing and figured he could one-up him with assembling a career of even worse misfits and even bigger losers.
I meant to spell the Elusive Robert Denby. drat.
Anyway back to Riding with Death, I thought Dr Hale’s plot to defraud the government, put the money in a Swiss bank account, and hang out in the Caribbean made perfect sense but what was the point of the helicopter? I mean, I’ve never been in one or tried to communicate with someone aboard one but aren’t they incredibly noisy? Why not just have a thug shoot Sam, throw him in the truck, haven’t it driven off somewhere till it ACCIDENTLY blows up. By the time the Feds figure it out Hale’s long gone with his 10 mill.
Bad villainous plans? I can think of one perfect example:
“What do you suppose would happen if you poured acid into someone’s parachute?”
The Girl in Gold Boots:
“Yes, my plan is working perfectly, I’ve been spotted by several people and I’ve killed a man!”
“Well, what do you expect, he’s just a child.”
I’d have to say, without a doubt, Kalgan’s plan in Space Mutiny was the dumbest plan I can recall in a MSTied movie. How can we get off this ship? I know, let’s blow it up!
A close second was Biff Hardcheese’s plan to stop him by running around screaming like a girl and waxing the floors.
Second only because it apparently succeded, somehow.
BTW, this is totally off-topic, but I’m browsing via the mobile version of the site, and it looks and works great!
I was totally planning to be bored by this topic, but miGHOD did this stir up some snakes. Just watched Santa Claus v. Pia Zadora, so Baldar’s Plan is at the forefront.
Why isn’t Baldar’s reading of, “planet of WAAARRRRHHHH” as renowned as King Donovan’s, “TORCHA!” You could plant row crops in the furrows in this guy’s face.
Oh no… Megalon is attacking! what do we do?!
I know… go get Godzilla to help!
*What the mess! that’s a bad plan*
its bad for tourism. Bad for the economy. and its bad news sewage systems.
But… port-o-potties are gonna be going like hotcakes!
Adding to #22, the plan of traveling to a skeezy go-go-dancer club, in LA, to become a janitor, junior drug dealer, and a crack whore.
How about Whit Bissell’s plan (in “I Was a Teenage Werewolf”)to transform Michael Landon into a blood-thirsty wolf?!! Yeah…that sounds like a real scientific breakthrough!
@ # 8
I haven’t seen the unMSTied version of The Brain That Wouldn’t Die in a long time, but I think there was a scene where Kurt mentions the “neck juice” being some kind of formula that the doctor had just invented that would make a body part be able to attach to another, by having the two different DNA cells accept each other…. or something like that.
A mention should be made to This Island Earth. Exeter goes to Earth to collect really smart scientists to take them back to Metaluna, have their brains washed, and they become zombies working for Metaluna, trying to find ways to make uranium…. is that how it was? I haven’t seen the uncut This Island Earth in a long time either, but I think that was the gist. This plan is flawed since, by the time Exeter returned to Metaluna with the scientists in tow, the planet was still minutes away from blowing up. Kind of makes Exeter’s trip to Earth a colossal waste of time.
Dr. Z- trying to take over the world from his basement and walking catfish? Pretty lame. He did kill a few misc. scientists and a cracker cop, but come on.
Also- Bela in Bride of the Monster was pretty lame too.
A couple of my favorites (Blood Waters of Dr. Z & Girl in Gold Boots) have already been mentioned.
One that pops to mind as ridiculously impractical is Eric’s plan to drive Jenni crazy in “The Screaming Skull,” which pretty much requires Eric to be omnipresent and invisible to pull it off the way we see it in the movie. All that would have to happen for it to fail utterly is for Jenni to see him once, moving the skull around. And then what? “Sorry, honey, I was… uh… just, uh… rushing the Halloween season! I got a bit more reaction than I expected!”
I’m going to go with the Blood Waters of Dr. Z as well…
His entire plan seems to be taking revenge on people who mocked him or didn’t fund him… By why does he need to be a giant beautiful cat-fish to do that?
Being the pumafan, and all …
Despite being a beloved character, Vadinho had a pretty dumb plan of throwing random americans from high places to see if they were thepumaman.
Rawwjer’s plan of auctioning human skeletons … doesn’t get much more Southerny gothic than that.
Okay, dumbest hero plans:
The Magic Sword – How do you conquer seven curses?…Take seven ready-packaged guys with you to push into the traps and get bumped off instead of you.
(Well, maybe not dumb, but…highly impractical in real-world situations.)
Riding With Death has been mentioned a couple times, and I’m going to have to add to it: Dr. Hale’s plan had absolutely no way of working.
First off, he and Luther Stark are idiots. There are at least twenty people working with them who would have to have been aware of the fraud or some other criminal activity. What was Luther Stark doing at the lab after Sam and Dr. Hale left, and why, after catching Abby there, did he truss her up, load her into the helicopter and race to the storage unit to beat Sam and Dr. Hale there when he could have just tied her up and set the lab to blow again (or even better, have his enforcer do it so he didn’t have to rush back in the helicopter)? I don’t want to say they should have assumed Sam Casey was a super-agent, but shouldn’t they have given him enough credit to assume he’d have figured out what the deal was with the helicopter (especially after they watched him looking at them through binoculars), or when he took an acetylene torch into the truck bed when he said he would be fixing the brakes? Finally, how on earth did they get lucky enough that Sam stopped to have the truck looked at in the first place to be able to hire Carl to cut the brakes?
Robert Denby’s plan of blowing up jets and racecars may be stupid but at least it’s based on things one could reasonably expect would happen.
Did Mrs. March from “The Atomic Brain” really expect the Doctor to not screw her over on the body transplant?
Also, Lloyd Wangler from “Escape 2000” made one mistake: He parked.
I don’t know Nekouken. Dr Hale’s basic scheme of fraud, swiss bank, Caribbean was a staple of 70s detective shows like Barnaby Jones, Hawaii Five-O, and the Name of the Game where the really smart crook was caught by the even smarter detective. It was all the extra stuff like helicopters and bag switching and Charleton Heston’s parking space that did him in.
I can see Denby using race cars to work out the kinks but once he did blow up the jet it was time to close up his chop shop. Getting those New England journalists involved didn’t help either
#9
“Pulatso #6: You’ll have to ask Peter Falk, The Bay of Pigs was his idea.”
==================================
Hey, like JFK wrote to Vince “At least we tried.”
This Island Earth’s plan by Exeter wasn’t very bright.
By the time he got his posse of scientists together he
should have known where things were going (sort of like
many nazis in 1945 Germany as far as their future goes)
and whacked Brack (ooh, that rhymes!) and started a
high tech consulting firm. But moved it from Georgia to
somewhere in , say, northern California.Hey, wait a minute,
isn’t Bill Gates’ forehead kind of…..well, maybe not.
@21: Actually, the acid in a parachute idea to get revenge might be Coleman Francis’s most sensical character decision. It’s no more bizarre or stupid than the methods by which lots of revenge murders take place. Just watch any of those true crime shows on A&E or truTV.
For me the most idiotic part of “Red Zone Cuba” is when Tony Cardoza and Harold Saunders first meet Coleman “Curly” Francis. The sheriff goes up to them and offers a $5,000 for turning in Coleman. They don’t rat Coleman out and take the money, but when Coleman talks about how you can get $1,000 for joining the Bay of Pigs invasion and ANOTHER $1,000 when it’s finished, they love the idea. Never mind that turning Coleman into the law would be (a) easier, (b) a faster way to get money, and (c) $500 more profitable per person. STUPID STUPID STUPID!
Speaking of stupid money decisions, Mr. Pink with Mustache says that with a time machine, you could put money in a bank account in the past and then live off the interest in the future. Yet he and his company think that developing the time machine is more profitable!!!
The sheriff/government/scientist’s plan of combating the creature in “The Creeping Terror” is also mind numbingly stupid, especially when they decide to never inform the populace of any danger. Another example of cutting off communication for no reason: “Laserblast” has the agent-from-an-unnamed-government-entity who demands that the local police force isolate the town. WHY?
Also high on the stupidity meter is Jimmy in “I Accuse My Parents,” who plans to get his life back in order and win his girl back by
coming clean to the policedirectly confronting the mob boss. And I’ve never undstood why Satan couldn’t find anyone more menacing than Pitch in “Santa Claus.”I could go on and on. So many stupid people in so many stupid movies.
In ‘Gamera Vs Gaos’, “Hey! Lets build a fountain of blood, get Gaos to sit on it, we spin him around until he’s dizzy, then the sun comes up and kills him. What could possibly go wrong?”
Also, ‘Attack Of The The Eye Creatures’. Did the aliens have any plan at all? Or, was it just wander around and get killed by headlights?
Oh! One more. The cops in ‘Wild Rebels’. “Lets allow a bunch of kill happy bikers to rape and pillage at their leisure until we spring our clever trap on them. If a bunch of innocent civilians and policeman get murdered along the way…eh, acceptable losses.”
@Creeping Terror, #40:
What always gets me about that exchange is how doubly stupid it is. The only reason he takes Pink Boy to the future is to get R&D funding. Pink Boy basically tells him how to get money without having to sign a contract with anyone, thus making his role pointless and losing Evil Co the contract. But the Physics Professor signs the contract for the cash anyway!
How about Devil Fish? Who would think that combining a shark and octopuss would be a good idea? Oh wait… Sci-Fi and Roger Corman do!! Has anyone seen the trailer? The gang at Best Brains would riff away!!
Oh…where to begin, I feel like a kid in a candy store. How about our thief/murderer in Gamera vs. Barugon. The guy doesn’t really seem to have a plan, just seems to follow the “grab everything valuable and squash anyone in my way” line of plans. He’s really more ANNOYINGLY evil than anything. Although I will say “getting on a speedboat, taking out military guards with a handgun, stealing the giant diamond and speeding away” isn’t that bad a plan, it tends to fail when there is a GIANT MONSTER LIZARD who wants the diamond just a little more that you do. :shock:
In “Manos: The Hands of Fate,” I’d have to say that Mike’s plan to bring his family back to the Master’s shack and wait for the evil masses to encounter him there (where there isn’t a working phone or a working car or anything) was breathtakingly ill-conceived.
As for the villainous side of this coin, I don’t understand why the bad guys in “The Incredibly Strange Creatures…” thought that the crawlspace full of unpredictable and dangerous zombies was a GOOD idea.
Also, between Mrs. March’s foolish reliance on everyone around her and the nuclear security device, there was a whole cavalcade of stupid planning going on in “The Atomic Brain.”
#44:
I kinda already made that comment over in the thread about the next box set coming out in the near future.
Not really MST, but I was re-watching the Rifftrax version of Night of the Living Dead yesterday and the thought occured to me, ” What would have happened if instead of fighting so much our players had remained calm enough to re-force all of the windows and doors to withstand till daylight. Then try to make a break to one of the safe zones.”
Since all hell doesn’t really break out till the barbeque. Although they still probably had to kill the little girl and possibley baldy and his wife.
Also, if I was the only survior I’m pretty sure if I heard gun shots in the morning I say or do something to make it clear that I’m not a ghoul.
RO-Man’s plan to get the girl kind of fizzled in ROBOT MONSTER.
Although not MST3K…the most obvious worst plan would have to be RIFFtax PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE!
The evil plot from Secret Agent Super Dragon hurts my brain. How are the bad guys supposed to profit from the deadly chewing gum and the pottery made out of drugs? Why is there a masked ball and waht does the W on their conference table stand for?
#48: “Although not MST3K…the most obvious worst plan would have to be RIFFtax PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE!” Indeed. The plan is worth repeating:
“Eros, the Earth people are getting closer to that which we fear. Since they will not listen or respect our existence, they cannot help but believe our powers when they see their own dead walking round again, brought about by our advancement in such things. As soon as you have enough of the dead recruits, march them on the capitals of the Earth, let nothing stand in your way. Their own dead will be used to make them accept our existence, and believe in that fact.”
(Corbett: “That was all one sentence!” And it does sound like it, in John Breckinridge’s strange mode of delivery.)