At the end of The She-Creature, Mike’s final line is, “Man, if there was ever a movie I wanted to throw into the stump grinder, this is the one!” And there’s no doubt that MSTies feel the same way about various other MSTed movies, that are not simply plain or boring, but generate full, unadulterated malice.
My top picks would definitely be:
The Mad Monster
The Projected Man
The Deadly Bees
Oh, no, none of those. My one choice is: Red. Zone. Cuba. If we rounded up every print and burned them, the world would be just fine, maybe better.
Keep those WDT ideas coming!
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Any one of the movies that are not Sci-Fi or Horror movies, like Hamlet or Last of the Wild Horses. After all the show is called Mystery SCIENCE Theater. No matter how bad some of those creature features from the 50’s and 60’s are at least they belong on this show.
Count me in the pro-Deadly Bees camp. Also not sure why.
Perhaps the British prim-ness.
Perhaps because my dad was a beekeeper.
Perhaps because Suzzana Leigh. Buzz buzz.
;-)
I Accuse my Parents. Still the one episode I cannot sit down and watch completely in one sitting…
Ron Wood was a founding member of the Birds, not the Stones.
I would say Girls Town, but Mamie Van Doren’s bullet bra would get into the works of the stump grinder and bind everything up. Then we would have to run a second copy of Melting Man through to regrease it.
There can be no question that Invasion of the Neptune Men belongs in the stump grinder. There is no MST movie that I find more painful.
I can list a lot of newer Hollywood movies but I’m having a hard time thinking of the ones on MST3K.
Tom asking if you can catch a venereal disease from “Hobgoblins” makes me wonder if it can make a stump grinder gag.
Pod People: It was a dull, dry, aimless movie with thoroughly unlikeable characters in which I had zero emotional investment — until the end, when the Earth people kill Trumpy’s parents and the Earth kid dumps Trumpy and the Earth kid and his family go off and leave Trumpy in the woods, alone, on a strange world light-years from home. I was this close to tearing up at that scene, and it made me absolutely furious at that rotten-ass movie.
Alien From L.A.: I don’t care how hot Kathy Ireland was back then; her voice and acting were atrocious and the movie was so soul-crushingly dull that it seemed Mike’n’the Bots were fighting for their lives to get through it.
Ring Of Terror: I could’ve gotten a cheap laff out of the 35 year-old college students if the movie weren’t as dull as watching beige paint dry — dull, and slogging, and dark and gray. Jeezus, not even Bill Rebane or Coleman Francis shot a movie as dark and murky as Ring Of Terror.
Hobgoblins: One of my all-time favorite episodes; the movie’s so off-scale bad that it’s seems to actually inspire the riffing even more. Still, the movie itself is such a cheap-ass steaming dog flop that I want to beat it senseless and never stop… after, of course, kneeing it in the groin, and snagging on it, and giving it a power sit-up.
Oh, man, c’mon. Starfighters rules. The corn detassling, the dexedrine… the refueling. You do have a point about it looking like a really long Air Force PAO reel, though.
Y’know, I’ve always had a theory about Starfighters, which is that Coleman Francis directed it under an assumed name. I mean, it has lots of airplanes in it; while nobody is actually killed from an airplane, you see guys training to kill people from airplanes; and while no coffee is consumed in Starfighters, the heavy presence of booze and dexedrine as a motif might simply mean that Francis is trying to stretch a bit. Add to that the fact that Starfighters takes what should be an exciting and romantic premise and crushes all the excitement out of it, and you have a strong case for it being a pseudonymously-directed Coleman Francis epic.
“I found a screaming hipbone, if that helps any…”
– Mike Nelson
I loved Mickey; he made Screaming; Skull worth watching. I’ve always considered Mickey to be the Torgo of the Sci-Fi years.
Outlaw. The existence of Watney Smith alone justifies trashing it forever. (And I’ve heard that the novel series it was based on was even more misogynistic than the movie.)
Oh, wow, don’t I know it. That, on top of the fact that Merlin’s Shop was a dull, grinding, big fat steaming pile of nothing. I don’t think I’ve ever made it to the end.
D’ahh, c’mon. I could watch Dr. Z again and again. It’s so delightfully cheap and stupid, and I love the acting by the dull Jim Stafford-looking scientist guy. And that ending — sheer friggin’ poetry, man. It’s like a remake of Creature From The Black Lagoon directed by Ed Wood.
Not to make too fine a point of it, but the premise of the show (which, in fact, it is, so I should really just relax) was the Mads shooting Joel/Mike into space and subjecting them to the worst movies ever made, not necessarily the worst science fiction movies ever made.
I loved the sci-fi genre, of course, and it fit the format well… but personally I found many of the non-science-fiction/horror films among their best. And, of course, honest, from-the heart riffing knows no boundaries!
And while there are some I like more than others, I think the WORST MST3K ep I’ve ever seen pretty much transcends most other shows I’ve watched.
But that’s just me. Relaxing now. As you were. ;-)
There’s lots of new stuff available at rifftrax.com.
1) Two new full movie riffs by Mike, Kevin, and Bill: “Astro Zombies” and “Honor and Glory”
2) A new Bridget and Mary Jo short: “Nobody Tells Me What To Do!”
3) A new Mike, Kevin, and Bill short: “At Your Fingertips: Sugar and Spice (Live Edition)”
4) Two new “Just the Jokes” from Mike, Kevin, and Bill: “Road House (2016 Three-Riffer Edition)” and “The Walking Dead – Season 1 Episode 1″
5) “Jungle Goddess,” “Rocket Attack U.S.A.,” “Mad Monster,” and “The Slime People” have been posted at the “MST3K Episodes on Rifftrax” section.
Enjoy!
Well, we must separate the film from the MST3K treatment.
Hobgoblins is one of my favorite episodes. However, it is an utterly loathsome film. The same goes for Wild, Wild World of Batwoman, Red Zone Cuba, Beast of Yucca Flats and Manos.
If I had to pick only one, however….yeah, it’s Hobgoblins.
Yeah, most of the movies on the show are bad (which is the whole point), and many of them are downright horrible. Yet they’re fun because of the riffs. IMHO only a few are so bad that even the riffing can’t make them bearable.
Just three for me:
1) Radar Secret Service
2) The Atomic Brain
3) Diabolik. And pretty much all of Mario Bava’s filmography.
Let’s not forget the word MYSTERY which is quite encompassing. Don’t get me started on the word THEATER ;)
cheesy movies, the worst we can find
la la la
But seriously, I couldn’t stump grinder any of them. Besides, the ones I dislike people love, and I couldn’t do that to my fellow MSTies, even hypothetically.
Okay, fine. We can do without Space Mutiny, right?
The Wild World of Batwoman makes me grimace, wince, and flinch. The movie has no right existing in a sane world.
In the scene when Batwoman is communicating with spirits, I am near the breaking point and ready to eject the DVD.
But in the end, I turn and see Joel’s footprints in the sand and I realize he has once again carried me through the dark night of the soul that is TWWOB.
(There’s also some weird lines in the sand where he’s dragged the bots along.)
Yep. WWWoBW seance scene was one of the most embarassing in all off Mysty filmdom. Reminds yyou of scene in one of my fvorite movies (The President’s Analyst) where the FBR agent corrects the kid saying his parents and James Coburn went to eat at “Chinks” by saying “Don’t say Chinks, it’s bigoted. Say Chinese.” And the agent is trying to assassinate Coburn!
(Although current FBI agents in NYC seem to be less unbiased and opposed to potty mouthed real estate developer candidates.)
Sunday morning reflections:
We’re all familiar with the statement, “…but the riffing makes it bearable…”
Wild World of Batwoman is one of our favorite eps. However, once, just once, we tried to watch the unriffed original. THAT goes straight to the stump grinder. Absolute proof that, in the words of the beloved Mr. Cranky, “Jesus died in vain.”
And on a quick look through this WDT, only one post of pure hate for Ring of Terror. That’s just wrong. Ring of Terror is undiluted cinematic evil. Remember the difficulty the ‘bots had coming up with something good about the movie to get a RAM chip?
well, you just made a stump grinder gag about making a stump grinder gag…
I’m with Hobgoblins going into the stump grinder. There are plenty of MSTied movies where the movie sucks but you can tell the filmmakers were trying (yes, even Red Zone Cuba), or where the movie has a weir charm that makess it bearable despite the cast and crew being checked out (like The The Eye Creatures). There are movies like A Touch of Satan or The Deadly Bees which are horrible, but clearly a product of their time and culture.
But Hobgoblins starts with a crappy script, adds a cast with 0 acting skill divided up 6 ways, a director who clearly doesn’t care, and tops it off with sixth-grade sets, props, and “special” effects. There is no culture, there is no nostalgic 80s atmosphere. It has nothing but negatives.
Given that Hobgoblins was actually produced, that means that somebody, somewhere, looked at this ledger, saw all these negatives, and STILL MADE THIS STEAMING PILE OF “FILM”.
That’s why Hobgoblins should go in the stump grinder. I’m tempted to throw in the the sadist who greenlit the movie as well, but I want to get my deposit on the stump grinder back.
Sigh, I’m so glad I’m a regular on a board where this makes perfect sense.
As you were.
Castle of The Incredible Melting Batwoman –
So it seems from the accumulated research of this esteemed group that the most stump grindiest movie of all is Castle of The Incredible Melting Batwoman. Long periods of sheer cinematic vacuum interspersed with icky meltingness and out of focus black and white jiggling girl parts. The seance scene where Batwoman’s tattoo melts off while Fu Manchu blurts out wretchedly racist faux Chinese is particularly loathsome. It’s almost as if they had patched together pieces of three bad films to make a worse one!
Ron Wood was with The Faces(along with Rod Stewart)at that time and not with the Stones..
The word SCIENCE in the name of the show has nothing to do with what kind of movies they’re subjecting Joel to..could be a SCIENCE experiment..
I might stand alone on this but, Angels Revenge is my choice for the stump grinder. It is in my opinion, a horrendous rip-off of Charlie’s Angels, which wastes the talents of Alan Hale, Jim Backus, and Jack Palace. The main actresses are horrendous and the movie just has an unpleasant feel to it. I is one of the few episode I can barely get through with the riffing, never mind without.
A cogent and well-supported argument, Steve K. :clap: You have convinced me. Despite my aforementioned disdain for “The Brain/Head that Wouldn’t Die’, I realize that “Hobgoblins” is surely a far worse cinematic cesspool, a celluloid biohazard if there ever was one. I haven’t watched it in years, but even now thinking about it I’m feeling tainted, and need to break out the Super-Sized bottle of hand sanitizer. ICK. :sick:
Ring of Terror
Fire Maidens of Outer Space
The Wild World of Batwoman
Monster A-Go-Go
The Girl in Lover’s Lane
Attack of the The Eye Creatures
Invasion USA
Rocket Attack USA
Invasion of the Neptune Men
The Beast of Yucca Flats
The Incredible Melting Man
The Starfighters
Radar Secret Service
Castle of Fu Manchu
Hobgoblins
High School Big Shot
Red Zone Cuba
The Skydivers
Hellcats
The Sidehackers
Although not a MSTie movie, I recently saw Galaxy Invader (used as the credits for Pod People) and it is very much stump grinder-worthy.
“Hobgoblins” and “Village of the Giants” are the only MST3K eps that the riffing could not save–into the stump grinder with ’em! And then soak the grinder in Lysol.
@ISenseDanger – I can’t hate Ring of Terror no matter how bad it is. It was the first episode of MST3K I saw and it hooked me on the show.
They asked this question in a general way about a movie they’d seen enough of (paraphrasing here) during the anniversary press conference and Kevin immediately said Manos, adding “I hate that fu&k!ng movie.” On the risk of stepping on favored toes I may not agree in strength but in sentiment. It’s filmed by Zapruder and makes me feel dirty after watching. And there’s nothing redeeming in the ending.
Same here!
Funny story – I worked at the Library of Congress for a short time and in the lineup of movies people had voted to preserve in the National Film Registry was none other than MST3K: The Movie!
That’s what I’m wondering. Say what you will about all the movie where absolutely nothing happens or the plots are immensely confusing, but here we have a movie with about a minute of actual story somehow stretched out to 70 minutes. It’s loathsome in its characters, its plot, its everything, but worst of all, it has you asking at the end, “Wait, that’s it??” If there’s one thing I hate more than a bad movie, it’s a bad movie that makes me wish there was more.
The Starfighters. I kept watching that movie waiting for something to happen, and nothing did! The SoL crew did nothing to alleviate the boredom.
Re: The Wild World of Batwoman
Usually, it is considered a great bonus that there are Rhino editions of MST3K that include the unriffed version of a given movie on deck.
But with TWWoB, if I loan the DVD to a friend, I have to warn them to make double darn sure that they do not – even for a minute – accidentally watch the original unriffed version.
There are some things you just cannot unsee.
Kitten With a Whip – The movie has an annoying shade of grey/brown to it that gives me an intense migraine. Ann Margaret takes that migraine to a critical throbbing mass. Then everyone sits around in a house forever having a bad trip. And John Forsythe is there! Charlie! The guy who told the angels what to do. Then we go to TJ for some colorful fun and everything is still in that migraine inducing color! Gah! talk me down someone.
“The Screaming Skull” for being impenetrably dull, and then “Devil Doll” for being 7 flavors of uncomfortable.
On the former, the whole affair would likely have been forgotten were it not for the excellent short. I wouldn’t say the riffing wasn’t enough to say it, though; I wouldn’t really know for sure, having napped out about two-thirds of the movie. I enjoyed the host segments, anyway.
“Devil Doll”, however, I COULD watch the whole way through, albeit while scrubbing my body intensely with lye soap and taking a good long, ashamed look in the mirror.
I’m Cherokee Jack!
What, and condemn them for allowing dead people to return to their posts? Surely you jest! :rotfl:
Flag on the Moon
“The Beast of Yucca Flats” and “The Magic Sword.” These are the only two MST3K-treated films I actually saw as a kid when they came out. “Beast” was a stultifying little bolus even on a drive-in screen, while “Sword” scared the liverwurst out of me (give me a break, I was ten). So yep, off to the grinder with them both, and may their hurting go deep.
Just in case it comes up in Classic Rock Trivia, Ron Wood was a founder of The Birds (not The Byrds) and then went on to play with Jeff Beck, The Faces and the Rolling Stones. He was never in the (California) Byrds, The Birds being of English origin.
Because I just watched it recently for the first time in a LONG time (Thanks SHOUT!) “Stranded In Space”. What a terrible movie/TV Pilot that the riffing can’t even turn into a good episode.
Then my lowest rated episode – “Robot vs Aztec Mummy” – How can a movie with a Robot and a Mummy be terrible? This is how? It’s from such an early time that again the riffing can’t redeem it.
Finally “Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders” – the riffing is OK, but the movie is so completely disturbing without any true horror that I really just never, ever want to watch it again.
Oh – and I can totally agree with “Wild World of Batwoman” Ugh, what a disgusting mess.
Into the wood chipper!!!