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Weekend Discussion Thread: Most Ridiculous SceneAlert reader Trevor suggests:
Me, the scene that comes to mind is the seance scene in WILD WILD WORLD OF BATWOMAN. Everyone involved will have to pay, now or in the afterlife. What’s your pick? 183 Replies to “Weekend Discussion Thread: Most Ridiculous Scene”Commenting at Satellite News
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1: The Angel’s Revenge, when the model takes the tour and everything just looks bad.
2: EVERY SCENE IN HOBGOBLINS.
3: The part in WW Batwomen where everyone was chasing each other? I can’t remember it all the way.
4: The Prince of Space, where Krakor jumps or something, and they’re like ‘I’ll throw my doll at you!’
5: The creeping terror, where the monster attacks to lover’s lane couples. God, the old guy with the pipe. :roll:
All my favorites have been mentioned, but I’ll also add:
1) the whole “Combat Rod” battle in “Phantom Planet”…
2) Richard Kiel’s lumbering stumbling as the Solarite (seriously, could he even SEE in that thing?)…
3) The sudden appearance of Sgt. Ruben Kinkaid in “Hobgoblins”, berating Nick for whatever…
4) The confrontation at the end of “Devil Fish” where Dr. West rails about his wife having the “morals of a slut”…
5) “I’M COMING!” in “Quest of the Delta Knights”…
6) “Why are we on this train?” in “Future War”…
7) The psychedelic “face-changing sketch” in “Diabolik.” That really needed more riffing on top of it, it was so bizarre.
First off: the Trumpy stop-motion scene (from which I take my name) certainly is goofy, but I can’t say it seemed out of place. In a certain sense, the movie doesn’t know if it’s an alien attack movie/slasher movie (slash slasher movie?) or an E.T. rip-off, so you could say all scenes with Tommy VS. the entire evil-Trumpy-kills-dumb-band-members plot don’t fit with each other. Nonetheless, Trumpy’s whimsical stop motion really doesn’t seem too ridiculous in the context of the “Tommy half” of the movie (though still kooky nonetheless).
Besides that little note in response to previous posters, I have different selections based on what ridiculous means. If ridiculous is taken to mean outlandish, wacky and unnecessary, my pick would be…hmm. Tough one. I dunno. A lot of choices. Maybe all of Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders? That’s another example of a movie with a tragic case of genre confusion. The fortune teller’s monkey arson death, the man-baby fiasco, and once more the evil monkey unleashed by Merlin’s negligence, while seemingly time traveling the movie to 1984.
If you simply take “pointless and out of place/unnecessary” as the definition of ridiculous, my pick would be the all-time classic opening driving sequence from “Manos.”
Now let’s all decide what the definition of “is” is. DATED JOKE!
As someone else said, there are can be a lot of definitions of ridiculous here. For now I’ll use the definition: “A scene so painfully stupid it makes me ashamed to be a carbon based life form.”
Off the top of my head it’s a tie between the wrestling scene in Manos and almost any scene in Angels Revenge.
I don’t know if I’ve ever even heard the riffs in that seance scene because Batwoman has me rolling when she reacts to the “Chinese” voice from beyond. This movie also has the insane dancing soup scene which is near the top of any ridiculous scene list.
There are a couple contenders:
In Swamp Diamonds, where the woman struggling against drowning is OBVIOUSLY IN A POOL.
& any dancing scene in The Wild World Of Batwoman. Also, in Godzilla vs. Megalon in which the robot “…knew there was a danger, so he reprogrammed himself to—” GROW 100 STORIES TALL ??? Useless walking scenes in The Castle of Fu Man Chu. The “drama” in The Crawling Hand. Endless ant voyuerism from Phase IV, with the scientist letting some evil alien ants go because “Maybe they’ve learned something?” Hmm…
Tie:
As mentioned before, the old man being thrown down the well or whatever at frog legs diner in Red Zone Cuba. Can anyone on the planet explain the motivation of the character’s and sense of this scenes place in the narrative? Go for it! I dare you.
And the Brit Bird running back for her eye at the end of Atomic Brain. I can just hear the director: “Okay, in this scene you want your eye, you realize the place is going to blow and you need to take your eye with you because otherwise…” I mean, can you imagine?
This was a tough decision, but I’d have to go with the knife fighting scene in “The Sinister Urge”; pointless, insipid, laughably choreographed, and completely unrelated to what little plot the movie had.
While making my decision, I noticed that a lot of the more ridiculous scenes in MST’ed movies are fight scenes. Here are some that I feel deserve a (dis)honorable mention:
– The climactic battle between Rommel and J.C. in “The Sidehackers”.
– The record-breaking “quiet guy fight scene” from “Skydivers”.
– The overblown push fight from “Teenage Strangler”.
– The beach brawl from “Horror at Party Beach”.
– The sad, sad fight scene from “Time Chasers”.
– And, finally, the scene in that labyrinth of cardboard boxes at the beginning of “Future War”.
Many fine choices have been made, but I’m surprised that when it comes to The Starfighters, people go for refueling when there’s always the sheer mindboggling tedium of DETASSLING. I don’t know if any other moment in a MST3K episode has made me say “REALLY? SERIOUSLY? YOU THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA?” to the screen.
The guy making the phone ringing noise in Monster A Go Go.
“Yore gonna be the WORM-FACE!”
If a ridiculous scene is one that just fills space in a movie with something stupid and painful, there are several musical numbers are obvious contenders in this category. Wholly emberassing to witness.
Teenage Strangler – Yipe Stripes
Hobgoblins – Fishpicker
Eegah – Pick any horrible Arch Hall Jr song!
TISCTSLABMUZ – Chew chew chew (wa Wa WA!)
Catalina Caper – Little Richard is bad, but those guys in red puffy shirts are UNBEARABLE.
Wild Rebels – That horrible band’s horrible music is only slightly better than Rod Tillman’s horrible dancing.
Track of the Moon Beast – California Lady. “I forced my skull right through my face and refused to was my stringy hair”
[Oh, and the “I just found out that Count Dracula was a f*****t” scene in Werewolf.]
I’ve always been completely baffled by that scene. What purpose does that line serve? He says it for literally no reason, just some strange non-sequitur.
My main pick, and it’s been said already, the creepy monitor-watching guys in “Attack of the the Eye Creatures.” That whole movie is disgusting, but that scene is just a wee bit much.
#63 Preston P
I asctually have a theory about that. I think the director of Werewolf had just watched Repo Man, specifically the “John Wayne was a fag!” scene, and thought “Ooooo, edgy!”
I’d have to say “Prince of Space”, the scene when both Krankor and Wally (aka POS) did the “Bionic Jump” onto the ledge.
As Moe Szylak would say, “Good… GOD!!!”
Hands down, it’s the David Ryder “scream” as he jumps out of the bowling alley waxer in Space Mutiny. The overall ridiculousness of the movie not withstanding, that scene is beyond scope…
The scene in “Monster-a-Go-Go” where they show a telephone on a desk and the guy micmics it ringing before he answers it, leading of course to Joel’s memorable one word comment: “Unbelievable”.
I mean, jeebus, couldn’t you not have a sound man ring a phone? Couldn’t you not use a real phone and have someone call up that number to actually make it ring? How bloody cheap can you be??? How incompetent of a movie maker are you when you have to direct your actor to micmic a ringing phone????
Unbelieveable.
My thought about the scenes with the Keeper in “Werewolf” were that he was supposed to seem creepy, off-putting, and eccentric. That shudder of revulsion and confusion was what the film-makers were going for there, and they actually did a very good job.
It’s just that they failed to find a house big enough to justify having a groundskeeper, which makes his presence in the film unnecessary and perplexing. :)
A minor one would be the newspaper guy from Invasion USA. Just plain weird.
But hands down the most ridiculous scene ever (for me) is in Terror From the Year 5000 when Dr. Flattop carbon dates the statue and the calculations tell him that it’s from the future. No matter how many time I watch that episode (which I otherwise love) I become livid at the utter stupidity of that that one scene.
CP
I’ll vote for the weird “Blansky’s Beauties” scene in OPERATION DOUBLE 007, where the girls drug those MP dudes and then transform their truck into a traveling Vegas sideshow and drive off into the desert while “Jesus Loves Me” plays on the soundtrack. Bizarre.
A scene that has always lengthened my beard is one in Time Chasers, where that non-hero of Castleton, who has been riding a bike for the entire film (when he’s not flying his cessna) is being chased by thugs and he decides that while they’re being detained by a tractor blocking their path (and on that note, why are they just looking on? Why don’t they get out and chase him??), he’ll steal a car, which he immediately crashes it into the random pile of boxes, whereupon it turns onto its side.
When the driver, who ran out of a general store when Castleton-mullet steals it, runs up and asks that time-wizzing chunkhead what the hell he just did, Geeko replies, “…I don’t drive.” and then steals a bike and rides away.
The thugs, who have gotten past that tractor by this point, jump out of their truck and steal individual bikes and give chase.
Ok, so if he doesn’t drive, then why oh WHY THE HELL DID HE STEAL THE CAR?! Again, why did the thugs just watch? Why did the thugs leave their trucks for bicycles?? Was there even a point to that scene?
Come to think of it, there are quite a few scenes in that film alone that frost my perm.
For instance, Bob Evil’s office. Why’s it in a branch library and why is his office itself on a mezzanine and why the carnival mirror and why the armed guards (with non-concealable weapons) in a “respectable” corporate office?
This is the movie that makes me hate Vermont, and I’ve never even been there.
My choice is the resurrection of Lieutenant Lamont who is calmly sitting at her work station on the bridge after she was just killed in the previous scene. Did the continuity director even read the script?
I have to vote for the outhouse scene in Boggy Creek II.
A close second goes to any scene with Tim Van Patten in the Master Ninja “movies”
Wow, so many good choices so far. This is quite a fun thread. Many of the MST3K movies were ridiculous from beginning to end, so it’s hard to pick just a few scenes that stand out. But I’ll try to list a few that have not (I think) been mentioned so far:
Eegah wielding the pool ladder as a weapon. And also, any scene with an oven in the living room.
Any of the dinosaur puppet/cardboard box scenes from Future War.
The scenes in Danger Death Ray that clearly show children’s toys in a bathtub.
The cult scenes from Final Sacrifice, with doughy Canadians all in their matching outfits – except for that one guy.
Any scene from Escape 2000 with Toblerone in it.
Any scene from The Brain That Wouldn’t Die with Jan in the Pan having a serious discussion about anything. Imagine that from the actor’s point of view, especially, as she had to deliver her lines with her head stuck through a hole in a table.
Some possible contenders:
-the poorly edited closing shot in “Danger! Death Ray!”
-the fight against the invisible bad guys in “Cave Dwellers”
-Voldar getting attacked by the kids in “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians”
-the thorough search of the next room and the exhaustive nighttime investigation by the cops in “Manos”
-Ann-Margret trying to sound intimidating while Sylvester the Cat and Doodles Weaver are on TV in “Kitten with a Whip”
-anything involving Eddie Deezen trying to be a badass in “Laserblast”
-the octopus shenanigans in “Bride of the Monster”
-James Earl Jones killing the bad guys with radio-controlled planes in “City Limits”
-the human telephone in “Monster a Go-Go”
-the theft of scenes from “A Night to Remember” in “The Castle of Fu Manchu”
-“I’M DOCTOR TED NELSON!” being met by overanxious gunfire in “The Incredible Melting Man”
-the explanation of the legs-crossed system in “Horrors of Spider Island”
-the teleporting guy in “The Girl in Gold Boots”
-Tony flying around to that godawful theme music in “The Puma Man”
-Captain Santa Claus getting a dance from a Bellarian in “Space Mutiny”
Oh, and I can’t leave out the bizarre argument over crackers from “The Incredible Melting Man” or the surreal hate for anteaters in “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank.”
Where does one start?
I’ll put in my vote for the seance scene in Wild World of Batwoman, and every other scene in that movie.
All of Alien from L.A. was pretty ridiculous.
The Trumpy-you-can-do-stupid-magic-things. Also from that movie when the kid is looking through his telescope – AND SEES AFRICAN WILDLIFE!!!! HELLO?!!!!
The scene in Escape 2000 when Trash/Moon shoots down that helicopter and keeps looking up like it’s just hanging there in the sky all disabled and stuff. Yeah, that could happen.
The Magic Voyage of Sinbad. Ah, yes. That underwater scene. That’s some serious movie-making gold right there for ya. And the fact that the bird that Luberia sent just flies right under water there and DOESN’T GET WET.
Joel: How come water isn’t wet underwater?
And let us not forget: There WAS no MONSTER (!)
Say, wha…?
Oh, yeah – The dancing scene in Colossus and the Headhunters (For the first time, people don’t know where to look…This is history’s first really awkward moment).
The scene when the guy is hung from a rope and thrown into a tree in revenge of the creature. Jks office in the branch library is pretty ridiculous as well.
Ah! I was hoping for this thread!
Well, heres my picks…
– Any scene in “Robot Monster” where Ro-man is on screen.
– In “Wild Rebels” where we’re led to believe you can hold up a bank with a hypodermic needle.
– Lee Van Cleef’s showdown with the monster in “It Conquered The World”. Its a grown man yelling at giant carrot.
– Vi’s disembodied head yelling “Tom Stewart killed me!” in “Tormented”.
– The shots of the incomplete costumes of the the Eye Creatures from “Attack of the the Eye Creatures”. They just didn’t care.
– “Thong, the fish is ready!” from “Cave Dwellers”.
– When the lady gets a cat’s brain in “The Atomic Brain” then she eats a mouse.
– Jack Frost’s attack of dementia in “Jack Frost”.
– Space Chief’s very fruity fight scene in “Invasion of the Neptune Men”. Some of the Neptune Men just fall down.
– Whenever “Puma Man” is flying.
– And yes, the god awful seance scene from “Batwoman” where they talk to a ‘chinese’ man.
I agree that the “Batwoman” seance scene may very well be the worst, with the “chase” in the lab near the end a close second.
I’m not sure if anyone else mentioned this, but the attack on the army truck by the showgirls in “Operation Double 007” is a pretty strong candidate, too. To quote Tom’s riff immediately after that scene, “What the hell was that?”
I must be totally original again and vote for Hobgoblins in Club Scum. The table turning x3 and the return of the military guy just puts it over the top. It was ridiculous.
Second place is Voldar’s thwarting via toys in SCCTM, toys that should have been given to nice children, but instead were used as weapons.
I just thought of the mustard nearly getting into Raul Julia’s brain…
(“Mike, the comic relief lady is making me very tense!”)
I don’t think it’s been mentioned yet, but the whole sequence with the Gesture Professor from Mole People takes it for me. The way he says the word “down” about 500 times, the idiotic theories combined with semi-naughty drawings, plus his effeminate hand movements.
From Incredible Melting Man:
“You can’t tell anyone, not even your wife.”
[pause]
[pause]
[pause]
“You know I’m not married, Ted.”
Just thought of another one. How about the dogs (with hair coats?) supposed to be Killer Shrews? Good thing Enos was so good with welding (just wait until he gets his hands on them Duke Boys General Lee).
My vote goes to the sequence in Future War where the male and female leads are arrested for no apparent reason and are then brought to the scene of a dinosaur attack which is being broadcast live by a cardboard camera.
I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned the introduction of “Pipperrrr” scene in The Final Sacrifice. By the way, for the record, I don’t hates that rabbit.
When the little kid (Roxanne?) (In Godzilla Vs. Megalon) is riding the stupid fish paddle boat in the disturbingly short shorts and the lake starts churning and the huge whirlpool sucks all the water out. Yeah like that could happen.
CK # 86 That was Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane not Enos in the Killer Shrews.
Adding to/copying from everyone else….
– The Planet Goofball scene from “Pod People”
– The “Wild Wild World of Batwoman” seance and any scene with Heathcliff making monkey faces.
– The climatic battle at the end of “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” and any scene of Droppo prancing around like a moron.
– Eddie Deezen as Froggy in “Laserblast.”
Basically, whenever the movie tries to be funny or suddenly turns supercalifragilistic-expiala-wacky!
Two things stand out to me:
1.In Sidehackers: Rommel’s ethical stance that guns not be brought along on a mission of homicidal vengeance. This is completely aside from the practical issues involved with setting pugilists against gunman.
2.In Space Mutiny: Billy Drago’s limping villain character apparently leaving the bridge and visiting his co-conspiritor in the basement for the sole purpose of telling him that he needed to get back to the bridge before anyone got suspicious.
These two things are not just editing failures like the dead woman in Space Mutiny working at her station immediately after being killed, or a dying sheriff sliding down a wall twice. These are the kinds of absurdities that can completely undermine whatever credibility a film might have. Or maybe it’s just me.
The throwing the old man down the well scene in Red Zone Cuba would count, but that movie had allready gone so far beyond even surrealism it hardly seemed to matter.
One other scene I just have to mention:
In “Santa Claus”, Old Nick – I mean St. Nick – is playing the organ and watching a bunch of shrill voiced children (who are apparently supposed to be slave labor – I mean joyful toymakers – in Santa’s shop. As these singing children conform to a myriad of respective ethnic stereotypes, Santa bounces around on his seat as if he’s being tormented by hemorrhoids, and makes a series of very unsettling faces. It’s an unforgettable scene, alomst as disturbing as that truly frightening Robot Santa in the Mexican department store window display!
Great topic! So many choices, but when it comes to ridiculously off-the-cuff science, no one can top Dr. J.R. Vance–from NASA–and his theory regarding miniature black holes.
The guy at the end of “The Deadly Bees” is one of the guys from the beginning… the one who says he’s going to Seagull Island to check it out. The “joke,” such as it is, is that he’s arriving just as everything has come to an end. There are all sorts of bizarre aspects to the scene (e.g., the music, the way it’s used as a punchline to the entire film), but the identity of the man isn’t one of them.
Great stretches of “Manos” are pretty hallucinatory, but for me, the one that takes the cake is when (if I remember the sequence correctly) one of the wives finds Michael knocked out and tied to the tree, kisses him, and, offended at his lack of response (being unconscious and all), slaps him twice across the face. It comes across more as the writer/director/star getting to enact one of his fantasies in the name of art (see also: Gallo, Vincent) than as a scene with any logical sequence or purpose.
The bit in “Girl in Gold Boots” always gets me when Blatz exits the jail, then returns with Buzz in tow, and the cop at the desk completely fails to notice that one person went out, and two came back. You can write it off to the cop being busy on the phone, but you’re stuck with the fact that Blatz’s whole plan *depended* on the cop being that extraordinarily unobservant. One “Hey, who are you?” and the whole operation would have blown up in their faces.
Then there’s the sequence in “Future War” where, after the dinosaur attack on the house, Daniel and the nun… jump a freight? And aren’t shown actually arriving anywhere before being back? And then are immediately picked up by the cops? Huh?
And those are just the first three that pop to mind.
I think I have to say the most ridiculous thing I remember from an MST’d movie is the bathtub helicopter/submarine rendezvous scene from Danger! Death Ray.
“This must be a really impressive organization to be able to throw away a $1.50 helicopter.”
3 of the top of my head
The Girl in Gold Boots teleportation scene
Godzilla Vs. The Sea Monsters “replica” canoe situation
Catalina Cape’s first scene with Creepy Girl
#92 Cornjob
“2.In Space Mutiny: Billy Drago’s limping villain character”…
James Ryan. Billy Drago isn’t in it.
As previously mentioned. I have to nominate the hang glider scene in “Cave Dwellers”.
“I’m the luckiest boy in the world.”
And as a couple honorable mentions:
1. The New York cabbie scene in “Time Chasers”
2. The scene where Nick steals a car to get away from Robertson’s henchmen. Imediately crashes it. Then tells the owner he doesn’t know how to drive.
Most ridiculous I would have to say was the Hitler Building from Neptune Men. First time I saw that, I yelled “What?” along with the SOL crew.
Everything in Manos, but particularly Torgo’s, um…execution?
I’m surprised no one’s mentioned anything from one of my favs Screaming; Skull. When the main guy gets attacked by a pack of skulls at the end was pretty ridiculous. “Wait, I forgot to tell the skull…Ah, nevermind.”