|
 |
Weekend Discussion Thread: Drab and Dreary MoviesHaving discussed the dark and dreary “Brute Man” this week, I thought we’d find out what you think is the drabbest, dreariest movie MST3K ever riffed.
My pick: “Radar Secret Service” — a gray movie full of identical men in identical gray suits and hats getting in and out of identical gray cars (except for the one with the giant metal volleyball on top, of course). Sid Melton lightens things up a little, but not enough to save it. Runner up: “The Undead.” When Digger Smolken is the liveliest character in the movie, you know it’s bad. What’s your pick? 169 Replies to “Weekend Discussion Thread: Drab and Dreary Movies”Commenting at Satellite News
We are determined to encourage thoughtful discussion, so please be respectful to others. We also provide an "Ignore" button ( Comments are closed. |
|
Satellite News is a fan site for the Mystery Science Theater 3000 television and Netflix series. It is an independent publication written and compiled by Chris Cornell (msampo@aol.com) and Brian Henry (erhardt4@aol.com). Satellite of Love, LLC does not maintain this web site, nor is it responsible for this site's content.
All content posted on Satellite News is copyright © 2024 by Chris Cornell and Brian Henry, except where otherwise noted. This Date in MSTory is written and compiled by Steve Finley, Chris Cornell and Brian Henry. Copyright © 2024 All rights reserved. Please do not reproduce This Date in MSTory items in any form without express written permission from the authors. Items of MST3K news may be duplicated or reposted, as long as Satellite News is cited as the source. The views and opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of Satellite of Love, LLC. No warranty is expressed or implied that the information given herein is completely accurate, and in fact this information can and will change at any time. So there. Mystery Science Theater 3000, its characters and situations are copyrights and trademarks of Satellite of Love, LLC. Banner image created by Larry Lee Moniz. |
|
) to help our users cope with "trolls" and other commenters whom they find annoying. Go to our
For me its The Girl in Lovers Lane. Just watched it after getting the new dvd set and it was just bland and then the ending. That tops it.
Castle of Fu Manchu
I should say most of my experience is with Mike, Bobo, Pearl etc. and some really godawful movies from the Joel, Trace etc. era no doubt await me. Hands-down, easily it’s “Hamlet”. Even with Mike and the Bots it was painful to watch.
Beast of Yucca Flats. Bar none the grainiest drabest dreariest film ever shot. And as if to heighten the sense of drab, no one speaks a line of dialogue to a camera. It’s like a moving still life of a gray blob of nothing.
Randy
Only one mention of Invasion of the Neptune Men?? That’s my pick…. that one actually drove them out of the theater and made Servo ill.
Although if I weren’t such a total Hamlet freak, I’d pick that one. It’s got to be nigh-unwatchable to anyone without a Hamlet obsession.
Hate to be repetitive, but Brute Man is a great choice. The Dead Talk Back also qualifies. How about Castle of Fu Manchu. One of the few episodes I haven’t watched over and over. And kudos to those who mentioned High School Bigshot. So depressing! If I’m not in a good mood I can’t watch it.
Skydivers.
Radar Secret Service.
Racket girls (All the manly women look the same after awhile)
Choosing from the entire 10-year run, I’d say it’s between Creeping Terror and Brute Man. High School Big Shot is certainly depressing, but it’s not quite as drab as those.
Honorable mention goes to all the Coleman Francis films.
I almost screamed Hamlet, but I’m going to go with The Crawling Eye.
I have to say “The Indestructible Man.” “The Indestructible Man.” There, I said it.
heres the letterman list:
10. cave dwellers
9. starfighters
8. the dead talk back
7. hercules against the moon men
6. mad monster
5. killer shrews
4. monster a go go
3. the creeping terror
2. Hamlet
1. red zone cuba
there out of all ive seen these are the dreariest.
“the brian that wouldn’t die”, “manos” and “bloodlust” are quite “drab and dreary”
“Radar Secret Service,” “The Screaming Skull,” and “The Atomic Brain” are some of my favorite MST3K eps, so I can’t agree with those picks. Likewise “Red Zone Cuba” and “Beast Of Yucca Flats.” Granted, the movies sans riffage are duller than dog dirt, but I think that often provides a better canvas for the SOL to work on. And “The Creeping Terror” has butts galore, a gross whale of a man collapsing on his ass in a tiny creek, and an attempt at being artsy-fartsy with the “sheets in the wind” shot. I found this hilarious long before MST3K even existed.
Totally agree about “The She Creature,” however. Unbelievably drab and incompetent far beyond the pale (you can’t tell initially if the “pop-off tie” gag is a shtick or just a goof), but not surprising for director Edward L. Cahn, who created many other equally dull movies. Even the gang can’t save that one.
…And “Monster A Go-Go.” God. A movie in which nothing happens after the opening event, until the narrator announces that the opening event itself didn’t happen. I actually fall asleep watching this one, only to wake up for the reaction to the vocalized phone “ring” (“Oh, WOW.”) and the grand finale. Well, there you go. Were we still even discussing this?
I only really notice how dreary an MST3K movie is if the riffing is uninspired, e.g.:The Being from Another Planet, Track of the Moon Beast and Castle of Fu Manchu. Manos, however, is just too massive in it’s dreariness to overlook, even if the riffing is top-flight.
I’m entering the double digits with my suggestion of Hamlet. Not to mention it wasn’t funny, riffable, nor did it have that kind of MST3K-feel to it.
Next up … parts: the clonus horror. Primarily bacause it’s about a bunch of clones who think they’re human and hink they’re coming to America, when, in fact, they just become extras for the main character’s lone adventure, and get no screen-time, after that. Plus, his story is sad, too.
Third place would be Attack of the Giant Leeches. The characters and situations start off sad, and it just gets worse until the very end with the floating corpses.
Honorable mentions to nearly every other Mystery Science Theater movie. Hooray.
This is a really, really tough call for me.
When I first saw it, I found it hard to imagine that movie could be more drab and dreary than “Manos.” As far as color films, it might win. But some of the black and white competition really has the upper hand.
“Manos,” in my estimation, is a movie that blows you away with it’s…Manos-ness, and admittedly, dare I say it, rather unique atmosphere (please don’t ask me to explain the difference between “Manos-ness” and Manos’ “unique atmosphere”). It seems unbearably dreary at first, but because it is so overwhelmingly memorable, you actually sort of like it FOR it’s badness after multiple viewings, all the while seriously questioning your sanity.
Red Zone Cuba had a similar effect on me. I hated it to the core, but I remember it almost fondly at this point for being, despite how terrible and hard to watch it was, rather memorable and unique in it’s own way.
Some MST3K films are just drab and dreary with NO redeeming qualities at all.
The Starfighters is a contender. Monster A-go-go is definitely a contender. The Creeping Terror, yes. Mad Monster, again, yes.
Hamlet?
To be or not to be the worst of the lot?
Probably. But it’s a close race no matter which way you look at it.
Oh, by the way, does this mean next week’s discussion question will be “Best Movie MST3K Ever Riffed?”
I can’t recall that one being done yet, but I may have just forgotten it.
If not, that should be the next one!
My vote goes to season two’s “Rocket Attack USA”. So drab no one here has even remembered it. Inept cold-war propaganda. At least the season six episode it most resembles, “Invasion USA”, had a modicum of sex-appeal. Which the “The Undead” has in spades: with Allison Hayes and a hypnotized prostitute, how can you go wrong?
Having not seen High School Big Shot, I have to go with Hamlet. Definitely.
Red Zone Cuba gets it for films, but Days of Our Years is my vote for the dreariest short.
Teenagers from Outer Space. I swear if I hear ‘The Metal Inscription (C)’ again, I’ll force every democrat in America to listen to every Rush Limbaugh Show in existance!
Not only that, but I unwillingly showed it to some people who never seen the show before. My dad was trying to explain the shows premise, but in the Sci, uh, syfy era.
I have never watched it since.
Oh, and drearyest short has to be Cheating. The only redeeming quality was mikes spot on Regan ‘weeeeeeell…’
How about Space Travelers? Lots of dreary NASA control room geeks, & contrived melodrama. A movie that couldn’t be saved even by Hackman doing Shatner.
I hate to admit having never seen it even though Kathleen Crowley was a local girl my family knew but what about Rebel Set? It’s never mentioned and seems to have made no impact on anybody. Doesn’t that count?
One more vote for Hamlet. I thought it would be great but I couldn’t sit thru it when it first aired. Did they film it during a blackout?
I’ve got to go with Zombie Nightmare. You can’t see or hear anything until Adam West is dragged to Hell.
Having read the above comments, and somewhat to my surprise, it may be Phantom Planet. Come on, by the end how many people weren’t rooting for the rocket dogs to successfully strafe the
2 by 4 planet and its one corridor. Now if the
fruity “good and the beautiful” guy had survived to philosophise to the chorus line jury….. And our hero abandons the two hot girls after his bod for, what?…
I disagree with Collin on Hollywood After Dark. It may be depressing in some areas, but the bizzare stripper scenes kinda balance it out.
I Accuse My Parents
ck says:
July 11th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
“Having read the above comments, and somewhat to my surprise, it may be Phantom Planet. Come on, by the end how many people weren’t rooting for the rocket dogs to successfully strafe the
2 by 4 planet and its one corridor. Now if the
fruity “good and the beautiful” guy had survived to philosophise to the chorus line jury….. And our hero abandons the two hot girls after his bod for, what?…”
Hear, hear! The Phantom Planet is very dreary. I haven’t watched it in a long time because of how dreary it is. It’s probably why I didn’t even consider it for this discussion.
I’ve always found The Unearthly and Atomic Brain to be tough to get through because they’re so dreary and gray.
hamlet…..simply wretched
Monster A-Go-Go
Many of the characters are hard to tell apart from eachother, even when the lighting is decent. Not an ounce of excitement to be had, especially with the most anti-climactic ending ever.
high school big shot, hamlet and red zone cuba have been mentioned as being just about the most dreary movies for me.
strangely enough, skydivers isn’t so bad even though lots of people die. i guess because of the goofy party and the fact that there are people who actually smile. but coleman francis is just depressing.
for newer movies, i’m going to have to go with It lives by night…weird husband turns into a bat, kills bunches of people, no one seems to be all that likable…the whole movie is seriously dreary for me.
Don’t want to be influenced by the other answers, so i’m posting before reading any responses.
for me the first one that comes to mind is ‘Ring of Terror’ – it’s grainy, low contrast and the audio isn’t very good. There are (as always) some quite funny riffs, but the dreary video quality puts me to sleep.
Radar Secret Service, however, always keeps me entertained, they really nail the ‘radar solves all problems’ concept in the film. But Sampo is right, the characters are hard to distinguish and I always get confused (even after multiple viewings) as to which are the ‘good guys’ and which are the mobsters, and the two blondes are hard to tell apart too.
After reading the posts, I’m sticking with ‘Ring of Terror’ for drab and dreary.
But for most DEPRESSING i’d agree with those who said “High School Big Shot” and “Girl In Lover’s Lane”. Both should come with a ‘may drain all meaning from the universe and induce suicidal thoughts’ warning.
Definitely going with Pod People(AKA The Unearthling) Somehow it manages to make the colorfulness and beauty of the outdoors look like a vacation under a smog blanket. Plus almost everybody dies. So the film is both drab and dreary on multiple levels.
Drabness and dreariness of Pod People permeates every single element to movie making.
High School Big Shot is film where Shakespeare, Tribble Man, Big Lipped overgrown teenager, generic community theater thugs, town money hos & Corman is captured in cinematic tragic dreamyvision.
A film where a prominent town lush dares to ask, “Son, can I borrow two bucks to take my best girl out.” A film which I believe isn’t as dreadful as some have stated.
Even more compelling is the episode itself, combined with “Out of this World” #618 delivers solid over all satisfaction.
The Slime People; an entire movie shot through a thin film of vaseline. What’s happening? Nobody knows, you can’t see it. You can hear what’s going on, but it doesn’t even sound interesting. I always loved the Commando Cody shorts, though.
No mention of Sidehackers? I couldn’t even finish that one. 2nd season is pretty bleak overall but Sidehackers is nastier than all the rest of 2nd season put together.
Going through the rest of the seasons…let me think…
Bleakest in Season 3 is probably The Castle of Fu-Manchu. Strangely this has become one of my favorite episodes even though the movie is a confusing muddle of “dry ice, Rosco fog, and blood.” The Unearthly gets a mention.
Season 4: Quite a few to pick from. Space Travelers stands apart, though. Special mentions to The Indestructible Man and Tormented.
Season 5: This season’s more fun but still, it’s got The Atomic Brain in it, a movie without an ounce of energy in it, atomic or otherwise. A toxic stench of futility also breathes off The Painted Hills. I don’t get all the nominations for Radar Secret Service. It’s an inoffensive, third-rate crime movie, trying but failing to be The Asphalt Jungle, but it’s hardly the dreariest episode in a season that has Swamp Diamonds in it.
Season 6: Hoo, boy. Almost all the movies in this season are grey-tinged downers and it’s a credit to Mike Nelson and the other writers that they got so many good episodes out of them. Red Zone Cuba is probably the most depressing film, although the riffing somewhat makes up for it. The riffing can’t get me through The Amazing Transparent Man, distinguished also by being lumped with the most depressing short in MST3K, The Days of Our Years.
Season 7: The Brute Man is hard going and, on reflection, just a little harder going than Laserblast, which at least has the occasional loud bang to keep us awake.
Season 8: The first half of the season’s a dead zone. It’s hard to decide which film is worst. The Leech Woman is up there, as it The She Creature. Then comes The Incredibly Strange Creatures &c. and the rest of the season’s good with one stark exception, Devil Doll, a nasty, mean-minded piece of work.
Season 9: The Projected Man and The Deadly Bees vie for first. The Screaming Skull is pretty bad but I do get a little entertainment out of seeing it rip off Rebecca and Gaslight at the same time.
Season 10: most of the season, really. The only one that even remotely qualifies as goofy fun is the Joe Don Baker one. I don’t vote for Hamlet because even a dull, lifeless enacting of Shakespeare is still Shakespeare, and any film that gets to murmuring “…what’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba…” to myself is not entirely bad. So I vote for It Lives by Night.
I think I vote for HAMLET, too. And while CHEATING is pretty dark and depressing, I gotta say that most of THE PHANTOM CREEPS episodes are pretty drab too…
Thinking more about shorts, I’m sticking with Cheating as the most dreary. Runners up for me would have to be A Circus on Ice and A Day at the Fair. The blurry, low-lit feel of A Circus on Ice makes me think of a giant janitor’s closet. If there truly was smell-o-vision, that movie would smell of amonia, musty ice and sawdust. Don’t get me started on what A Day at the Fair would smell like. I’ve been to some pretty rinky-dink fairs in my time, but this is the WORST. I’d rather just sit in the car with the windows rolled up than step foot inside the fairgrounds.
HAMLET is the worst for me. I’ve never been able to finish watching it. Even the riffs aren’t good. It would be tough to write around that movie though.
Any MST-ied movie that “Stars Nobody” and “Features Nothing” !! HAHAHAHAHA
The Mad Monster. It was hard enough watching it half-asleep, but to watch it when awake it’s beyond terrible. Not to mention that the riffs were bad too. I quit watching after Servo hit on the blender.
My vote would have to be for The Dead Talk Back. Not only is the cinematography dull, none of the actors really seem to know what’s going on.
Not even the incredible performance of Aldo Farnese as Henry Krasker can save it.
Ahhhhh… the slime people, dreary? yes. but that is the result of far below sub-par technical effort. But Hamlet while a great written piece is performed so drab and dark it makes the viewer want to bang thier head against the wall. This is totally the wrong genre for MST3K to have taken on and it shows.
I have three more nominees for the most drab and dreary that have yet to be mentioned. The first is “Beatniks”. These guys are so depressing that you wish someone would Moon them all. The singing, except for Tom’s is also a snooze. And to top is off, there were no beatniks. And how about “Rocketship X-M”? Anything by Robert Lippert is, by nature, drab, but the plot of this stinkburger is really dreary. But the most drab and dreary for me is “Santa Claus” You start with child labor, singing “ethnic slur” songs, a depressing panorama of Mexico and an imbicile for the main character. Add in the boy’s vampiric parents for a dark feel. Even Lupita’s “cuteness” adds to the dreariness of this movie. When Pitch is the liveliest creature, you know something is bad. The dreariest short has to be the “The days of our Years.” But, a dishonorable mention has to go to “Catching Trouble”. The only movie where you root for the snakes to win.
The leading contenders, Hamlet & High Sctool Big Shot, definately could drive Leo Buscali to a suicide prevention line. Of the two, Hamlet wins as it just sucks the life out of sea monkies.
I am surprised that “Bloodlust” was not mentioned. Maybe its all the stripe shirts worn by various cast members that evoked the snappy Yipes Stripes number?
#67: “Oh, by the way, does this mean next week’s discussion question will be “Best Movie MST3K Ever Riffed?” ”
Oh, I second! I was just watching “Time Chasers” and thinking that for all of it’s faults, it’s really not that bad — it looks good, the acting is okay, and the plot is fairly coherent.
For dreariest film, I’d have to go with Invasion of the Neptune Men. I find the grey hard to watch, the story is kind of boring — but you can’t beat reusing footage from WWII for true dreariness. That speaks to a world view that I can’t fathom; definitely I would never want to meet a person who thinks its okay to use footage like that in what seems to be a kids movie.
Boggy Creek is pretty dreary, too — it’s slow, I don’t find Texarkana that attractive to look at, the accents are annoying, the plot is insipid. I put it on when I need to sleep.
“Oh, I second! I was just watching “Time Chasers” and thinking that for all of it’s faults, it’s really not that bad — it looks good, the acting is okay, and the plot is fairly coherent.”
=============================
Ditto. I’m preparing to defend it as a movie, although i expect to be in a distinct minority. :smile:
I think it compares favorably to your average Saturday SciFi/SyFy channel horror movie.
She Creatures is the most “inert” and dreary of all eps for me. Think of those shots of the beach…and they couldn’t even make party and carnival scenes lively. Even Ring of Terror and many of the others mentioned seem splashy compared to this one. And throw in Lance what’s his name’s dreary non-acting. Ugh.