Alert reader Matthew writes:
What is the lamest scientific explanation and/or plot device given in a MST movie?
For me it’s tough to choose, but I think my top three are:
1) Beginning of the End: Peter Graves’ “radiation makes photosynthesis, the growing process, occur day and night.” So be sure to fertilize your plants with lots of uranium!
2) Space Mutiny: David Ryder’s “high-density de-atomizer escape system.” If only it really had pulled apart all his atoms.
3) The Undead: Quentis merging with Diana’s brainwaves to travel back in time, sans clothes. Of course his wristwatch survives the psychic teleport perfectly intact.”
Good one!
I’d have to go with the cheesy “invisible” face shields in “12 to the Moon.” It’s amazing how invisible they are!
What’s your pick?
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Patrick #43 –
“Overdrawn At the Memory Bank – I’d like someone to explain the science behind inserting someone’s essence in a computer.”
Well you see, Patrick, when a man loves a computer very much… :oops:
@49
I’ve often pondered some of these feats of classic horror fiction, especially werewolves and vampires, and where they could be categorized.
I tend to categorize horror as strictly involving supernatural elements and scifi as plausible within naturalistic boundaries. Psycho killers are in the suspense category. Thus, The Exocist is horror, Terminator is scifi, Halloween is suspense.
If it could be argued that the behaviour of Lycanthropy and Sanguinophagia are mental conditions, it’s plausible that an infectious agent is responsible, placing werewolves and vampires strictly into a scifi category. The trouble comes in with transmogrification, however, with new wolfish features and becoming a flying bat at will being most common. This certainly points to a “magical” situation – something not within the realm of naturalistic explanation (for the werewolf at least, not in a short timespan of minutes/hours). Thus, at least in the Hollywood versions, these two creatures should be horror (the original legends from the middle ages, however, do not usually include such fantastical features and these human “monsters” could still remain in the realm of science).
But what of The Thing? This alien can physically transmogrify into whatever its victim was. Surely this is science fiction? Could not a werewolf also follow along this path, at least as long as a scratch or bite are not the causal event? Ah, so much to ponder and so much of it becoming off-topic… :smile:
I always found the “Perfect Orbit” thing for the planet visited in “Gamera vs. Guiron” kinda iffy. Been a while since I’ve seen the episode to find any other science flaws.
I mentioned in the thread for the episode about how somehow melting gives you extra strength, and then losing an arm while melting somehow makes you go faster. (insert “You want to go FASTER?” here)
How whatever lab accident occured caused Rondo Hatton’s character in “Brute Man” to disfigure JUST the right way.
Probably more that I can’t think of right now.
Human Duplicators: You can make perfectly good clones – until they hit the floor: *splat!* :roll: Soo—why does impact make them so vulnerable? Not a very well thought-out army to take over the world. (And what the hell are these “clones” made of?)
The Incredible Melting Man: Besides the fact that Saturn is no where near the sun to see it like that, how can anyone continue to LIVE, let alone get STRONGER when they are “melting” so profusely? (And have lost an arm, but don’t appear to have any blood left to bleed to death). Lame.
Brute Man: What the hell were IN those chemicals that exploded in a classroom to alter someone’s appearance so much? Pretty dangerous stuff to leave lying around. Here students – experiment with this!
The Dead Talk Back – A RAZORBLADE in a GLASS contacts the dead!! (Okay, that one doesn’t count, he was setting someone up :wink: )
Cold light. :???:
Everything everone’s mentioned so far is good, I had a good laugh at all these comments.
I’m sure there’s more: Like something in almost every movie, but I can’t think of anything else at the moment.
Oh, yeah – Everyone giving chase to a monster that was NEVER THERE!!!!!! :mad:
It has to be the heart in ACM. Just insane.
I am soooo happy that my two “favorites” were pointed out. Those being the Terror From the Year 5000 carbon dating issue, and the sensors from the Legend of Boggy Creek II. Both of those scenes make my brain hurt from the sheer stupidity of using existing sciences in ways that make no sense. Psuedo science that is just made up is fine by me, but with the example of carbon dating knowledge of how it works was available at the time.
Additionally I like the theories of how the C-14 dating could possibly work. But one thing to remember is it’s a statue. He knows it’s a statue. Why on earth would he even bother to carbon date something he knows is inorganic?
-CP
#52.
I think that is true for traditional movie monster horror like The Werewolf and Dracula.
However, both Werewolf and It Lives by Night are using science as a basis for what happens to the victims in both movies. It’s even stronger in Werewolf, since Yuri somehow concocted a serum that turned that security guard into a werewolf.
Someone mentioned Jan-in-the-pan’s super envigorating neck juice, which enabled her to speak and laugh without lungs, but the Killer Shrews (or “killer shoes” if you prefer) retention of deadly poisons and developing the ability to inject that poison was mighty impressive. In the honorable mention category, Buz Nichols’ ability to teleport was quite advanced. He would never have been able to do that if he sat around getting fat on Flavo-Fibes. And finally, the ability of the Southern Sun to carry around a warehouse made of bricks and mortar was truly amazing.
Ah, I just thought of one we’re all forgetting because it was more an FX F-up than hokey science: PUMAMAN’s ability to “drop” guys sideways! I know all the phenomena in that movie straddles the science/supernatural line, leaving us the cop-out of magic being able to do anything, but the mask’s circuitry and earth-tone-sphere spaceship seemed to imply that the “gods” were actually aliens with powers that seem godlike to we humans. The fact that Tony’s “flying” appeared to actually be a combination leaping and air-walking could imply that PM’s main power was actually gravity manipulation, so I guess that could give him the power to make whoever he touched fall whichever way he wanted, and…
Wait, did I just rationalize THE PUMAMAN’s powers instead of decrying them? Ah, the perils of being a Transfan; sometimes it just kicks in unconsciously. Lousy subspace…
Great topic! Many of my choices have already been mentioned (my top pick being Jan in the Pan and her telepathic neck juice), but I’d also add the absurdity of the “instant drug” effect in War of the Colossal Beast, when the 60-foot-tall Glenn eats a few loaves of normal-sized bread & is out cold within moments. It’s a minor point among all the impossible-to-believe science of radiation and gigantism, but it always bothers me a LOT.
I also love the spacecrafts in Monster-a-Go-Go and Night of the Blood Beast, which seem as if they probably wouldn’t survive a trip to Wal-Mart, let alone traveling through Earth’s atmosphere.
I was happy to see The Mole People mentioned. The whole underground city, with its miraculous source of light (but not too much light!) fits in perfectly with the (English) professor’s opening lecture, “down, down, down.”
And then, as someone else pointed out, Riding with Death and the entire idea behind a wristwatch stabilizing Sam’s DNA, while allowing him to become invisible at will, is superbly ridiculous. In fact, maybe THIS is my top pick, and Jan’s neck juice could take second place.
#56 Colossus Prime – I thought the same thing about the 14C thing, but I did some checking and apparently it is possible to carbon-date inorganic objects if they are made of steel. 14C comes from CO2 in the atmosphere, absorbed by plants, made into sugars, and subsequently ends up in the bones of animals. Since steel is made by combining coal (fossilized plants), CO2 from the air and iron in a smelting furnace, 14C ends up in steel objects. So I guess it’s not crazy for Dr. Drill-instructor to try to carbon-date a steel statue.
From what I read, this method wasn’t invented till the 1950’s, so the screenwriter probably thought he was being “cutting edge.” I guess Terror from the Year 5000 was the Jurassic Park of it’s day. Or not.
This topic seemed pretty easy for me at first, but after going through MST’s rich history of movies that take severe leaps with science fiction, it’s not such a no-brainer after all. So I decided to choose the ones that, for me, stuck out as ridiculous upon first viewing:
– 413 Manhunt in Space: Professor Newton’s “cold light” causing invisibility.
– 421 Monster A Go Go: the “Steve Douglas, found alive and of normal size…” speech says it all.
– 513 Brain That Wouldn’t Die: Jan-in-the-Pan alive and talking? Definitely a “no-brainer”! :razz:
– 516 Alien From L.A. : since when do all Australians live underground?
– 822 Overdrawn at the Memory Bank : I always wondered if Ray Liotta’s character in Hannibal would have liked to have been doppled…
For Sampo: ok, so far nothing I’ve suggested has been something you’ve wanted to use for a weekend discussion, but I’m going to keep trying anyway. My latest thought: Host-riffer “Switcheroo”. Which eps that had Mike would you have liked to see Joel attempt, and vice versa? What do you think, sir?
what about the projected man? how dose being dematerialized, stored in a computer, projected through laser, and being rematerialized somewhere across town melt your face and make you high voltage touch of death guy?
that always kinda bothered me
“its an orange in a vice”
The Leech Woman (802). The secret of eternal youth is to kill people and drink the juice from their pineal glands? Uhhhh…. ooookayyyy…
Three that immediatley came to mind.
“Phantom Planet”- the shrinking when he breathes the air on the planet/asteroid.
“Santa Claus Conquers The Martians”
The “Newk-u-lar” curtain, which is completley controlled by possibly radio active lightbulbs of white and red.
“Santa Claus”-basically anything that happens in that movie. Satan (pitch) trying to thwart Santa, The wind-up reindeer, Merlin the Magician ?, the whole cloud city workshop, … :shock:
Another thought for a topic:
Most attractive/least attractive heroine/hero,
with reasons why. It occurred to me watching The Beginning of the End. The heroine, Audrey Ames, is an independent career woman (and not the daughter, niece working for a relative, and/or a secretary). Also attractive
(and in terms of the movie) probably brighter then your average graduate of the University of Minnesota.
I have another for my list:
The Horrors of Spider Island.
As already mentioned, the “single-cell heart” from The Amazing Colossal Man has got to top the list. I don’t know if they seriously thought anyone was going to buy that crap.
@15:
The magic oven in “Design for Dreaming” is pretty hilarious. I could almost buy an electromechanical device that retrieves and mixes ingredients, then conveys the pans to an oven for baking, but the cake comes out cooled, frosted, and with candles, meaning the device would basically need to be a replicator.
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die. Take one severed head, some beef broth, one roasting pan, a bunson burner, and reanimate! :roll: :!: :?:
I’m surprised no one has said this but Gamera’s flames coming out of his arm and leg holes to fly.
Let alone the diagram for Gyoa’s double throut and the fact that monster’s tissues shrink in sunlight.
And although, It was never in the Sandy Frank series of the Showa Era Gamera Films, the whole lets go inside Gamera through a tiny sub and find out what happen to him after Jiger hit him with the spike in her tail in Gamera vs. Monster X. Let alone the fact once the two kids get in there they find an infant Jiger inside Gamera’s lung tissue.
Mind you I am a fan of Kaiju films, but still.
Now, Crow already pointed it out in the episode “Beginning of the End”, but I just do not understand how someone who’s fighing RADIOACTIVELY infused insects realistically thinks that a radioactive weapon will somehow kill the bugs. That’s like saying gasoline will put out a fire because it’s a liquid. Military intelligence at its finest. What’s worse is the scientist :???: sees no fault in that logic. Shame on you Peter Graves.
Of course, there was that whole hanglider in Cave Dwellers that might or might not be a little out of place, from a scientific standpoint, but I’m not exactly sure. :mrgreen:
Moon rocks? Oh, wow! Track of the Moon Beast- How does being hit by a meteorite turn someone into a Dinosaurid? Why does shooting them with another meteor sliver blow them up? Riding with Death- How does coating a radio with deuterium blow up a jet fighter? Why were doing the same thing to race cars? When did NASCAR start behind the Iron Curtain? The Final Sacrifice- Why did setting the villain on fire bring Atlantis rising out of it’s shallow grave? Hasn’t anybody in Alberta ever tried to plant tomatoes or something? Pumaman- How did the mask make the paper mache heads? And what point does having wires run off them to nothing serve? Invasion of the Neptune Men- “Their spaceship runs on coal.” How did the Electro Barrier “pull it off” anyway? My first thought was Amazing Colossal Man too. Hats off to CP Elvis #41 for mentioning Dr Frank Baxter. Down and down and down…
I didn’t see it mentioned but mighgt have missed it, but in Incredible Melting Man, how would looking at the sun through the rings of Saturn make you all melty. Did it melt the others first then Steve get melty later? Also how did they control the capsule while becoming melty, and the legnth of time it takes to go from Saturn back to earth would be several years, thye would likely be all dead since it took Steve to melt into in a few days.
Oh well..such is Melting Man
Lets see:
Switching a cat brain and a human brain in “The Atomic Brain”.
Any movie involving a small creature growing huge (“The Black Scorpion”, “Begining Of The End”, “Earth Vs. The Spider” “The Deadly Mantis”). They wouldn’t be able to move!
Building a fountain of blood in “Gamera Vs. Gaos”. It almost worked, but it was still lame.
Glen’s ‘one celled heart’ in “Amazing Colassal Man”.
Electricity making a man ‘a solid mass of cells’ in “The Indestructible Man”
Aliens that can travel in and survive the depths of space but are destroyed by $1.98 flashlights in “Attack Of The The Eye Creatures”.
Androids that break like eggshells if they trip in “The Human Duplicators”
The itty-bitty space capsule in “Monster A Go Go”.
A severed head talking without lungs in “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die”.
Radar images as clear as HD-TV in “Radar Secret Service”.
Krasker’s ‘device’ to talk to the dead in “The Dead Talk Back”.
Not as much “lame science” as WTF? is our hero in Laserblast developing a growth in his chest by wearing the alien necklace battery for his laser gun. Dr. Roddy Cornelius’ removal of the object doesn’t prevent the kid from further use of the weapon and frequently turning into Jim Carrey from The Mask.
Also, one of my favorite KTMA episodes is Phase IV where the scientists learn to communicate with ants via a dot-matrix printer. Ludicrous but quite satisfying.
On a non-scientific topic, forgive me and my inability to type properly. I just read back my contribution and saw all of my bad spelling and sentences coming out weird. I really am fluent in english!!
I forgot all about Rojium and Pantium, two new elements that make up the Roji-Panty complex! (Invasion of the Neptune Men)
Ooh. I forgot the Roji-Panty Complex. Neptune Men is a gold mine here. Why are satellites overhead a apocalyptic event? Why can’t the spacemen launch more then 3 fighters at a time? Coordinating just-in-time railroad repair sounds almost like rocket science to me.
I see most of my “favorites” have already been noted, but what the hell. Off the top of my head:
The brain swapping in the Atomic Brain.
Head swapping in The Brain That Wouldn’t Die.
The radio to talk to dead people in The Dead Talk Back.
The Eye Creatures which are destroyed by light. Sheesh, you’d think they’d avoid a planet like Earth!
The fragile androids of Human Duplicators.
The gigantic caveman of Eegah!
The Incredible Melting Man who continues to be a killing machine despite the fact he’s melting!
The underground civilization in Alien from LA and The Mole People.
Puma Man defying the laws of physics whenever he flies, particularly when he drops villains at 45 degree angles in midair.
Night of the Blood Beast – just everything about it. Bad science.
I hate to rain on the parade of folks singling out Glenn Mannin’s single-cell heart, but that isn’t quite the explanation given. Doctor Doctor compares the way the heart behaves to the rest of the body by saying his heart is made “of a single cell for all practical purposes”, which actually has got a bit of actual science in it.
The contractions and expansions of the heart are the result of all the cells in it moving in an astounding synchronicity and it could be described back then as a single structure, at least for the purposes of describing its behavior, rather than lots of pieces come together. Somewhere around here I’ve got those lovely Time-Life books from the 50s and 60s describing How The Non-Gross Parts Of The Body Work, and loose explanations to encourage thinking of the heart that way were good enough for pop science even then. It’s not clear why the synchronicity of heart muscle would relate to it not gigantifying as fast as everything else in the body, but I suppose explaining one functional anomaly by pointing out the same organ has another one is good enough for an effect the characters, after all, can’t explain.
(These days the subtleties of the heart’s behavior are better understood, and a lot more fascinating, than in the late 50s and I don’t think anyone would try passing off its contractions and expansions as all that monolithic today, but we can’t fault a story from the 50s for not using the scientific understanding of today. Come to think of it I’m not positive that in the 50s people were sure heart tissue could regrow after injuries — thus the warnings that people who’d had heart attacks could never seriously exert themselves again — which perhaps played into the thinking behind that scene.)
The real absurdity is the explanation of Glenn Manning’s super-growth given earlier in the movie, that his body’s cells are carrying on their reproduction without the old cells dying. To the extent that unlimited reproduction wouldn’t be just a cancer of everything (the dreaded Funky Winkerbean Syndrome) the failure of old cells to die wouldn’t make you gigantic, at least not over the timescale of days presented for Glenn’s amazing colossal growth.
The deerfly can do 600 MPH.
Great topic! What about Ken in K12/310 Fugitive Alien bragging about his strength. He says he is 10x stronger at home (valnastar?)than on Earth. Could be gravity but the strength affect doesn’t seem to work on his fellow Wolf Raiders. And if it’s gravity wouldn’t it straighten his curly girly hair?!?
Repeat to myself: It’s just a show I should really just relax.
#82 What episode are you referring to?
Looking at the sun through the rings of Saturn causes one to melt.
So a rocket can just make a hard right in space …
Has anyone brought up Commando Cody’s ability to fly and shoot at the same time? not to metion Ro-Man’s death ray that kills all life except some mutated dino stock footage and 6 people who happen to have a fancy over the counter antibiotic? and what evil science was behind the bubble machine??? why…why…why?
# 84 – The episode referred to in comment #82 is 805 – The Deadly Mantis. Dr. Nedric Jackson makes one of his usual smug comebacks about how fast insects can fly. He almost certainly meant to say that the deerfly goes 600 *scale* miles per hour.
The character of Nedric brings up another sore point for me: scientists who are depicted as not only smug, but manically evangelical about their theories. Dear Nedric seemed about to come to blows with the poor geriatric who disagreed with him. Gives scientists a bad name (though unfortunately some are that bad).
Lame movie science on MST3K:
– Gypsy Moons: Neither planet orbits a star, they wander around randomly through space and only orbit each other. Why aren’t these planets frozen wastelands devoid of life instead of containing thriving humanoid civilizations? Without a star (sun) within a reasonable distance, they’d be cold and dark, really cold and really dark.
– Robot vs. Aztec Mummy: The explanation as to how the woman is the reincarnation of the dead Aztec priestess and other nonsense is hilarious. The human robot built by “The Bat” is even shorter on explanation. Of course, the main premise of the story is ripped off from the wonderfully atmospheric original Universal “The Mummy” with Boris Karloff. This knock-off from Mexico has no atmosphere or quality of any kind.
– Cave Dwellers (Ator The Eagle): The “geometric nucleus” (aka atom bomb) built by the poor excuse for Archimedes in the movie is not explained particularly well. Then again, neither is the hang glider.
– The Atom Brain: How does a human sized brain fit inside a cat’s skull? And vice versa without rattling around a lot? I wish that was the worst part of the movie, but sadly, it’s not even close.
– Hobgoblins: Hobgoblins exist, grow, reproduce, etc. how exactly? Where were they hiding all those years before the movie takes place?
– Werewolf: Getting a cut from the long dead werewolf skull magically causes lycanthropy. Very scientific and well explained.
– Slime People: Don’t ask how or why.
– Amazing Colossal Man: Glenn Manning should be dead, the suddenly heals and gets to be 50 feet tall. Even the doctor in the film mentions that he should be dead from the burns over most of his body. The only explanation, like all movies of this type, is that radiation makes things get really big sometimes.
This is fun, too much fun, but I’ll stop here for now.
Stranded in Space’s Terra, the other Earth on the other side of our Earth’s orbit, which I’m sure has been debunked thoroughly, right?
speaking of Archimedes (see #89), how about all that goofy junk from his “lost storehouse” in “Quest of the Delta Knights”? now granted, i’m no professional scientician or anything, but i’m pretty sure Archimedes didn’t invent the laser cannon, then have his ancient cult of minions stash it away in a musty cave somewhere vaguely European for a prepubescent hermaphrodite & grunge-wuss “Da Vinci” to witlessly stumble upon.
Hobgoblins: The origin was explained, they were extraterrestrial and made contact with McCreedy but they didn’t explain how the creatures survived for DECADES in the studio vault with no food or water.
Devil Fish: I don’t think it was possible in the 1980s to create a hybrid shark/octopus. But recently someone created cats that glow in the dark, so in the future who knows?
Pod People: Instant self-burial for members of Trumpy’s species?
First Spaceship On Venus(1960): They didn’t have any way of knowing just how hostile the Venusian atmosphere and atmospheric pressure is-until after 1960, when American & Soviet probes actually landed there.
1. The goofy communication machine in It Conquered the World.
2. You knock over the cow statue and the lost city of Ziox can return to it’s glory
3. “Douglas was pear-shaped, very short and stood the whole way.”
I want to post this before I read all the others (so that I can pretend I was the first to say this).
For me it would have to be Devil Fish. Even though the Paleontologist woman was really attractive (way more than the Peter Frampton blonde), I have to say her little slide-show/lecture was incredibly inaccurate. I can’t remember all the details, but I believe she showed a picture of a shark claiming it was a Tylosaurus (related to monitor lizards btw), and then she claimed it was the ancestor of something else I can’t remember what (Tylo died out 65 million years ago with the dinosaurs, so it couldn’t have given rise to anything else). I’m sure there was more, but I’d have to see it again. regardless, inacurracies like that really crack me up, so I loved it.
Little paleontology lesson for all you out there.
“The dirty picture racket is worse than dope peddling or kidnapping. You show me a crime, and I’ll show you a picture that could have caused it.”
Thank you, Ed Wood’s The Sinister Urge. Yes, I call that “science”. It’s about as real as most of the other examples here…
By the way… I was always fond of that old old host segment where Joel and the bots scientifically dissect Commando Cody.
#30 The Professor – “Prince of Space. Why the hell did weapons not effect him? As far as I understand it, he was just as human as you or me…did the weapons of the Krankor chicken army not effect humans at all?”
I was going to wait until the episode guide got to this, but this is as good a time as any to bring this up… a friend of mine likes to use Prince of Space as a prime example of something that’s wrong with a lot of Japanese pop-fiction the more you look… the heroes are just inherently better that the villains and that’s it. Usually this power in not earned, there’s no cleverness… they just are BETTER and win because they’re better. That’s all.
More on this once we hit that episode, but think about virtually any “action” anime you’ve ever seen, or hell, even the Fugitive Alien or Godzilla and Gamera flicks.
I don’t think anyone elso mentioned Pod People.
“Trumpy, you can do magic things!
How the hell did that work, was Trumpy in cahotes with the guy who made “The Wizard of Speed and Time”!
He also made goofy music play in the background during his spazy little stop-motion psycho-Kinetic episode!
#95 Commando Cody could be it’s own thread but I will attempt to point out items J&TB neglected;
1- Cuffed slacks, patent leather shoes and Arrow shirts are necessary to survive the surface of the moon.
2- Fine bone china for space meals and a woman to do the dirty dishes. Where was the kitchen?
3- Landing gear not necessary for rocky, uneven terrain for screaming rockets?
4- The ability to survive diving out of speeding vehicles, several times, and not even lose your hat, never mind injury of any sort. (Crazy glue?)Scientists must have been some bad MFs in the old days.
5- The ability of the bad guys to hit Cody with pin point accuracy with a ten pound rock and never hit him after firing hundreds of rounds with guns?
6- Moon atmosphere, or not? Moon buildings are equiped with air intake vents and fire fountains. Chevy horns blare endlessly and loudly even though they were beams of desstruction?
In every movie where an aircraft is diving, it sounds like it has a WWII Stuka’s jericho siren installed…and any falling object sounds like is a WWII bomb whistle. (Wayy off-topic, but I happened to re-watch “Air America” the other day and noticed that when the Pilatus Porter aircraft makes it’s emergency landing the engine makes a ‘missing’ sound…despite the fact that it’s jet-powered…and then just as it touches down the sound magically becomes that of a turboprop jet engine again – ahh, the joys of post-sound.)
Also, the ‘ooo-ooo-aah-aah-aah’ bird found in EVERY jungle on the planet (aka the Australian Kookaburra).
@#92:
Yes, the origin of the Hobgoblins was explained in the movie, but I’d hardly call that explanation scientific and I would call it lame, hence the rhetorical question in my list at post #89, “Hobgoblins exist, grow, reproduce, etc. how exactly? Where were they hiding all those years before the movie takes place?” pointing out the lame explanation.