Short: (1936) In part two (“The Undersea City”) of a serial, our heroes are menaced by Atlantean soldiers.
Movie: (1956) A vicious criminal is executed, but then resurrected by scientists. Discovering that he is now invincible, he vows vengeance on those who squealed on him.
First shown: 8/15/92
Opening: Something’s different about the bots (and Magic Voice), but Joel can’t quite figure it out
Invention exchange: The Mads’ have an invention, but they can’t show it to us; J&tB show off their cereal novels
Host segment 1: Tragedy strikes the Undersea Kingdom parade goes awry
Host segment 2: Joel asks: “What would you do if you were indestructible?”
Host segment 3: Joel tries the Lon Chaney “eye thing,” Tom and Crow are no help
End: J&tB sign the “no cop/doughnut joke” pledge, while the Mads deal with cops in Deep 13
Stinger: Indestructible man struggles with a manhole cover
(212 votes, average: 3.95 out of 5)
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• We’re getting into the meat of season four, and this is another of those great, seemingly effortless episodes. Terrible but watchable movie, great riffing, funny segments. Another winner.
• This episode was included in Rhino’s “The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection, Vol. 11.”
• Joel mentions Crow’s Billy doll, last seen the last time “Undersea Kingdom” was featured.
• I assume Trace was running Tom and Kevin was running Crow in the opening segment. I wonder if that was the only time that has ever happened…
• A little biting literary commentary as Tom refers to the “controversial-yet-all-but-forgotten” novel “American Psycho.”
• This episode contains a notorious goof by the Brains: Dr. F says that the movie features “Casey Adams of ‘Catalina Caper’ fame.” In fact, Adams does not appear in “Catalina Caper.” The Brains are confusing him with “Catalina Caper” star Del Moore, whom Adams somewhat looks and sounds like … but not that much, really. Throughout the movie, when J&tB are supposedly doing impressions of Casey Adams, they’re really imitating Moore’s campy portrayal in “Catalina Caper.” They don’t really much sound like Adams at all.
• How could they make such a dumb mistake? Not to sound too much like an old “I walked uphill in the snow to school” fogey, but it’s important to remember that this episode was done before the World Wide Web—and the ability to just pop on to the IMDB and get your cast information straight — existed. My sense is that Best Brains’ entire movie research department, at that time, consisted of a dog-eared copy of the Leonard Maltin Movie Guide — which would have given them the correct name of the “Catalina Caper” actor, had they bothered to consult it.
• This is the only episode I’m aware of in which an actor appears in both the short and the main feature. It’s Lon Chaney Jr., the star of the main feature, who also appears in the short and actually has a few lines.
• The Rodney King incident was fresh in the writers’ minds. There are several references to it.
• Several times during the short, when a character refers to the “strange prisoners” or “strange captives” J&tB respond with “…weeeeird prisoners…” and “…weeeeird captives…”. For those wondering what that’s about, it’s reference to the early Marx Brothers movie “Animal Crackers.” In it, Groucho briefly parodies the trance-like intonations used in the monologues that are the gimmick in Eugene O’Neill’s play “Strange Interlude” (which was playing down the street when “Animal Crackers” was a Broadway musical). Aren’t you sorry you asked?
• Whoa! A somewhat startling reference to future Vice President Dick Cheney. I forgot he was SecDef when this episode was made.
• This installment of “Undersea Kingdom” is largely people running and riding around. It doesn’t really advance the plot very much…
• In segment 1, Crow’s little commercial for pepper sounds like a lot like the ones Garrison Keillor does (used to do? I haven’t listened in a while…) on his St. Paul-based radio show “A Prairie Home Companion.” I wonder if it’s an homage or just a coincidence.
• There’s also something incredibly silly about “Pollixfen, for your den-fen-tures….” That’s about three levels away from an actual joke, but it’s still funny.
• Props to Jef Maynard and the rest of the props team for the parade in segment 1. Very cool.
• As segment 1 ends, Crow says “I’m just going to step into this doorway,” a reference to Les Nessman in the famous “Turkey Drop” episode of “WKRP in Cincinnati.”
• J&tB get mighty cranky during the incredibly static car conversation. Maybe I’m just hardened off to boring movie scenes, but it doesn’t seem that bad to me.
• They still make Old Smuggler. From one who knows.
• The cop-donut thing is funny, but by my count there were only three of them in this episode. Doesn’t seem like Joel overdid it to me…
• Another overtly religious remark from Joel: “…only millions of Christians…”
• The Brains treat Joe Flynn’s appearance in this movie a little strangely. The recognition of him comes when they make a joke that he’s a Joe Flynn lookalike. Later they acknowledge that it IS Joe Flynn, croaking “McHale!” several times and they even make a great “Inspector Henderson and Captain Binghampton” joke. I wonder if that first riff was a leftover from an early pass through the movie.
• This movie offers extensive footage of the Angels Flight trolley, a popular (and, in 2001, deadly) L.A. tourist attraction.
• Lon must have loved this role—there were hardly any lines to learn.
• Try to not blink as long as the witness lady goes without blinking. It’s tough!
• Fans of Joel got about as close as they’re ever going to get to their hero in segment 3. You can count the pores!
• Callbacks: “Hikeeba!” (Women of the Prehistoric Planet). ”Want some?” (Daddy-O). The routine Tom and Crow fall into at the end of segment 3 is from “Sidehackers.” That they are still going on about it two seasons later is amazing.
• Obscure ref: “I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster” – the name of a very short-lived ’60s TV series. Also, Tom refers to “that Crazy Glue demonstration,” a reference to an all-but-forgotten TV commercial in which an actor playing a construction worker Crazy Glues his hardhat to the bottom of a girder and then hangs from it.
• Gypsy’s a notary?
• Mike and Kevin are great as the cops in the final segment. By the way, that scene also provided a wonderful poopie moment, with Mike and Frank cracking each other up.
• Cast and crew wrapup for the short: Some people who worked on this short also worked on “Radar Men from the Moon” including special effects guys Howard and Theodore Lydecker and production support guy Barney A. Sarecky (who also worked on “Radar Secret Service” and “The Corpse Vanishes”). In front of the camera, Jack Mulhall was in “The She-Creature,” Edwin Parker was in “This Island Earth,” “Bride of the Monster” and “The Mole People” and Tom Steele was in “Radar Men from the Moon.”
• Cast and crew roundup for the feature: producer-director Jack Pollexfen also worked on “The Atomic Brain,” as did screenwriters Sue Bradford and Vy Russell. Cinematographer John Russell Jr. also worked on “Girls Town” and “Invasion USA.” Art director Theobold Holsopple also worked on “Rocketship X-M.” Of course, score composer Albert Glasser worked on lots of MSTed movies.
In front of the camera, Ross Elliott was in “The Crawling Hand,” Kenneth Terrell was in “Radar Men from the Moon,” Robert Shayne was in “Teenage Caveman” and “The Rebel Set”) and Robert Foulk was in “Untamed Youth.”
• CreditsWatch: Andrea Ducane does the makeup for the second of three shows this season (Clayton James was the main makeup guy at this point). Suzette Jamison finishes up her internship. Additional contributing writer: David Sussman.
• Fave riffs from the short: “This looks like a set the Monkees would end up on.” Honorable mention: “It’s Jim Henson’s Birth of a Nation Babies.”
• Fave riffs from the movie: (As Irish cop) “Alright, gather round everybody, lots to see, show’s just startin’.” Honorable mention: Detective in movie: “You wanted me?” Joel: “For years!!”
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Cubby @#38, your description of an “and the rest” episode is perfect for this one. I don’t dislike it, I just…don’t remember it after watching. It has its moments, the host segments are fun, but….
Also, bonus points for mentioning Jim Begg’s WKRP appearance. WKRP was my favorite sitcom back in the day, and having Begg tie it together with MST was very satisfying. (Two degrees of separation!)
yeah, I never hear anyone mention this one as one of their favorites, but then again no one ever says “God I HATE Indestructable Man!”.
Max Showalter, Police Lt. Richard ‘Dick’ Chasen, in this movie billed under the screen name Casey Adams, is hilarious as the Reverend in Blake Edwards’ “10.” If you haven’t seen it, or haven’t seen it in a long while, it’s out on an excellent blu-ray. I highly advise it.
My 2nd favorite ep from the vol. 11 set. The riffing from the scene where the scientist guys bring Lon Chaney Jr. back from the dead, and the sewer scene, are prime MST3K fodder. I also love how they lose it during the attempts at romantic rapport when the lovebirds are parked in the car. “Turn it off! Turn it off!” Another takeaway from this movie: the lead actress is pretty hot, and a not-bad actress.
As a classic film nerd, I love these old serials. I think I prefer Phantom Creeps, though.
Fave riffs:
“It’s a Jack Ruby planet. The Jack Ruby Program!”
“Gumby, no!!”
“Top of the world, Pokey!”
@ckdexterhaven,
I actually own some old superhero serials on DVD — a “Green Hornet”, “Captain Marvel” and the later “Batman” one. I love their goofy charm. But for the MST-ed serials my favorite is still “Commando Cody” — even if he did overstay his welcome. There are so many of my favorite riffs attached to those:
“Oh, I hate to shoot a butt like that.”
“Nipple, nipple, tweak, tweak, fly, fly FLY!!!!”
“Steerings out.”
“Are the dicks coming with us?” “Uh no, we call them police officers now dear.”
Etc.
I always wonder what qualify’s as obscure? At one point, I saw the crazy glue commercial once or twice a day for at least 2 years. If you are old enough to remember it and watched channels that carried it, it tough to forget it. It kind of like Sarah Palin is now. 20 years from now she’ll be an obscure old former governor that the kids have never heard of but how can anyone whose an adult now, not know who she is? I can see someone who is big in the news for a few weeks is obscure, but I can’t call someone or something who is on TV at least weekly for 3 or 4 years obscure.
When I say Walter Cronkite to my middle school students, they have no idea who I’m talking about. Is he an obscure newscaster? For my 13 year old daughter half the jokes in the show are obscure.
I would define obscure as anything that’s not known by the majority of the general public. I’m not surprised middle schoolers don’t know Walter Cronkite but I wouldn’t call him obscure. The local news guy in San Jose, however, would be obscure for anyone. The great thing about MST is they threw all types of references out and assumed people would get them.
@56 The guy hanging by his hardhat is part of the Krazy Glue logo to this day. And he still shows up in the new commercials.
http://www.krazyglue.com/about/knowledge5.aspx
I also remember an SNL parody of the ad, where a poor fellow had a board glued to his skull that was still there long after his death!
As a kid in Brooklyn how I loved Lon Chaney Jr.
And how disappointed when I first saw this flick on
Creature Features or some other local tv station-
When I saw that MST acquired this I looked forward
to it and was shocked that ole Lon didnt even speak-
Expected some(more)Inspector Henderson riffs as revivifying doctor.
Still over time I enjoy more and more how Joel and the bots make it great episode for me-
@51
I’ve got a better Jim Begg connection for you.
In Catalina Caper, which features Jim Begg as Laurence, Joel & The Bots frequently make comparions to the similar Disney film The Boatniks(which, by the way, stars the great Phil Silvers and is hilarious.)
Now, The Boatniks was directed by Norman Tokar who also directed The Cat From Outer Space (which is one of my favorite Disney live-action films).
Guess who has a bit part in The Cat From Outer Space as a goofy computer technican for the military?
That’s right…………………
Jim Begg.
Defining obscure as not generally know makes sense up to a point.
If you ask anyone in Rhode Island about Dells Lemonade or the Big Blue Bug, you’ll get about a 99% recognition. Ask outside of RI about 1% at best. Counts as obscure.
Michelle Bachman ran for president and quit after the first primary, if she never runs again, she’ll be remembered in her home state and by political observers but she’ll be forgotten by most other people. Counts as obscure.
The Geico Gecko would be known by about 99% of Americans today. He’s been on TV since 1999. If they stopped using him today, would he be obscure 20 years from now? The crazy glue ad was on TV as much as the Gecko ad is played now and it was on for at least 5 years. I’d bet that if you asked people who were at least 10 years old in 1980, over 90% would remember the commercial. Does it count as obscure?
According to a recent poll, 55% of Americans knew how long it took for the earth to revolve around the sun. Less than 1/3 of Americans know what the 4th of July celebrates. Are these obscure facts?
Watched this episode again just last week, laughed my butt off from beginning to end. Maybe a new favorite, it never effected me that way before…then again, I never made the Catalina Caper connection before, either. That girl from the car conversation also occasionally gets a completely insane look on her face, anyone else notice? That had me going too.
Back to Lon Chaney Jr and Spider Baby – what a great film! Genuinely freaky and disturbing, but with a cool funhouse vibe to it. The theme song is one of my favorites! Here’s a version performed by Fantomas. Bon appetit!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGjbDsjuoA8
I don’t know if it’s obscure or not. I guess it isn’t to me, but it might be to you. ;-)
@erasmus hall, should have known by the name but nice to see a fellow brooklynite on here.
Cabb- You know it’s interesting, for decades Spider Baby was just about the most famous film that no one had ever seen. It was stuck in distribution hell for 4 years before it was finally released and by then most drive-in theaters refused to buy black-and-white movies, so very few people got to see it under any of it’s many changing titles. Jack Hill and everyone involved had moved on by then (Chaney died without ever getting to see the film).
My fascination with the movie started when I’d read about this legendary lost film in Famous Monsters magazine as a kid. The master prints were destroyed in a flood and no one seemed to know if a copy existed. All there was to go on was the title and a few production stills and a basic synopsis: a family with a degenerative brain disease that caused them regress into a feral state and something about cannibalism. Eventually, a good print was found and the movie was released on DVD. And the film exceeded my expectations when it turned out not to be the turgidly unpleasant film that I’d always imagined but instead a touching and witty gothic horror with the exploitational elements overshadowed by a message of unconditional love. Quite a nice surprise for a movie that was once titled Cannibal Orgy and The Liver Eaters.
I really don’t have much to add to my original comments at #8 above from 2008 (I used to sign in as just “Bob” rather than “Mr. B(ob)). I’m glad I scanned through the comments above, otherwise I may have repeated pretty much the same thing here again.
One thing that does occur to me now is the tenuous connection this movie has to Jungle Goddess by way of hamburgers. Now that I think of it I wonder how many movies used on MST3K mention hamburgers.
This is an episode where we already owned the feature film on VHS at the time, but after seeing Undersea Kingdom on MST3K we went out and got that too. We watched it all the way through and it was goofy fun. The end surprised me a bit, (spoiler alert) the entire Undersea Kingdom is destroyed at the end of the serial! Of course, the heroes escape just in time and with little remorse for helping to bring about the downfall of an entire civilization.
Not one of my fave movies but still enjoy it. Love the short though, wonder why the gang never finished the Undersea Kingdom. Would have loved to see what happened to Diii-annna!
Fave comment: Richard Basehart remark in 5,4,3….
Fave riff: He’s industructible, but he needs a light wrap
On a personal note, found out my boss is a mstie. Told him I was going to see the Titans in March, his eyes got all big and he said Joel! MST3k! I’m so jealous of you!
We’re everywhere. We’re taking over the world. Be afraid, be very afraid.
The Angels Flight trolley is featured in The Incredibly Long Title as well. There’s another way to spot a cheapo B-movie – when they use “landmarks” that are only recognizable to locals.
Nothing much else to add, but I wanted to post something just because my Gravatar happens to be from this episode.
Three stars, and only barely. This one is buoyed by the strength of its host segments; the movie is a boring little programmer and the riffing doesn’t do it too many favors, but the segments are pretty much all golden.
Darkest riff: “Hey, Lon, how ’bout you pretend to have the DTs?”
This one’s okay, not great or horrible, just okay. Undersea Kingdom p.2 is underwhelming but the screechy imitation of the kid still cracks me up. Did anyone else think the pun value of “Dick Chasen” was ignored? It may be immature, but if there had been someone in my school with that name, everyone would’ve joked about how HE liked to chase after ‘dicks’. I was able to stare and not blink for considerably longer than the witness woman. Not too difficult really. Here’s some trivia: the office building where Benton throws a guy over the edge was J.F. Sebastian’s home in Blade Runner and it was also featured in the Outer Limits episode “Demon With a Glass Hand”.
#61-Opinion polls aren’t scientific or all that reliable. A sampling size may be 1300 people, and even if different demographics and geographic distribution are taken into account, it doesn’t necessarily show an accurate representation of the views or knowledge of a nation with over 300 million people.
Glad to know I’m not the only one who did a bit of a mental double take re-watching this episode a couple of years ago when they mentioned Dick Cheney. It’s kind of funny that while many of the jokes have gotten a bit more obscure as pop culture continues to evolve, some of their references have actually grown more relevant over time.
Kind of brings a new meaning to the term “late to the punchline.”
someone mentioned some Zappa references, they also refer to unga khan in the serial as Jimmy Carl Black(he was the indian of the group). and then right after a monty python ref with “It’s da Bishop!” there was talk on another discussion about the lack of pop culture refs in the new rifftrax and cinematic titanic stuff, i too lament that lack of specific type jokes. i wonder why they both dropped those?
oh, hafta agree with the spider baby love. i stumbled on a vhs copy of it in the mid 90’s at a video store in Eugene OR with a great stock of rare movies, which i pirated. it’s now one of my faves. lon looks a wreck in it, but plays a very convincing part as the nanny/butler for the cannibal children. sid haig is great too, plus the girls are hot. rawwrrrr!! see it if you haven’t. not scary just awesome b movie action.
Am I the only one who was excited to hear a reference to the “Underdog” cartoons in this episode?? “Shoe Shine; you’re humble and lovable” =D
#73> Not sure on Rifftrax, but CT has stated they shy away from the obscure pop culture refrences as they don’t get the laughs in the live setting. Yeah one or two people might get it but not enough to bring down the house. In the live setting you do have to go a bit more least common denominator.
@75
So CT is becoming the very thing that the Brains loathed when they made the MST3K movie for Universal?
“Bootsy Collins? Who’s that?”
Yeesh.
Most obscure riff – “Smoking is glamorous” reference to an anti-smoking poster from the 70s (at least that’s when I first saw it). The woman on the poster really does look like Lon during the scene when they use the reference. I caught it right away and haven’t seen the poster since grade school.
Indestructible Man passes the Bechdel Test. Eva has a couple of non-male conversations with the other burlesque performers.
What is it with movie newspapers reporting building codes being under fire on the front page?
IIRC identical twins cannot have the same fingerprints due to how they’re not a genetic trait.
It’s important to remember that this episode was done before the World Wide Web — and the ability to just pop on to the IMDB and get your cast information straight — existed.
Actually, both the Internet and IMDB existed at the time. It’s just that access to them wasn’t widely available.
@ #29: Apparently it used to be that you saluted in that fashion while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance long before the Nazis ruined it.
Favorite riffs
Jim Henson’s Birth of a Nation Babies.
Enough TV for you two. Now get outside and play.
That’s Mister Stinking Rotten Mouthpiece to you.
Even criminals have to punch in.
No one will be seated during the frightening Letter Folding Scene.
What am I smelling? Did somebody die in here? Oh, I did!
Aunt Bea After Dark.
I may be indestructible, but I still hurt inside.
“I felt sorry for the witness, and I thought about how easily a person’s mind can become confused when suddenly they receive a brutal shock.”
Then I went to lunch.
“The name of Paul triggered his hate.”
The name Gary made him happy.
Oh no! he just killed Resusci-Annie!
Stop or the Foley artist will shoot!
Remember when I got ahead of myself a while back? Well, we’re at that scene now.
“O’Malley, see that the young lady gets home all right.”
Does it have to be her home? I’m kidding, of course.
“Operator, get me Police Headquarters.”
Why should I? What’s in it for me?
We can crash in my Nash.
I’ll go with the guy with the bazooka.
This is like Close Encounters of the Turd Kind.
Favorite riff within a riff:
It’s a planet full of Jack Rubys…
The Jack Ruby Program! *crowd applause*
My OCD is swinging into high today so I’ll point out that the title card reads “Indestructible Man” and this review is for “The Indestructible Man”. I’ll just step into this doorway and pipe down now. My apologiess.
Mary Jo on the CT shows jokes about still trying to indulge her favorite riff of “It’s you, you brought the birds, you’re evil!”, and then the frustration of having to explain it to film-illiterate college kids who’ve never seen Hitchcock films. (Like that’s a GOOD bit of progress we now have to accept.)
In the last CT tour, she did a comedy segment where she came out in her Scarlett dress (from “Do the Frank”) and did a one-woman dissertation on the riff.
The recorded shows, as just extensions of the comedy writers, can still use the principle of The Right People Will Get It, while the live shows have to fight the moment-to-moment standup battles of audience laughs and keeping from losing energy, so they have to play to the crowd demographic.
Something RT has no problem with whatsoever when they trot out the live Reefer Madness shows.
Damn, you’re right. Now fixed.
Well, of course, the internet has been around since Al Gore invented it back in the 70s or something. I was using the internet in 1992 to reach BBSes and Prodigy. But, there was no web, no easy way to just check a fact like we have today. You could dick around for an hour on your computer or you could just open a Maltin book, and that was my point.
And yet another inaccurate title. It’s called Indestructible Man, but he was destroyed.
What a good one this episode is. The movie plays it straight enough to lend itself to wonderful riffing while still having a kernel of a good idea buried within. Not to mention this one’s easy to look at too. Usually low budget means one or two cheaply dressed sets with the actors standing still in front of them. Here we get a lot of nifty location filming.
Fave riff:
Crow [at Casey Adams wining and dining at a drive-in]: Gee, the man spares no expense…
It’s that note of disdainful sarcasm that puts this one over.
“Destruction-Resistant Man”
I’m a huge Lon Chaney Jr. fan; I first saw this movie on the old “Count Gore DeVol’s Creature Feature” on channel 20 in DC when I was a teenager in the early ’70s. It struck me as a film noir with sci-fi overtones; I really dug it when I first saw it, although that long talky scene in the drive-in had me reacting the same way Crow and Servo did. Along with Attack Of The Giant Leeches and several other old B&W clunkers I remember from the Count Gore Show, this episode was one of my instant favorites, and is largely responsible for finally making me a hardcore MSTie during Season 4, after first discovering MST3K during Season 2.
I really wish they’d done more episodes of Undersea Kingdom. That serial was so camp, so ridiculous — guys on horses riding into battle alongside tanks and robots — that I just couldn’t stop watching.
My favorite riff:
“I’ve gotta take a big indestructible whiz!”
— Tom Servo
Tip for gangsters & would-be criminals: Don’t hire or work with a guy named ‘Squeamy’.
This movie has made me far more intimately knowledgeable about Lon Chaney’s T-zone then I ever wanted or needed to be. Other than that, it’s a great episode!
“How many guys named Squeamy do you know?”
Old Smuggler is the 2nd best selling whisky in Argentina.
So you know it’s gotta be good!
#83
Well, maybe that’s not what he WAS, but it’s what he was CALLED, so…
Joel’s equation of Christianity with overall believing-someone-can-return-from-the-dead sort of misses some nuances, huh? IIRC he makes the same basic remark in “Human Duplicators.”
To my DULL SURPRISE, no one’s asked what was the deal with that one gangster having a limp (unless they did and I missed it). So, as seen in earlier episodes, girlfriends with accents are considered odd enough to merit explanation, but gangsters with limps, ehh. Hm.
;-)
Well gangsters do get into fights and such. Possibly was shot in the leg and the wound wasn’t patched up properly.