“BigZilla” wrote:
“I think a lot of film makers have issues with women.”
Ain’t that tha truth! In fact, horrible as it is, I think a good weekend discussion would be “most debased view of women in an MST3K film.”
Between this movie and The Creeping Terror alone you’ve got some seriously whacked views of women. Totally inappropriate but a surprisingly common theme here.
Colossus Prime added:
As amusing as that would be as a weekend discussion thread, in my mind it starts and ends with Project Moonbase. They give us an incredibly accomplished female astronaut who is surrounded by men that constantly belittle her and treat her like a housewife/secretary.
And Adoptadog added:
I think that the attitude toward women in MSTied movies would be an interesting topic, though I must say that the worst, hands down, would have to be Hobgoblins. Project Moonbase has the excuse of merely magnifying the prevalent attitude toward women at the time…Hobgoblins has no excuse.
So what are the “most debased view of women in an MST3K film”?
Without thinking too hard, there’s a moment in “Commando Cody” where they’re getting on the rocketship and Cody says to the woman: “I still say this is no trip for a woman” and she replies “You’ll be glad to have somebody along who can cook your meals!”
What’s your pick?
My movie nomination is The Leech Woman. Her husband wants to experiment on her, insults her, uses her like a tissue and drives home that she has no value except when she was young and pretty. She is portrayed as a clingy, insecure drunk who uses men. NEAHL!…NEAHHLLL!!! HONKK! HONNNKKK!!! girlfriend was such a harpy when Neal was trying to score with Teri!? She is obviously from Texas since she resolved the love triangle via sidearm. The only character who was half way decent was Kamala. Yeah, this one ‘war of the sexes’ was a low down, dirty hate festival where no gender won.
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How about Alien From L.A.? It makes women seem very dumb. Also any movie from the 50s or 60s is probably sexist.
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I’m still trying to wrap my mind around this one… The Brain that Wouldn’t Die… that line in there where the woman says, “Who’s to tell me to blow if I don’t want to…?”
I can’t tell if that is an empowerment statement by her or if the movie is one of the worst for women just because it has to vocally point that out.
of course she doesn’t HAVE to…
heck… i’m just gonna say the Brain the Wouldn’t die…
Women have it pretty bad in this movie… they either lose their heads… get tricked into losing their heads or have to contend with people telling them to “Blow” when they may or may not want to.
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agree with #50: although Hobgoblins is offensive to women, it’s also offensive to everybody.
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>On a tangent, how different would Prince of Space been had Krankor and his planet and crew and guardian been all-female instead of all-male?
The chicken riffs would have been a little more on the nose?
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The Horrors of Spider Island is definitely up there (“I wonder how this movie REALLY feels about women?”); however, there’s one thing I noticed about the movies of Greydon Clark (Angels Revenge, Hobgoblins, Final Justice). Maybe it’s just me, and maybe this is off topic, but it seems that practically every female character in his movies is a terrible actor. My theory is that he cast them based solely on their looks. That’s why, in my opinion, reydon Clark is one of the great unsung villains of MST3K.
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Without reading any other comments, Horrors of Spider Island is a obvious pick. Not only is it a precursor to those $10 pay-per-view shows with titles mentioning spring break or cheerleaders or….Throw in the weather induced adultery (so does climate change affect divorce rates?) and sleazy sax music. I don’t know if the most hateful MST movie but I’m sure it’s got to be a consensus top five.
I would mention Boggy Creek but it’s hateful of everything. The frog legs scene in Red Zone Cuba is simply Brutalist with the woman singing Ave Maria to her father’s murder and her impending rape and probable murder. That is the most hateful moment of any MST movie I can think of.
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The really slimy thing about The Brain That Wouldn’t Die is that Dr. Cortner, after making a big deal that he had to find a replacement body for his wife as soon as possible, then takes his sweet time hanging around and chatting up every stripper and tawdry model. It’s where the film really betrays its exploitative nature.
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I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned “The Deadly Mantis” yet. Though the female lead is portrayed throughout most of the film as a competent and headstrong journalist, that all vanishes at the end, when the smarmy condescending doctor she’s inexplicably fallen for mocks her fear, snatches the camera out of her hand and shoves his tongue down her throat in the shadow of the corpse of a giant mantis.
Not the most egregious example by a long shot, but still, pretty bad.
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The end of Indestructible Man is pretty bad. It would have been saved by showing what would really happen when a creepy cop gets a stripper fired so she can give him lapdances for free.
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#57
Good observation. I agree. That bit in RZC is even worse when you learn what was (fortunately) cut out in the MST3000 version.
It does (outworse?) Manos (an amazing achievement). Of course, the “heroes” are also quite repugnant in their treatment of men, and not just the girl’s father.
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In the uncut version of Hobgoblins, Pixie (the beehive-haired waitress at Club Scum) is also a prostitute. So basically all the women in the movie are defined by their sex-having or lack thereof. I think that qualifies it pretty well.
Also agree about The Leech Woman. Malla’s speech about how women have nothing to look forward to once they start getting older is pretty bad.
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Yes, many movies came from other times where some of this stuff may not have been as bad as it sounds now.
However, I think the sexism of Project Moonbase starts with the name of the female lead that when spoken sounds like “Colonel Bright-eyes.” Ick. And making sure he is promoted so he outranks her? Ick.
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Good comments all, but I have to say, for an attitude of sheer hatred of women it’s hard to beat “The Sidehackers.” The show was gratefully cut for MST3K, but the original included the rape and murder of a woman. I’ve got to say, that shows real issues about women from this mean spirited movie.
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#61
I’m not aware of what was cut. I thought it was all Coleman Francis editing. “I almost broke my neck in that jump cut!”
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re. comment #13: “Horrors of spider island. The whole scene with the judging of women based on how the look is just so objectifing.”
I think your reasoning is faulty. Gary (and assistant Georgia, whom he always treats respectfully) are selecting female dancers to entertain overseas. Of course he’s judging them on their looks, but also on their dancing abilities and general demeanor. He rejects the pretty ballerina not for her appearance but because she’s not the right type of dancer for the troupe.
And for all the silliness that ensues on the island, at least each babe is given her own personality and motivations for being there and wanting to stay alive. I think Angel’s Revenge attempts this also. And I don’t think enjoying the spectacle of scantily-clad women makes one a bad person.
I dunno, this topic question demands a more ruthless inquiry into movies (exploitation films in particular) as male-driven fantasies for general audiences. Long ago, film-makers figured out that females in peril are more exciting than men in the same situations. Why is this? Do women viewers respond differently than males during horror/sci-fi films?
In defense of Sidehackers: it portrays two sides of the supportive girlfriend character: one girl is positive and nurturing to her beau Rommel, the other is abused by J.C. and hostile when her advances towards Rommel are rebuffed. Both are dead by the end of the film, but serve to drive the plot to its violent finale.
And there IS a strong female character in Gorgo: his mom who swims all the way to London to retrieve her kidnapped son, enduring missile attacks from the British army. Go Gorgo’s mom!
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I’d have thought someone would –
“I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned “The Deadly Mantis” yet.”
Damn, beat me to it. “She’s not a photographer . . . she’s just a woman.” Spot on.
What is the short where the narrator says that one has to be impeccably prim at all times? The young woman has one loose sock and non-permed hair and the narrator says (about the young man nearby) “You’re not exactly dressed in a way to make him act like a human being.” And adding irony, she looks BETTER when she’s not prissed up. I cringe at a lot of the other stuff mentioned so far, but this is the only one at which I get truly enraged. Livid, even, at least the first time I saw it.
About Leech Woman, the overall effect is bad, certainly, and all around the cast, but I always thought Malla’s speech was basically suggesting that women don’t have anything to look forward to in old age because men are too selfish/sexist/whatever to give them anything to look forward to – that their attitudes don’t permit it. Just how I always interpereted that, I guess. The movie still gets no credit from me anywhere else.
I do have to say, though, that the worst *single* incident, as opposed to episode, is indeed:
“An hour ago, I got you fired.”
“What? What’d you do that for?!”
“I figured being my wife would take up all of your time.”
Epic chauvinism.
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Too lazy to look up the movie (The Deadly Mantis, perhaps?), but “Woman equals stupid” is a quote I like to throw around the house when I like to pretend I’m being chauvinistic (“get in there and make my dinner, woman”). Yeah, pretending. That’s it.
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RT @ 67-I agree with your sentiments about Malia. I also think that an elderly black woman was presented an an intelligent, decisive woman yet ultimately desirable woman figuratively. Amazing for 1959! These points are perhaps silver linings in an otherwise hatedriven, drunken screamfest.
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I think I will choose The Deadly Mantis because of the personal feeling about that movie. When I last watched it, for the weekly discussion, I didn’t like how the female lead ended up at the end of the movie. She started out all right, a magazine photographer and all, but by the end she became a typical, weak woman. The men were also rather condescending to her when she was to take the pictures of the dead mantis.
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Quoting myself from recent comments on 804 – The Deadly Mantis:
“Our three leads personify brains (doctor who figures stuff out), brawn (colonel who gets the job done) and beauty (photographer who screams a lot and fails to do her job at the end and is better off becoming a housewife).”
But of all the aforementioned offenses, the threat to spank a female astronaut in PJ Moonbase is the most egregious.
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All good choices so far, but what about Girl In Lovers Lane, if someone hasn’t mentioned it already. Only types of women in the movie: you’re either turning tricks at the local brothel, wanting to date guys only for the dimes they can give you for the jukebox (similar to the brothel sort), or you’re nice, kind, and considerate and get mauled to death by Jack Elam. Not a very complimentary picture indeed. Night Of The Blood Beast wasn’t complimentary either. The women are either vacous photographers that act woodenly and need rescuing or are doctors who have their diagnoses contradicted by their male counterparts.
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How many MST movies have hookers in them? I can remember quite a few but I’m sure there are some that I’m missing.
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Besides the previously mentioned, Hobgoblins, “Manos”, and …Mixed-up Zombies; I’d like to mention Jack Frost, which perpetuates that a women’s inner beauty is reflected by her outer beauty: hence we have the lovely, innocent, Nashtinka (have no Idea how spell her name) versus her “ugly” Stepsister who is spoiled, ignorant and mean-spirited and her Stepmother, the archetypal hag: shrewish, tyrannical, heaping unprovoked cruelty on her stepdaughter, including attempted murder.
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kt: “How many MST movies have hookers in them? I can remember quite a few but I’m sure there are some that I’m missing.”
Literally or figuratively? Liza Greer (Trish, from ANGEL’S REVENGE) evidently went on to be a Hollywood call girl.
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I will have to vote for Angels Revenge. Not only should there have been enlightenment by that time period, but disguising chauvinism as empowerment somehow makes it so much worse. It’s one thing to be blunt about. It’s another to be deceptive
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Without reading most of the posts, I’m thinking Manos, with a touch of Design for Dreaming. The first works on an objective level, that women, alive, or undead, and then possible underage AND undead, are there to be pawed at by a big-kneed-Cocker-via-Belushi-esque henchman, while the next just treats women as psychotic consumers that cannot be sated until Jetson cars and masked strangers make their overindulgent dreams come true. Who doesn’t need a push-button kitchen, anyway? Surely doing ANYTHING more than pushing a button to make a meal would exhaust any lady, correct? There, there.(insert condescending pat on cheek, then on rear)
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“Manos” and all Coleman Francis win hands down – “Red Zone Cuba” is a cruel cruel movie. For dumbsake – and since it hasn’t been mentioned, about “Deathstalker and the Warriors From Hell.”
“Eegah” has a pathetic view of women, as does “Fire Maidens Of Outer Space”, and “the Wild World of Batwoman” is pretty out there as well. But then, the men in those movies are equally pathetic.
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Diabolik did nothing for the image of women. Diabolik’s girl (who allegedly was a protagonist in the film) was so materialist she encouraged him to steal and murder for her insatiable lust for more riches.
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#75 – not little Trish! For realss? She was one of the 7!!!!
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“Racket Girls” seems to only have five minutes of plot and 45 minutes of scantly clad women wrestling. The scene where the promoter talks a desperate woman into becoming a call girl to pay off her debts is pretty loathsome. Some of the lady wrestlers stand up and refuse to throw a match, but only one of them seems to have any brains.
What gets me about “Project Moonbase” is that the filmmakers try to get themselves off the hook by revealing the President as a woman at the end.
Unfortunately, she comes off like someone’s dotty old aunt rather than a world leader.
#78 It’s worth mentioning that the Diabolik characters were created by two women.
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Actually, this sort of thing goes all the way back tro the KTMA days. In “Million Eyes of Su-Maru”, there’s an organization of strong women who are portrayed as cold-blooded murderers, until they meet up with a couple of doofus CIA agents. Then, they just melt into their arms at the mere sight of them. Thus, women are either killers or passive sex objects.
This sort of thing makes you glad Beverly Garland shows up.
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Gorn: The comic-book version of Eva is quite competent and likable, from what I’m told. It’s only in the movie that she’s a materialistic tramp.
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I agree with most of citations of woman-hating or woman-dissing mentioned above in so many episodes and shorts, but I also think that some of them, like Manos and Hobgoblins, were just parts of a wretched whole, where nobody came out ahead. But having just watched “The Home Economics Story” this morning, it’s rubbing me raw the most. It makes me recall how even in the ’70s my mechanically gifted sister was forced to take Home Ec. (At least I enjoyed shop class as much as I might have cooking.)
Other low-lights I recall:
Project Moonbase: As Ted H. points out in #63, don’t forget the ending. Newly shotgun-married Col. Briteis’s “gift” to her hubby is a triple-promotion to make him senior to her. Women eagerly participating in their own diminishment really grinds my gears.
Rocketship X-M: I still wonder who really was to blame for their screwed-up flight. After all, Karl Eckstrom rejected Lisa van Horn’s calculations for the flight that sent them to Mars instead of the Moon. (I can’t decide if one of the writers was trying to sneak in some criticism of the otherwise manifest condescension toward her.) And whose bright idea was it to disconnect from a still-firing lower-stage rocket without even a tiny course adjustment? Some rocket scientists they were.
But one thing that long grated on me was the near-total absence of strong on-screen females in MST3K itself. Gypsy (voiced by men) was dull-witted and got special treatment from Joel. Thank goodness they eventually first made up a palatable reason for this, then gave her character more depth. One truly good thing that came from Trace’s departure was that Mary Jo’s Pearl Forrester went from a whiny, irritating, emasculating supporting character to a ferocious, unpredictable, hilarious Head Mad. I’m sure the gradual changes were more happenstance than misogyny, but it was a definite additional pleasure in MST3K’s last three years to see a strong and enjoyable regular female character on the show.
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@ Kenneth Morgan (#82):
When I think of Beverly, I think of her in “It Conquered the World”: she’s got fire, she’s got spirit (and MRxL), she thinks for herself, she takes on a huge fanged pickle from space single-handed… AND she wears one of those cute ’50s sweaters with the puffy shoulders. Where do I sign up for a woman like that?
@ Jeff Q (#84):
I don’t have a problem with “The Home Economics Story” (nor does my home-ec-major mother). In the context of the time, it’s even fairly progressive… women going to college not to get an MRS degree, but to prepare for a professional career. Or, granted, to become a housewife with mad skillz like my home-ec-major mother. But societal paradigm shifts don’t happen all at once.
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#75- Oh, not little Trish. She had such wonderful guidance from her teachers. With skills like cutting off a man’s penis and making a van super-awesome she could have written her own ticket.
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I like to think that after Colonel Briteis (Bright Eyes? Are you #@&$ kidding me?) marries Commander Jackass, she kills him in a murder so perfect she’s never caught or even suspected. And as his widow she gets all his stuff, which she subsequently either sells or burns.
It makes the movie a little more palatable.
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I’m glad someone mentioned King Dinosaur. That one disturbs me the most. Mostly its because of the leader of the expedition shoving the girls around during the “action” scenes. I highly doubt the script called for him to treat them that way, so I thinks it speaks more to the attitude of the particular actor than that of the character he was portraying or that of the filmmakers. What a jerk!
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“Eegah,” definitely. And let’s not forget “Catalina Caper.”
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Kevin #74: I’d like to mention Jack Frost, which perpetuates that a women’s inner beauty is reflected by her outer beauty: hence we have the lovely, innocent, Nashtinka (have no Idea how spell her name) versus her “ugly” Stepsister who is spoiled, ignorant and mean-spirited and her Stepmother, the archetypal hag: shrewish, tyrannical, heaping unprovoked cruelty on her stepdaughter, including attempted murder.
Seeing as how it’s an adapted faerie tale, that sort of theme is to be expected.
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Sitting Duck #90: That’s true, but such theme’s should still be called out. Not saying faerie tales should change, but when a theme is potentially unhealthy, such as women’s self-image, the fact should at least be acknowledged.
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It’s so difficult to single out any particular one. Every one that has been mentioned in these comments qualify in my opinion. What I’ve noticed however is the majority of those mentioned were made prior to the 1970s, before the rise of the womens rights movement and the change in societal attitudes toward women.
Not to excuse or condone the attitude of the writers of all the films mentioned in these comments but they were the product of their society at the time.
In conclusion, I can’t single out any particular one, other than to say every film made prior to the 1970s riffed by the Brains contained horrible attitudes and treatment toward women.
The best that can be said is those attitudes provided terrific material for the Brains, especially for writers like Mary Jo and Bridget, as you know they had a field day slamming and mocking the behavior toward women in those films, which often made for some of the funniest material and riffs in the show.
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Selling Wizard.
Come on, think about, women being portrayed as freezer presenting magicians has to have some diabolical purpose.
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Many good examples but i don’t see any mention of The Sinister Urge! The harpy madam, the woman-hating thrill-killing thug, blaming pornogrophy for all the world’s ills, the sad tale of what happens when a small-town girl moves to LA to become an actress… all make a strong case for me.
I was always a little confused by Manos‘ attitude towards women… the wives appear to have gotten out of Manos’ control so much they seem to be deciding what to do with the family.
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I don’t see the big deal about the shorts from the fifties and their attitudes towards women given that we’re having this conversation on the Internet. The Internet, people.
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What’s more exploitive than cleavage? 50 Ft. cleavage! Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman gets my vote.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVntJSy59Cc
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At this point, I have only read the first ten posts and can say what a good topic this is. But my wife gives the best example of the worst attitude towards women in any MST film: King Dinosaur. The women in this movie, even though seemingly they are a doctor and a scientist, are there to serve, and when they get in the way, or the men are frustrated, then the women are just pushed (and not gently) aside. Even for the unenlightened 50’s and 60’s, this attitude seems out of place. Also, one of these women is portrayed as whiny; just wanting to go back. A strange attitude for an adventurer.
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Just thought of another one I don’t think was mentioned: Boggy Creek II. It’s fairly recent (early eighties?), so there’s no excuse for directer/star Charles B. Pierce’s comments about not leaving the female students the rifle because “you wouldn’t know what to do with it if I did.” At least the one student, Tanya, refuses to go along with it. But that little scene, plus the fact that this guy apparently wrote the screenplay to include the women sleeping in their underwear in the camper with him, gives me the idea that Mr. Pierce has some women issues as well…
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Johnny Ryde @ 41 & Mike @ 55- “On a tangent, how different would Prince of Space been had Krankor and his planet and crew and guardian been all-female instead of all-male?” Two words, camel toes.
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“Horrors Of Spider Island” without a doubt.
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