I remember that the “Amazing Colossal Episode Guide” had a list of things from the movies that really disturbed and stuck with the writers. I think unusually disturbing movie moments or plot content would be a great discussion topic. The thing that I couldn’t get over was the project featured in “Parts: The Clonus Horror.” The concept of clueless people being lobotomized and/or used for live organ harvesting bothers me more than most topics covered in MSTied films.
Oh, I’m going to have to go with the melting man in “The Incredible Melting Man.” Gross.
What’s your pick?
(Keep those topic suggestions coming!)
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Most of the things already mentioned didn’t seem to phase me due to the fact that the riffing was pointing out how ridiculous these movies were…except.. I too found the implied rape scene in the Hellcats disturbing. And I am surprised no one has mentioned The Brute Man. The movie was just basically an exploitation of the disfiguring condition that Rondo Hatten suffered from. Not to be a total bring down I did appreciate the inclusion of Arch Hall Jr’s face in Eegah.
They are just movies, and we should just relax. But some things are just bothersome, or gross. Many bothersome ones mentioned, Manos, Brain That Wouldn’t Die, etc. Here’s a couple I didn’t see mentioned, and one I saw mentioned but not explained thoroughly.
The egg cream scene in Squirm just grosses me out. That he would a worm in an already icky drink (milky water?) is double gross. I can’t eat certain things watching that movie. It is one of my favorites, however. Roger being under the thumb of his dad in that movie saddens me, personally. Such a repressive atmosphere.
The fact that the teenagers in Zombie Nightmare are such utter thugs, especially the one with Farrah hair (Jim, right?), and don’t care at all about hurting others, always bothered me.
Horror at Party Beach for similar reasons to Squirm. Just gross stuff. Again, however, one of my favorites. My skull!
All the people dying in the cities in Gorgo and Invasion of the Neptune Men bothers me. Especially because afterward everything’s bright and cheery, or in the case of Gorgo, we’re supposed to ‘understand’.
It Lives by Night includes gross elements, and is yet again one of my favorites.
And The Brute Man. Depressing.
And on a lighter note, the fact that the campers are eating “baloney sandwiches and pork and beans” grosses me out a little, for some reason.
For me, practically everyone in ‘Wild Rebels’ makes me sick. The bikers are just so slimy in their disregard for human life. And the police are perfectly okay with letting them kill innocent people.
Phase 4 is the first one to come to mind. Haven’t been able to make it through the whole thing.
I’m most disturbed by the Japanese jokes the hosts and bots make during their movies, especially when they’re watching a non-Japanese film. A few gags about the oddities of a foreign culture are to be expected. But hearing so many jokes within a 90-minute period feels like racism. There’s enough weird stuff in movies like “Invasion of the Neptune Men” and “Fugitive Alien” without making fun of real-world Japan. Other jokes betray the writing staff’s very white cultural upbringing. Like an out-of-nowhere joke about “ultraviolent Japanese porn cartoons” in “Red Zone Cuba”. The hell? Even when that episdoe first aired that joke made them sound clueless and out of touch.
What are you talking about? There wasn’t such riff in Red Zone Cuba, it was in Prince of Space. Haven’t you watched hentai? Tentacle porn? The Brains were too soft with Japan, since you have a lot of oddballs and eccentricities running rampant in that country, like the guys who marry cartoon characters, or those humilliating game shows.
The shaving cream licking scene in Eegah is so disgusting, I won’t watch that episode anymore
#106… you mean like, every country? Weirdness is everywhere. It just manifests that way in Japanese pop culture. I’ve spent time in Japan; I tend to dig the place. I agree with #105 that several of the Japanese jokes do feel really “out of touch” on a show that was usually really sharp.
I gotta be unoriginal and throw in another vote for that shaving cream bit in Eegah. Actually, that whole scene in the cave made me really appreciate that whole final host segment with the showers! Icky!
Pretty much anything involving sadism, especially against women. So that leaves a decent number of movies out – Manos: Hand of Fate in particular. How people actually enjoy a movie where a mother and daughter get turned into sex slaves is beyond me…
Ironically, I’m a guy and the characters and movies that really creep me out are the ones that are blatantly misogynist.
“Leech Woman” is bleak and unpleasant enough without the racism and negative portrayal of women (actually, take away those two things and there IS no movie). It’s probably the episode I most dread watching.
The two complete pigs in “Horrors of Spider Island” kick up the perv a notch by instantly molesting the first women they see (which the swimming girl LIKES?!). One guy’s reaction to a woman holding a gun on him is “Hello BABY!” and he then tries to grope her, mocking her when she tells him to back off. And the way all the men order the women around (“Come on, girls!” “That’s enough water, girls!”) and the way they just submit to their whims…ugh.
The scene at the end of “Agent for HARM” where he condescendingly smooches and paws at the girl as he’s about to arrest her always brings up my bile. Every time I just want her to snatch his hands off her face and break his thumbs.
Other Things: Secret Agent Super Dragon mocking the villain as he’s dying sent a chill up my spine the first time I saw it. Vi charging at the camera at the end of “Tormented” made me jump when I first watched that. I still can’t look at the face of the girl who was lobotomized in “Parts: The Clonus Horror.” And I’d actually like to second the person who commented on the Cinematic Titanic movies. With the exception of “East Meets Watts” and “Alien Factor”, all those films make me feel icky.
#424 Manos: The Hands of Fate – Little Debbie as one of the Master’s brides at the end. Gruesome.
#704 The Incredible Melting Man – The Melting Man himself. ‘Nuff Said.
Honorable Mention:
#812 The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies: Ortega. Eww! Makes Torgo look like Patrick Swayze by comparison.
Anyone mentioned the implied necrophilia of the murder victim at the beginning of Yucca Flats? Worse for the absolute lack of context. And of course the close-up of Coleman’s butt doesn’t help.
The rape scene in #610 “The Violent Years.” No, M&TB, that’s NOT funny.
Re: The Cinematic Titanic stuff…
“The Oozing Skull” and “Legacy of Blood” are the only two that kind of weird me out a little — “Legacy of Blood” the most so with the indications of incest and rape.
But the rest don’t actually bother me that much. And “Wasp Woman” is a Corman film so you know it’s going to be boring more than disturbing.
@87 & 93
Actually, the baseline reaction amongst humans is to be (quite) disturbed by depictions of serious suffering and depravity. It’s not strictly normal to find such things goofy or entertaining.
U.S. pop culture is one of a few major exceptions to this pattern. Internationally, studies have shown that a majority of people are shocked and horrified by the level of physical and other violence so common in U.S. films. It’s not typical of most world cultures, though of course there are some other exceptions.
So I don’t blame you for being jaded, living in this society as you do, but just recognize that your perception is actually an exception and a modification to the more basic, intuitive human response. Neither better nor worse, necessarily, but definitely not the more innate reaction.
I for one feel no shame in being perturbed by such depictions of vicious sadism and gratuitous tragedy. I won’t watch many of the episodes discussed here (Clonus and Manos being at the top of that list), and as far as my purposes go I’m not missing a thing.
Interesting to hear that Touch of Satan is a Lovecraft ripoff, though. Maybe I’ll give that one another shot with that as the underlying interpretation. At least it would have more depth that way.
I have to say “Bloodlust”. The idea of hunting down people to kill them for the thrill of it! Then the guy who does the hunting wants the two teenage girls for “female companionship”. Ew.
I want to add a real life experience to the thread. When I was a kid, several times our extended family would rent several cabins for a couple weeks on the shoreline of one of Minnesota’s ubiquitous lakes. This was meant to be the highlight of summer vacation, and while I did enjoy the fishing and hanging out with the other kids, I personally could not go swimming because of the leeches! As soon as you hit the water, one would attach itself and they would be swimming at you. It disturbed me so much it put a damper on the whole vacation.
Back home in Michigan, one Saturday afternoon a local channel screened “Attack of the Giant Leeches”. Of course, now its pretty tame stuff compared to what has subsequently hit the screen (“Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, all the slasher movies, “Saw”, “Hostel”, “living” dead films), but when it came to the scene where the giant leeches are sucking blood out of the people, that totally freaked me out. At the time (late 60s/early 70s) that was some pretty graphic stuff to appear on TV, and combined with my real life fear and hatred of leeches, I had nightmares for a while.
So, while I basically agree with the viewpoint that “we should really just relax” and enjoy the comedy, it also has a lot to do with personal experience and perspective, and the same situation portrayed in the movie will have different effects depending on the person watching.
I have enjoyed reading this thread, its a good one.
@117- I too grew up in Michigan and encounterd Leeches. I am, however, not afraid of the film. But I still won’t wade in a creek.
Good topic.
Girl In Lover’s Lane is actually a fairly well acted film, so the disturbing themes of child abuse, alcoholism, sex crimes and murder is especially bothersome. Movie definitely leaves you with a bad feeling.
Brain That Wouldn’t Die is pretty dark and gets darker as it goes. When the mad doctor betrays and victimizes the already emotionally fragile disfigured woman it gets really ugly.
Sidehackers gets disturbing from the moment the character of J.C. is introduced. Horrible, ugly film.
Atomic Brain’s theme of using young women for medical experiments is quite nasty. The only thing that saves it is it’s implausibility. One cannot swap brains with cats! However, the movie is also dreary and dull beyond belief. It makes The Unearthly seem like an action picture.
Clonus is certainly quite disturbing and with a tinge of plausibility plus a few decent name actors it can be hard to watch because of its dark premise.
HOME ECONOMICS STORY: Mr. Johnson’s dungeon.
Bloodlust is a suprisingly grody movie.
I cannot look at the avocado guy from Robot Holocaust, too creepy.
@#106 There was such a Japanese riff in Red Zone Cuba. Near the end of the movie, when they’re on their way to the mine, they stop off for supplies. Mike, speaking as the cashier, makes a crack about “super x-rated Japanese cartoons”, before he adds “thanks for not killing me. Right neighbourly of you!” It does stand out as a rather pointless joke for the scene…
@115 Touch of Satan was a Lovecraft ripoff? Then it must have been Dagon she was referring to when she said, “this is where the fish lives”… :-)
Pretty much all of things I’d have noted have already been mentioned.
I’d say knocking off female characters just for shock value (like in “Girl in Lover’s Lane” or CT’s “East Meets Watts”) gets to me, as does the gore of “Incredible Melting Man” and nearly anything to do with bugs.
Maybe the one that bothers me the most is the bear cubs crying in “Catching Trouble” because those aren’t actors playing a part. That seems very real. I agree with Joel; the cubs’ mom should’ve shown up and put Ross in his place.
The Giant Spider Invasion and the ‘bend you over my knee’ sequence :pain:
@124
Heh, don’t ask me, I’m only going off of what #84 said.
@113 No, it’s not funny. It’s HILARIOUS. Besides, if a young Jean Moorehead tried to rape me I would be absolutely overjoyed.
#115: I’m not American and value violent scenes for what they are, fictional, not realistics depictions of violent acts. All of the people I know aren’t shock in the slightest by American movies. And I don’t believe in any fancy studies and statistics, you can prove anything, even the contrary of what you have stated.
One more thing, have you ever seen the Guinea Pig films, Audition, Ichi the Killer? Those weren’t made by Roger Corman.
There is no possible justification for putting acts of shaving, massaging or splaying to the medium of film.
@ #116,
That premise is actually pretty old. One of the earliest examples of it is a short story called “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Cornell. It was first published in 1924!
I read it in my high school freshamn English class.
The idea behind the original story, though, was to play up the barbarism of hunting animals for sport alone as well as to explore the lines between “man” and “beast”.
The story has been adapted many, many times for movies.
misogynism, sexism, racism, and the other awful -isms only really bother me when the movie presents it as perfectly normal and how you ought to be. Which makes Project Moonbase especial cring worthy.
Many of the examples in this thread are gross, but none of them
on balance come up to (down to?) the Itchy and Scratchy Show.
@127 Fair enough. :-)
“#115: I’m not American and value violent scenes for what they are, fictional, not realistics depictions of violent acts.”
Where did I say that this only ever applies to Americans? I said there were other exceptions (and I mean that both for nations and for individuals).
I like how you contrast “fiction” with “realistic depictions,” even though “realistic depictions” are also fiction. So which is it? Is it a question of realism, or a question of fiction?
If it’s a question of realism, then people are still going to have varying and subjective reactions, because some people (myself included) can all too easily recognize what a realistic version of such events *would* look like. It’s the implication we react to, not only what is literally shown on the screen. (And the implication of human suffering can be as or more unsettling than the mere sight of bodily harm.) That’s why suspense films, like Hitchcock’s, work so well – the audience is expected to fill in the gaps in their imagination.
And for some folks, when an one is aware that more-or-less equally horrible things do actually happen in real life, it’s hard not to experience a jump from a semi-realistic depiction to full-blown implications. It’s a subjective emotional reaction, not something we deliberately choose to inflict on ourselves.
As to fiction . . . well of course they’re fictional. But just because it’s fictional doesn’t mean it can’t be disturbing. If I created a fictitious film in which
Note: Very disturbing example below; please skip a paragraph if you are sensitive to such things
a child is sexually assaulted and has their fingers cut off one by one before being torn apart and eaten by wild dogs, that would be entirely fictitious on my part as a film creator, but it would still be extremely gruesome and disturbing to the vast majority of viewers. And rightly so.
This is of course a very extreme example, but the point needs to be made clearly: Being fictitious does not *in and of itself* mean that something is inherently non-disturbing. As I’ve just (disturbingly) illustrated, it’s all a matter of context and of degree. I cannot imagine how someone could find a fictitious depiction as grim as my example to be totally casual and lighthearted in *any* context. Even if it were not realistic at all – say, in a garish cartoony animation style – most people would still be greatly unnerved by it because of what it implies to be happening. As annoyed as I am by the character, watching SpongeBob getting raped and having the flesh torn from his limbs would not be something that most people could just let slide without issue.
Hell, the people on MST3k *themselves* point out how dark and unsettling these things are. They even chose to cut the worst portions of “Sidehackers” because they knew full well it wouldn’t be appropriate for many viewers. The Riffers surely have greater tolerances than most, thanks to extensive exposure, but that doesn’t mean they’re completely unoffended by this stuff.
You may likewise be jaded through substantial long-term exposure, and there’s nothing morally or socially wrong with that, but a majority of people do remain sensitized to such depictions. Just look at the ratio of people in this thread; the great majority can name at least a few things which bother them. And I probably added to their list – so I apologize to anyone who was offended by my examples! I just wanted it to be totally clear that fiction can still be offensive. Not being real doesn’t make it OK. (It sure as hell doesn’t make it entertaining.)
“All of the people I know aren’t shock in the slightest by American movies.”
All of the people you know represents a tiny anecdotal sample of all the people who view movies and T.V.
I can say with equal truth that *by far* most of the people I know ARE disturbed by these things . . . does my anecdote cancel yours out? No, they’re both unsubstantiated hearsay.
“And I don’t believe in any fancy studies and statistics, you can prove anything, even the contrary of what you have stated.”
Statistics is a rigorously objective discipline in and of itself. Yes, I know that there are organizations which deliberately skew statistics or fund their own questionable studies, but unless there’s a specific reason to be suspicious of a given institution, it’s not healthy IMO for one’s very first reaction to be a paranoid dismissal of the very possibility that professional conclusions contradict one’s own.
I unfortunately don’t have time to dig around for the study, but I encourage others to investigate the subject if it happens to interest them. No reason to just take my word for it.
“One more thing, have you ever seen the Guinea Pig films, Audition, Ichi the Killer? Those weren’t made by Roger Corman.”
No, I haven’t seen any of those, and I’m not sure where Roger Corman entered the equation. I’m not disturbed by any of the Corman stuff I’ve seen on MST3k.
So many Sensitive Sandys. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. :-)
@133 For the record, I love Itchy and Scratchy. : D
But I can only do so because I know it’s intended as a massively ironic jab at violence in children’s television. It’s intended to illustrate, via exaggeration, the absurdity of constantly exposing children to depictions of physical conflict. It implies the questions, “Why do we draw the line where we do, rather than higher or lower? What does this say about us as a society?” So I can deal with a fair amount of edginess in the right context.
Which just goes to show how complexly subjective these perceptions are.
Ah, back when The Simpsons was filled with relevant and subtly biting social commentary . . .
Late to the party, I know, but really felt the need to point out the entirety of Final Justice. Joe Don’s character is a psychopath portrayed as a hero. In his introduction scene he laughs about how many people he’s killed and later he says what comes out as basically a law inforcement officer can choose which laws he inforces and how. As funny as the riffing is in the movie over all the movie itself disgusts me that this is our “hero”.
@123 – That was back when Mike was picking on anything he thought had geeky-fans–And at that time in the primeval mid-90’s, all those uneducated folk thought “anime” was hentai porn, Sailor Moon, or both.
(In fact, if you really want to get PC, with the new emphasis on Anti-Bullying crusades in every kids’ school, Mike’s “Grown-up high-school locker-room bully still thwacking towels at the Geekz” comic-persona act has ITSELF become a little disturbing to watch in the ’10’s.
As in the host seg from Giant Gila Monster, where J&tB go into long PC lectures about why drunks are sad and pathetic and drunk humor isn’t as funny now as it was in the 50’s, Mike has now become the un-PC Foster Brooks of the cyberbullied ’10’s. Yeah, a little off the subject, but you take “disturbing” where you can get it.)
“San Francisco International” really bugs me. All the comments about the teenage boy not being loved by his parents just seemed to cross the line. Child abuse is not funny in any context.
Ericj…Dude you’re completely ridiculous. Did mike beat you up and take your lunch money? Give you a swirly? Take your mom to a nice seafood dinner and never call her again?
@136 Hey, I’m not a Sensitive Sandy. I’m a Negative Nancy. Difference, my good man.
@139 I understand what you’re saying, but you have to realize that joking about bullying has been around since forever. You may find it very insensitive, but getting sad over it doesn’t make it go away. Mike’s style of humor isn’t dated, primarily because I think we shouldn’t get so depressed over the fact that bullying exists. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mike was speaking from experience. I always thought Trace was with the jokes about bullying.
You should realize that bullying back in the, say, fifties, was a lot worse than bullying today, yet people still laugh and joke about what was done to them. My dad had his arm held against a hot pipe (to the point of blistering) by an older kid in high school, and all the school made the older kid do was apologize. And, you’ll notice society didn’t fall apart.
It’s like Mel Brooks making Hitler into a buffoon. It takes away his power as an image. Sorry to get Guy Debordian, but there it is.
@136
We sure do outnumber the Compassionless Calebs in this thread.
Yeah, alliterative schoolyard taunting is a really strong debate technique, huh? Really drives home the logic in your point.
I can understand how long-term exposure can desensitize a person. As I’ve been saying, there’s nothing inherently bad or incorrect about that. So folks like yourself don’t have to follow our sensitive standards in order for me to respect you. But apparently, all the rest of us would have to follow your standards in order for you to respect us.
And for what? For feeling a stirring of empathy when we encounter perceptions of suffering in our fellow people (or other creatures)? We’re required to be dead to that in order to be thought of as mature, competent human beings in your eyes? Evidently, we should feel ashamed when we experience the realization that we truly dislike the idea of certain forms of pain and injustice. Especially when it’s on a visceral, emotional level, apparently.
Maybe there’s an underlying connection here. Maybe the inability to empathize with the implied suffering of these characters stems from the same root that makes some of you unable to empathize with the distress that other posters describe themselves as feeling. That’s why you can’t respect why our reactions are different from yours . . . you can’t understand what it’s like to experience them. Is that why you insist that we’re somehow flawed for being unlike you? Because I could turn that right back around.
*sigh*
Nevertheless, I don’t hold being jaded against anyone. One of my best friends is far, far more inured to violence and horror stuff than I am (he’s rather a buff for it, actually), but we recognize that each of us just has our own history, our own perceptions, our own reasoning, and our own preferences, and we’re perfectly civil about it. We accept our respective boundaries.
142 @ It’s like Mel Brooks making Hitler into a buffoon. It takes away his power as an image. Sorry to get Guy Debordian, but there it is.
It’s not “satirizing” the image of the bully (I’m not sure how that analogizes into Mel Brooks’ Producers/Hitler jokes–Unless you’re trying to suggest it’s supposed to be like those later David Spade movies, where Spade tried to indulge his mouthy-snot act and still subject himself to embarrassing pratfalls to try and get back on the audience’s good side.)
It’s wishfully living it out every fantasy of geek-bullying power in their own private clubhouse–If RiffTrax didn’t wishfully dream they were bullying legions of pasty-faced geeks from afar, they wouldn’t do so many danged Twilight and Transformers films every third disk.
And that’s the point where it stops being comedy, and starts being a, well, isolated clubhouse for their own niche of fans who don’t pay attention to the comedy so much as vicariously dream of living the LIFESTYLE of bullying every neighborhood geek from afar, thinking that they’re “paying back” those comic book movies and the Hunger Games for creating those fans in the first place. If you want to invoke Godwin’s, it’s more a matter of “When does an edgy comic’s fans stop becoming comedy fans and start becoming the Hitler Youth?”
(But again, that’s more in the category of “Disturbing riffs“, which’s a completely different thread than when we’re on “Disturbing movies”. I’m not sure which of the two categories Deathstalker falls into, so I’ll save that for later.)
Bob Dole, Ma’am. Where’s the outrage!
No movie really gets to me. Knowing it’s a movie helps swallow anything a writer or director wants to feed me. I am just really hard to shock. In fact there is only one movie that made me scream out loud, “Ok, enough already!” That was Return of the Living Dead III. Really just too much, but I did watch the whole movie.
The only movie I ever walked out on was Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Loxce the Bee Gees but hate that movie. Yeesh!
Ok, you want a disturbing moment in MST? The horrifying buffalo shots from Zombie Nightmare and Outlaw. Yikes indeed!
Piece owt!
You just compared Mike Nelson fans to the hitler youth. You’re a f’ng moron. How are you not perma-banned from here is beyond me.
The bathroom scene from Soultaker is pretty disturbing….. Joe Estavez as the mother staring at her daughter taking a bath….. Terrible.
@147 Agreed. I thought ericj had disappeared and WAS banned. It’s sad to have his constant Mike/Rifftrax bashing in every discussion. I still have no idea what he’s trying to accomplish by constantly harping on it over and over. Why even post in the Rifftrax topics? I know this is way off topic, but his constant hate talk ruins otherwise wonderful forum comments. Ericj don’t bother responding, I typically filter out your comments, I’m sure you’ll distort it into some Mike or Rifftrax failure
Understanding what’s going on in a movie, and maybe not liking something a movie, is one thing, but to actually be upset by it is too much. Especially when it comes to some of the crap shown on MST3K. It really is just a movie.
And please, I thought this was about the movies alone, not about the riffs.
Furthermore, some are taking subject far too seriously.