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Weekend Discussion Thread: Most Laughable Props in a MSTed MovieAlert treader “Rowsdower” suggests:
He also had examples that were actually make up and costumes, which I think I will save for another day. I think I’m going to go with the flying pizza monsters in episode (I was on no sleep when I typed that.) What’s your pick? 160 Replies to “Weekend Discussion Thread: Most Laughable Props in a MSTed Movie”Commenting at Satellite News
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Let’s not forget the puppet spider from Women Of The Prehistoric Planet. “Looks like it might jump!” “Yeah, what with the string attached to it and all.”
To Fart Bargo @80
Giant fake boobs I don’t find laughable. I’ve had people on my site that have pondered just what happened to that facsimile of Joy Harmon’s chest.
Another one that sprang to mind was ‘The Gold Mask’ in Pew-ma-man. It looked like someone had just made a bad sculpture in clay, wrapped it with alot of Hershey Kisses wrappers, and spray-painted it gold.
– The rocket being rotated by hand on a rod in Robot Monster in the shot that is supposed to represent the orbiting space platform. Even with the mist thrown in to hide it you can see the hand and the rod with the ridiculous sparks coming out the back of the rocket. Having it rotate in that tiny tight circle to make it possible to do by hand just makes you laugh every time you see how cheap and amateurish manner in which they did it. :silly:
– The computer read-out on the “awesome” motorcycle in Warrior Of The Lost World. The graphics were really futuristic and visionary. :laugh:
– The octopus dancing overhead in Magic Voyage Of Sinbad.
– The single shot ray pistol used by Retik In Radar Men From The Moon. I love that it has to be reloaded after every shot as a premise to explain why Cody isn’t blasted to bits within seconds. Every time Retik misses it takes him as long to reload as if it was a flintlock musket!
– The office chairs with casters on Commando Cody’s rocket ship in Radar Men From The Moon.
– The crazy creepy mouth “speaker” in Santa Claus. Also the crazy telescope and the mechanical reindeer. And the “flower to disappear”. :smirk:
Arch Hall Jr’s hair in Eegah. Wait…that’s NOT a prop?!?
Can’t we just say all of “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” was a bad prop. The polar bear costume with the ridiculous head piece. “Tor” the robot in the painted cardboard boxes. Anything on the ship. The light bulbs that control the “nuke-u-lar” curtain. Plus everything else that’s already been mentioned. That movie is a complete mess !!!!!!!
Another lousy prop from Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is the Nuclear Curtain. Not only is it just a box with a couple of cheap light sockets hooked up to a suicide cord but in the movie switching the bulbs reverses the polarity of the thing and shuts it off.
Then there’s the “live” deer swimming across the creek in Boggy Creek II. It’s plainly a old hunting trophy they probably picked up at a yard sale.
Damn, just beaten again with a suggestion. Agree with #102. The movie is definitely in the top 5 for worst props. There’s so many.
Does an invisible hamster count as a laughable prop?(Amazing Transparent Man) If not, then the hubcap armor worn by the girl in Ator: The Blade Master(Cave Dwellers).
The girdle that Dan Kessler wears in The Giant Spider Invasion, laughable and disgusting.
I have to second Mr. B(ob) and nominate Warrior of the Lost World’s motorcycle effects. The motorcycle screen readout is actually the Starmaster Atari video game. You can’t get much cheaper than that.
The Invasion of the Neptune Men also deserves a shout out due to the crappy ships and lame radar screen effects that they showed on screen for approximately 1/3 of the movie.
109 comments and nobody’s mentioned the Master’s STUPID staff in “Manos: The Hands of Fate.” As Joel says, it looks like a rusted out tailpipe. Sure, it’s not as impractical or absurd as many of the other mentioned props here, but it is laughable because it’s not intimidating and it serves no purpose.
What about the frisbee space station from “Project Monobase” or the other props that the scientist uses to explain the space mission to the journalist (“or large barge”)? And speaking of bad props from “Space Mutiny,” you can’t forget “the laser that whirs like a drill!”
But most of my favorites were already mentioned. Unlike most denizens of the message boards, I read all the comments before posting my own in order to not be repetitive.
The “hot dog” artillery from Undersea Kingdom. Totally laughable. Just as bad, the prop version of Krankor: after he says “Ya scum!” he jumps up to meet Prince of Space and he’s a doll-type of thing. Crow says “I’ll throw my doll up at you!” Those tiny dolls from “Are You Ready for Marriage”. Boing! Maybe that prank mask-thing from Track of the Moon Beast.
How about or might hunter hero from Teenage Cavemen carrying a deer carcass back to camp? Just how old WAS that roadkill anyway, to have such severe rigor mortis?
Sharktopus #48: (Radar is a fairly simple concept to grasp, so how come mid-20th century movies assign radar with world-shaking omnipotence the way late-20th century movies treat computers?)
Because most Hollywood writers are English majors with only the shakiest grasp of basic scientific principles.
#91 I think you mean “Night of the Blood Beast”
The tiny buggy from Blood Waters of Dr. Z. Not only is it really stupid looking, but it gets easily bogged in a swamp even though I’m sure it was suppose to make crossing a swamp easy.
The giant paper mache hand in, “The Amazing Colossal Man”. The giant, dune buggy spider in “Giant Spider Invasion”. The pasta worms in “Squirm”.
two others I don’t think have been mentioned:
The giant syringe from Amazing Colossal Man. Not too bad, but still silly.
Also I believe in Revenge of the Creature there is a seen where the creature throws a prop human into a tree and it looks really fakey. The ball on a stick from that movie as well.
@114: You’re right. I’ve noticed that most movies and TV shows that use real life science rarely talk about it at a level more advanced than what you’d find in a HS class at the time. It’s also why characters are more likely to be writers or to work in the media than would be expected in real life.
Another one for the list is in Track of the Moon Beast. They had to zoom in on a picture of the moon because the actual moon pulled out of the deal at the last minute.
Lamest prop for is the enforcers from Space Muntiny. Which makes it the coolest. I wish I had bigger garage because I would absolutely built my own enforcer. I would be the terror of my neighborhood.[manicle laughter]
I don’t know if it’s my absolute favorite laughable prop, but I was amused by the alien babes’ “yellow submarine” head-shaver that appeared in “Gamera vs. Guiron”. It’s clearly a typical Oster clipper with some colorful plastic junk glued to it.
As soon as I saw this week’s topic, I immediately thought of the go carts/bumper cars/floor buffers from “Space Mutiny”, and I see lots of other people did, too. I actually watched it last night (again), and they are truly laughable–you really could walk on your hands and catch up to them faster. (Favorite related riff: “Put the top up! PUT THE TOP UP!!”)
Honorable mention goes to the mask with its own fanny pack from “The Pumaman.” :)
Do the invisible warriors Ator and Jimmy Carl Black fought in Cave Dwellers count? Or is that considered costumes, or….?
I dunno, but there’s alota crap in Pod People. The music studio, the flying objects, the data stream(okay, that was probably just the soundtrack), the congested Smucker’s egg, the pointless what I call glowing death dots. I could go on…
Yeah, I know Jimmy Carl Black wasn’t the actor playing Thong…
@ Sitting Duck: With the notable exception of Futurama’s writers, many of whom have advanced mathematics degrees for some reason. :eek:
It is with deep shame that I say that I have a great one for
this thread but cannot remember the movie :(
Maybe someone can help, I think it might be a spy one, Operation Double-007 (maybe)…(Actually probably not)
Anyway, there’s an underwater shot of a scuba diver, but apparently it’s far to expensive to actually film a real human scuba diver so they used a wind up toy for the mesmerizing effect.
Mighty Jack, maybe? Help…
I just thought of one..the socks..i mean worms from Robot Holocaust.
One that I always found hilarious were the earrings/trackers from “Clonus”. If they used them to track them on the campus of the Loser Clone Institute couldn’t they have used them in town? Did they just forget about them or what?
#114 Having an English minor, I think you’re overgeneralizing. Some writers are just lazy and won’t do research, some are unaware of how many viewers will actually know something about a scientific subject and be able to call out bull****. Like Doc Lockhart’s weight-detecting radar (which somehow doesn’t detect trees in Arkansas despite being surrounded by them).
Yeah the helicopter and submarine from Danger! Death Ray! get my vote. They just make me laugh and laugh. The Enforcers come in second.
@ Warren #130: But then you’re only minoring in English. :P I will concede that I overgeneralized in that post.
Mechanical reindeer from santa claus:
“A pentagram and reindeer laughing, you figure it out.”
A couple that have yet to be mentioned:
-The pig sleigh from Jack Frost
-The Hitler Building
The keyboard taped to a sheet of metal on the wall in Space Mutiny, which was supposed to be a video monitor.
How about the X-ray machine that detects cocktail shrimp in Night of The Bloodbeast
Sorry, boys, Project Moonbase has to take the prize. Gotta love it when the cast can’t even keep it together.
Dr BELLOWS: Now that we have a space station…
BRAINS: or frisbee!
Dr BELLOWS: …it is at last possible to send a ship…
BRAINS: or batteries!
Dr BELLOWS: …all the way around the moon.
BRAINS: “…or playground ball!”
Then, of course, we have the spaghetti ball in the Rocky Jones film.
SERVO: Look, it’s the MST3K logo!
JOEL: You’re not supposed to know about that!
:-)
Honorable mention goes to the paper towel rolls desperately trying to be Patriot missiles (or something) in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. A lousy bear costume doesn’t count as a prop – that’s a case of wearing it badly.
Oh yeah, paper towels glued to the patio table. But wasn’t that stock footage of real equipment that just looked fakey? Or was SSCtM so cheap they couldn’t even afford real stock footage? :laugh:
Where are our wall-mounted keyboards, anyway? *averybrooks* I want my flying car! /averybrooks/
The Final Sacrifice – Troy’s wiffleball bat, which is used to brain one of the exterminators trying to get in the house. You know it’s a wiffleball bat because Troy has no muscle tissue that allows him to lift anything heavier than 5 ounces and he apparently swings it with the authority of Robert De Niro as Al Capone in “The Untouchables”.
I don’t think this was mentioned, but the “device” used to “communicate with the dead” in The Dead Talk Back is quite laughable, just looks like a ball of aluminum foil.
I see the octopus from Bride of the Monster has been mentioned several times. True story: The fake octopus in the film was stolen from Republic Studio’s backlot. The motor which controlled the octopus’ tentacles was not stolen with it.
If you have never seen the movie Ed Wood with Johnny Depp i highly recommend it. Great funny movie.
I’d have to pick the shameless self-plugging movie posters in “Earth vs. the Spider.” Second place goes to the radar box in “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.”
Has anyone mentioned the spider puppet in Horrors of Spider Island
#138: Sure they could afford stock footage in SCCtM. Remember that infamous shot of the planes refueling? That was used (but did not come from) Dr Strangelove. :-P
Most likely, that’s why Crow (I think, hard to tell sometimes) imitates the good Doctor later in the episode. Someone had to recognize that scene…
Forgot about the Volkswagen spider in the Giant Spider Invasion. Now that’s a real slug bug!
(and yes, I know spiders aren’t bugs. Go away.) :rotfl:
We aren’t mentioning the plywood shells around the jeeps used in Commando Cody. After all, even Servo recognized that the Moon Men “had uses for plywood we can’t even imagine.” And they don’t look THAT bad…
Not to defend the “invisible faceplates” of 12 To The Moon, but the filmmakers probably pulled that idea out of their hinders at the very last minute. The faceplates of the real air force surplus high altitude pressure suits they used would have reflected the cameras and just about everything else.
Even Stanley Kubrick had that little problem shooting 2001, if you know where to look. ;)
The ridiculously small return pod that “Monster a Go Go” supposedly returned to Earth in. Even Joel, Crow and Tom laugh upon seeing it.
The very obviously rubber “Devil Fish.”
The mask that is obviously coming off the monster (at the end of the movie) in “The Brain that Wouldn’t Die.”
How about the baby oil on the nightstand in Mitchell?
Forget Krasker’s “radio,” how about the razor blade in a wineglass? :roll: