Movie: (1983) In an dystopian future, a corporate drone discovers a way to project himself into his a favorite movie.
First shown: 12/6/97
Opening: Crow wants to cash in on his catchphrase: “You know you want me, baby!”
Intro: Mike tries to find himself a catchphrase, while Public Pearl TV begins its dubious pledge drive
Host segment 1: Crow and Tom order a monkey, which escapes and throws stuff
Host segment 2: While Mike continues to struggle with Henry the monkey, PPTV presents a preview of “Pearl! Pearl! Pearl! Pearl! Pearl!”
Host segment 3: Tom asks to be doppled to the nanite world, and soon regrets it
End: Bobo tries and fails to talk Henry down, so Mike takes deplorable action. Meanwhile, Pearl is counting her ill-gotten gain
Stinger: “Mom … ‘m I nuts?”
(307 votes, average: 4.62 out of 5)
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• And so season 8 comes to an end, and does so with a flourish. Another strange …er… movie, lots of great riffing and memorable host segments.
• Bill’s take this episode is here.
• This episode was included in Rhino’s The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection, Vol. 4
• References.
• The “You Know You Want Me, Baby” T-shirts hit the Info Club store very quickly after this show aired. The boxes we can see in the opening are probably real.
• This season started on the first of February and it was December when this last episode of the season aired. The first seven episodes were shown in seven weeks, an almost dizzying bounty of new MST3K. But after that we got exactly five episodes every three months. This would be the last new episode until season 9 began in mid-March of the following year.
• The “Public Pearl TV” pledge drive in the opening is inspired. And, of course, Ortega (that’s Paul under that mask) makes a return appearance. “The Nature of Bobo” bit-within-a-bit is great too.
• TV’s Frank is invoked twice, including an “eyukaeee!”
• Instantmonkeysonline.com actually exists (update: it STILL exists). It allows you to send a cute ascii picture of a monkey to a friend via e-mail. It wasn’t very instant when I tried it, though.
• Mary Jo and Bill managed to top the pledge drive sketch with the instant classic “When Loving Lovers Love.” The pair show a tremendous chemistry.
• The endless fat jokes might begin to seem unfair after a while, except, let’s face it, the movie itself keeps calling the character “The Fat Man.” That seems, to me, like permission to go nuts.
• Paul and Patrick are the voices of the hoodlum nanites. This is pretty much the one clunker segment in this episode.
• That’s Beez and then-recent BBI hire Peter Rudrud as the voices of the “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank Technical Support” team.
• By the way, the RiffTrax team actually did a very respectful, but still very funny riff of “Casablanca.”
• Cast and crew round up: Another brief one, since this was mostly done by Canadians. Costumer: Mary Jane McCarty also worked on “The Last Chase.”
• CreditsWatch: Produced and directed by Kevin. Fred Street, an audio guy who appeared in the credits in seasons 2 and 3 and then returned for season 8, falls off the regular credits after this episode, as does Post Audio Inc. (Both return one more time for special thanks in a season 10 episode.)
• Fave riff: “Thank you, Floyd the pervert.” Honorable mention: “Ah, the call to script rewrites.”
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I believe the nanites are portrayed by Patrick Brantseg and Paul Chaplin. I don’t know why Bridget is credited, it doesn’t sound anything like her.
156: “Nothing against Trace, but I don’t think he could have delivered, “You know you want me baby!” quite as well as Bill.”
Well, Trace wouldn’t have WRITTEN “You know you want me baby.” Trace’s Crow was much more of a cheerful innocent. Bill’s Crow is mad about being alive, which I presume is why they included the part about him being alone on the Satellite for 500 years. He’s basically a warped frustrated old man. And I’ll stop again.
There’s only one thing to say about this episode that I didn’t say last time:
I’M INTERFACED!!!
Oh, and one other thing. It may or may not be an intentional reference but the “Old guys becoming pandas” riff is exactly what happens to the main character’s father in Ranma 1/2.
“Thank you, Floyd the Pervert.”
So…why “Floyd”? Was there a Howard McNear resemblance that they otherwise didn’t comment on?
What can I say about PPTV that hasn’t already been said? This was easily the highlight of the episode for me. Mary Jo plays it just right with spot on delivery. Just like a real PBS telethon.
The monkey on SOL did get old quickly.
A lot of people state this one is hard to follow. I don’t think so. It is a series of silly plot contrivances but they are easy to follow and I have to admit the story did suck me in.
Favorite Riffs:
The fat man appears and Crow remarks as Fingal-Rick “Crap and I’m running the prime rib special tonight.”
Two thugs wearing hats approach Fingal. Mike “These guys were rejected from Men Without Hats.”
Crow “So this is public television. Suddenly I feel like beating the crap out of Fred Rodgers.”
Good episode…lots of really great riffs…
Thanks to Sitting Duck and Jose Chung for the credits corrections (now made). I can (partially) explain: The tape of this that I had for a long time cut off before the credits. I asked somebody to transcribe them for me. They apparently made a mistake on the Bridget entry. Gotta fix that in the credits listing too. The Jim/Kevin confusion I can blame on no one but my faulty brain.
Yep, I don’t care for this one. Bring on Season 9!
Something no one has mentioned during the PPTV segment is Servo’s cheerful and oh-so chatty pledge call. I wonder how many takes it took for him to get through that tongue-twisting line about how cool it’ll be to have a tote bag to tote things in. At least one outtake made it into the second Poopie reel. Plus the timing of his “Helloooo!” just as he’s insulting Mike has me laughing every time.
Now I have to go watch my Websters and my Facts of Lifeses and my Who’s the Bosseseses….
dopple my fingal, mike, and monitor my fingal time and my cube time
I could go for some Flav-o-Fives right about now.
And the Sci-Fi Era: Year 1 comes to an end. . . while not always pretty, and with some definite growing pains and bumpy patches, Season 8 of MST still manages to provide a few classics and some all around great episodes.
Overdrawn at the Memory Bank is one of those great episodes, it’s pretty funny overall and the movie is unique amongst MST movies, what with the shot-on-video-public-broadcasting-terribleness of it. I agree with others, this is a rough one, but that doesn’t limit my enjoyment of it. I like it.
The Host Segments are pretty good, I love the PPTV pledge drive (Ortega!), with HS#2’s “When Loving Lovers Love” being a highlight of the whole season (and most definitely an overall highlight of Pearl’s). One question though: Brain Guy whipped up this set for Pearl and the pledge drive, right? Well. . . where exactly did he whip this up AT? Where are they? They haven’t got to Castle Forrester yet. . .so. . .where are they?
The other segments are only so-so, the Henry the monkey stuff in HS#1 and then after that are okay I guess; I’m sure it was fun to throw stuff at Mike. Also, notice how one of the things Henry throws (a box of Triscuits, I believe) gets caught in Crow’s net. Nice toss, Henry!
The Servo-Nanites skit in HS#3 is my least favorite; I just really really don’t like the Nanites, none of their skits do it for me.
Back to the movie, OATMB is pretty bad, but you have to admit that it seems pretty ambitious for a public broadcasting production. Also, Raul Julia is pretty good in this, even if his character is kind of a jerk and doof.
*One more movie note: Production Designer Carol Spier is David Cronenberg’s go to PD, having worked together on 14 films (including most of Cronenberg’s best: The Fly, Videodrome, Naked Lunch, The Brood, etc.) and she also has become Guillermo Del Toro’s choice for his English language films, Mimic, Blade II, and this summer’s Pacific Rim. She most likely got roped into doing OATMB due to her love of public broadcasting (just like Raul Julia); the same year as OATMB (1985) she was also the Art Director for Sesame Street Presents: Follow that Bird. The more you know! :rainbow:
–
RIFFS:
Crow: “Wanda Cannon! Now that’s a porno name if I ever heard one.”
Mike: “TV’s Frank!”
Servo: “Wow, Frank’s really come up in the world.”
Servo: “Man, never show a good movie in the middle of your crappy movie.”
Crow: “Huge slam on anteaters out of nowhere!”
movie: “Wait, switch to analog..”
Mike: “It has a much warmer sound.”
Servo: “My nuts?”
Mike: “He cracked the code for scrubbing bubbles.”
Mike: “This is how much pure cocaine you would need to enjoy this movie.”
Crow (as Fat Man): “To Wendy’s!”
Crow: “Eraserhead was easier to follow than this movie!”
Mike: “VertiGo-to Hell..”
–
Oh, and in case you were wondering,
“YOU KNOW YOU WANT ME, BABY!”
–
Overdrawn at the Memory Bank,
I give it
4 out of 5 Fingals
Guess I should chime in, since it influenced my ID and all…
As many have said, classic episode. Yes, Servo wanting Mike to “dopple my Fingal down to the Nanite world” was the weak segment of the group, but arrogance always seems to be followed up by some well-deserved comeuppance. Why would Servo be any different?
“Monitor both my cube time AND my Fingal time.”
Oh God, this episode is bringing up repressed memories of all the mind crushingly boring nature documentaries that my parents made me watch on PBS when I was a kid. I swear those things were filmed by directors who thought Empire State was too fast paced. And then for 1/3 of the year the pledge drives would be on and I’d have to wait through 20 minutes of pathetic and aggressive begging to get to a documentary about the digestion of the Sumatran Sloth. On a black and white TV no less. As a liberal and an environmentalist I’m sympathetic to a lot of their programming, even if I couldn’t stand to watch a lot of it.
I like this episode a lot, despite the PBS flashbacks and the soap opera look of the movie being something of an eyesore.
Another weak point of the film is the frequent use of narration. Normally, such a device is used in movies when there’s some exposition to be conveyed and there’s no way to do so convincingly in the dialogue. The problem here is that the narrations don’t actually provide any information that viewers couldn’t have figured out on their own. So it comes off more like a really crappy DVD commentary track.
Good lord, people, it’s Flav-O-Fibs (it’s clearly spelled that way on the bag) as in flavor and fiber.
I am one of those who is vastly annoyed by the time OATMB staggers to a close, chucking spinning Raul paperdolls at us in a queasy mixture of weird and boring. But I understand that this sort of thing is subjective. I truly do, because I actually *enjoy* the weird and boring ending of “Fu Manchu.” Hey look–ants! (slurp slurp)
Pearl’s great in this episode. She’s a Mad for all seasons like her son before her. I love the “Loving Lovers Love to Love Lovers Who Love When They’re in Love” lyrics. :)
I thought they were politically conscious subversive hip-hop snacks called Flavor-Flavs.
“Get your monkeys instantly, with instant monkeys online!”
There was a missed riffing opportunity. When the Chairman was explaining to Fingal about the tag switch, he referred to the kid responsible as a little rascal. Despite this, no one hums the Our Gang theme.
This is how I would rank the Season 8 experiments:
(*****)
814: Riding with Death, 813: Jack Frost, 810: Giant Spider Invasion, 820: Space Mutiny, 811: Parts: The Clonus Horror, 821: Time Chasers
(****)
809: I was a Teenage Werewolf, 803: The Mole People, 816: Prince of Space, 822: Overdrawn at the Memory Bank
(***)
815: Agent for HARM, 818: Devil Doll, 804: The Deadly Mantis, 812: TISCWSLABMUZ, 801: Revenge of the Creature, 817: Horror on Party Beach, 807: Terror from the Year 5000, 806: The Undead, 819: Invasion of the Neptune Men, 808: The She Creature, 802: The Leech Woman, 805: The Thing that Couldn’t Die
–
Overall, a pretty good season. Obviously the back-half of the season outshines the first-half, and while not one of my (overall) favorite seasons of MST3K (or even my favorite season of the Sci-Fi era), it still has plenty of goodness to offer.
t minus 26 weeks and counting until….?
Well, it certainly won’t be us commenting on episode 1014…. ;)
Fingal’s cubed it again.
Sampo, when exactly is the “eyukaeee!”?
I still don’t get the “Floyd the Pervert” riff. Oh well.
But they only met less than a year ago…
He didn’t get bored with women. He got bored with one PARTICULAR woman. There’s a HUGE difference.
Wouldn’t it be weird if it turns out that all of the commentators who repeat MST3K lines on a regular basis turned out to all live in the same city? Why, yes, it would.
Well, the entire experience is “fake” so I’m not sure why you’d put undue attention on the spear. ;-)
Hard to see how they could do a worse job than the current old rich white guys regime…
I’m INTERFACED!
BFD!
Please see the Time Chasers comments section for more about INTERFACEs…
Now containing 10% more ant parts…
So, a joke satirizing Wacky 70’s-80’s Marketable TV Catchphrases, gets quoted in perpetuity as a….marketable fan TV catchphrase. Well, nice to see things worked out.
(Good point, but think they fished that well essentially dry…)
And since the movie bothered them, It’s All PBS’s Fault, including their stupid pledge drives.
(And the desire to beat up Mister Rogers, and not just because King Friday embarrasses the Cowtown puppeteers.)
Except that in 1983, there wasn’t one actual PBS evil-network-headquarters producing original content; productions were usually produced by local stations, or independent companies connected with one major station, which accounts for the cheap-local-videotape look. Apart from any British or CBC imports or Children’s Television Workshop, most early PBS of the 70’s and early 80’s could politely be called “Fan-fiction”, but then, that’s what made it so populist and democratic.
That’s hard for some of us in Boston to grasp, where, of course, WGBH produces everything.
So many people are having so much trouble rolling with the future technology stuff, I couldn’t address it all if I wanted to. And I don’t. :-)
Under penalty of law? That’s odd.
Seems rather self-explanatory to me. Noticeably less obtuse than the likes of “Liquor Up Front, Poker in the Rear”…
Since you raise the question, no, he wasn’t. Man, The Electric Company was great, wasn’t it? :-) 780 episodes, wow.
You may be thinking of Luis Ávalos. AKA Dr. Doolats. AKA Igor. AKA Pedro the Plant Guy. AKA the Tickler. AKA the Blowhard. And so on.
…
Aww, he’s dead. :-|
You just described most of the human race…
“Y’know what this mall needs? Killbots.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chopping_Mall
Oh, and I suppose his village was attacked by electricians too, QUIT WHINING!
;-)
Here’s something for occasions when you encounter someone who insinuates that not pledging to PBS means you want to send Big Bird from Sesame Street to living on the street. Respond by pointing out that Big Bird is hardly on the show anymore, and you could legitimately rename it Elmo & Friends. They’ll have a much harder time making emotional appeals with Elmo. Sure, the kids seem to like him, and they are the target audience. But I think you’d be hard-pressed to find an adult who can do more than tolerate him.
Nova was okay. But wow, could Irrational Geographic ever make even the most intriguing subjects deadly dull.
why i think Sesame Street will be off the air within 10 years or so (since Jim died they have had a hard time with all the Muppets/thing he made)
One of the worst movies they ever did. Someone would have to force me to suffer through this bore-fest again. Even the MST3K crew can’t make this one watchable.
In the future, puerile ruses will still work!
Another lovely bit of nostalgia from this capper to the the return season. Did anyone get a bit of a twinge when the MSTHour theme got lifted for the Public Pearl theme? Being fairly unfamiliar with the pre-Sci-Fi era, I didn’t make that connection until years later.
I’m sort of split on this one ultimately. The host segments are pure gold (indeed, did they make that set out of the remnants of Roman Times?), and while the movie segments are often funny they do drag in spots. Thankfully the movie itself is such a mass of reference spaghetti thrown at the wall there’s always something coming along to perk things up.
Fave riffs
[on obvious Peter Lorre impersonator]
Who’s he doing? Jimmy Stewart? James Cagney! John Kenneth Galbraith! Ram Jass! Terry ‘Hulk’ Hogan, maybe?
“…you’re in for a bumpy ride!”
Now ‘All About Eve’? Why not just have the Bowery Boys come through the movie?
[simulated woman vanishes]
Now if she’d only turned into a cold beer it would’ve been perfect!
And not longterm on Sesame Street, either, as Rafael the Fix-It Man was only on for one season, and later replaced by the whole Luis & Maria thing at the repair shop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtoZupV5R8w
Yes, there are adults who still know these generational things, especially with “Old-School” Sesame now going down the toilet.
Of course, Julia was just starting out on stage in NY at the time, so for us today, it was the first archival appearance of a later-to-be-famous actor, but for Raul, it was…Tuesday. :)
Sad but true–Except for Rita Moreno and the hip black guy, we never found out whatever happened to most of the classic Electric Company cast….Well, except for Skip “Fargo North” Hinnant later doing the voice of Fritz the Cat.
Easily my least favorite episode of the entire run. I find this one just marginally funnier than Space Mutiny. My least favorite host segments, they are so different than the comfortability I’m used to. And the movie is horrendously awful to look at, just yuck. Totally baffled as to why this is a fan favorite.
Bring on Season 9! Things start to drastically improve starting next week, because Lembeck is staying!!!
Yeah, just dopple my Fingal, I’ll show you some fun stuff.
With all our technology available we still don’t have a DoppleApp! Get off your asses Apple! The AppleDoppleApp would sell like hotcakes!
I’m here to help.
You really don’t HAVE to include an anteater in the app being as they are dirty, disgusting creatures. But as a downloadable add-on I don’t think most of us would object.
My nuts?
(I’m reposting this (slightly altered) from the Time Chasers thread because that thread’s dying down and probably won’t get much future traffic. No big deal, I just think it’ll be of at least faint interest to some.)
klisch: Using a Commodore 64 as a time travel device is so 80’s.
Kenneth Morgan: OK, this movie isn’t all that great, but there are whole seasons of “Doctor Who” that are less credible than the Commodore 64/light plane-inspired time paradoxes featured here.
Dan in WI: For my money the Commodore 64 is the star of this film. This was the first home computer our family bought when I was about 5th grade in 1983. That really was an amazingly flexible machine in its day and its games totally blew away the Atari machines of the day.
Larry P.: I loved the Commodore 64 making an appearance; guess those things were more powerful than people realized!
I was comparing the family Commodore 64 computer to the Atari 2600 game machine because I actually used it.
jay: Time Chasers had a Commodore 64 in a Beechcraft Bellanca.Nothing says cinematic visual excitement like 5 1/2 inch floppy disks.Who wouldn’t thrill to the sound of the hard drive spinning up.
My, the whole forum’s certainly buzzing about that Commodore…
Films have been depicting computers doing things that computers can’t possibly do for as long as there have been computers if not longer. ;-) For more action-packed Commodore action, see a film entitled (quite coincidentally with no bearing on this episode) “Interface” (released in 1985, with which many people remain pre-occupied). This Star Chamber meets Mazes & Monsters non-stravaganza was filmed on an even smaller budget than “Time Chasers” with much worse actors, features quite possibly THE most incompetent cops in bad movie history, and its teacher protagonist makes Nick Miller look like Indiana Jones (if you kind of squint…) while SIMULTANEOUSLY being sharper than his female lead. It’s available on both VHS and DVD.
I love love this episode until the last 15 mins or so.. really runs out of steam and then the movie’s awfulness just suffocates me. I love the telethon bits and enjoy the monkey throwing stuff at Mike. It’s a movie that needs to be seen to be believed..
a lot of MST3K episodes run out of steam near the end but this one hurts worse for some reason.
3.5 out of 4 stars with a couple all time classic moments.
When loving lovers love is awesome.
Years ago when I worked as a Newspaper Advertising person (remember those?) there was another guy on my sales team that was a MSTIE. I lent him a copy of ODATMB, as he had never seen it. For about the next six months, everytime we’d pass in the hallway, he’d laugh and say “This is how much pure cocaine you need to enjoy this movie.”
M “Never Saw A Chris Farley Movie. PHILLISTINES!” Sipher:
Actually, Appolonia has no clue what “cinemas” are at all, implying that yes, they’ve been restricted. Or she’s really dumb
Are the two mutually exclusive? They are not.
She Just Didn’t Care.
Aside from the fact that snuff films have never been proven to exist, you’d rather watch people die horribly? Hm.
Well, he writes for an audience of human beings. He knows what they want. ;-)
This wasn’t his life story. It was just Tuesday.
Well, remember, this is from the eighties, when sexual harassment was graded, not punished. :-|
Besides, if I’m not mistaken and frankly what are the odds of that, it doesn’t count as sexual harassment unless she tells him to stop and he keeps doing it, anyway. Apparently she never told him to stop, so he was just an irritant, not a harasser. I guess. I hope I’m not wrong.
“Hit it! Wiggle the plug or something!”
So, you always thought you’d lose, then.
As the internet teaches us every day, no matter what it is, there are weirdos who want it. No Matter What It Is.
It “sounds” like you’re wondering if Ranma influenced Overdrawn, which, since Ranma debuted some four years after Overdrawn, clearly isn’t the case. If you’re wondering if Ranma was referencing this film, well, that’s actually almost as unlikely. I don’t think 1980s Japan was devouring the USA’s ENTIRE science fiction output at the time.
And it’s “reconst” — st_, st_, st_ — a slang…from the future! term for “reconstitute.”
I think Smoothie was wondering if the riff was possibly a reference to Ranma.
Top 10 ep!
Oops, something else that I posted under Time Chasers where it will probably mostly go unnoticed and so I’m re-posting it here:
TOTALLY OFF_TOPIC, I’ve come across various Deviantart pages which offer versions of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen per genre, decade, and so on.
I hereby thus (no, wait, that should be thus hereby) suggest “Who would be on your MST3K League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?” as a non-episode thread topic. I suppose that could use some fine tuning, it’s up to you, I can’t make all your decisions for you…
Still a longtime favorite episode, even after having seen plenty more (the box set this episode is in and the one with Cave Dwellers were the first episodes I owned after Manos); the movie is *so* incredibly goofy and dumb, Raul Julia’s two performances are very bad, and the riffing is really on point. When the Fat Man drives off in his Jeep and someone yells “TO WENDY’S!”, I always lose it.
Ooh, an M. Bison reference! Six degrees of Raul Julia.
Yeah, nobody ever makes THOSE!
((covers one eye) Or didn’t you see that?)