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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Love the moment when the two Fingals in the 2001-esque landscape fly by the camera:
(outstretched arms) “I love you this much!” / (hands in pockets) “I don’t care for you!”
Just Blade Runner.
Hmmm, so is this or that a worse role/performance…
Did someone just say something? I could have sworn… nah, just my imagination.
Oh, okay. Oops, then. :-|
AFAIK though the Brains rarely refer to anime/manga unless the film in question is Japanese, and not even all that much then. Of course, nearly all anime/manga references would WHOOOOOOSH *right* over my head, so I can’t be nearly as certain as I appear to be. ;-)
It’s due to a vague similarity between the “breathy” speech patterns of both Floyd the barber and the Peter Lorre impersonator in the movie. I.E., if Floyd was a creepy perv he might sound kind of like that guy.
I like this episode a lot. The movie is so weird and goofy, there’s plenty of opportunity for riffing. One of my favorite riffs is when the “Fat Man” is coming to Rick’s, and they block the door with a couple of flimsy rattan chairs…
Mike: “Yeah, that’ll stop the 400 pound guy who smells pancakes.”
The one thing I dislike is the parts of the host segments involving Tom and Crow’s monkey. It’s not that funny to begin with, and they drag it out too long.
Well, even I’d call that a bit of a stretch — I’ve watched many episodes of The Andy Griffith Show and that part of Floyd’s dialogue never particularly struck me — but okay, thanks. :-)
Now that you mention it, the only way I know that’s a Raul Julia reference is because The Elusive Robert Denby quoted the line in question seven years ago (“Seven years ago?” “Seven Years Ago.”). Is that irony? Or is it that thing that gets confused with irony? ;-)
I loved the monkey stuff. Mike’s submissive pose is just so ridiculous.
I wonder if my posts get Liked by different people or by the same ones over and over again. Oh well. :-)
I further wonder if anyone found my description of “Interface” interesting enough to look for more info about it. Having watched it once, it struck me as almost MADE to be riffed on…
I love when “The Fat Man” is walking and Tom is wheezing and coughing. It gets me everytime!
Delete your account.
Did I see that? I didn’t see that. It’s so funny you’d think I would see that. I didn’t see that…