I was thinking about Ed Wood movies a few minutes ago and Bela Lugosi’s role in them in particular, then I realized that I wouldn’t have really become a Bela Lugosi fan if not for MST3K and Rifftrax. This, of course, brings up the question of which actors were introduced through MST3K that led people to become fans of them? In my case, along with Bela there’s no denying Beverly Garland and Reb Brown.
I’m going to expand this to include directors as well but the guy I want to mention is Bruno VeSota, who I had never heard of before I discovered MST3K and who I really think had some talent and who I love to see in anything he’s in.
Who’s your pick?
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Linda Griffiths of “Overdrawn” is an interesting case, not because of her acting, but because she is pretty talented writer and dramatist.
And to a lesser extent, I’m kind of jonesing to see “Time Chasers 2,” because the original has that low-budget likable charm to it.
#51 – I remember several years ago, Linda Griffiths used to be a movie host on one of the cable networks we have up here (Showcase). She would discuss the movie they were about to show, which were usually for Mature Adults only. Not porn, but definitely not for the kiddies… :-)
Ed Wood. I’d never heard of him, or his dubious legacy, until MST3K and “Bride of the Monster”. After “The Violent Years” and “The Sinister Urge”, I decided to check out “Plan Nine from Outer Space”, and have enjoyed most of his films ever since, even the twisted “Glen or Glenda”.
Granted, Wood was a strange bird, and his talent never matched his lofty ambitions, but his films have a goofy charm, and despite their cheesiness, an endearing earnestness. You can tell he, and his actors, were really trying their best, even though their best was unintentionally hilarious.
Wood never intended to be a laughingstock, and his final years were pathetically sad, but posthumously he got the last laugh, as he has a legacy as a cult favourite, and IMO his films made some of the best episodes in MST3K history. I was thrilled when RiffTrax did “Plan Nine from Outer Space”, which I had hoped they would’ve done during the MST3K years. The best thing about most of Wood’s films is you can get as much enjoyment out of them on their own, as well as with the MST3K/RiffTrax treatment. Shine on, you crazy diamond.
@ #34
I know. Sinister Urge would have never been without Kline.
Others have said the same thing, but the only movie persona that I truly became a fan of via MST3K was Beverly Garland.
I’d seen her through all those years of My Three Sons, where she never made an impression on me, but I hadn’t seen her in anything else. MST3K educated me.
I also became a fan of the MST3K cast, of course, except for Joel, of whom I was already a fan.
DICK CONTINO.
Are you kidding me?
DICK CONTINO.
The Pride of Fresno–you want to see a tribute to how much fun you can have with your life? Visit his website. He’s 82 and still gettin’ it done. And check out MRS. Contino.
At his wiki entry: “Contino’s acting became known to a new generation in 1991, when “Daddy-O,” a low-budget 1958 movie in which he played the starring role as a faddishly-dressed beat rebel and singer, became the centerpiece of an episode of the third season of ‘Mystery Science Theatre 3000.'”
Jeez, Dick Contino. MST brought new wonder and meaning to my life when it introduced me to—*Dick Contino.*
I’m right in there with everyone who has posted about their heightened awareness of Coleman Francis and Joe Don Baker, but the actor that MST3K really highlighted for me was John Saxon.
He might not be in all that many riffed movies (just Mitchell, I think), but his menacing eyebrows and his unforgettable glare really spice up whatever film he graces with his presence. Joel even references him when he describes the swan-helmeted whisper-thin bad guy in Cave Dwellers as that “John Saxon-ey type guy.”
I have since gone back and re-watched the original Nightmare on Elm Street and Enter the Dragon (which, as an aside, means that Bruce Lee and Joe Don Baker have just one degree of separation) and they both have a healthy dose of some sweet Saxon-ey goodness.
Mst3k made me fan of “bad” movie sin general,I was already fan of Ed Wood (thaanks to, well, the movie Ed Wood) in particular of Roger Corman, Tor Johnson, John Carradine, Kim Catrall, Vadinho, Death rays for peaceful purposes, the Del Airs (there are some songs of them on Youtube) and Gamera, the playboy of the kaiju world. Thanks to Space Mutiny I have watched Robo Wars, Strike Commando, etc. They are hilarious, if you are interested in watching Blast Hardcheese fighting commies with metal teeth.
But I’m not a hipster, like some of the people on this thread, I genuinely like them. Hipsters…
MST introduced me to Coleen Gray from Leech Woman and Phantom Planet and Gloria Talbott from Leech Woman and Girls Town. Gloria was in one of my fave sci-fi movies from the 50s, I Married a Monster From Outer Space. They were both in a lot of old tv shows and everytime I see Coleen I always have to say, “Are you some kind of leech lady?” It’s like the people we met through MST are old friends and then it’s comforting and kind of familiar to see them in something else.
Like #39, I have to say Tor Johnson and Rondo Hatton
@53 Ed Wood gets my respect too. He did what others only wished they could do. I think he could have been reasonably successful given a proper budget and support from a real film studio.
#61 His Glenn or Glenda is surprisingly advanced for the time, it tries to convey a posiive message. Compared it to some of the Dwain Esper explotation movies like Sex Madness, Reefer Madness, Marihuana, Maniac, Forbidden Adventure, which are just sleazy.
Hey. You guys wanna see Linda Griffiths, of Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, topless? Do you? Well, check out this movie called “Lianna”. It’s about a married woman who discovers that she’s a lesbian. :giggle:
Emby Mellay, the Princess Leia of the underworld.
Aleksandr Ptushko! I’ve had the chance to see two of his movies in theaters: The Stone Flower and Ruslan and Ludmilla. Two of the best moviegoing experiences of my life, truly.
Criterion Collection fans should bow down before Bryant Haliday of Devil Doll and The Projected Man–he was a co-founder of Janus Films, the film distribution company that brought what are now regarded as masterpieces of world cinema to the United States. Criterion was essentially the home-video arm of the films Janus distributed theatrically.
Director would be Coleman Francis. You have to like somebody who was cost conscious enough to shoot a film without sound or a script and then dub in the voices later and figure out the plot as you went along. Actor/Actress would be Allison Hayes: she seemed to be stuck in B movies despite her being a competent actress and a complete knockout. I don’t want to name names but I can think of some that have gotten farther on with a lot less.
Coleman Francis, Roger Corman and Tor Johnson are the first three that really stick out in my mind.
Barbara Valentin from “Horror of Spider Island”–went on to a decent acting career in Germany, lifelong friend of Freddie Mercury and “Babs will mess you up!” Robert Easton–more talented than first appeared (went on to be a respected voice coach), and, since I share a birthday with him, I’m always proud to be “hittin’ the BOOZE again!” Ray Dennis Steckler–we met him at a screening of his documentary “Reading, PA.” He wound up interviewing/filming the audience exiting the theater. Somewhere, in his vast bin of footage lies me and my wife; couldn’t be prouder. His wife is real nice person as well. Finally, teen idol, pilot, author, and rock ‘n roller Arch Hall Jr.–in 2006, Pittsburgh had an “Arch Hall Jr. weekend;” it was a meet and greet at a video store, a screening of “The Sadist” at the Warhol Museum and, best of all, a live show at the 31st Street Pub. The local garage rock scene turned out and, boy, does he have FANS! All this with Alan “Undercover Angel” O’Day on keyboards. Nice guys as well; Arch, Alan and Ray Dennis have all signed our DVD copy of “Wild Guitar”
Being a fan of film music, I probably never would have heard of Albert Glasser without MST3K. Wait…maybe that’s not a good thing!
Peter Graves, Roger Corman and Ed wood. I wouldn’t see that ed wood movie if wasn’t for Mst3k. And I respect Corman for saving so much on film and not braking the bank. He sometime made movies better that some movie makers who spend millions or billions. (Michale Bay)
Actors: Raul Julia; Joe Don Baker. Director: David Worth.
And all of those that were involved in “Time Chasers.” Most of the movies on MST3K had an “original” idea and each actor/director/story was something refreshing to see each time you watch.
MST3K makes me want to seek out the films in their entirety, and to also look for really obscure movies.
I said Bev for actress above…
Put me down for Corman under director. I didn’t put him above because I’d been watching his films since I was very small (I have a memory of seeing his Raven with Price, Lorre, Karloff) when I was probably 3 years old..the scene with Lorre half turned into a Raven…and it stuck with me). But MST3K showed me who he was.
I also like the song used in Hobgoblins, how was it called? Pig Liquor? Fish Picker?
#68 – ROGER CORMAN!! THAT’S who I couldn’t pull out the name on… Thanks! :)
Barbara Valentin, Coleman Francis, Beverly Garland, Robert Easton, Arch Hall, Jr.
I was already an Ed Wood fan! :)
Because of the riff in “Cave Dwellers”,”now we’re in a Kurosawa film”, I became a big fan of the director Akira Kurosawa. For some reason that riff stuck with me even though I had no idea who he was. One night flipping through stuff on T.V. I came across “Seven Samurai” and recognized the directors name from that riff. That movie pulled me in and made me a huge fan instantly. I have never had much of an interest in old b&w films, or subtitled films for that matter. So, the fact that it captured my attention for over 2 hours told me he was a special director that required further exploration. For that, I thank you MST3K.
I’ll echo the sentiments of others above and say Ed Wood, Coleman Francis, Ray Dennis Steckler, Bert I. Gordon and Roger Corman for sure. Beverly Garland as well; who was a very nice lady and I treasure the autographed picture I have of her from It Conquered the World. Same goes for Mamie Van Doren and glad I have my autographed picture of her too. Also I’ll throw in Jonathan Haze for good measure because I think he was better than the movies he was in to be sure. In general the show opened a door for me in appreciating films that aren’t the best to say the least.
I agree with #72 and I’ll seek out the unriffed versions of some of these flicks as well. The other day in fact I was happy because I found the unriffed version of Moon Zero Two paired with When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth on a Best Buy shelf. At first I was shocked that Best Buy was actually carrying a DVD that is out of print or close to it. I’m sure I’ll be more shocked after I watch the movie.
But MST opened the door that I can’t shut now. And for better or worse they broadened my tastes in movies.
Joe Estevez…has a great attitude about his career and the kind of movies he’s made.
And “Wild Rebels” gave me a new appreciation of Steve Alaimo.
Robert Ginty from Warrior of the Lost World.
I’ve been watching The Paper Chase this week and he’s good in it. The Exterminator is cool too.
Joe Don Baker. Mitchell and Final Justice aside, he has done some real go character roles in many movies.
About my comment (81) go should have been good.
would like to thank MST for turning me on to several actresses that I hitherto was not aware of and they are…….drumrole……….Lisa Foster of Cave Dweller fame who I am now going to check out in something else she was in called Fanny Hill. Looking forward to that! Also, Peggy Castle from Beginning/End and Invasion U.S.A. I became a fan of. The list continues with Virginia Leith from Brain/Wouldn’t Die and SO good in Kubrick’s Fear and Desire. More main squeezes I wish were mine and am now a big fan of courtesy of MST include the newleywed bride in The Creeping Terror, Suzanna Leigh in Deadly Bees, Diane Mahree in her sole movie appearance ManosTHOF, Lynne Frederick in Phase IV, Janet Munro in Crawling Eye and of course the bewitching Emby Mellay.
@YourNewBestFriend – Thanks for the Dick Contino stuff. It turns out I went to the same high school he did (though much later) yet somehow never I had heard of him.
As for the topic, I’m glad MST3k introduced me to Coleman Francis. I’m still not a fan but I am fascinated at how horrible his movies are. Who kept giving him money to make them?
Also I never would have heard “Everything I Touched Turned to) Gold” by Joe Valino if not for the show. What song is that you ask? It’s what Michele was dancing to at the jukebox in the beginning of Girl in Gold Boots. I love that song.
Have to agree about Roger Corman & Ray Dennis Steckler. Too bad that RDS badmouthed MST considering how many people were introduced to his work through it.
Also, back in college, I had an idea of a comic book where Dick Contino & Beverly Garland would hunt down paranormal Phenomina during the late 50s/early 60s, kinda like a 50s X-Files.
Also fell in love with the Bronx Warriors movies after seeing Escape 2000 (aka Escape from the Bronx). You don’t need to see 1990 Bronx Warriors to understand EFtB, but the drum solo scene is pretty darn cool.
Count me in the Coleman Francis appreciation(?) club. his movies actually have a lot of variety, despite the many ‘shooting people from an airplane” scenes.
I knew Richard Kiel from his cameos (e.g. Happy Gilmore (shudder)) and Bond film appearance, but I love seeing him being able to ‘stretch out’ in meatier roles like ‘Eegah,’ or the best, Human Duplicators. Also, I’ve grown to expect good things from Johnathan Haze.
it’s thanks to Coleman Francis that I became a John Carradine fan at a young age. His was always a name, a face, and a voice that happily stood out throughout a lifetime of watching B movies, and even continues to this day thanks to Frankenstein Island. Powerful stuff.
Growing up I had only seen Beverly Garland as Kate Jackson’s annoying mother in Scarecrow and Mrs. King but MST showed me a whole new side of her and you could tell she did her best in Corman schlock. I also never would have seen the movie Ed Wood without seeing Bride of the Monster first. Overall, MST broadened my horizons and movies like the Russo-Finnish trilogy helped me gain a good appreciation of the absurd.
Another vote for Arch Hall, Jr. If you haven’t seen “The Sadist”, do so. The story unfolds in real time, and his screen time is geniunely grim and disturbing; you believe his character is capable of anything.
Plus after his acting days were over he became a highly-skilled commercial pilot in Southeast Asia. Flying was always my dream; glad to see Mr. Hall made his come true.
I’ve seen him mentioned before but I’m going to add to the love of Arch Hall Jr. Recently saw The Sadist, and he’s really good. Maybe if he’s stuck to movies like this he would be better well known. Also enjoy Wild Guitar.
For anybody who hasn’t yet, go to his website. There’s some interesting stories of making the movies. He’s also on Facebook.
I also love Ed Wood and Tor Johnson. I think Ed was a good director and had some good ideas. He should have stayed far away from editing though.
Ill go with John Phillip Law and Lee Van Cleef together in Death Rides a Horse. Its in the public domain and very cheesy. Hey CT/RT did you get that, Public Domain!!!
Many of the movies “done” on MST3K were movies I first saw as a young teenager in the early ’70s on “Count Gore DeVol’s Saturday Chiller”, which ran between 1972 and 1979 on WDCA, Channel 20, an independent UHF station in Washington DC; in fact, right offhand, I can think of at least ten movies done on MST3K which I originally saw on the old Count Gore DeVol Show…. so, by the time I started watching MST3K, I was familiar with most of the “major” Grade B horror/sci-fi directors — Lippert, Corman, Gordon, Wood — as well as most of the actors, especially the gloriously tedious John Agar, the delightfully inarticulate Tor “Time For Go To Bed Now” Johnson, the surprisingly good Beverly Garland, and a young Peter Graves.
As far as directors I became a fan of as a direct result of watching MST3K, there’s only one: Coleman Francis… and I do mean There’s Only ONE Coleman Francis. The first picture of his that I saw was Red Zone Cuba, featuring the riveting cameo by John Carradine, as well as Carradine belting out the jaunty, up-tempo theme song as only he could sing it. My devotion to Francis’ work was cemented by the soul-crushingly dull Skydivers. There was just so much about that picture: the opening credit sequence and its jarring juxtaposition of dramatic symphonic music over a wild pulchritudinous dance scene, its riveting acting, its stunning action sequences, its multi-layered romantic subplots (“Suzy’s my girl!”), not to mention its brain-numbing tedium — nobody could take a potentially exciting scenario and totally crush the excitement out of it quite like Coleman Francis — I knew then that here was an auteur for the ages.
Ray Kellogg is another director I only vaguely remembered from my “Saturday Chiller” teenage viewing days — The Giant Gila Monster was one of those movies that went in through my eyeballs, through my brain, and escaped out the back of my head, leaving me totally unaffected — but, then came The Killer Shrews (Experiment 407) and my opinion of Kellogg was totally changed. The breathtaking special effects — putting dogs into crappy shaggy outfits was sheer genius — the romantic subplots, and the drinking…. ohhh, the drinking.
(…and btw, if there are any other MST freaks in the Washington DC Metro area who have a Saturday evening free, I think that a drinking game built around a double-feature viewing of The Killer Shrews and The Leech Woman would be really awesome — or really disastrous, depending on how you look at it. Obviously, the host would need plenty of overnight crash-out space.)
Ray Dennis Steckler is another director who I’d heard a lot about — especially on DJ Pyro’s Intoxica podcast on luxuriamusic.com — but whose work I’d never actually seen. As I was a big fan of bad old movies ever since high school, I’d heard a lot about Steckler’s The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies, but it being the pre-Internet Era, it was really hard to get hold of that kind of stuff… but in the process of re-acquainting myself with MST3K after a too-long absence, I stumbled over Experiment 812 (The Incredibly Strange Creatures Etc.) and checked it out… and, man oh man, what a massive stinkburger that was. The musical sequences were breathtaking in their deep-down badness; Nelson pretty much sums it up in one of his riffs about how they took a camera crew to a local Open Mic Night and used whatever footage they got in TISCWSLABMUZ. And, the plot…what plot? So, needless to say, I’m a huge Ray Dennis Steckler fan, thanks to MST3K.
another vote for the supremely mellow Ben Murphy :yes:
For actor/actress, gotta go first with Beverly Garland. Very talented, believable; someone I want to root for, even if she’s a villain. Oh, and she’s drop-dead gorgeous. Secondly, Mamie Van Doren, for obvious reasons. Thirdly, Richard Kiel. Although he had no discernible acting talent, he was note-perfect at playing large scary guys.
For director, Ed Wood. He clearly reached more than he could grasp, but his passion and earnestness come through in all of his work. And although I wouldn’t say I’m a “fan”, Coleman Francis’ movies must be seen to be truly believed.
Both Jimmy Bryant and Ennio Morricone. Not that MST3K was what got me into them, but upon falling in love with Bryant’s work with Speedy West it dawned on me that I had already been introduced to his amazing guitar work as a young12 year old guffawing at Mike and the bots mocking the giangantress tossing around a scrawny iggy pop looklike and being suprised that the music sounded so good.
@carjackfairy MST3K certainly didn’t introduce me to Ennio Morricone, but it did make me aware of just prolific he was as a composer. He seems to have been responsible for all sorts of movies of various genres and quality.
Great thread, especially adding directors. Ted V. Mikels, director. Huge fan, thanks to MST3K.
Fan of Bela, Arch Hall, Roger Corman, Kathy Ireland, John Philip Law, Tor Johnson, and did I mention Ted V. Mikels?
“Zombie Nightmare” made me discover Motörhead, Virgin Steele (not to be confused with Virgil Steele), Fist and… Well, Thor. Whatever faults that movie has, and they are many, the music is cool and a lot of fun.