Some of us could argue that a few of the movies covered on the show weren’t really all that bad. But what about individual scenes? What are some of the most surprisingly good moments in an otherwise bad riffed movie? For me, I’d vote for the “Bird’s the Word” strangulation scene from “The Crawling Hand.” The dappled lighting effects and the ironic song choice seem oddly ahead of their time.
I would pick the scene in Girls Town where Silver first arrives at the school and is menaced by her roommates. It’s actually kind of gripping.
What’s your pick?
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Y’know, when I first saw the reports of that Alien Nuclear Massacre On Mars horsehockey, I let loose the Facepalm Heard Round The World.
I responded to a tweet I saw announcing the report with a YouTube link to Experiment 201, asking, “Could your research have been based on THIS?”
Still, in all, a very gripping and sobering scene in what’s otherwise a well-done, charred-on-the-outside stinkburger, despite the fact that Mission Commander Walt Disney uses it as an excuse to deliver one of his boring-ass speeches.
Oh, wow, yeah… the way he throws down that “…here in this forsaken jungle hell” line — he really kills it, man.
Y’know, a lot of people like to mock Lugosi’s work from the ’40s onward, bottoming out with his roles in Ed Wood movies, but many don’t realize what an awesome actor he really was in the early ’30s Universal horror classics, and earlier on Broadway; as I recall, he was playing Dracula in the original New York production when Universal got the film rights and cast Lugosi in the lead based on his stage performance. Once he became a big name, though, studios went nuts trying to make big bank off of him by casting him in one stinkburger after another — The Corpse Vanishes, The Devil Bat, Murder By Television, The Phantom Creeps…
Lugosi was one of those actors who knew how to chew the scenery in a good way. Say what you want, but he never phoned it in. He was always “on”. While Wood’s Glen Or Glenda was, sadly, never featured on MST3K, it still has Lugosi’s classic “pull the string!” monologue in his role as God (or whatever it was he was supposed to be playing in that one).
I can understand what the filmmakers were after in that scene, but I can’t help giggling when I see it, because the effect is so badly done, even for those days.
All I can think when I see that scene is “Kubrick did it better”.
Alright, I confess: I really dug the high-speed running highway gun battle in Warrior Of The Lost World… except that they killed Megaweapon, dammit!
Also — while it isn’t technically an MST3K episode — that brief moment in Hollywood After Dark, in the backstage fight scene at the strip club, where the hero whacks the bad guy upside the face with a lamp — shot from the POV of the guy being hit — is really cool. The rest of the movie is absolutely rank, but that one shot is really, really sweet.
“Jamie Farr’s” monologue about the toy machine in “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” was effective. There was even some reverb added to make a good effect.
#3 We can be in the minority together. I have just now found that you can get their album Zombie Stomp at Amazon, MP3 download. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have “Elaine” or “Joy Ride”, two of my favorites from the movie.
#7 The double moons reflected in the girl’s eyes was a chilling shot, though I’m not entirely sure what the director was trying to convey. Also (since I am contractually obligated to be an tedious pedant on this point) they don’t really look like Phobos and Deimos.
My vote is for the paperweight scene in The Crawling Eye. For about 30 seconds, the movie was actually gripping.
Re:#48 No, I’m not Sandra Bullock. I am a lifelong severe clinical depressive with symptoms whose magnitude impressed even the few token schizophrenics that dropped by the support group for depressives I attended for about a year.
Before I got put on the right Medication one of the least tolarable symptoms I experienced was a sense of existing as nothing but a bodiless focused point of consciousness in an absolute void being crushed by infinite nothingness from all sides. I wasn’t psychotic. So I was aware of objective reality. On an emotional level though, it was all an impossible distance away. It’s a really weird feeling, even for mental illness, that’s hard to describe to someone who hasn’t experienced it firsthand. And like I said, my case is unusually severe. About the only other person in my support group that seemed to regard my symptoms as comparable to their own was a lady who had a depressive episode in her 40’s that was a worse experience than the year she had to spend in a concentration camp during World War 2.
This is why adrift in space scenes like the one in Phantom Planet and the far better one in 2001 affect me the way they do. And why you’ll never get me on a spaceship. Anyway, I’m a tense and shell shocked person a bit, but the medication makes me feel human.
Oh definitely. It’s also a crowning moment of awesome for Bela during filming as Ed Wood was afraid Bela wouldn’t have been able to remember the speech at his age but he memorized it, nailed the delivery and got a standing ovation from everyone there. Most powerful line in the movie and homaged in the 1994 “Ed Wood” film.
In Final Sacrifice, the scene where Rowsdower confronts Satoris to save Troy, you could sense Rowsdower’s sadness and anger at Satoris for ruining his life.
For one, I agree with Stacia @12 about Devil Doll. In fact, every scene involving Bryant Haliday in Devil Doll or The Projected Man are made better by his presence. In my opinion, he’s the best actor Mst has ever riffed.
For my best scene: I’ll go with the ending scene in The Dead Talk Back. It’s a cool little whodunit. I really didn’t know who the killer was the first time I saw it. That, and the neat little plot twist of Krasker’s radio not REALLY talking to the dead. But instead being used to out the guilty party. And notice how Lt. Lewis is standing behind Raymond the whole time. He already knew he was the killer. He just wanted Krasker to help confirm it.
And yes, I really need to get a life…..
In Monster A-Go-Go…no, I can’t finish that sentence.
For me this is an easy one – I’ve always found the final scene in “Girl’s Town” to be very poignant. Silver’s had a crappy childhood, runs with the wrong crowd, has no love for her parents (well, mother in particular), and is not happy to be here in the general population with nuns telling her what to do.
So I love the very last scene, after everything that’s happened, and she’s realized that she can actually be loved by someone for nothing more than for who she is – she hugs Mother Veronica and says “Goodbye.. Mother.”
Holy cow.. I almost teared up writing that.
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Any of the scenes in the The Giant Leeches between Dave Walker and his slutty wife Liz. Both Bruno VeSota and Yvette Vickers were good actors, and those clips simply sizzle with repressed sexual tension. Too bad the leeches were hefty bags, but you can’t have everything …
@68. y’know, there’s more plot in a Mst’d Corman movie than in most kids’ films that come out nowadays. Beverly Garland shows good range in her roles, between Gunslinger and Swamp Diamonds. Allison Hayes too, though Crawling Hand isn’t a Corman (Gunslinger is!).
BTW, I love your avatar Goshzilla.
It wasn’t just one scene but The Girl in Lover’s Lane was one of the very few MST movies I actually got emotionally involved with. It made the closing host segment when they wanted to rewrite the movie at the end that much better because I think the MST writers got involved a bit too. I shared in every bit of their anger!
I’m a bit late to the party on this one, i can’t think of one particular SCENE, but there are parts of “The Violent Years” that really show some real pathos for these characters that are rolling down the wrong path. Like one right choice could have “saved” them. Overall though, it’s a pretty big turd.
One movie already mentioned that had a overall premise that disguised a potentially much better movie is “Timechasers”. The plot, while not wholly original, was a reasonable twist on the time-travel concept, and to me the back-bone of the script had some really smart ideas, only the fact that the film-makers made it on a budget that didn’t allow them to have actual actors or sets or effects or anything turned it into a big pile of crap. A case where the reach overstretched their grasp.
Several people mentioned It Conquered the World, but I think that one is hard to define as “great scenes in bad movies” as I think this is generally considered one of the better overall movies to be riffed by MST3K. I think especially for the limitations of the time period / genre it really works.
Back to the same premise but in that same Genre (50s sci-fi) I think “Teenagers from Outer Space” (TORCHA!!), though a pretty terrible movie has a few scenes that work very well. In particular, where Derick decides he’s going to sacrifice himself at the end to save earth, and he’s talking to Betty about making a decision, and she doesn’t realize what he’s going to do…I think that really works well.