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Weekend Discussion Thread: MSTed Movie Characters Who Never Give UpJay asks:
I’m going to nominate Fingers O’Toole the comic relief guy from “Catalina Caper.” Despite numerous dunkings, he eventually got his man. 78 Replies to “Weekend Discussion Thread: MSTed Movie Characters Who Never Give Up”Commenting at Satellite News
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The only thing Future War pulls off successfully is the feeling that the aliens really want their tool back.
And what of Helen and her endless quest for a Coke?
I choose to recognize Hugh Beaumont for his dedication to the flimsy dramatic premises of Msties Special recognition for tolerating more ham from his leading men than a Smithfield farm! He intrepidly anchored the stalwart second banana role with the requisite tepid finesse!!!
Great thread. Has anyone mentioned Torgo? In spite of numerous physical, mental, social, and hygienic handicaps, and a very unsupportive boss, he keeps going about care taking and hauling luggage. Sure he’s slow and constantly teetering on the edge of collapse, but he keeps at it. Presumed dead but last seen running at full speed despite being dismembered and set on fire. An A for effort.
And how about Jimmy who accuses his parents. With great determination he does one ruinously stupid thing after another and somehow things kinda work out.
Both Troy and Rowsdower bravely took on an evil cult, even though between the two of them they had almost nothing going for them, and their truck broke down every 50ft.
And I have to give my own shout out to the lady who was back at work after being violently killed in the previous scene. I usually take at least a day or two off after being murdered.
The rebels in Escape 2000 not only fight the man but keep their outfits dry cleaned in a post apocalyptic sewer. You gotta make time for that.
The Agent for H.A.R.M was very determined to never leave that one location.
The evil guy in The Thing that Wouldn’t Die kept going after being decapitated and buried alive for centuries. He used his mind to force people to reunite his head with his body. But he was promptly destroyed after this triumph. I guess he should have quit while he was a head.
Wasn’t Paul the one who was always giving up?
Ator. He did whatever it took to complete his mission, even building a hang glider.
In Tormented a bit of a tossup between Richard Carlson and his girlfriend Six.
While she didn’t let a little thing like being dead stop her from getting her
man, the jazz musician was prepared to toss a little girl off a lighthouse to keep
his Carnegie Hall gig going.
I’d say everyone in Pumaman. Tony never quit whining and trying to quit. Pleasence never stopped his mask-making scheme and the Onion would’ve made a great terminator.
Jim, the Farrah Fawcett-haired teen punk in “Zombie Nightmare” never gave up on trying to make it with the Twist n Creme girl. Despite constant rejection and his own utter loathsomeness, he kept at it until killed by a zombie, at which point the entire populace of Earth let out a collective sigh of relief.
MEGAWEAPON! MEGAWEAPON! MEGAWEAPON!!
It’s got to be Gamera during his ‘friend of all children phase’. The plot for all the Daiei Gamera films (except the first) is basically the same; Gamera tries to defeat the other monster, fails, then tries again and wins. The guy is just relentless in his attempts to protect the people of Japan from whatever disaster they’ve unleashed upon themselves, and sometimes suffers horrific injuries in the process. But he just never ever gives up.
For that reason I’d actually point to him as being a pretty decent role model for kids. Except for the mass carnage he caused in his first film, obviously.
THANKS, SAMPO! –
For choosing my idea for this Week’s Discussion. I am the last, lone MSTie in my family. My son stuck with me watching my old VHS tapes until he discovered classic Russian literature (curse you Dostoevsky!), but now I persist alone. Being chosen for the WDT is the pinnacle of payoffs for persistence. I feel like a Neptune Man who has finally found his record! — Jay
Young Yoko Ono in Gamera vs Guiron. Nobody believes her story about her brother taking off in a spaceship, but she perseveres, nearly breaks out in big production number few times, and is proven right in the end. Then she grew up to break up the Beatles.
In “Time of the Apes”, Johnny was very determined not to care.
Pitch from Santa Claus. He has a bit of a Wile E. Coyote mentality about him, trying to foil Santa at the cost of personal pain and humiliation.
“Alien From L.A.” had several characters who never gave up. Wanda’s dad never gave up his quest to find Atlantis, even if it meant abandoning his daughter and becoming a deadbeat dad. Wanda never gave up looking for her dad despite him falling into a “bottomless” pit. And Gus never gave up trying to fake an Australian accent, though he never quite pulled it off.
And a punk/New Wave dwarf with eyelashes like drapes somehow managed to work his way up to Godfather of the Atlantean Mafia, armed only with a baguette.
The kids in Prince of Space, of course. You stand between them and bootblacking, they’re gonna knock you down, man!
The director of “The Starfighters” was very determined not to have anything happen in the movie. Every time it started to look like something might actually happen, boom! Nothing.
Right up to the very end, when the pilots have graduated training and head off on their first assignment and the viewer thinks, “Well, they must be off to have an adventure at last,” only to have the rug pulled out from under them as the credits roll and the actors flee the film.
There is a great irony to that ending. The whole movie tries to make the point that there is still value in fighter jets when the military wants to focus on long range bombers. In the end, the fighter jets are shown to be pointless, even as we are expected to marvel at them.
The monster in Monster-A-Go-Go was very determined to never show up at all. After leading us on for an entire film, he succeeds. There is no monster.
Captain Joe is never, ever giving up drinking.
You’re stuck here!
She’s been briefly mentioned, but the absolute winner here is Lt. Lamont from Space Mutiny. Despite everything – the fact that she’s insane, that she has an awesome package, that there’s an armadillo down her trousers, and of course – being blasted with a laser – none of that stops her from going back to work on the bridge of the Gallact… er.. Southern Sun.
I agree with Deavers – it was very nice of Captain Santa Claus to give that dead woman another chance.
Gare
The Russian bomber in Invasion USA was so determined that he nuked the same army base twice.
There have been quite a few characters who didn’t let death stop them from carrying out their mission, however evil, vague or inconsequential it may be.
Lt. Lamont — “Space Mutiny”
Glen Manning — “Amazing Colossal Man/War of the Colossal Beast”
Vi — “Tormented”
Butcher Benton — “The Indestructable Man
Hamlet’s dad — Hamlet
Jedro, the twitchy old guy — “The Unearthly”
The alien mummy — “Being From Another Planet”
Jan in the Pan — “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die”
Tony — “Zombie Nightmare”
Gideon Drew — “The Thing That Couldn’t Die”
Natalie and Zack — “Soultaker”
The titular “She Creature”
Assorted nameless characters in “The Incredibly Strange Creatures…etc”
The mutated remains of sailors who became goofy monsters in “The Horror of Party Beach”
The guy’s first wife in “The Screaming Skull”
Definitely not the ‘LOAD’ from Mole People.
What a LOAD!
Offtopic:
Since I can’t seem to figure out how to use the email feature on this sight, here’s suggestion for a weekend topic:
How about people/places in an mst3000 movie to hook-up with, with perhaps a scenario for the relationship development. For example in Time Chasers try the produce aisle in the supermarket. Seems like it’s a babe magnet—perhaps the kale or brussels sprouts is an aphrodisiac. But watch out for the unnerving lady who invites you to dinner at her place. And of course there’s The Place in OatMB.
You might think it was a happy ending in the produce aisle for 2-plaid girl and chin boy but no no.
On the way to his pad Nick drives her car into a ditch making a play for Shopping News girl.
Stricken with remorse he takes to mainlining Vermont maple syrup and Coors Light.
His disgusted honey drops him off at Pink Boy’s walkup one bedroom apartment.
While rehabbing there Nick decides to reinvent time travel to get her back but ends up crashing a tree on George Washington and Thomas Jefferson leading to…
@ #75: Sampo’s e-mail is at the bottom of the page in the first of the Boring Stuff paragraphs.
Yes. But when I try it it gets into a rather confusing list (6 choices) of Choose
Your Account, instead of just an address to mail email to. Hard to know which to select
or what kind of a list one might get on by doing so, so I’ll just pass on that.
As one might deduce, my internet/email skills are of a barely rudimentary level.
On the bright side, my nieces and nephews are amused. :)
No matter how bad things got, he never stopped coming!