Movie: (2019) A paranormal investigator finds himself in the middle of a battle for possession of a magical talisman.
Host: Joel.
Opening: In the cold open, Kinga and Synthia are waiting for Dr. Erhardt to return with a host. When he arrives, the host is … Joel! And a somewhat older one at that. But Erhardt didn’t bring Joel’s bots, so Kinga grabs Emily’s bots.
Invention exchange: The Mads have electric lassos, but Joel explains their long history. Joel has given Tom a mood globe.
Segment 1: J&tB present “Fears,” a demon sitcom, but the bots have second thoughts.
Segment 2: Joel gives Tom Servo his original voice back. After intermission, Pearl introduces herself but Joel has no memories of Dr. F ever mentioning her.
Segment 3: J&tB DemonProv, a demon improv show. The Mads are impressed.
Close: The bots want to visit Emily’s again and Synthia and Pearl approve. The Mads have caught the improv bug.
Stinger: Nick makes his move.
Thoughts:
• This episode premiered on June 24, 2022.
• Joel has brought along with him a digital version of the episodes 101-512 door sequence.
• Fans of Cinematic Titanic know what a gift it is whenever J. Elvis riffs, and this ep demonstrated that again.
• Tom still has his J. Elvis voice in the theater, the first time since season 1.
• Long-time readers of this guide may be aware that I have exactly one criterion for whether I like an episode: am I laughing? In this case, oh my, I was laughing quite a bit. Some very funny stuff in this one.
• This week’s LOTR ref: “That’s a wrap on Sauron.”
• Callbacks: “Pretty niiice.” Somebody gets called a “dickweed.” “Lentils.”
• Fave riff: “Party invites. And cryptocurrancy. Okay, two things.”
• Honorable mention: “To be fair, he does have resting punch face.” “Pete Davidson out.” “All the same room.” “Pregnant pause…” “My one weakness: a firm but gentle push.” “Right in the mysogyny.” “I”m gonna need a larger hangar from which to suspend my disbelief.”
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I do love this episode. The folks who made this movie are delightful and have become friends with the MST crew. And I’ve said this multiple times elsewhere, but I’m convinced this movie takes place in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer universe. The lead character even dresses like Doyle from “Angel”
As this posts, there is currently a Kickstarter active for Demon Squad 2. It has nine days to go but is already at 128% of its goal. The write up for the Kickstarter does indeed acknowledge this MST episode. They note being genuinely grateful for the exposure.
The phrase that kept coming up when the MST3K crew described this movie was “labor of love”, and that’s quite evident. Demon Squad is a movie that the filmmakers genuinely cared about and put a lot of hard work into, and that enthusiasm is infectious. Sure, it’s low-budget, but it’s competently made for the resources they had to work with.
It’s pretty clear that the MST3K folks had real affection for this one. And as fun as it can be when they really tear into a movie, there’s something special about the ones that they actually like.
For a review of this “MST3K” episode and others go to “Faith’s Take” on YouTube.com.
She reviews Rifftrax as well.
This is the first of two episodes Joel agreed to host in Season 13 if the Kickstarter reached a certain stretch goal, which it did with ease.
The writer/director and lead actress were on the post premiere livestream in the Gizmoplex and they were an absolute delight. As someone else already pointed out, they launched a Kickstarter for a sequel. The first one had a loftier target and failed, but they set a more modest goal and it’s fully funded with a little bit of time to go as of this post.
For having a 12 dollar budget, this movie is surprisingly watchable, even if it was made in 2017, released in 2019, but looks like it takes place in 2005. They tried. It’s also a very sweaty movie.
Joel’s door sequence and green screened SOL background made folks very excited.
The voice joke with Dr. Erhardt and his banter with Joel was very funny.
“This ex-Pizza Hut ain’t big enough for the both of us.”
“Watch out, he’s gonna ska!”
“It’s the Men’s Wearhouse repo man!”
“This gender reveal party has gone horribly wrong!”
Joel at the end: “Who’s Emily?”
The one demon they interrogate definitely looks like a vamped out character from Buffy/Angel. I do wonder if there was some inspiration from the Whedonverse.
Side effects might include itchiness, swelling and the rotting of your eternal soul from within.
This was such a great treat. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen with Joel’s first real MST3K riff and host segments in decades, but clearly I had no cause for concern. Even as someone who didn’t follow the show in the Comedy Central period, as I watched the host segments I felt a sense of ‘they never really left, did they?’ It all came back to them like it was just yesterday.
The movie too, was goofily watchable and you could tell the performers were giving it their all. The ‘Judge Doom’-type character in particular was noteworthy and in a rarity for an MST3k subject there was one joke that actually landed; ‘Can I get that card back? We only have the one!’
Fave Riffs
He had her the moment she saw that hat.
Wow, that’s real Latin! This guy’s legit!
He holds that gun like it’s a precious Hummel figure.
She was raised by a feral pile of money.
‘You’re a distraction.’
What every woman wants to hear…
Was this guy possessed by a Cadbury Cream Egg?
As I mentioned in 1305 I always love when Josh makes an appearance. He’s the cast member I never knew I missed since I came to the show in season 4. I really gained my appreciation of him during Cinematic Titanic.
I’m not sure how Dr. Erhart didn’t know who he brought back since he said it was the original host. Good to hear he still dabbles in the Mad Science game and I’m glad he even did both voices.
And then there is Joel. Joel from the future. I saw his final live tour but I’ve still been waiting for this. I am sad his Bots didn’t make the trip. This still needs to happen down the road. But I think Emily’s Bots would have been my second choice. So here we go. I did find the digital animated classic door sequence pretty jarring though. I was a little surprised not to see Joel’s name on the writing team for this grand return. Overall I have to say that I fully realize a return like this is so heavily anticipated that it probably can’t live up to what one really wants from it. In the end it delivers about what I expected and that’s still something.
Invention Exchange with the father of the invention exchange:
I like the electric lassos the Mads give us. It was good for a chuckle. I also like how the father of the invention exchange nonchalantly takes them down. First he gives credit to Gallagher and then takes the old nemesis down too. But do you really think Vaudeville did it first? Electric just doesn’t seem to fit with Vaudeville. As for the mood globe. That just says Joel and ‘nuff said.
Host Segment 1: First off I’m glad whoever wrote this is a fellow fan of the far superior Shelly Long era of Cheers. So Joel leads off with a very meta sketch which makes reference to the occasional host segment that never really want anywhere. Bold choice.
Host Segment 2: I was waiting to reinstall the Josh voice into Tom. And even though I saw it coming I still loved it. So what is with the Hannibal Smith reference out of the blue? Next we see Joel working on Crow but we don’t know what he is trying to accomplish. Finally Pearl visits the exterior in a space suite. But why isn’t the hexfield viewscreen used?
Host Segment 3: As Joel introduced Demon-prov I instantly thought of Comedy Sportz. It was brief but screamed Joel. Kinga and Max sold it well.
Closing Segment: I really thought it was cute that the Bots had backpacks when they returned to Emily. But the Mads should probably stick to mad science. They don’t want to stretch themselves too thin.
The movie.:
Hard to pin down the 2019 it was released in. Maybe setting noir in present day just doesn’t work but I’d have to see it done right to actually know that. Of course the props where all over the place. (modern cellphone, blackberry and ancient desk phone etc.) The movie way too liberally rips off Ghostbusters jargon and that’s saying something given they really don’t do that much of it. Finally Nick Moon is way too low rent sleazy (and he can’t do that right) to be a hero. I’d hate him but I am struggling to even muster up that emotion. So this is a dud all right.
Favorite Riffs
Nick Moon puts on Ghostbuster style paranormal viewfinder. Tom “OK Nick. It’s time to steam some punks.”
The green smoke flies by. Joel “surrender Dorothy.” (I’ve always thought of Joel as the king of the Wizard of Oz riff.)
Moses “I’m gonna pretend that you didn’t say anything.” Crow “Can we pretend too?”
Daisy “No funny business.” Crow “None so far.”
The Stranger “Don’t get me wrong the torture was fun.” Crow “Disagree”
Detective Fortier “You can make her death count.” Joel as Muppet Count “One dead girlfriend Ah, ah, ah.”
Maybe I’m in the minority here, but this movie just, “sat on my head and crushed it”. I’m also remembering Crow’s line from back in the day, “Just when I think I’ve seen the worst movie ever made, along comes the worst movie ever made”.
Demon Squad reminds me of a DVD extra I saw once that was an abbreviated walkthrough of the actual film that had been made as a kind of proof-of-concept that was used to attract investors to get the money to make the actual movie. When Demon Squad ended I felt like someone should have said, “OK, we’ve done the half-assed walkthrough, let’s make the real movie now and try to do it right.”
This is in my opinion the worst movie MST has riffed. It made it really hard for me to enjoy the jokes. All I can even remember is “Scary Bradshaw”. I’ll have to watch again, but this seemed like an absolute and total waste of Joel and Josh’s return to the theater. Why they didn’t riff nest weeks Gamera movie I’ll never know.
Demon Squad AKA Dresden Files in the Deep South AKA Time Chasers of Nu-MST3K. It also happens to pass the Bechdel Test. Daisy and Lilah talk about the mansion’s alarm system.
MST3K Connections: Eric C. Schmitz (who portrays the Stranger) also appeared in Atlantic Rim as a street musician.
Unlike the other two movies of the current century which have been screened on the show, this is a fun watch that looks to be worth viewing without the riffing.
Favorite riffs
“You got me, Moon.”
Oh, he had her the second she saw that hat.
You’re a loose cannon, Moon! I want your gun, your badge, and your dagger on my desk first thing in the morning.
Wait, how do we know he’s not delusional and didn’t just straight up kill an innocent woman?
Props provided by Gulf Coast Goodwill stores, Mobile, Alabama.
“I’m not cheap.”
Tell that to the Groupon I’m holding.
Are we there yet? Oh wait, I’m driving.
Yessir. Some people just call ’em all demons and call it a day, but not our man Moon.
Yeah, but beyond the danger it can put you in, to not know the difference between a Galbore from a druid from a Cambrian, to them, it’s just plain hurtful.
Meanwhile, in the city’s other building.
This looks like a job for someone else!
“What about this?”
Oh, this is a little fooler we call Find the Lady.
Very nice. 1d6 with piercing and reach, +2 against undead. It’s a solid roll.
“I do this for all my clients.”
Yes, I see them under your bed.
Pennywise: The Middle School Years.
“Like I said, if you have the core and the dagger, you can open up realms that you’ve only dreamed about.”
Like Dinotopia?
“You can have your little toy back at the end of class.”
But for now, here’s Lilah’s book report on Super Fudge.
“There’s a Peruvian vengeance spell that’s supposed to turn a man inside out.”
It’s hilarious!
Forget it, Nick. It’s Demontown.
“How angry are you?”
I don’t know. How angry would you feel if you just lost your favorite hat?
Who brings a crossbow to a Cracker Barrel?
My one weakness, a firm but gentle push.
“If you’re willing to talk, there are some of us who listen.”
Not me, but others.
Great episode overall, but the movie absolutely baffles me. In that it understands certain aspects of noir narrative, but also doesn’t at the same time. Primarily in that there are multiple mysteries going on that wind up relating to one another. But where a typical noir usually they take their time to show how they wind up being the same case, this movie ties that all together in the first 10 minutes. It doesn’t make the movie bad, but rather fascinating. There’s plenty of other stuff that makes it bad, but all in an absolutely delightful way.
Great to see Joel back. I’d say he hasn’t missed a beat, but he’s always just kinda played himself :)
– “You have any idea what the Stranger will do to me?”
Stranger things?
As we now know from Hobgoblins 2, never allow a homemade sequel that thinks it owes its “cult popularity” to MST3K, or they’re going to kiss up to it.
At worst, we’d probably even get Nick threatening one of the demon bar patrons with “I’m gonna Moon ya!”, before killing the fat demon barkeep.
Someone clearly thought they had their own Men in Black/RIPD knockoff on paper, and maybe if someone with an actual film studio had filmed it somewhere besides an Alabama bar with actual actors, it might be.
You see Asylum-era movies this lazily homemade, and realize, 60’s Ed Wood and Coleman Francis movies were just as amateur and backyard-buddy filmed, but they were at least watchable, and didn’t look like college-student videos.
In the old days, they still had to risk them on paying theater audiences, and that raised an entire bar of effort.
On a side note, I’m assuming they got J. Elvis to do his Old S1 Servo voice for the host seg, but not ONE single callback of “Ooo…I’m impressed.”?
I caught some of Demon Squad on Pluto TV. I didn’t have time to finish it. It had an amusing cheapness to it. The concept probably could’ve been good for the New World Pictures era of Charles Band movies, before he got really cheap.
You’re entitled to your opinion but I gotta tell you, proclaiming that this movie is worse than Manos, Red Zone Cuba, The Castle of Fu-Manchu, The Creeping Terror, or The Beast of Yucca Flats seems maybe just a little hyperbolic to me.
“you bent it!” Not gonna lie, I found Daisy really cute but, alas, she’s married to the director (who was not Nick Moon).
Thad Boyd: I was thinking of those other movies, and in my opinion they are at least entertaining in their awfulness.
I’m sorry, gang, but this one was a real slog for me. I’m used to them riffing on movies made by people who have no business making movies–the canon is full of ’em–but this is the only one that felt like it was made by kids borrowing video cameras from AV. (Well, Carnival Magic, too, but at least they were able to get a chimp from the bio lab, too.) Now, to Thad Boyd’s point, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Demon Squad is a worse film than Manos, Colman Francis’s trilogy, etc.: I agree that it has a certain charm that would make it fun to watch on its own. But, for me, that just puts it in the same category as reasonably well-made comedies, which we all know are very hard to riff on. What makes Manos, etc., perfect for MST is the fact that the inept film makers took themselves very seriously and really thought they were making “art”. The group that made DS knew exactly who they were and what they were doing: making a reasonably competent movie on a budget of $85. Who wants to laugh at them? Also, I have to say, I thought Joel’s performance was as flat as yesterday’s ginger ale, like he was just phoning it in. In any case, this was the only S13 episode that I didn’t like very much. Let’s see how I feel the second time through, though.
New World Pictures was a Roger Corman production company. Charles Band’s pre-Full Moon company was Empire International Pictures.
Yes. Well, actually either one would’ve been good for Demon Squad, but New World probably would’ve been the better of the two.
Okay, so I just watched Demon Squad a second time. I did like it better the second time through. I laughed out loud a few times more than previously. In the end, I don’t take back anything I wrote in my first post, though: amateur night, a budget less than I’ve earned as a professional musician, and not hateful enough to deserve the robots’ tears. It’s still the least of Season 13, but it’s not an Unwatchable.
I realize this movie was made with limited resources, and was something of a labor of love by the cast & crew, and that they received an amount of respect from the MST3K team. But it’s still a bad movie. Not by any means the worst movie, but still bad. But then I’m biased; for me, the best supernatural private eye was Fred Ward as Phil Lovecraft in “Cast a Deadly Spell”, and that’s a tough act to follow. By the way, unless I’m mistaken, Nick’s last appeal for the Girl Friday to stay as his partner (the “can’t guarantee” bit) was pretty much borrowed from Christopher Eccelston as the Ninth Doctor.
The episode itself was good, though. It was nice to have Joel & J. Elvis back, and I got a big laugh when Larry’s old voice reappeared. The riffing was good, and I liked the host segments. It was an OK experiment.
Oh, and regarding “Gamera vs. Jiger” next week, when the elephant scene comes up, avert your eyes.
Cat a Deadly Spell is a masterpiece. I miss Fred Ward.
Unpopular opinion, I guess, but I thought the Joel episodes were the weakest of the season. They all felt flat and unfunny. I love Joel, but his appearances just felt disconnected and uninterested. Jonah and Emily killed it, and I hope next season is them exclusively.
He still knows HOW to riff, even more than not-too-bad Jonah or the Ham-Sisters, but he’s been behind the producer desk too long, thought he retired, and is losing the fire for it–Sort of like when Paul McCartney retired to run Apple Music, but still had to write songs for their other bands, and you could still tell they were McCartney songs.
Nowadays, when Joel appears on the series, he’s usually got his guitar out to sing old fan-lore Clown in the Sky hits.
And yes, not everyone shares the new writers’ affection for Demon Squad, and The Christmas Dragon still feels more like a RiffTrax than like “Christmas That Almost Wasn’t”, but that’s for later.
I felt the same during the segments. I miss the completely baked Joel. The Joel who mostly acted with his eyebrows and would pop his head into odd angles for no reason whatsoever. This Joel is older and wiser and less stoned, but he doesn’t have to act older, wiser and less stoned. What do you think sirs?
Fair, and we’ll get there in a few weeks, but while I found this episode very enjoyable, in the build up to the season, Joel waaaaaaaaay oversold The Bubble and it was hard to like that episode as much as this one.