Dug was Here Selections: The Skydivers (1963), Hillbillys in a Haunted House (1967), Pumaman (1980)

Watched between:  01/12 - 10/14/2024

Format:  MST3K on YouTube

Viewing:  First on All (I think)

Director:  No

Selection:  Consensus - us, MST3K live feed

My father-in-law had some outpatient surgery and, thus, Dug, my brother-in-law, was here for a couple of weeks.  He capped off his visit with a stay with us.  Dug is the foremost MST3K/ Rifftrax fan in my life - and while I've been a fan since I was 14, he's the guy who remembers stuff about episodes from the show that I haven't seen since high school.

I won't be writing these movies up, but I can say I finally ticked Hillbillys in a Haunted House (1967) off my list, which had been there since discovering Joi Lansing about 20 years ago via The Adventures of Superman.  But I also knew, for 20 years, this was going to be a rough ride.  The movie is a weird, all-star bash, including Lon Chaney, Basil Rathbone, John Carradine and a bunch of Nashville musicians, for whom it was intended to be a showcase.

you get two big guesses as to why Joi Lansing was included

There's also some yellow-peril as there's a spy story going on, also a gorilla and ghosts.  

this movie has everything

The Skydivers (1963) is a movie made by sky divers about sky divers, and it's like they knew one day MST3K would exist, and would need content.

The Pumaman (1980) is an Italian produced, British-shot movie about a superhero with alien-gifted powers of a puma.  Like flying, and walking through walls.  It makes no sense, and has Donald Pleasance as the villain, wearing a sort of leatherette jumpsuit.  Cannot recommend enough.

Anyway, a good time was had by all.  

  

MST3K/ Cattrall Watch: City Limits (1984)

Watched:  09/29/2023

Format:  MST3K on YouTube (keep circulating the tapes?)

Viewing:  First

Director:  Someone, I'm sure

In my quest to catch the entirety of the Kim Cattrall filmography without it becoming a thing, I finally got around to the episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (S5:E3) in which Joel and the Bots watch the 1984 sci-fi opus City Limits.  

You will guess from the fact it is not just an episode of MST3K, but from observing that a 1984 movie made its way to MST3K in 8 years that maybe this was not a movie that was in high demand, perhaps due to the fact it's a low-budget mess of a movie.

Weirdly, the movie features a number of known humans, begging the question:  what was happening in 1984 for each of these people?

The movie features:

• James Earl Jones
• Rae Dawn Chong (on the poster above)
• John Stockwell (the guy from Christine and Top Gun)
• Dean Devlin for some reason
• John Diehl (many things, including Miami Vice)
• and, of course, Kim Cattrall
• And Robby Benson who was in stuff I've never actually seen

It feels like the movie happened to be a way station for actors on their way up or down.  I won't guess further as to whom was heading up or down, but you can do the math.  It's mostly weird to watch yet another 1980's no-budget post-apocalyptic movie but you actually recognize half the cast.

Anyway - I won't even really get into what it is or is about.  Because Jamie and I had to piece together what was happening in a pause-the-movie moment about 2/3rds of the way through.

This movie is now famous mostly for spawning the Kim Cattrall bit on MST3K as someone on staff (I assume Trace Beauliue) was clearly a fellow appreciator of the actor.  

It does help if you've seen Mannequin.  I mean, not just to appreciate the sketch, but in life in general.

MST3K Watch: Killer Fish (1979)

Watched:  08/12/2019
Format:  Netflix MST3K - The Gauntlet
Viewing:  First
Decade:  1970's

Sometimes movie stars just want to take a vacation and maybe shoot a movie while they're there.  You see it all the time in these peculiar movies that don't look very good but star people who actually cost some money - and the movie is in, say, Hawaii.  They're called "postcard movies", and the deal is usually that the star maybe asks for less because they're being put up in a really nice hotel in Maui for two months to make some romcom or whatever.  Their family comes out and they go boogie-boarding on their days off.

I kind of suspect something similar was afoot in 1979 when Killer Fish went into production.  The movie doesn't have the world's biggest stars, but in '79 Lee Majors was a pretty big deal and Karen Black was still bankable.  I imagine selling the movie as "come down to Rio de Janeiro for a couple months" was a pretty good deal.  I'd also mention, this movie was part of the short-lived Fawcett-Majors Productions, a go at producing from when Lee Majors and Farah Fawcett were Hollywood's foremost couple.  And, no, you've never heard of this movie or the other films that they produced.

MST3K Watch: The Day Time Ended (1979)

Watched:  03/02/2019
Format:  MST3K on Netflix
Viewing:  First
Decade:  1970s

This movie is a bizarre mess with no story.  Now, sometimes MST3K cuts these movies for time, so its possible we lost some key moments or elements on the floor, but...  I don't think so. 

The MST3K episode DOES feature an astonishing musical number lifting music from The Music Man.  The current crew has really hit their stride.  And - there's a Kim Cattrall callback.

But, yeah, it's a bunch of unmotivated special FX and a cast that I can't not talk about. 

MST3K Watch: Lords of the Deep (1989)

Watched:  01/18/2019
Format:  MST3K on Netflix
Viewing:  First
Decade:  1980's

A mash-up of The Abyss and every space station movie you've ever seen, with terrible acting, hilariously bad lighting and direction, set-design right out of a high school play and your two leads played by "that guy" from 1970's television and Felix's wife who gets killed early on in License to Kill.  And some adorably bad puppets.

The courage it took to make this on the heels of The Abyss is just... man...

MST3K Watch: Atlantic Rim (2013)

Watched:  01/03/2019
Format:  MST3K on Netflix
Viewing: first
Decade:  2010's

It's not often you see a movie and you think "this isn't a patch on Robot Jox".   Made for... someone? by The Asylum - which raises the question about the market and outlets for movies like this in 2019.

Yes, this was a quick cash grab by The Asylum to make some coin off the dummies who think Pacific Rim and Atlantic Rim (2013) must be related, and probably honestly can't tell the different between the two, anyway.  I do wonder what has to happen to you along the way to decide this is going to be what you do for money, but I also don't blame them.

In closing: I am pretty sure they made the movie up as they went along and the cast was drunk through 40-60% of the movie, and I'm not kidding.  Our lead seems pickled a huge amount of this movie.

MST3K Watch: Mac and Me (1988)

Watched:  12/27/2018
Format:  MST3K on Netflix
Viewing:  First
Decade:  1980's

What the actual @#$% was that?

MST3K Watch: The Final Sacrifice (1990)

For whatever reason, this has long been one of my top 5 MST3K episodes.  Well, that reason is primarily Zap Rowsdower, the burly, mustachioed, Canadian-tuxedo'ed co-star of the movie.  Paired with the weiniest kid to ever star in a movie, it's a match made in cinema glory.

MST3K Watch: The Corpse Vanishes (1942)

I forgot to write this one up when we watched it a while back.  It happens.

For a long time I thought the first MST3K episode I'd ever seen was Bride of the Monster, the Bela Lugosi-starring picture by Ed Wood with Lugosi playing a mad scientist living in a spooky old house with a slow-witted assistant and pursued by an eager girl reporter out to prove her mettle.  But I actually remembered one of the jokes from the first time I saw MST3K, and as I've subsequently watched Bride of the Monster more than once, I've realized:  nope, that joke wasn't used with that film.

So, I have very particular memories of the day I first saw MST3K which helped me track down the correct episode.