The Least Worst of MST3k

I know what bad movies are. I feel that I am qualified to judge what makes a movie merely bad, and what slams it down into the bottom of the wet, fungoid covered barrel of pure masturbation booth splooge. After 40 odd years of watching everything from big screen blockbusters to burned discs from weirdy pervo directors with the title printed right on the disc itself in sloppy handwriting, I know a bad movie when I fucking see one. I've seen thousands. Shit, maybe tens of thousands by now. I'm not even bragging. Some of those movies hurt my soul. There are bad movies that are bad, but not terrible. They're silly, fun, perfect as an excuse to stay in your pajamas on that rainy afternoon and blow off doing the laundry. Then there are movies that do damage. Neural damage, emotional damage, irreparable damage to your capacity for trust - all wounded and maimed and forever scarred. I've thrown movies across the room is disgust, stomped away from my screen after flipping it off and calling it horrible names, burned discs in the fireplace until they were nothing more than a drippy silver puddle, gotten drunk beneath a scalding hot shower and cried afterwards, all in vain.

Some of them - like The Wild World Of Batwoman, Castle of Fu Manchu and others made their way onto MST3k. Most - shit bearing titles like Mr. Jingles and Hellweek, and whatever that pseudo-snuff film by that asshole porn director was called - did not. Thank god.

The point is this: yes, the movies on MST3k are bad. But some of them - when compared to the festering pus puddles of diarrhetic wretchedness that I've had to sit through in my admittedly short but packed career as a "professional" film reviewer (whatever the fuck that means) - are quite good. Enjoyable, even. They're decently paced, reasonably well shot and at least look like they were edited by someone who wasn't a brain damaged monkey missing one arm.

For example:
Danger: Diabolik

Ironic that the last film to be shown on Mystery Science Theater 3000 was also probably their best one. Not that Danger: Diabolik is going to go down in history as the Citizen Kane of Italian psychedelic action flicks. Still, Diabolik has several things going for it. #1 - it's directed by Mario "Black Sunday" Bava. #2 - it stars leggy Marisa Mell, a sleek and golden ponygirl in barely-there mini dresses and loads of eye makeup. #3 - The Beastie Boys spoofed it in their 1998 video for Body Movin', using a ton of actual film footage for the majority. It's a fast paced and silly, 007 groovaliffic, tripping balls acid warpy Funkadelic shagfest that you can't help but enjoy.

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies

Yeah, I'm prejudiced. I loved Ray Dennis Steckler with all of my strange little heart. I had all of his films on tape - clamshell VHS, bitches - and half of them were signed by the man himself. Because I met him and he was awesome and called me "dear" and seemed utterly shocked that I owned any of his films at all. Yeah so maybe the plot is a mess, but who the fuck cares? Watch the dancing girls, enjoy the carnival, sing along to "Shook Out Of Shape" (I have the single on my iTunes - envy me) and keep in mind that this was only one of many many MANY Steckler/Flagg films, and not even the best of the lot. The Thrill Killers would have to be his best, with Rat Pfink A Boo Boo not far behind Creatures. It clips along at a decent pace and is surprisingly coherent, despite its core weirdness and cautious toe-dips into the shallow end of 60s psychological psychedelica. This is the gritty, grungy, scratchy, kitschy, sordid, tiki-loungy, tacky, starting-to-wilt 60s in all of its Kodachrome glory, stuffed to the rafters with beehive hairdos and urban despair. Dig it, man.



The Girl In Gold Boots

Fast forward four years and Ray Dennis Steckler's somewhat nostalgic look at the early 60s has become a tired, boozy, cigaretty whore in the hands of director Ted Mikels. The story seems tame and almost childish now, but back in the late 60s, this was some shocking, seedy shit. Strip clubs, drug dealers, criminal underbellies, fast times with bad pills and worse folk music. It's like Go Ask Alice, only with go go dancers. Can fresh faced Michelle be saved from a slow descent into marijuana addiction? Will the idealistic Critter finally man up and join the Army? Did the go go dancers of the 60s and 70s ever dance this badly? It's a sticky, oily, scary world, but the outfits are cute.


Tormented

Come on, admit it. We all have That One Ex that we'd totally kill if we could get away with it. Somewhere in Sacramento, there's a bloated, narcissistic film director whom I'd like to harpoon. But nevermind that now. The love triangle in Tormented isn't all that bad really, considering it was 1960 and the world still a pretty innocent place. It manages to combine a ghost story, a noir Whodunnit and a psychological drama all into one: is Tom Stewart going crazy, or is he really being haunted by the ghost of his psychotic ex girlfriend Vi, whom he did not kill, but did not rescue from death either. Lets call it The Tell-Tale Lighthouse.

Earth VS. The Spider

Look, it was the 50s. Big bug movies were mandatory. We like to think we're the first truly jaded generation of film fans, but imitation was a machine that was well oiled and running at full steam even 60+ years ago. Tarantula and Them! were such smash hits that everyone jumped on the bandwagon, hoping to squeeze a little milk money out of the Hollywood teat before it ran dry. Earth Vs. The Spider could have been a lot worse. But it's not. It's even kinda cute. It's got a real live rear-projected tarantula, rock and roll music, full skirts and letter jackets, big squirty handfuls of pomade, giant sticky spiderwebs and life sized skeletons laying around all over the place. The scene in which the spider goes crawling around downtown is a highlight.

 Marooned

Seriously, this film is drier than burned toast, duller than cold oatmeal, pick your bland food metaphor. But hey, so was Apollo 13, quite frankly. I'd rather watch Marooned than sit through Gravity again. Lets face it: there is simply no way to make a movie about astronauts trapped in a spacecraft and forced to sit and wait to be rescued into riveting, action packed, on the edge of your seat fare. Okay? There's no chase scenes, no monsters, just a gradual depletion of oxygen and a lot of sweating down in the Cape. Still, with its all-star cast and an Academy Award under its belt, it's probably the "best" film ever shown on MST3k, as far as superficial Hollywood accolades go.

The Beginning of the End

Another big bug movie, this one about grasshoppers. Someone had to do it. Grasshoppers are destructive little fuckers, man. The Dustbowl? Yeah, you can pretty much pin the entire blame for The Great Depression right on those hoppy little fuckers. Fuck you, Jiminy Cricket, you are not cute. Referred to en masse as a plague, it was only a matter of time before someone made a movie about them, munching on humans like crunchy blades of grass, rubbing their legs together and chirping up a deafening storm, flying around and shit.The bigger the bug and the more legs it has, the ickier it is. Fact.

The Leech Woman

Wow. This movie was pretty far ahead of its time. It was the 50s, a time when women stood in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant preferably, and made their men some damn dinner. Women were still pretty much window dressing. Oh sure, they could vote and stuff, but they still had to wear dresses and know how to make meatloaf. It was the era of June Cleaver, ironed and starched and sanitized. And here comes another "June" - emotionally abused and belittled by her husband for decades, she's become a soggy boozer with no future, until she meets a saucy (and not at all stupid) African queen named Mala who shows her the magic elixir of eternal youth and gives a speech about how society favors men and casts its women aside, and so deserve to be killed to provide the elixir's key ingredient. Yeah, girlfriend! Can I get a hallelujah? June starts killing and fucking, fucking and killing, backstabbing both sexes - literally! And who can blame her?  Her husband was a dick and men are pigs. May as well wallow in the mud before it dries up.

The Rebel Set

Hip, groovy little Oceans Eleven-esque, great train robbery and murky murder movie with a cast of coffeehouse beatniks who have clearly never picked up a single book by William S. Burroughs, nor know what it is to be starving, hysterical or naked, let alone all three at once. Still, it's a nifty little plot, carefully choreographed and pulled off rather well. Our hero Johnny is spectacularly unlikable and dumb, and sadly, the girl featured on the film poster, dancing wantonly and swinging her ponytail lasts all of three seconds in the film and has no dialogue. Instead, we get dumb blonde Karen, who ditzes off about a quarter of the way in and never returns. Shame really. She was the best actor in the whole damn thing.







Revenge of the Creature

The Creature From the Black Lagoon was an utter classic. Brilliant, spooky, slimy and creepy, memorable in every way and offering us an actual sculpted monster rather than a shadow puppet or a rear projected insect. The sequel is no great shakes, but it at least tries, taking the monster out of the lagoon, transplanting him to Florida and then letting him run amok around suburbia. Mr. Black Lagoon (Creech to his friends) has cooled off on doll-like brunettes and moved on to cool blondes, targeting Lori Nelson the moment he catches sight of her ringside at his new aquarium. From then on, it's a weird, fishy triangle between Lori, Creech and John Agar, with the usual underwater stunts and skimpy bathing suits for our cast to romp around in.