10th August 2010

Question: what have the following films in common? Robot Monster, The Killer Shrews, The Beast Of Yucca Flats, The Horror Of Party Beach, Viking Women vs. the Sea Serpent, Bride Of The Monster, The Phantom Planet and The Screaming Skull.

Answer: well, it's not just that they're not very good - or indeed that they're rubbish (though I actually thought that The Screaming Skull had a few nice moments in it). Some of them are absolutely bone-meltingly abysmal. But more than that: it's that they've all been targeted by the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 show. Now I've been unaware of the cult of MST3K for a long time but the basic thrust of it is that a bloke and some robots are forced to watch dismally bad movies, and they keep up a jokey running commentary on them.

So now, what have this second batch of films in common (and really you should be able to see where this is going): This Island Earth, Phase IV, Earth Vs The Spider, Parts: The Clonus Horror, Squirm? Well, the answer this time is that they're NOT bad movies - admittedly Earth Vs The Spider isn't universally loved and wasn't exactly snubbed at the 1959 Academy Awards, but it has some halfway decent arachno effects - but they've still been given the MST treatment. And that kind of annoys me.

This was prompted by This island Earth turning up in the post the other week and let's be honest: it's not a masterpiece. But it's perfectly acceptable: it's well enough made, and the Metaluna effects are still impressive. Still, the thing for which it's mainly remembered is the giant mutant that shows up in the last act with the huge exposed brain and the huge claws for hands. It is, again, a perfectly acceptable and effective costume and makeup job which may obviously be a bloke in a suit, but it's a bloke in a very nicely designed suit. Even if it does nothing much but stagger around leering into camera and briefly menacing heroine Faith Domergue, it's what sticks in the memory more than the plot or the dialogue. But as a film there's nothing drastically wrong with it: it's not boring, for a start, and there are several thousand worse movies out there.

So why lump it in with The Amazing Colossal Man and Women Of The Prehistoric Planet? Are all 50s Z-features supposed to be equally worthy of derision and bad jokes? If you can't tell the difference (or don't care about the difference) between This Island Earth and The Beast Of Yucca Flats - if you can't distinguish the qualities of the former from the complete shambling incompetence of the latter - why not riff on Cat People or Hammer's Dracula? Why not Bicycle Thieves or Citizen Kane, The Grapes Of Wrath or Once Upon A Time In The West? There's no shortage of unusual hats to mock, or funny facial expressions that go nicely with a muttered "Who farted?". (And let's be honest: if you can't tell the difference between This Island Earth and The Beast Of Yucca Flats, then you're an idiot.)

The answer is that they're very easy targets - if you're going to make gags about Ed Wood movies the bar is very low to start with. And the general consensus is that these movies are rubbish anyway so it's not as though we need to show them any respect, right? Our own performances and production values don't need to be anything remarkable, because it's only Robot Monster after all. Well, to judge from the numerous clips on YouTube (and I'll gladly admit that's not the best context to watch anything), MST3K itself isn't that stellar. The framing sequences look no better than the early series of Red Dwarf (and the acting is a lot worse) so it's a bit rich to start mocking the set designs and performance from movies that were shot forty years before on even lower budgets. If the only way your own acting looks any good is because you've stuck it next to Bride Of The Monster, maybe you really shouldn't bother.

The opening of their treatment to The Screaming Skull isn't stellar either: "I k-new a K-nuebel once" is the quip at the expense of writer-producer John Knuebel. So we're less than two minutes in and mocking surnames? On a show whose crew includes people called Brantseg, Trisko and Roozenboom? Then, as a car drives up to the big scary house: "Yes, shocking horror arrives in style in your 1953 Mercedes!" Sorry, but in what 1958-set movie from 1958 would a 1953 car be notably unusual?

It's ultimately about respect - Scream respects Halloween, Airplane! respects Airport. MST doesn't respect its targets and it just becomes some guys in the cinema shouting out random one-liners. That's annoying at the Empire or your local Cineworld, and it's annoying here. It's also disrespectful to the audience: I don't need to be told what's wrong with The Killer Shrews. Just show me the movie and let me make my own mind up.

If you are going to mock other people's work, your own has to be of that standard at the very least. Scream pulls off its deflation of teenage slasher cliché by being a better movie than those it's taking the rise out of. A rotten little film like Hack!, by contrast, doesn't - it's the kind of DTV horror movie that calls upon a character to wittily announce "this is like a scene from a ****** horror movie", which doesn't work because that's precisely what it is. Airplane! works because its technical qualities are up to par. Dracula: Dead And Loving It works in that department - as a loving recreation of the look and feel of vintage Hammer pictures it's a complete success, but it's sunk by the movie just not being funny.

Now I'll be the first to admit that my sense of humour is a nebulous thing at best, and it may be that Dracula: Dead And Loving It is absolutely hysterical and I just don't get it. But I don't think so. And I don't think my not getting the joke about MST3K is my fault.

Untill the next time.

Richard.

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