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Post by cahvaydweller on Oct 21, 2013 11:02:02 GMT -5
No matter how many times I see it, the submersion/burial of Evil Trumpy from Pod People never ceases to amaze me. What effects from otherwise lackluster MST'ed movies do you admire?
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Post by Mike Flugennock on Oct 21, 2013 13:31:35 GMT -5
Impressive effects from MSTied movies?
Ouch, my brain exploded.
But, seriously... if I think for a moment...
Oh, yeah -- Tom Stewart holding Vi's head by the hair in Tormented. What else... let's see... oh, yeah, there's the flying effex in Pumaman. I also really dug how they made that guy look as if he'd been turned into a giant avocado in Robot Holocaust. Then, there's that big fight scene between Guiron and Gaos in Gamera Vs Guiron.
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Post by Monophylos on Oct 21, 2013 16:35:03 GMT -5
The space battle sequences from Space Mutiny weren't bad at all!  Seriously I'm having a hard time thinking of effects from MST3K movies (leaving aside ones stolen from other movies, like the "Battlestar Galactica" footage in Space Mutiny or the A Night to Remember footage in The Castle of Fu Manchu) that are reasonably good. Hm, I actually like the dragon at the end of The Magic Sword. The dragonfire is unconvincing but the creature itself looks pretty good. Gorgo is a bit of a slog as a movie but the monster looks pretty good--certainly better than you'll see in many kaiju movies--and it's obvious that a lot of care was put into the city models. Also I feel compelled to mention something pertaining to Invasion U.S.A. I used to know someone in college years ago who told an amusing little story about that movie and the scene toward the end where the cab-driver and the rancher are overwhelmed in the flood resulting from the Commies destroying Hoover Dam (or Boulder Dam rather). He saw the movie in his childhood and he somehow misremembered the scene as being far more dramatic than it was: he imagined seeing an actual wall of water and the taxicab desperately trying to outdrive it. But there's no such thing of course. All you see are shots of a car driving down a country road, intercut with shots of a turbulent flow of water (probably just stock footage of some rapids). The only time you even sort of see the water and the car in the same shot is in a process shot from inside the cab, with a bit of rear-projected water seen through the back windscreen. Then the camera whirls around, there's more stock-footage water, and a shot of the rancher's hat floating about. My friend cited that as an example of how a film could suggest something without actually showing it. |
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Post by CriticAndProud on Oct 22, 2013 15:26:53 GMT -5
Not impressive, but I love the rubber suit battles in the Gamera series. Such charm.
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Post by msmystie3000 on Oct 22, 2013 17:50:38 GMT -5
Most of the kaiju chaos in the original B&W GAMERA film aren't too bad.
I haven't seen the SPACE TRAVELERS episode but I heard it got an Academy Award for special effects. However, I wonder if SPACE TRAVELERS/MAROONED would count as "B-Movie crap" to begin with? It seems to just be considered "bad" due to being boring or something.
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Post by Mike Flugennock on Oct 22, 2013 19:47:02 GMT -5
Most of the kaiju chaos in the original B&W GAMERA film aren't too bad. I haven't seen the SPACE TRAVELERS episode but I heard it got an Academy Award for special effects. However, I wonder if SPACE TRAVELERS/MAROONED would count as "B-Movie crap" to begin with? It seems to just be considered "bad" due to being boring or something. The wreaking-havoc-on-Tokyo scenes in Gamera were OK, but the shots of tanks and missile batteries and jet fighters attacking are so obviously models that I laugh every time I see them. I saw Marooned (aka Space Travelers) when I was about 12, right after it came out, and I thought it was pretty cool. The intervening years of growing spaceflight geekitude, though, have made that picture pretty cringeworthy for me in that regard. The shots of the Apollo CSM in flight, and the Apollo cockpit interiors, are so wrong in so many ways -- and don't get me started about Richard Crenna's EVA scene where he rips his suit open on the Apollo's high-gain antenna. Actually, in all seriousness... I was watching The Black Scorpion this afternoon, and I have to say that I still love those old-skool Ray Harryhausen-style stop-frame animation effex. |
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Post by zombiewhacker on Oct 23, 2013 1:44:52 GMT -5
I never caught Incredible Melting Man, either riffed or unriffed. How did the FX hold up in that movie?
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Post by Monophylos on Oct 23, 2013 8:54:36 GMT -5
I tend to distinguish between special effects on one hand and costuming and makeup on the other, although that's probably an arbitrary distinction. I'd say The Incredible Melting Man makeup is still gooily convincing; heck, it's one reason I don't watch that episode very much. (Slimy or glutinous things in movies really hit some nerve with me.) On the other hand, the little space sequence that opens the movie is one of the worst I've ever seen: one little room kept poorly lit so you don't see how bad the set dressing is, astronauts going "Ooh! Wow!" about how beautiful are the rings of Saturn while the only space shots are some swirly lights and a few seconds of stock footage of solar prominences (why?) The analogous scene in <i>Stranded in Space</i> is much, much better.
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Post by cahvaydweller on Oct 23, 2013 9:51:40 GMT -5
The reason why I don't watch "Melting Man" very much is because I really feel bad for the victims; the little girl and the elderly couple are so frightened and painicked by the title character that it almost makes me uncomfortable. Of course in a way, that's kind of a compliment to the actors; their fear was so convincing that you actually pity them and want them to survive.
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Post by Mike Flugennock on Oct 23, 2013 18:58:14 GMT -5
I tend to distinguish between special effects on one hand and costuming and makeup on the other, although that's probably an arbitrary distinction. I'd say The Incredible Melting Man makeup is still gooily convincing; heck, it's one reason I don't watch that episode very much. (Slimy or glutinous things in movies really hit some nerve with me.) On the other hand, the little space sequence that opens the movie is one of the worst I've ever seen: one little room kept poorly lit so you don't see how bad the set dressing is, astronauts going "Ooh! Wow!" about how beautiful are the rings of Saturn while the only space shots are some swirly lights and a few seconds of stock footage of solar prominences (why?) The analogous scene in Stranded in Space is much, much better. Actually, in all fairness, the in-flight comms from many Apollo missions contain many instances of astronauts doing some variation of "wow, look at that!" when viewing the Earth as a whole planet for the first time, or when first seeing an "earthrise" from lunar orbit, or when describing the lunar landscape while on the surface. Still, regarding Incredible Melting Man... while it's not exactly pertinent to special effects, the idea that three astronauts made a trip of upwards of three years to Saturn shut up inside the cabin of an Apollo command module is just laughable. For the three days, each way, to the Moon and back, the Apollo cabin was a cushy ride; but spending a round-trip time of nearly six years in that thing? Cripes, man, they would've gone nuts. |
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Post by Monophylos on Oct 23, 2013 19:54:47 GMT -5
Oh, to be sure, it's not the oohing and aahing itself that's the problem, it's the fact that we're never really shown what they're oohing and aahing about--certainly nothing that looks like rings. How hard could it have been to fake up a matte painting or two?
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Post by dph on Oct 24, 2013 15:17:58 GMT -5
Even though it's obviously a matte shot, I like the shot of Mothra flying low over all of the captives on the island in Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster. Even Joel says "Nice shot".
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Post by ChrisDalek on Oct 24, 2013 16:44:12 GMT -5
The Eagle hangar crash in Cosmic Princess. It happens right before a commercial break (the Pizza & Pasta break, IIRC) and although the guys walk out of the theater just before it starts, someone at KTMA must have been impressed with the scene cos they still left it in.
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Post by angilasman on Oct 24, 2013 17:52:55 GMT -5
I've always been a fan of kaiju, so I'd like to mention that there are several nice monster/minature moments from the Gamera and Godzillas (Godzilla films tended to have far superior effects, but with MST using two of the more low-budget Godzilla films that's not as apparent).
Love the dragon in The Magic Sword.
The Russian fantasy films are full of spectacular stuff. Even when the visuals are goofy they're still really interesting.
There are a few really nice model shots (amid many horrible ones) in the Fugitive Alien episodes.
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Post by Mike Flugennock on Oct 24, 2013 17:57:57 GMT -5
Oh, to be sure, it's not the oohing and aahing itself that's the problem, it's the fact that we're never really shown what they're oohing and aahing about--certainly nothing that looks like rings. How hard could it have been to fake up a matte painting or two? Not that hard, especially considering the state of the art in special effex even back then. Still, I find myself remembering Nelson's riff from 12 To The Moon: "Uhh, ladies and gentlemen, we just blew our entire special-effects budget..." |
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