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Post by christmas on Jun 1, 2014 14:18:01 GMT -5
I could give more thought to this, but I remember genuinely loving "The Phantom Planet" at the time it aired. Goofy, but underrated and fun to watch.
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Post by gorncaptain on Jun 1, 2014 16:39:25 GMT -5
Insofar as "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank" isn't confusing it's just plain lame, the tale of a slacker who reacts to his very mild disciplinary action for watching movies on company time by vandalizing his employer's bank accounts and the world's weather. So it still sucks ass, sorry. Presuming he couldn't possibly sue them for almost losing his body, and trapping his mind forever in a cheesy virtual world, it seemed a perfectly reasonable reaction. A world where only rich fat corporate heads can even watch classic movies is pretty awful to contemplate. And they did try to kill him more than once. Are we sure the Wachowski Brothers never saw this movie when they were teens? I can only imagine the Matrix riffs if that come out a few years sooner.
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Post by gorncaptain on Jun 1, 2014 16:46:37 GMT -5
I've liked Diabolik ever since they did it, and immediately tracked down the uncut film. Alas, the DVD release has a slightly different English dub, and does not contain "Is that stud coming?"
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Post by TheNewMads on Jun 1, 2014 18:49:48 GMT -5
diabolik is indeed a pretty good-looking film.
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Post by zombiewhacker on Jun 2, 2014 3:12:54 GMT -5
Gorgo -- I used to look forward to this airing on Channel 9 in New York -- it used to be on the Four O'Clock movie. Anyone here old enough to remember when TV was virtually the only way to watch movies, and you would scour the TV Guide to see when the movies you loved were going to air? Sounds like we grew up in the same neck of the woods. I have many fond memories of CBS's Late Show and Late Late Show; WOR's Million Dollar Movie, Movie Nine, Big Preview, and Fright Night; ABC's 4:30 Movie; and WPIX's Science Fiction Film Festival, Chiller Theater, Channel 11 Film Festival, and Abbott and Costello movie every Sunday morning at 10:00 AM. But that's a whole 'nother thread we're getting into, ain't it?
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Post by Who Let Servo Drive on Jun 2, 2014 12:23:07 GMT -5
But that's a whole 'nother thread we're getting into, ain't it? Sure is! Interesting that in the old days every community had its own (often independent) stations showing afternoon or late night movies and they had an entire cult of viewership grow up around them. In fact circling back to MST the guys on the show often refer to the theme music and movies shown on their own local movie programs (I can hear the music for it in my head now as mouthed by Joel and (I think) Crow, although I've never heard it for myself!). Of course that seems quaint now, with a billion stations, the ability to stream just about any movie you want when you want it, and the ability to turn on your TV and watch parliamentary debate in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia as it broadcasts live or tune into a radio station streaming live from Thailand. All those things are amazing and good, but I can't help but feel nostalgic for the world when it was a great big place split into many small communities, and so individual creations mattered more, because they weren't simply consumer products that you can access whenever you want. When I was very little my folks took me to see Destroy All Monsters in the theater (I think it came out in the USA the year after it was released in Japan). Total special moment! Then it would air maybe once a year in the NY area and that was a day you set aside everything else and cheered each monster as he first appeared. Now, sitting at my desk in my office, I can pick up my phone and watch it right now, if I feel like it. and also
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Post by TheNewMads on Jun 2, 2014 14:52:36 GMT -5
I also am ambivalent about video on demand. these new cox Contour ads epitomize the evil side of it. "Spaghetti, hamburgers, We're used to getting everything we want, with Cox Contour!" there was a value in being beholden to a handful of stations and getting familiar with the libraries of your local stations. Sometimes you would watch something you might not have chosen to watch on your own, and you might learn something from it. and if you saw something amazing and you didn't catch the name of it, the memory would haunt you and you'd stalk the TV guide hoping it would come on again. same thing as listening to FM radio and catching a song you loved but not catching the name of it. you'd just have to hang on to the memory of it and hope they would play it again. it made it more valuable. it's great now to have everything at our fingertips but anything that's that readily available becomes worth less. it's just how the world works.
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Post by Who Let Servo Drive on Jun 2, 2014 16:18:15 GMT -5
Those are excellent points, like you said about catching something without catching its name and doing all that hunting for it. Then one day, voila! (Or maybe you died never having discovered the name of that song or movie.) Everything is spoonfed to us now, and indeed it is just like a burger or spaghetti, a commodity for mass consumption.
Easier, in fact, because until those Star Trek food-materializer things become reality, you actually have to get off your hinder and make the burger, or go get it, or order it to be delivered and then wait. The Godfather is literally several clicks away from starting. So The Godfather is easier to get than a burger.
It's a lot like how you value something you saved up for so much more than something you bought with mad money, or were given for free. When I was a kid I saw the Aurora Creature from the Black Lagoon model kit at my local drug store and I was in love. I didn't have the money for it, though, and did not come from a family of means, so I had to save up for it. I saved pennies I found or earned doing chores for months, and eventually an aunt heard about what I was doing and gave me those last 14 cents I needed for the kit. (Glow in the dark head and hands!) So I went back to the drug store -- but the kit was gone. Being a little kid, I didn't know what to do, but I eventually figured out a plan. I went back to the store a few days later with a pencil and paper, took a look at one of the other Aurora monster kits, jotted down the address of the company, put my pennies in an envelope, and mailed them to aurora with a letter describing in great detail the model I was ordering. A few weeks later I got the pennies back in the mail with a letter from some nice secretary patiently explaining to me that they did not do direct sales of their products so she was returning the pennies.
Man did that model loom large in my imagination in those heady days of thinking about it -- dreaming of taking the parts off the sprue, imagining that glowing Creature head (and hands!) dominating the darkness of my room at night. Nowadays, I could easily buy one of the collector kits off of ebay, mint in box, still sealed, exactly what I wanted back in 1971. But I never have.
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Post by speedyboris on Jun 4, 2014 16:36:09 GMT -5
"I Accuse My Parents" comes to mind. The movie's really not that bad by MST standards; it's easy to follow, has some memorable characters, and there is a worthwhile, more-relevant-than-ever moral (that is, parents need to pay attention to their kids or they'll feel neglected and might end up in crime), even if the judge lays said moral on pretty thick at the end. Plus, "Are You Happy in Your Work".
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Post by winddemon2 on Jun 5, 2014 1:00:43 GMT -5
Warrior of the Lost World is more watchable than Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. I'm calling it right now!!! WHOSE WITH me!
Yes Thunderdome was , the disparity between it and the rest of the trilogy is more wide than any other lackluster third of any other trilogy, so much so that… Warrior of the Lost World is unequivocally better just by the fact it had action.
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Post by GodoHell on Jun 5, 2014 7:15:25 GMT -5
Time flies when I watch Prince of Space because I like it so much.
I will not even attempt to make a case that it's a good movie. I just like it.
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Post by mitchell33 on Jun 8, 2014 23:57:29 GMT -5
i have a copy of Mitchell that my brother made me, but what's funny about that is that it's such a bad film that i can't seem to get past the 1st few minutes of it without hearing Joel & the bots comments. cause that's the one episode i've seen the most i think. it's also my favorite episode as well.
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Post by Who Let Servo Drive on Jun 9, 2014 12:32:15 GMT -5
The MST guys cut a scene in the movie where big blubbery Joe Don Baker slobbers all over the beautiful Linda Evans' bare feet, like a sinister St. Bernard. I think they rightly concluded that he had insisted that scene be made just to satisfy himself in ways that we needn't dwell on. Thank God for MST's editing saavy, although I have to admit it would have been funny to hear them riff that.
Goosio. Yes, I'd like Goosio on my Mount Rushmore of MST characters as well. I mean, before he was killed. I'd like to remember him as he was in life.
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Post by Prime Minister Jim J. Bullock on Jun 10, 2014 8:31:41 GMT -5
"I Accuse My Parents" comes to mind. The movie's really not that bad by MST standards; it's easy to follow, has some memorable characters, and there is a worthwhile, more-relevant-than-ever moral (that is, parents need to pay attention to their kids or they'll feel neglected and might end up in crime), even if the judge lays said moral on pretty thick at the end. Plus, "Are You Happy in Your Work". I agree with this, I own the unriffed version of I Accuse my Parents, and it is quite watchable, it has pretty good acting, an actual plot that held together, and Mary Beth Hughes was not a bad singer at all.
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Post by Monophylos on Jun 10, 2014 9:01:31 GMT -5
I've said it before and I'll say it again: parts of Mitchell are actually pretty good. The whole enterprise is vitiated by a made-for-TV-movie cheapness, so you get stuff like the 20 mph car chase and the stereotyped criminals who'd be right at home on an episode of "Kojak", but there are some effective sequences, particularly the final fight between Mitchell and Benton (which the MST3K edit does bowdlerize.) The real difficulty isn't that Mitchell himself is slobby and unsympathetic; that wouldn't matter so long as you got the idea he was good at his job. But Mitchell isn't The French Connection and Mitchell isn't "Popeye" Doyle so after one early scene in which Mitchell's demonstrating some acumen in picking apart Deaney's story of shooting the burglar, Mitchell doesn't really do anything more other than make a nuisance of himself until the villains inexplicably decide to include him in their plans.
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