Post by kmorgan on Feb 14, 2021 21:59:38 GMT -5
Since I watched "Space Travelers" last week (see my entry in the "kmorgan's selections" thread on the General board), I thought I'd re-post this article I wrote for the old Even Deeper Blurting board back in August, 2001. I've only made a few minor grammatical edits here and there. And, as noted elsewhere, I've since learned that the edits were apparently more the work of FVI than BBI.
*******
In this installment of a continuing series, Kenneth Morgan continues letting you know what the Brains didn't show you.
As I've previously noted, an average episode of MST3K allows approximately 75 minutes per episode for actual movie footage. As a result, a fair amount of time sensitive editing (as opposed to content editing) is required for most of the featured movies to fit into the show. One experiment where this is very apparent is show 401, which featured "Marooned", a.k.a. "Space Travelers", a film that clocks in at 134 minutes. (The original release, that is. I'm not sure if the Film Ventures International version is different.)
Anyway, I figured I'd just run down all the stuff they just couldn't make room for. So, one movie rental later, here it is:
**The first cut occurs right at the beginning: the main titles. The original film features them against a better-looking Earth backdrop than the FVI version. Interesting note: The main actors are listed by character name and character occupation, the main actresses by character name and the supporting actors by character occupation. I guess the budget wouldn't allow those characters to have names.
**During the opening launch sequence, we see a few more shots of consoles and the rocket. No major loss.
**There's a big cut following the sequence with the astronauts turning on the capsule's TV camera. In the original, we see that there is a second camera, stationed at Lloyd's (Gene Hackman) feet, pointed upwards. (SUGGESTED RIFF- "Activating crotch cam.")
**This leads immediately to shots of the capsule docking with the orbiting laboratory. There's a brief scene of our heroes settling in (like Stone (James Franciscus) riding a stationary bike), then all three go outside (Lloyd gets to use a cool jetpack) and gaze in wonder at the rising sun. This leads to the "Bring them down" scene, which we saw.
**After the ship's retros fail the second time, we see Keith (Gregory Peck) start giving orders for everyone to look for the cause of the problem. At one point, he says he wants a "tape dump" of the relevant data. (S.R.: "A tape dump? Well, I'll have to eat a couple of cassettes, then you'll have to wait a while…") At that point, they finally notice the astronauts wives waiting in the visitors' gallery. So, Dougherty (David Janssen) breaks the news to them. Betty Lloyd (Mariette Hartley) is brave in a NASA PR fashion, Theresa Stone (Nancy Kovac) is nervous, and Celia Pruitt (Lee Grant) seems defeatist.
**Immediately after this, Keith shows up at a press conference and gives them the usual fairy tale; yes, they're stuck in orbit and the oxygen is running low, but there's no cause for alarm. (Yeah, right, Greg.)
**Ever wonder why Keith suddenly goes along with the rescue idea, after bluntly turning it down earlier? Here's why: After that scene in the conference room, we see Keith driving down a Texas highway and getting stopped by the police. (S.R.: "Sorry about this, Mr. Peck. We thought you were black. Move along.") While Keith protests the stop, a call from the unnamed, generic President of the United States comes over the police radio. Keith takes the call and tells the President that a rescue attempt won't work. The Pres says try it anyway; it'll look better in the papers. Thusly chastened, Keith agrees.
**After this, there's a brief sequence of the astronauts listening to the news of their predicament over the radio. Pruitt (Richard Crenna) turns it off, says forget waiting, and decides to go outside and "eyeball the engine". It's at this point that we rejoin MST3K, as ground control tells them of the planned rescue.
**Following the scene of the astronauts taking their "quiet pills", we see Keith pull a John Ford kind of thing at the launch pad: There are too many procedures in the manual, so he just crosses out the ones they don't need, putting them back on schedule. Afterwards, we see Dougherty still practicing in the simulator, and not doing very well. Keith takes notes on his progress. (S.R.(as Peck): "Note to self: Fire Dougherty immediately. Do NOT adopt Damien.")
**After this, we see a bunch of weather photos being received at NASA. Oh, no! Hurricane Alma is headed for the Cape! (It's not like we didn't see this coming, fellas.) Keith stoically accepts this information, and then is called to the phone again to talk to POTUS. He tells him about Alma, says that the Russians can't help (though they could, actually), and that they can't launch the rescue ship any earlier.
**This leads to the astronuts being awakened by Mission Control. They pass along some general news and lame jokes. Stone, as always, is jotting down calculations on his notepad. Pruitt moans about how he's never made any money working for NASA and how he's too old to be assigned to the Mars mission. (S.R.: "Dick, at the rate we're going, your great grandkids will be too old for the Mars shot.") Lloyd is sullen and snappy, leading to a crew reminiscence of a psych test they all once took, which convinces the audience that Lloyd is, indeed, bonkers. Mission Control calls Pruitt to the window so he can see his hometown (San Diego) pass by underneath. (I think they all turned on their lights or something.) Pruitt is all choked up at this.
**Afterwards, we see the rescue ship brought to the Cape via a chopper. Dougherty exits the chopper and is told about Alma. We then see the ship winched up atop the booster. (No big loss, this scene.) This leads to the teary goodbye scene with the astronauts' wives.
**After Lloyd's Shatnerian breakdown, there's a brief bit of his getting sedated with a hypo, while he begs his buddies not to kill him. Pruitt shouts at Ground Control for bringing in Lloyd's wife (S.R.l: "Yeah, like it's her fault that her husband's a Section 8 case!") and tells them to get it in gear with the rescue.
**This leads to footage of the wind and rain picking up at the Cape as Alma comes to visit. Keith and Dougherty pull up to the pad and take the elevator up to the top. They enter the area where the ship is found, a place known in NASA parlance as a "white room". (S.R.(singing): "In a White Room, with a red spaceship!") Keith flashes Dougherty a thumbs up, which he returns in kind. (S.R.(as Janssen): "Actually, I meant to use a different finger.") Dr. Kimble then climbs into the ship. There's a long countdown scene, leading up to the "Hold!" sequence featured on the show.
**As the eye of Alma passes over the Cape, there's a shot of the rescue ship launching, followed by the usual chant of, "Go! Go! Go!" No one seems to notice that the stock footage ship that launches is different from the stock footage ship seen earlier on the pad.
**Right after the launch, there's a brief bit on Ironman One with the far out space nuts. Ever-calculating Stone calmly tells his buddies about what happens when you die of anoxia and makes it sound like a pretty darn nice way to snuff it. This leads to the sequence where Keith urges one of them commit suicide ASAP.
**After the crew argues over who gets to try space hara kiri, there are longer shots of Pruitt outside the ship than we saw. We could afford to lose those, though.
**Later, after Stone puts Lloyd on his own air supply and takes off his own helmet, he tries to concentrate and dazed by lack of air, starts laughing. He looks outside, sees the Russian scrubbing bubble ship appear and, still dazed, thinks it's the Angel of Death, or something. He describes the cosmonaut getting out of the ship; Keith tells him to forget about Dougherty and go with the Russkie. (Somehow, I don't think the President will be too happy about that, Greg.) This leads us to the big, slow, non-tension-filled ending we saw.
**The only other sequence we didn't see was the closing credits. FVI featured more production credits; the original just had photos of the main cast on a NASA map.
That's about it. The cut stuff rounded out the plot, though it didn't fix some of the gaping logical flaws in the movie. (Like why Pruitt decided to off himself in a way that used up most of their oxygen.) Much of what was cut was padding, though. It would've provided some good riffing material, but the show was OK anyway. Still, it would've been nice to leave some of it in. Oh, well.
Anyway, watching this movie unMSTed wasn't too bad. It's an Oscar winner with an A-list cast that at least tries to make an intelligent film featuring realistic space travel.
Besides, Hackman is good in anything. Even this.
*******
In this installment of a continuing series, Kenneth Morgan continues letting you know what the Brains didn't show you.
As I've previously noted, an average episode of MST3K allows approximately 75 minutes per episode for actual movie footage. As a result, a fair amount of time sensitive editing (as opposed to content editing) is required for most of the featured movies to fit into the show. One experiment where this is very apparent is show 401, which featured "Marooned", a.k.a. "Space Travelers", a film that clocks in at 134 minutes. (The original release, that is. I'm not sure if the Film Ventures International version is different.)
Anyway, I figured I'd just run down all the stuff they just couldn't make room for. So, one movie rental later, here it is:
**The first cut occurs right at the beginning: the main titles. The original film features them against a better-looking Earth backdrop than the FVI version. Interesting note: The main actors are listed by character name and character occupation, the main actresses by character name and the supporting actors by character occupation. I guess the budget wouldn't allow those characters to have names.
**During the opening launch sequence, we see a few more shots of consoles and the rocket. No major loss.
**There's a big cut following the sequence with the astronauts turning on the capsule's TV camera. In the original, we see that there is a second camera, stationed at Lloyd's (Gene Hackman) feet, pointed upwards. (SUGGESTED RIFF- "Activating crotch cam.")
**This leads immediately to shots of the capsule docking with the orbiting laboratory. There's a brief scene of our heroes settling in (like Stone (James Franciscus) riding a stationary bike), then all three go outside (Lloyd gets to use a cool jetpack) and gaze in wonder at the rising sun. This leads to the "Bring them down" scene, which we saw.
**After the ship's retros fail the second time, we see Keith (Gregory Peck) start giving orders for everyone to look for the cause of the problem. At one point, he says he wants a "tape dump" of the relevant data. (S.R.: "A tape dump? Well, I'll have to eat a couple of cassettes, then you'll have to wait a while…") At that point, they finally notice the astronauts wives waiting in the visitors' gallery. So, Dougherty (David Janssen) breaks the news to them. Betty Lloyd (Mariette Hartley) is brave in a NASA PR fashion, Theresa Stone (Nancy Kovac) is nervous, and Celia Pruitt (Lee Grant) seems defeatist.
**Immediately after this, Keith shows up at a press conference and gives them the usual fairy tale; yes, they're stuck in orbit and the oxygen is running low, but there's no cause for alarm. (Yeah, right, Greg.)
**Ever wonder why Keith suddenly goes along with the rescue idea, after bluntly turning it down earlier? Here's why: After that scene in the conference room, we see Keith driving down a Texas highway and getting stopped by the police. (S.R.: "Sorry about this, Mr. Peck. We thought you were black. Move along.") While Keith protests the stop, a call from the unnamed, generic President of the United States comes over the police radio. Keith takes the call and tells the President that a rescue attempt won't work. The Pres says try it anyway; it'll look better in the papers. Thusly chastened, Keith agrees.
**After this, there's a brief sequence of the astronauts listening to the news of their predicament over the radio. Pruitt (Richard Crenna) turns it off, says forget waiting, and decides to go outside and "eyeball the engine". It's at this point that we rejoin MST3K, as ground control tells them of the planned rescue.
**Following the scene of the astronauts taking their "quiet pills", we see Keith pull a John Ford kind of thing at the launch pad: There are too many procedures in the manual, so he just crosses out the ones they don't need, putting them back on schedule. Afterwards, we see Dougherty still practicing in the simulator, and not doing very well. Keith takes notes on his progress. (S.R.(as Peck): "Note to self: Fire Dougherty immediately. Do NOT adopt Damien.")
**After this, we see a bunch of weather photos being received at NASA. Oh, no! Hurricane Alma is headed for the Cape! (It's not like we didn't see this coming, fellas.) Keith stoically accepts this information, and then is called to the phone again to talk to POTUS. He tells him about Alma, says that the Russians can't help (though they could, actually), and that they can't launch the rescue ship any earlier.
**This leads to the astronuts being awakened by Mission Control. They pass along some general news and lame jokes. Stone, as always, is jotting down calculations on his notepad. Pruitt moans about how he's never made any money working for NASA and how he's too old to be assigned to the Mars mission. (S.R.: "Dick, at the rate we're going, your great grandkids will be too old for the Mars shot.") Lloyd is sullen and snappy, leading to a crew reminiscence of a psych test they all once took, which convinces the audience that Lloyd is, indeed, bonkers. Mission Control calls Pruitt to the window so he can see his hometown (San Diego) pass by underneath. (I think they all turned on their lights or something.) Pruitt is all choked up at this.
**Afterwards, we see the rescue ship brought to the Cape via a chopper. Dougherty exits the chopper and is told about Alma. We then see the ship winched up atop the booster. (No big loss, this scene.) This leads to the teary goodbye scene with the astronauts' wives.
**After Lloyd's Shatnerian breakdown, there's a brief bit of his getting sedated with a hypo, while he begs his buddies not to kill him. Pruitt shouts at Ground Control for bringing in Lloyd's wife (S.R.l: "Yeah, like it's her fault that her husband's a Section 8 case!") and tells them to get it in gear with the rescue.
**This leads to footage of the wind and rain picking up at the Cape as Alma comes to visit. Keith and Dougherty pull up to the pad and take the elevator up to the top. They enter the area where the ship is found, a place known in NASA parlance as a "white room". (S.R.(singing): "In a White Room, with a red spaceship!") Keith flashes Dougherty a thumbs up, which he returns in kind. (S.R.(as Janssen): "Actually, I meant to use a different finger.") Dr. Kimble then climbs into the ship. There's a long countdown scene, leading up to the "Hold!" sequence featured on the show.
**As the eye of Alma passes over the Cape, there's a shot of the rescue ship launching, followed by the usual chant of, "Go! Go! Go!" No one seems to notice that the stock footage ship that launches is different from the stock footage ship seen earlier on the pad.
**Right after the launch, there's a brief bit on Ironman One with the far out space nuts. Ever-calculating Stone calmly tells his buddies about what happens when you die of anoxia and makes it sound like a pretty darn nice way to snuff it. This leads to the sequence where Keith urges one of them commit suicide ASAP.
**After the crew argues over who gets to try space hara kiri, there are longer shots of Pruitt outside the ship than we saw. We could afford to lose those, though.
**Later, after Stone puts Lloyd on his own air supply and takes off his own helmet, he tries to concentrate and dazed by lack of air, starts laughing. He looks outside, sees the Russian scrubbing bubble ship appear and, still dazed, thinks it's the Angel of Death, or something. He describes the cosmonaut getting out of the ship; Keith tells him to forget about Dougherty and go with the Russkie. (Somehow, I don't think the President will be too happy about that, Greg.) This leads us to the big, slow, non-tension-filled ending we saw.
**The only other sequence we didn't see was the closing credits. FVI featured more production credits; the original just had photos of the main cast on a NASA map.
That's about it. The cut stuff rounded out the plot, though it didn't fix some of the gaping logical flaws in the movie. (Like why Pruitt decided to off himself in a way that used up most of their oxygen.) Much of what was cut was padding, though. It would've provided some good riffing material, but the show was OK anyway. Still, it would've been nice to leave some of it in. Oh, well.
Anyway, watching this movie unMSTed wasn't too bad. It's an Oscar winner with an A-list cast that at least tries to make an intelligent film featuring realistic space travel.
Besides, Hackman is good in anything. Even this.