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Post by mrmeadows on Mar 30, 2011 14:24:39 GMT -5
Yeah, Fu Manchu is just bad filmmaking. Sure, there's some lush scenery now and again--it's an exotic location, after all--but as Crow says at a different point in the film "it isn't framed very well". And worst of all, the movie just plain makes zero sense. I've seen the episode multiple times and still couldn't tell you what it was about. (I do think we've been oversold on how bad an EPISODE it is, but that's a different thread.)
But is it the worst ever? Hmmm...probably not. But neither is Manos. I'd have to go with one of the Coleman Francis flicks as the bottom-line WORST movies they've ever done. That said, I think I could enjoy a Francis movie unriffed (just laughing at the overly-sincere incompetence of it all) a lot more than Fu Manchu unriffed. Watching Fu unriffed would be like taking a lead fist to the gut.
I also need to go back and watch Ring of Terror again. It's been mentioned a few times in this thread but I don't remember it being THAT bad. I recall it being typically sub-par drive-in B-movie fare, but nothing Coleman Francis bad.
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Post by msmystie3000 on Mar 30, 2011 14:38:55 GMT -5
They did it with other episodes, too. I believe Cave Dwellers got the same kind of hype in its final host segment. It was bad (even if the episode is hilarious), but I don't think of it as being as bad as a few others that came before it, like Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy. I hear that. Cave Dwellers was silly, but watchable, yet Tom Servo states it was the "worst movie" they've watched on the show so far. I'd rather watch Cave Dwellers than Ring of Terror or Catalina Caper myself. I'd go as far to say Godzilla vs. Megalon as well, despite my Zilla fanhood. Honestly I don't find Invasion of the Neptune Men half as painful as they made it out to be either. It's not as much cheesy fun as Prince of Space either, but I always considered it more "meh" than anything. Ditto. I thought NEPTUNE MEN was kinda fun & cheesy. Also, concerning CAVE DWELLERS, I found it odd that J&TBs seemed perfectly fine, blasé, "business as usual" throughout the movie only to go catatonic with stupefied horror afterwards (I LOVE JOEL'S FACE, though!). As for GODZILLA vs. MEGALON, that episode RULED!
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Post by pablum on Mar 30, 2011 21:40:04 GMT -5
I also need to go back and watch Ring of Terror again. It's been mentioned a few times in this thread but I don't remember it being THAT bad. I recall it being typically sub-par drive-in B-movie fare, but nothing Coleman Francis bad. I had to use an example of a bad movie shown prior to The Castle of Fu Manchu on the show to help my case that the SOL crew were overreacting to the much easier to handle season 3 experiment. Coleman Francis movies were all much worse and the reactions to them were all justified. All the weeping directed at Fu Manchu should have been saved for them.
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Post by fathermushroom on Mar 30, 2011 21:54:23 GMT -5
I think they made more of the Rock Climbing in "Lost Continent" than was warranted, and by that I mean I might not have noticed it if they hadn't gone on and on about it.
Ditto Sandstorm in that Herc movie.
But, you know, it's all relative. They had to talk about SOMETHING every week, and they wanted to mix it up.
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Post by Mighty Jack on Mar 30, 2011 23:19:23 GMT -5
I think it's funny how people are comparing badness/painfulness. "This 'fill in the blank' movie is more painful than Fu"
It reminds me of that game where your asked to chose between 2 terrible things, like - "Would you rather make love to Rosie O'Donnell or the corpse of Martin van Buren?" - Sure, if you put a gun to my head I'll chose Van Buren... ;D But either way, I'm gonna hurt.
PS: Plus we can't really compare Monster A-G0 Go, Manos, the CF films etc, to Fu, because the SOL crew hadn't seen them at that point.
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Post by beljah on Mar 31, 2011 0:10:03 GMT -5
i actually like a lot of the mst3k movies as movies, but my taste in movies has always been a bit questionable (too many late night creature features in my youth warped my mind). i'd include as passable movies, or at least sporadically interesting movies: monster a-go-go just kidding about monster a-go-go. Phew...that was close. No love for "Jack Frost"?
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Post by TheNewMads on Mar 31, 2011 6:53:19 GMT -5
i actually like a lot of the mst3k movies as movies, but my taste in movies has always been a bit questionable (too many late night creature features in my youth warped my mind). i'd include as passable movies, or at least sporadically interesting movies: monster a-go-go just kidding about monster a-go-go. Phew...that was close. No love for "Jack Frost"? i thought about that, as well as "day the earth froze", "magic sword" etc. i know some people swear by the sword-and-sandalers of the great white north and they're sure visually lush, in a 60s technicolor kinda way, but somehow they just never got me. probably the result of some childhood trauma.
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Post by inlovewithcrow on Mar 31, 2011 13:00:30 GMT -5
I think they over sold Hypnoheliostaticstasis in Radar Secret Service. I didn't find it nearly as dull as the Rock Climbing scenes in Lost Continent. I actually like RSS. And I don't mind rock climbing, which I'll take over sandstorm or refueling any old day. Though maybe I just like guys' gray butts. Fu wasn't good but as I just posted in "just watched" it had some artistic shots, Richard Greene (who I like), and a nice theme song. Beast of Yucca Flats may be the one I think worst. It changes day to day.
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Post by continosbuckle on Apr 5, 2011 15:18:09 GMT -5
Girl in Lovers' Lane - Specifically the ending. I had read the ACEG entry before I ever saw the episode, and based on Paul Chaplin's vitriol towards the filmmakers about how it ended and how it was "not justified by the characters' actions and decisions", I expected it to be completely out of the blue and make me angry. But the ending, while a huge downer that probably could have been happy, fit with the rest of the movie, and did make sense based on the way the characters acted throughout the film. I mean, it sucks they killed a likable character off, but that doesn't mean it didn't make sense within the context of the film. While I'll agree with you that Paul certainly overstated, even misrepresented the situation in the movie, I'll say that Carrie's death was gratuitous and not essential to achieve the emotional effect that movie had been approaching beforehand. There are plenty of movies where a certain "good" character must die in the end for a full emotional impact (Chinatown, for instance), but I don't see this story leading in that direction, nor do I think its story integrity would have been damaged if Carrie hadn't died. The theme didn't demand her death. It was just a downer for the sake of being a downer. It wasn't even following the 50's moralistic code that would require someone's punishment for being a bad person, despite that being what Carrie's death seemed the most like. (There are a few examples of this in movies they did) I do think, however, that if the homosexual undercurrent between Danny and Bix was the point of that movie, Carrie's death would have made sense in a perverse fashion. But if that's the case, there's a real point about a movie being *too* subtle. While I don't think that subtext was unintentional, I also don't think it was the ultimate point of the movie. I'm curious. Does anyone have a survey of all the movies they've claimed have been the worst they've ever done? I know too that the ACEG says that The Incredible Melting Man "may" have been the worst movie they did, which I found their singling out of it a bit odd (despite me not really disagreeing). I find it odd but I can't remember them ever saying anything like that about any of the movies they did for SciFi. They may have gotten theatrical about how bad some of the movies were ( Neptune Men most readily), but I can't remember them claiming in their website recaps, nor in the episodes themselves, the sort of "This is clearly the worst movie you've ever shown us" scolding to Pearl that they did fairly often to Clayton.
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Post by sb5 on Apr 5, 2011 20:43:07 GMT -5
You make good points. I do agree that the movie easily could have (and maybe should have) had a happy ending. My problem was probably more with (as you noted) Paul's overstatement of how bad it was; when I first saw the episode, I was expected to be flat-out angry about it based on his description, but I felt more like, "That's it? That's what made you so angry?" I find it odd but I can't remember them ever saying anything like that about any of the movies they did for SciFi. They may have gotten theatrical about how bad some of the movies were ( Neptune Men most readily), but I can't remember them claiming in their website recaps, nor in the episodes themselves, the sort of "This is clearly the worst movie you've ever shown us" scolding to Pearl that they did fairly often to Clayton. In the ACEG entry for Hobgoblins, Paul said "It shoots right to the top of the list of the worst movies we've ever done".
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Post by continosbuckle on Apr 5, 2011 22:17:20 GMT -5
You make good points. I do agree that the movie easily could have (and maybe should have) had a happy ending. My problem was probably more with (as you noted) Paul's overstatement of how bad it was; when I first saw the episode, I was expected to be flat-out angry about it based on his description, but I felt more like, "That's it? That's what made you so angry?" Oh definitely. They certainly showed Jack Elam as being threatening, and moreover, resentful of Carrie and Bix, so the idea that he'd kill her is not "unsupported" or whatever word Paul used. In fact, the more outrageous moment was when Elam confessed immediately upon being wrestled into submission, when he seemed smugly amused about unintentionally setting up Bix's impending death by vigilante gang just beforehand. But I will say that the movie had an overarching theme, and Carrie's death (and its aftermath) bungled it and made the whole thing irrelevant, which, while it didn't elicit anger in me, certainly made me roll my eyes. In fact, I found my reaction to Liz's implied death at the end of Attack of the Giant Leeches much more in line with Paul's reaction to The Girl in Lover's Lane. The total lack of concern about her by all the characters, especially when she'd been shown as alive just moments earlier, was shockingly callous. Of course, that's the moral code I mentioned earlier. I find it odd but I can't remember them ever saying anything like that about any of the movies they did for SciFi. They may have gotten theatrical about how bad some of the movies were ( Neptune Men most readily), but I can't remember them claiming in their website recaps, nor in the episodes themselves, the sort of "This is clearly the worst movie you've ever shown us" scolding to Pearl that they did fairly often to Clayton. In the ACEG entry for Hobgoblins, Paul said "It shoots right to the top of the list of the worst movies we've ever done". Now that you mention it, I remember them saying that about Hobgoblins. I also remember them indicting Overdrawn at the Memory Bank in that same entry. Amusingly, the ACEG lists Skydivers as one they thought was one of the worst movies they ever did, until they saw the rest of Coleman Francis' oeuvre, whereupon it was rechristened the "best" of the three. They never did end up saying which of the remaining two movies they thought was the worst, though.
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Post by Lounge Lizard on May 9, 2011 21:25:00 GMT -5
I think an interesting thing Joel once said was that back then, all that people knew about the movie they were going to see was based on the poster. That's how the movies were sold too, by having a really good poster. Almost all of the movies on MST probably had cool/grabbing posters, but once people actually saw the movie they're like "wow that movie really sucked, it was nothing like what the poster had". Example:
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Post by msmystie3000 on May 9, 2011 23:12:24 GMT -5
I think an interesting thing Joel once said was that back then, all that people knew about the movie they were going to see was based on the poster. That's how the movies were sold too, by having a really good poster. Almost all of the movies on MST probably had cool/grabbing posters, but once people actually saw the movie they're like "wow that movie really sucked, it was nothing like what the poster had". Example: I can't see the poster. Could you repost it, please? Thanks!
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Post by Lounge Lizard on May 9, 2011 23:44:13 GMT -5
I think an interesting thing Joel once said was that back then, all that people knew about the movie they were going to see was based on the poster. That's how the movies were sold too, by having a really good poster. Almost all of the movies on MST probably had cool/grabbing posters, but once people actually saw the movie they're like "wow that movie really sucked, it was nothing like what the poster had". Example: I can't see the poster. Could you repost it, please? Thanks! Fixed!
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Post by BJ on May 10, 2011 14:43:21 GMT -5
Almost all of the movies on MST probably had cool/grabbing posters, but once people actually saw the movie they're like "wow that movie really sucked, it was nothing like what the poster had Very true. This one boggles the mind. Although, if Bryan Adams and River Phoenix had been in the movie, it would have probably been a lot better.
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