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Post by Monophylos on Dec 11, 2012 16:57:33 GMT -5
I've got the Skydivers episode cued up and got to thinking about the diabolical murder plot that Suzy concocts to kill Tony Cardoza. She picks an easily detectable method for sabotaging Cardoza's parachute, burning it with "acid" which she openly procures from a pharmacist without any attempt at concealment. (Could you get "acid" from a pharmacy at that time? By the way, I'm pretty sure if you asked a pharmacist for "acid" he'd immediately want to know, "What kind?") Then they allow themselves to be observed leaving the hangar, yet also hang around the place instead of making themselves scarce once effecting the sabotage. Not exactly the work of criminal masterminds.
Heaven knows there are a lot of dumb crooks in MST3K'd movies. Surely Jimmy Wilson from I Accuse My Parents is stupid (really big!) for getting roped into Charlie Blake's fencing operation without once thinking that maybe he was doing something criminal, and it was moronic beyond belief to confront Blake himself. Arthur Cummings (or Cummins?) in Mitchell goes down because he inexplicably keeps Mitchell around, feeding him information on the crime he's involved in (!) and then actually inviting Mitchell to take part (!!). And then there's Deaney's genius idea of supplying Mitchell with a $1000 per night hooker. That accomplished...what exactly?
Then there are the idiotic villainous plans. For instance, what's the point of Q's "hot ice" plan? In the movie it's used for two things, making a bullet and making a fake iceberg to hide their base. So instead of using an ordinary bullet they use an ice bullet which doesn't do any better a job and which is instantly traceable to one of only two people in the world, immensely simplifying the job of investigating the crime. And you'd think that an iceberg that didn't melt would only draw attention to Q's base, not conceal it.
Are there any smart criminals in MST3K's movies? I suppose Mr. T's planned heist in The Rebel Set is reasonably clever, although I question some of his methods of carrying it out. Is hiring three sad sacks, none of them experienced criminals, and insulting them multiple times really the way to get a gang together? (You get the feeling the idea behind the movie was, "Let's rip off the plot of The Killing and redo it with even bigger losers.") And the basic idea behind Tab Hunter's robbery in San Francisco International maybe isn't too bad, in a semi-competent TV movie sort of way: force a plane to stay on the runway long enough to burgle the cargo bay and steal the Rush albums inside.
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Post by Mike Flugennock on Dec 11, 2012 18:22:39 GMT -5
That's a no-brainer. It's Marvin's plan to heist the million bucks stashed in the office safe where he works in High School Big Shot. He goes through all the trouble to scope out the place, figure out when and where everybody has to be, lines up the best talent in town -- and then blabs the whole thing to the object of his crush: selfish, shallow, greedy, scheming Betty, who promptly turns around and blabs to her rock-stupid boyfriend who never heisted anything more valuable than a set of hub caps. Cripes, man, that's about as stupid as it gets -- far more stupid in its own way than Jimmy in I Accuse My Parents.
I've only seen The Rebel Set two or three times, so I don't remember a lot of it and can't really evaluate the stupidity of the caper, other than that it involves some unemployed losers -- including an umemployed actor and writer, just the kind of guys you want on a big-time caper like this -- being corralled by ringleader Edward "Chief" Platt and taking a train from L.A. all the way to Chicago, or something, so they can rob a bank there, then hide the loot in their luggage and then take the train all the rest of the way to NYC -- or something. WTF? Hell, I guess I need to watch that one again. It was one of those episodes I didn't remember from the initial run on CC; I downloaded it recently, watched it a couple of times and it didn't set my ass on fire right away, so I took it out of rotation and threw it onto the backup pile. Now I'm going to have to pull it out and watch it again to see if the caper is just as stupid as I remember it being.
I also couldn't get my head around what the crooked scientist in Riding With Death was thinking about with his plan that involved pretending to be in the trailer, working on his patent papers, while he was actually talking to Ben Murphy over the radio from a helicopter which was following Murphy's truck close enough for Murphy to read its license number with binoculars. Did the crooked scientist somehow think Murphy was stupid enough not to recognize the sound of somebody talking over a radio from a helicopter with an open cockpit? Did the crooked scientist honestly think nobody was going to investigate when ten million bucks turned up missing, and when it turned out his magic gasoline additive was a volatile explosive that he used to fake his own death in a tractor-trailer explosion that killed a Federal agent? Enough stupidity to go around for everybody there, for sure.
I have to agree that Suzy and Frankie's murder scheme in Skydivers ranks right up there on the Rock Stupidity Index: Suzy buys the acid from a shop in town where she can be recognized (astonishingly stupid), she and Frankie sneak into the hangar while everyone else is busy twisting and partying, which is not that stupid in itself, except that after they do the deed, instead of immediately joining the twist party and acting as if nothing's amiss, they hang around right outside the hangar to watch Harry's chute fall to pieces and then split the scene right in front of everybody. Cripes, what were they thinking? On top of that, Servo pretty much sums up their supposed motivation in a single riff: "Now that Harry's dead, we get all the -- hey, what do we get?"
Of course, Skydivers isn't the only Coleman Francis picture featuring rock-stupid criminals; Red Zone Cuba serves up its own great steamy load of stupid. "Curly" escapes prison and in order to avoid recapture, he signs on as a mercenary to fight in the Bay Of Pigs invasion... not exactly National Merit Scholarship material, that's for damn' sure. Then, when Curly and his loser pals manage to survive the invasion, bust out of the prison camp and escape from Cuba -- with a little help from Petey Plane -- what's the first thing they do? They go to the home of their buddy who was killed in Cuba, talk his wife into doing some tungsten prospecting, and immediately try to jump her claim -- something I hear, back in the day, could've gotten you some serious prison time. Then there's that gratuitous bit of murder and grand theft auto at the ramshackle frog-leg joint which seemed to make absolutely no sense. Let's also remember that John Carradine managed to escape any criminal charges for his singing.
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Post by continosbuckle on Dec 11, 2012 20:59:43 GMT -5
Talking about Riding With Death, when the entire Intersect plan is revealed at the beginning of the episodemovie, Dr. Hale and Driscoll mentioned that the "International Oil Cartel" tried to buy the rights to the fuel mixture in order to suppress it, because they're bad like that. But since the fuel mixture turned out to be useless, Dr. Hale concocted this scheme to steal ten million from the government or whoever he was working for. Perhaps he owned none of the intellectual property of his research, but I would think he would have been better served just selling the worthless fuel mixture to the Cartel. Surely that would've been way more than ten million, if what it claimed to do was any indication.
Perhaps all that money would have gone to Intersect rather than Hale, but if that were the case, he wouldn't be the one doing the famous "patent papers", and it would've been worthwhile to make that clear anyway.
Re: Red Zone Cuba
The initial plan was for the three of them to sign up for the Cuban invasion, get the $1000 signing bonus and then desert before they "shoved off". That's why Griffin was so mad with Cherokee Jack in that basement scene, although he should have been angry with the cut-from-the-MST3k-version store owner who originally sold the three guys on that deal.
I have to admit that Jimmy Wilson was pretty damn stupid in never realizing that the jobs he was doing for Blake were illegal. The filmmakers' burning desire to keep him an innocent wrecked that movie. Being stupid doesn't elicit sympathy, at least not that way.
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Post by Monophylos on Dec 11, 2012 22:59:43 GMT -5
I've never actually seen High School Big Shot all the way through >_< I should try again, although it seems like the sort of episode I'd have to be in the right mood to watch. Huh, seems like another movie that's borrowing from The Killing, which also features a loser who's recruited to pull off a big robbery and, instead of keeping his mouth shut, drops broad hints about the heist to his shrewish wife, who immediately runs to her small-time crook of a boyfriend with the story.
Well, maybe the evil scientist wasn't being too careless in talking to Ben Murphy from a noisy helicopter. It took a while for Ben to catch on that Dr. Hale wasn't really in the trailer, and then it was only because of Driscoll's news about the identity of the chopper. Ben didn't seem all that suspicious before that even though Dr. Hale had spoken from the chopper before.
By the way, if Dr. Hale really had come up with an explosive much more powerful than nitroglycerine, couldn't he have dispensed with the fraud plot? He could have patented the explosive and made a mint.
I guess that all of Griffin's unmotivated crimes in Red Zone Cuba were supposed to illustrate what an amoral, murderously impulsive scumbag he is. You almost have to admire Coleman Francis for that, by the way; given the chance to both act and direct, he doesn't try to make his own character admirable or heroic in any way but instead makes him a cold-blooded sociopath without a single redeeming quality. (That, more than anything, makes me wonder just sort of demons were in Francis's head when he made his movies.) So Griffin does randomly violent stuff like attacking a guy asking about playing craps. Wigging out and shooting Chastain's wife, though, that was really pointless. All that happened was that they were having car trouble and Mrs. Chastain suggested going back; as far as I can tell she was still going along with the plan. Going back would have just meant an inconvenient delay. But Griffin totally freaks out, pulls his gun, and kills someone who was still willing to help him. Why? Still, I don't think it makes Griffin stupid, exactly; it's more like he acts on every violent impulse he gets, whether or not it makes any sense from the standpoint of committing successful crime.
Incidentally, you'd think that Cook and Landis would have quietly abandoned Griffin at some point, considering that the guy attacked both of them for trivial reasons.
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Post by sol-survivor on Dec 11, 2012 23:26:07 GMT -5
Taylor's plan to kill Jonathan in The Painted Hills was kind of clever. Who could prove Jonathan didn't fall off that cliff by accident? His explanation to Tommy and Pile-On Pete, while not necessarily above suspicion, was at least plausible. Taylor was apparently a well-respected member of the community, and no matter how much Tommy protested there just wasn't any evidence to prove it was murder. Tommy apparently didn't even suspect Taylor of poisoning Lassie, or at least he didn't say so. It's not like there was a CSI team around to do the investigating. If Lassie hadn't learned the truth or had died from the poison he probably would have gotten away with everything, unless he went completely nuts with the guilt and gold fever eating away at him.
Which brings up the second clever crime of the episode; Lassie's revenge. Technically, I suppose, what she did was not so much killing him as literally backing him into a corner where he more or less panicked and fell. He didn't have to chase her up the mountain, after all. If she could be held responsible and actually talk she might have to come up with a pretty good explanation for why he disappeared. It's possible his body was never found, and who knows if the missing gold was ever found.
For stupid crimes, I couldn't agree more about Frankie and Suzy.
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Post by Afgncaap5 on Dec 12, 2012 4:34:43 GMT -5
I know it's not at all what you're talking about, but I've never been able to decide if I thought that Dr. Forrester's plan to break Joel/Mike's will to live, probably as the prelude to some kind of vague mind control/behavioral adjustment experiment was really smart or really dumb. (Then again, a lot of mad scientist plans seem to fall into that category...)
The criminals in Catalina Caper probably deserve a mention... though I don't know if I'd say "dumbest."
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Post by msmystie3000 on Dec 12, 2012 9:51:21 GMT -5
The Satan's Angel's crime spree in WILD REBELS and the fact that the cops were too stupid to nab them with all those banks, nightclub patrons, etc.....I've explained it a gazillion times before on this board. The whole thing is el stupido.
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Post by Monophylos on Dec 12, 2012 14:08:31 GMT -5
I know it's not at all what you're talking about, but I've never been able to decide if I thought that Dr. Forrester's plan to break Joel/Mike's will to live, probably as the prelude to some kind of vague mind control/behavioral adjustment experiment was really smart or really dumb. I tend to subscribe to the silly hypothesis that the whole situation--being shot into space, trapped on a satellite, tortured by mad scientists--was simply a hallucination of Joel's. So of course the "experiments" make no scientific sense, they never happened in the first place
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Post by brandonakaxerxes on Dec 12, 2012 14:23:21 GMT -5
I know it's not at all what you're talking about, but I've never been able to decide if I thought that Dr. Forrester's plan to break Joel/Mike's will to live, probably as the prelude to some kind of vague mind control/behavioral adjustment experiment was really smart or really dumb. I tend to subscribe to the silly hypothesis that the whole situation--being shot into space, trapped on a satellite, tortured by mad scientists--was simply a hallucination of Joel's. So of course the "experiments" make no scientific sense, they never happened in the first place So, what happened when Joel escaped and was replaced by Mike?
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Post by Monophylos on Dec 12, 2012 14:55:56 GMT -5
So, what happened when Joel escaped and was replaced by Mike? The David Lynch movie Lost Highway provides the answer: in order to escape from his situation, Joel hallucinates that he is actually another person, the way that Bill Pullman imagines that he's actually Balthazar Getty. In Lost Highway the imaginary transformation frees Pullman/Getty from prison, but in the MST3K universe Joel/Mike is immediately recaptured, after which he resigns himself to his fate.
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Post by mrsphyllistorgo on Dec 12, 2012 15:20:19 GMT -5
Hmmm... how about the teen sociopaths in Village of the Giants? As far as I can tell, they decided to head to the small town just to cause some trouble in the first place, then become thieves by stealing the GroBig Goo. Then, instead of keeping it and selling it, they eat it. Every last bit of it. Didn't save even a slice. So much for making any money off their heist.
But okay, they want the thrill of being gigantic. Fine. So they promptly hold an entire town hostage, kidnap a child and a young woman, and attempt to murder Tommy Kirk (which I'm sure everyone would just write off as "eh, I understand...", but still--murder.)
Then they get shrunk back to normal and run off, wrapped in raggedy curtains. While they certainly got off easy, they have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to show for this little crime spree. No money, no guns, no miracle goo; just a broken car and a long walk. That was a long way to go to end up back where they started.
As for "good" crimes, while The Rebel Set's robbery contained far too many moving parts and loose cannons, at least some thought was put into it, and the cops putting it together afterwards would have a good story to tell. Considering the vast majority of many criminals show the intellectual capacity of the gang in Wild Rebels, only far less ambitious, I'm sure the police appreciated the "makes a good story" aspect.
I hope he gores the little freak!
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Post by Mitchell on Dec 18, 2012 8:40:50 GMT -5
John Saxon's frameup of "Johnny Mathis" is undeniably the worst. . .because even Joe Don Baker was able to unravel it in about thirty seconds: guns randomly loaded, short guy gets to high shelf to get gun. . .etc etc.
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Post by Monophylos on Dec 18, 2012 15:45:46 GMT -5
Yeah, I guess that whole palaver with Deaney shooting the burglar was supposed to establish Mitchell as a sharp-eyed, clever cop, but it's all so clumsily written. Frankly, everything about Deaney seems clumsily written. While I haven't seen the unedited version myself I've read the comprehensive synopsis at the AgonyBooth site and, even there, Deaney's connection to the main plot with Cummings is never well explained.
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Post by Mitchell on Dec 18, 2012 16:33:42 GMT -5
Deaney and Cummings are associates in the same crime family. It's very loosely established in the sequence that ends with Mitchell murdering Deaney--which was completely cut out of the MST3K version. Basically Cummings told Gallano about Mitchell, who told Deaney to handle the situation, which Deaney did by hiring Greta (Linda Evans) to disgrace Mitchell. That confusing sentence about a minor subplot tells you all you need to know about what a tangled mess that story is.
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Post by Mr. Atari on Dec 18, 2012 17:59:36 GMT -5
I always figured that the director just decided, "We've got Martin Balsam and a bunch of hacks. Let's give Marty the screen time."
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