Torgo's Review Thread 2.0

[Torgo]

Folks, there is a sense of completion today as I've finished reviewing an entire era of the series. Come read my last review of the Netflix episodes, Lords of the Deep.

Goodbye Netflix. You suck. And Stranger Things is mediocre at best.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! With the completion of another season we have another season overview on the site! Watch as I run ::hand wave:: THE GAUNTLET and see my thoughts on Season 12!

And we also have another box set completed! And it's a full season set too! It's only six episodes, but we'll take what we can get! Come read the Season 12 DVD and Blu-Ray overview, now up!

And one last thing, if you spared some change you could have gotten some special features with that set. What special features? Check out the Pledge Drive Bonus Disc overview and find out!

Next Time: Who's theme music is that?

[Torgo]

After nearly two years, Rifftrax Live is back in business, and Mike, Kevin, and Bill are herr for you Fish Lockers and ready to figure out what you do with those Hobgoblins! They're over here, they're over there! Those darned Hobgoblins are everywhere!

[Mighty Jack]

They somehow managed to pull off the redo with their live take on Manos, but the rest have been fair, average at best for me. And the preview for Hobby did not impress (though the short makes me curious to see it). So I passed on it.

[Torgo]

Manos is the one exception where I found they turned in something just as good as the original episode. I really enjoyed that, but I feel part of what made it so enjoyable was that it was mostly a different trio doing the delivery this time (Kevin was the only holdover from the MST episode, though Mike was a writer on it).

Since then they've jumped on some of the more popular episodes from the Sci-Fi era, and it kind of sucks. If they kept plucking movies from Joel's tenure then they could probably craft a more memorably unique experience, but they keep going back to their own well and falling short.

I'm still saying it's just a matter of time until they announce Werewolf for a live show. It might even be the next Kickstarter.

[Mighty Jack]

Your right - and Werewolf, yeah probably, but I hope not, they've already done right by that one.

I know they are going for the popular episodes because they'll sell, but I'd rather they do something like Indestructible Man. Not that I dislike the original experiment, but there is room for improvement, Bill and Mike didn't riff on it, so, new voices. And it's not iconic, it doesn't have that baggage.

[Torgo]

What can I say except MASTER NINJA THEME SONG! We have another round of Lee Van Cleef ninja action, this time the epic beginning to the saga! Sit back and enjoy the tale of Master Ninja I!

And another volume bites the dust. Bear with me as I collect my thoughts on the all-Joel collection of Volume XX!

Next Time: It STINKS! (I'll say)

[Torgo]

It's long past time for my cancellation, and as if my lukewarm opinion on the new Dune movie wasn't enough, here's my negative review of Pod People! It STINKS!

Dave Chappelle I am not, but I do know how to piss people off.

Next Time: Hottest sea world action this side of Jaws 3!

[Torgo]

What's this I hear about another Gamera movie being riffed this next season? Well then, we better review the last Gamera movie they riffed, Gamera vs. Zigra, to get ready for another dish of turtle soup!

And while we're talking about Gamera, it's an all-Gamera box set! Our review of Volume XXI: MST3K vs. Gamera is now here!

Next Time: You think HE likes ham! Wait until you see ME like ham!

[Torgo]

[Torgo]

I go for one last round of classic MST with Bill Corbett and Mary Jo Pehl, as well as DEBBIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE! It's my last review of a Sci-Fi era episode so get ready for Devil Doll!

Also, get ready for a pairing of Monsters and Devils, and a little Gypsy toy on the side. A retrospective of Volume XIX!

Almost forgot! With this season completed it is time for another season overview! This one of my very beloved Season 8!

(Of note, I was planning on reviewing the latest Rifftrax Live but I'm postponing until it hits digital. I fell ill immediately after and don't trust myself to review it properly the far out from a viewing)

Next Time: Urkel!

[Torgo]

All the intense, pulse-pounding action you'll find at...an airport. Did we mention Urkel is here? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA...ah Urkel. What a character! Welcome to San Francisco International, and your flight is heading toward our review of the episode!

Next Time: Well, at least it's not Kevin Sorbo.

And that will do it for the MST reviews for now. The last ten will be saved as a countdown to the new season on the Gizmoplex as we celebrate this new chapter in our beloved series!

In the meantime, Rifftrax reviews are revving back up and I'll finally be christening the Mads section of my website. More supplemental material is also being worked on, so stay tuned!

[Torgo]

We now return to regular Rifftrax reviews, and what a better way to do so than with the power of DANCE AND MUSIC! Journey into the Disney Channel obsession that swept the nation...if you were under 12. It's High School Musical!

Also welcome back to those lovely Rifftrax Shorts, and of course it had to be a part of the At Your Fingertips series. It's a Live presentation of Sugar and Spice and everything nice.

[Torgo]

So here's what's what:  During Turkey Day they announced all 13 titles to be featured on the show for 2022's new season.  Some of these I've seen before, like Gamera vs. Jiger (of flapjacksing course I've seen this), Demon Squad (which I watched after they announced it earlier this year) and The Million Eyes of Sumuru (which I of course watched the KTMA episode for), but a lot of these are new to me.  The Shape of Things to Come is also a Rifftrax title, but I haven't watched that one (yet).

I was looking up the movie availability and found most of them are free to watch on Tubi, with the exception of five while one of those remaining titles is free to watch on Vudu. So what I'm going to do is make my rounds on these movies and work out some rough drafts for them on my blog, that way I have a head start in reviewing the new season as it airs. Will I survive?  Probably not. But let the record show that Afgncaap5 is not allowed to touch my stuff after I die and I left him NOTHING in my will.

For the record, if I had mounds of cash, I'd buy blu-rays of the following and watch them to, but I don't and they won't be watched:

Santo in The Treasure of Dracula
The Batwoman
The Mask
The Bubble

Those ones I'll have to watch in real time with the rest of the MSTies.  But let's see how long it takes until I forget I'm doing this.  I'm guessing after three days.

First:

[Torgo]

In the year 2041, North America has been turned into a barren wasteland by a cataclysmic event. Two factions the North Hemi and the Eastern Alliance are in the middle of negotiations for the North Hemi to construct smaller versions of their giant robot vehicles for the Eastern Alliance in hopes of boosting their own economy and building better relations between the two sides. But the Eastern Alliance representative General Wa-Lee betrays the North Hemi and seizes the opportunity to steal the giant mech MRAS-2. It's up to hotshot robot pilot Captain Drake, his co-pilot Stumpy, and archeologist Lena Faning to uncover the remains of an older robot, MEGA-1, and stop Wa-Lee from stealing the MRAS-2 and taking a group of hostages with him.

Full Moon features usually have their own distinctive look and feel to them, usually flavored by their producer Charles Band. Mystery Science Theater has already seen a couple of Band productions on their show in Laserblast and The Day Time Ended, both of which featured cheap film stock, clumsy acting, and stop motion effects. Band went full speed ahead on these concepts with the direct-to-video market which was Full Moon's target audience. I haven't seen a ton of Full Moon features, as I'm mostly familiar with their children's line of Moonbeam from when I was a tyke (which resulted in movies like Prehysteria and Dragonworld). Though of course, most will know Full Moon from it's long-running horror franchise, Puppet Master, which this film pokes fun at with a theater in 2041 playing the film Puppet Master 54.

I'm sure they snickered to themselves at this absurd joke at the time because there were only three Puppet Master movies at the time while a fourth and a fifth were being filmed back to back. As of this writing, Puppet Master is preparing to release its fifteenth film (a spin-off of its Doktor Death character), so who's laughing now?

Robot Wars is very much a Full Moon film, looking excessively cheap throughout its runtime with a couple of shots that you can tell they blew their entire budget on. One thing the Puppet Master movies had going for them, and that first film in particular, it that it knew how to scale back and ration out its money to what it needed and what effects they can afford. Robot Wars is almost embarrassingly ambitious by comparison. Hell, the title promises two things: Robots and wars. Living up to that is probably more money than Charles Band has ever thrown at a movie. That being said, the movie is very light on both robots and wars. Atlantic Rim had more robots and wars than this movie.

Why the flapjacks am I even here?

Robot Wars is 70 minutes long, and with a runtime like that it should be brisk and action packed. It's not. The movie's first act takes 45 minutes to play out, and it plays it as if the film is two hours long. After that, the movie just kind of mushes its second and third acts into some sort of payoff pudding for the final half-hour. When we do finally get to see some robot action, the sequence is about four minutes long, featuring some awesome stop motion animation and some silly model bumping edited in.

The film doesn't really have much of a human plot. The lead is played by future Tremors 5, 6, and 7 director Don Michael Paul who is pretty much playing Big McLargeHuge from Space Mutiny if he were a bit unhinged like Gary Busey. Cult icon (and woman who got her head blown up in Chopping Mall) Barbara Crampton plays his love interest, though the screenplay seems to be written by someone who had seen one too many episodes of Moonlighting and felt the only way to express sexual tension is for the two leads to get increasingly irritated at each other. The romantic angle is two-dimensional and even a little bit creepy in how Paul treats Crampton's character, but I think the filmmakers knew more men would be renting this movie than women so they didn't worry about her coming off as a sexual reward for his character. Just as offensive are the films take on Asian villains. The stereotype stretching is one thing, though the movie crosses a line when they communicate in a language that is Asian-influenced but obviously off-the-cuff gibberish.

How are the robots? If I'm being honest...they're really flapjacksing cool. That's what's painful about this movie, is that it looks like poopie for most of the time then it tosses in some cool designs and becomes fun briefly to tease you before becoming flat again. MRAS-2 has a badass scorpion influenced design while MEGA-1 is a charming and huggable rock-em-sock-em. The movie springs to life when they're onscreen, but it's always refraining from using them and thrusting us into cheap sets and stock locations on backlots, which makes Robot Wars a bit of a pain in the ass.

Next Week:

[Torgo]

From one of the directors of Danger on Tiki Island, this flick from the Philippines has a group of pearl hunters setting sail for a mysterious island for the chance to find some easy white gold. Once there they encounter a group of natives that can live both on the surface and under the ocean. Most of these natives are mutated, with the exception of the beautiful and scantily-clad Syriana. Syriana is also the only one of the tribe who is still able to bear children and has been ordered by her tribe chief and father to mate with one of the outsiders and conceive.

Beyond Atlantis stars the son of legendary actor John Wayne, Patrick Wayne, as the lead, who reportedly negotiated the idea that if he were to star in the film then it would have to be rated PG. The production then had to scale back its exploitation quite a bit to accommodate this (apparently all the tribe women in this film were supposed to be topless in the early vision for it). You can tell by watching the film that exploiting the female form is very much on the mind of this movie but it's refraining from going the full nine yards. Instead it takes a note from the playbook of One Million Years B.C., where part of what made that movie a success was blossoming teenage boys discovering sex through Raquel Welch's animal skin bikini while dads may very feel like sitting through the movie too. The idea is admittedly timeless, as it has been utilized many times since. My personal blossoming experience was either Halle Berry in the Flintstones movie or Jennifer O'Dell in the crappy syndicated series The Lost World, pick your poison.

Because it feels like it would be more interesting if it were exploitive, Beyond Atlantis is a bit flaccid. The bikinis are nice and everything, and we get some nice 360 degree angles of Leigh Christian during her underwater scenes, but its a very inert film. It feels a bit too casually paced, and if the movie were giving us something...how should I put this...more visual to admire than just a pretty island scenery, then the slow pace may not slog as much.

Or it could potentially fling it in a different direction and make it too sexually deviant. This is a very rapey flick. Not only does the premise somewhat hinge on a woman raping outsiders, the movie has a very primate-like look on sex in general. There is a scene early on in which Patrick Wayne attempts to seduce Lenore Stephens' character, which is just a notch above him grunting at her and dragging her to bed. It's a film that's obviously written by men for men to watch and nod their heads at.

Not helping the lack of momentum in the plot is the acting, which is stiff and wooden and reading from a script full of jive talk. The actors look mostly bored, with the most lively performance coming from the late character actor Sid Haig, who is just colorful enough to make the best of this movie in his scenes. Also clogging up the movie is the majority of underwater scenes, which pad out the movie so much that even Thunderball would be envious of it. The photography is beautiful, and its often used to show off shapely female bodies, but it rarely helps the narrative. The film is also underlined by a synth score by Ed Norton (Honeymooners Ed Norton or American History X Ed Norton?). All I can say is John Carpenter he is not.

Beyond Atlantis isn't quite a bad time but it does get dry and dull. It's a movie with a batch of ideas on how to make itself appealing that doesn't really form any of them fully. But there are some kicks to be had if you dig deep enough into its silliness.

Next Week: