Mystery Science Theater 3000: MONSTER A-GO GO

March 16, 2016 4:58 PM - Season 4, Episode 21

"An Astronaut Went Up... A 'Guess What' Came Down!" "The Picture That Comes Complete with a 10-Foot Tall Monster to Give You the Wim-Wams!" "How did a 10-foot-tall monster get into that little bitty space capsule?" "You've Never Seen a Picture Like This--Thank Goodness!" It's never a good sign when the poster taglines themselves make fun of the movie. One of the absolute worst movies in MST history, and of all time. With short CIRCUS ON ICE: A newsreel report of the 40th Annual Carnival of the Toronto Skating Club. It's iceberg time again! You may think you know what a bad movie looks like. You may think you can handle bad movies. You may think badfilm is nothing to be afraid of. The punishment for your hubris takes the form of a viewing of MONSTER A-GO GO. If you're a fan or born MSTie this should not be missed, but it can be lethal if you haven't built up an immunity. One of a handful of the most terrible movies MST ever did, up there with the likes of Robot Monster and Red Zone Cuba. And don't relax yet, one its primary rivals is on the way in just three weeks.... YouTube (1h32m) Premiered January 1, 1993. Trailer - Unriffed (DO NOT WATCH)

Episode:
Satellite News - MST3K Wikia - Annotated MST3K - Mighty Jack's MST3K Review - TV Tropes

I could fill this space with a selection of the lists of worst movies/best MST episodes this movie is on. io9, Paste twice, Crazy Town, the fact is any list of worst movies that doesn't include this one is obviously faulty. Not since ROBOT MONSTER have we hit a wall like this one -- and it's certainly not the last.

Movie MONSTER A-GO GO
Daddy-O's Drive-In Dirt - Wikipedia

IMDB )(2.3 stars)
"A space capsule crash-lands on Earth, and the astronaut aboard disappears. Is there a connection between the missing man and the monster roaming the area?"
Directed by Bill Rebane and Herschell Gordon Lewis. Written by them plus Jeff Smith and Dok Stanford. Starring Philip Morton, June Travis, George Perry and Henry Hite as the monster and supposed supplier of wim-wams.

Short CIRCUS ON ICE
Daddy-O's Drive-In Dirt
Directed by Gordon Sparling. Written by Constance Jaquays. Starring Ken Davey and Jacqueline du Bief.

posted by JHarris (8 comments total)

I'm the wind, baby!
posted by hobgadling at 5:13 PM on March 16, 2016 [6 favorites]

Ahead of the game! I got used to you doing this at 5:00 day of! Nice!
posted by valkane at 6:26 PM on March 16, 2016

You're serious about this one... I can tell by the tags.
" terrible poisonous toxic lethal deadly dangerous beware flee escape panic "

But it should have been evident from the title: "A-Go Go"?
The only good thing ever to have those 5 letters in its name was the original Whiskey A Go Go rock nightclub. And its reputation mostly came from abandoning its original function as a discothèque and launching live acts in the '60s, including Johnny Rivers and The Doors.

There's also "Hugo A Go Go", the resident villain in the Batfink cartoons (which are not too awful if you accept them for the silliness they're intended as... and could be used as part of this week's pre-show...)
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:42 PM on March 16, 2016 [3 favorites]

This one has probably my two favorite riffs of the entire series.

Tom sings, "These two girls they make quite a pair,
They both come from your worst nightmare,
They will haunt your soul forever,
And now,
When you see pink,
You're gonna think, 'We're doomed!'

They are agents of Satan…"

Laughing, Joel chides him, "Stop it, Tom."

and

All three of them laugh at a laughably bad space capsule prop. Tom says, "Right. Douglas was pear-shaped, very short, and stood the whole way."

The movie is so, so bad. I mean the crew literally boos at the end of it. Still, I think this one is really one of the crew's greatest achievements.
posted by ob1quixote at 8:01 PM on March 16, 2016 [4 favorites]

You have to love a film so utterly bereft of ideas that when they run out of monster attacks they literally just kind of stop the movie and call it a day.
posted by Scattercat at 11:35 PM on March 16, 2016 [2 favorites]

Ah, I forgot to supply the usual links!

The show is today at 9 PM ET, at: https://cytu.be/r/Metafilter_MST3KClub.

Here is the (somewhat outdated) Club FAQ.
posted by JHarris at 2:38 PM on March 17, 2016

Circus!

...

...on ICE!
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 3:17 AM on March 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

That was awful, though still better than obnoxious St. Patrick's Day drunks a-go-go.

My favourite riff, at which I laughed embarrassingly loudly:

Narrator: “There is one terrifying word in the world of nuclear physics.”
Tom: “Oops.”
posted by ilana at 2:09 PM on March 18, 2016 [3 favorites]