FanFare

Re-rewatch! The evil organization of this movie raises dumb clones of important people, like senators, to serve as sources of spare body parts. It was the kind of movie premise that seemed plausible in 1979, I guess. What happens when the senator gets voted out? Costs a lot of money to keep a clone in feed when it might not even be needed. In subplot news, Pearl and minions babysit a trio of god children. Previously, and again.
posted by JHarris on Mar 3, 2022 - 7 comments

Re-rewatch! At the center of the earth lies, apparently, a lost colony of Australians, living, also apparently, in a half-baked version of the techno-dystopia from the Super Mario Bros movie. Into this falls Wanda Saknussemm, played by supermodel Kathy Ireland, here cast as a high-pitched nerd girl. You know those movies where all a young woman has to do to be popular is lose the spectacles and wear a swimsuit? That's the story here, although it also involves falling down a "bottomless pit," running for her life from an oppressive government and their fiendish "Lotto," and a person with three-inch eyelashes. Also: the movie has a sequel, it turns out! Previously, and again.
posted by JHarris on Mar 4, 2021 - 4 comments

Rewatch! An astronaut survives a crash, but on waking up Earth doesn't seem to be as he remembers it... it turns out he's on "Terra," on the other side of the sun from Earth, which is a lot like Earth in a lot of ways (lots of Chryslers, for example), but is being run by one of those dystopian states that everyone was afraid of before we realized the fall of civilization would take the form of a social media meltdown. Previously
posted by JHarris on Jun 25, 2020 - 2 comments

"Caught in a future world, his only escape is back in time." Raul Julia is Aram Fingal, who lives in a future dystopia and gets in trouble by scrolling up Casablanca at his data entry job. So he's doppled into a baboon--thankfully, not an anteater--but an impish schoolkid loses his body, so he's then-doppled into the world-running computer for safe keeping. He pretends to be Rick from Casablanca, meets his dead mom of whom he asks, "My nuts?" and runs afoul of both computech Apollonia Jones and the CEO of Novicorp. Look, I've seen the movie several times and I'm just as lost as you are. This has gotta be the most nonsensical movie in MST3K's rich history of nonsense. Gloriously silly and yet seems not to even notice. Made for public television, it's another strong contender for Worst Movie They Riffed. It's filled with heaping helpings of made-up future jargon like a kind of sad Nadsat. Get ready everyone, it's Fingal time! In the host segments, Pearl decides to run her own pledge drive and rake in the dollars. This is the end of season eight of Mystery Science Theater 3000. YouTube (1h32m) Premiered November 22, 1997. 26 episodes left. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Oct 26, 2017 - 33 comments

"The only thing they don't use... is the scream" We know a remote farm in California, where Dick Sargent lives. Every July, dweebs grow there. One day a particularly upity dweeb decides to go see this "America" he's been told is so great and discovers he's a clone raised by a secretive organization to provide transplant organs for powerful people, in his case an important senator. Really. It's a stupid fate for a stupid guy in the stupid world of a stupid movie. The movie has the advantage of a higher budget than the average MST film, but that's more than offset by the great ridiculousnesses of the plot. We're expected to see the campus of the Clonus Project as a terrifying dystopia akin to The Village, but most of the time it ends up looking more like a resort for chowderheads. BTW, it has both Peter Graves and Keenan Wynn in it! In subplot news, Pearl and company find a group of runaway omnipotent space children and have to play babysitter. Bobo takes quite a bit of abuse. Trailer - Promo - YouTube (1h32m) Premiered June 7, 1997. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Aug 10, 2017 - 9 comments