Mystery Science Theater 3000: INVASION U.S.A.
October 19, 2016 3:51 PM - Season 6, Episode 2 - Subscribe

"It will scare the pants off you!" "SEE New York toppled! SEE San Francisco in flames! SEE Boulder Dam destroyed!" Oh PLEASE. A dime-store Svengali hypnotises a bunch of bar patrons that World War III has just occured, all because they didn't fear the Commies enough. Oops, spoilers! With short A Date With Your Family: Hugh Beaumont explains why a family should eat dinner together, literally telling us to pretend to enjoy each others' company. The short is terrific, another great introductory piece. The movie itself shouldn't be confused with the 1985 movie with Chuck Norris. People tend to either really like the movie portion or find it a snoozefest. I actually like it, but it's got a ton of time-filling stock footage. The host segments are mostly great throughout, and include the one time the late Mike Dodge appeared on camera, as the A-Bomb visiting on the Hexfield. BTW, this is another episode that's just not available on official VHS or DVD. YouTube (1h32m) Premiered on July 23, 1994.

Episode 602 INVASION U.S.A.
Satellite News
MST3K Wikia
Mighty Jack's MST3K Review
War of the Colossal Fan Guide

Movie
Daddy-O's Drive-In Dirt
Rotten Tomatoes (Critics N/A, Viewers 9%)
Wikipedia
IMDB (1952, 2.6 stars)
"A group of people at a bar witness the unfolding events of a Soviet invasion of the USA."
Directed by Alfred E. Green. Written by Robert Smith and Franz Spencer. Starring Gerald Mohr, Peggie Castle and Dan O'Herlihy.

Short "A Date With Your Family"
Daddy-O's Drive-In Dirt
Wikipedia (They call it a "social engineering" short.)
IMDB (1950, 1.7 stars)
"Educational short showing how you should never show any emotions at the dinner table."
Directed by Edward G. Simmel. Written by Arthur V. Jones. Starring Hugh Beaumont, Ralph Hodges and Fred La Porta.

Notes:
Fan opinion is divided on this one, Satellite News thinks it's great but Mighty Jack rates it as merely "Tin Foil" and War of the Colossal Fan Guide gives it only a star and a half.

The short, however, everyone agrees is great. Daddy-O's Drive-In Dirt is a fan site, a subsite of Satellite News in fact, that focuses on the movies themselves instead of the Brains' humorous additions, but even it can't resist noting a couple of classic lines, like "Pleasant, unemotional conversation helps the digestion."

More than one of the fan sites I visited for this episode couldn't resist pointing out the essential contradiction of the movie: the Commies are terrible because they militarize, restrict personal freedoms and take control of property. To fight them, we must militarize, institute a draft and let the military take control of factories to build weapons! The movie's dream of fighting Communism involves measures that look a lot like the worst parts of Communism.

The MST3K Wikia notes that the movie was unusually profitable for its time, one of only a few movies made in the 50s to earn over a million dollars.

I mentioned the late Mike Dodge joining the writer's room last week. This week we have the only time he appeared on screen, as the A-Bomb visiting on the Hexfield.

BTW, I hope this doesn't need to be said, but hypnosis doesn't work like that, and if it did, that hypnotist guy should probably be locked up.
posted by JHarris (6 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Emotions are for ethnic people.
posted by Chrysostom at 4:19 PM on October 19, 2016 [2 favorites]


Well, the Thursday 9:00-10:30PM MST3Kast should be an improvement over whatever we watched in the same time slot Wednesday... Why weren't the NewMSTCrew up and in action earlier? We could have had "Debate Riffs"!!!
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:22 PM on October 19, 2016


EXTRA! PAPER! AMERICA INVADED!
posted by wittgenstein at 11:19 AM on October 20, 2016


Every week, some of us in the MST3K Club watch that week's episode over the internet. You should watch it with us! This is done at https://cytu.be/r/Metafilter_MST3KClub at 9 PM Eastern time/6 PM Pacific, if I have my timezone math right. More info in the MST3K Club FAQ.
posted by JHarris at 1:28 PM on October 20, 2016


Thanks for making it out everyone! Preroll material was a playlist of 5 Second Films. After, Snake of Argument brought along the movie Russian Terminator and Lolituma, I dug up a recording of El Hambo, and foop contributed Weird Al's latest debate autotune. Good stuff this week!

Next week prepare yourself for another of the very worst MST covered, it's 603 THE DEAD TALK BACK!
posted by JHarris at 9:33 PM on October 20, 2016


Spirit! Tell me, are these the shadows of things that will be, or that only may be?
posted by ckape at 1:25 PM on April 2, 2017 [1 favorite]


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