Mystery Science Theater 3000: HIGH SCHOOL BIG SHOT

February 23, 2017 3:02 AM - Season 6, Episode 18

"The Kid Who Showed the Big Time How!" A supposedly-intelligent high school student makes a series of progressively worse decisions that lead ultimately to the deaths or critical wounding of every major character. With short Out of This World: An angel and a devil each try to convince a bread deliveryman to join the light or dark sides, respectively, of bread delivery, leaving unexamined the incredible theological implications. Fan opinion of this Roger Corman movie varies widely, but I like it. The short is pretty good, one of those ridiculous industrials where supernatural entites take great interest in some poor dope's work-a-day life. This episode is not available on YouTube due to a copyright claim. Apparently the entity "BentPixels" is protective of their rights over either this secondary school film noir or the celestial battle for bread delivery to resort to legal solutions. The episode premiered December 10, 1994.

Episode 618 HIGH SCHOOL BIG SHOT
Satellite News - Mighty Jack's Episode Review - War of the Colossal Fan Guide

Short: Out of This World
Daddy-O's Drive-In Dirt
IMDB (1954, 2.1 stars)
"An angel and a devil try to persuade a borderline wholesale bakery salesman to their side."
Starring Ralph Clanton.

Movie: High School Big Shot
Daddy-O's Drive-In Dirt - Rotten Tomatoes (Critics N/A, Viewers 15%) - Wikipedia
IMDB (1959, 2.5 stars)
Directed and written by Joel M. Rapp. Starring Tom Pittman, Virginia Aldridge and Howard Velt.

Notes:
The industrial short was made by Jam Handy on behalf of, of all companies, DuPont. The short's title (and, oddly, part of its theme) is shared with that weird 80s syndicated sitcom series about an angel who works as a housekeeper for rich folks. There, I bet you didn't expect to be reminded of that today!

The word is the story to this movie is greatly similar to one of the more obscure Stanley Kubrick movies, The Killing.

If you're expecting this movie to just be sort of blandly boring check again, Roger Corman piles on the melodrama, has characters make tragic decisions for no good reason, oh and then the kid's dad just up and hangs himself. It was a more laughable movie than I was expecting, let's just say.

posted by JHarris (8 comments total)

Hold a second, in the notes I got that dumb sitcom about the angel housekeeper Down To Earth mixed up with another similarly preposterous show. My bad.
posted by JHarris at 3:07 AM on February 23, 2017

Hope you accept bread into your life.
posted by wittgenstein at 4:41 AM on February 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

I need more bread in my life.
posted by valkane at 6:29 AM on February 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

And a gallon of milk.
posted by valkane at 6:29 AM on February 23, 2017

I think what I am learning is that now, more than ever, it's specialty breads.
posted by tomboko at 4:29 PM on February 23, 2017 [2 favorites]

This is the same depressed Dad who appears later on in I Was A Teenage Werewolf, I believe.
posted by wittgenstein at 5:10 PM on February 23, 2017

I forget who noticed it, but the safecracker character is Cyrano Jones from the (in)famous Star Trek episode The Trouble With Tribbles! I notice that Daddy-O's Drive-In Dirt pointed it out, but only in passing, in the cast list.

Also I said that Roger Corman "piles on the melodrama," but on second look I notice he only executive produced. He did that a lot.
posted by JHarris at 6:13 PM on February 24, 2017

Also, I'd like to shout out to valkane, for finding a copy of "She" on the internet, which was glorious in its terribleness.
posted by JHarris at 6:16 PM on February 24, 2017