Mystery Science Theater 3000: AT THE EARTH'S CORE

July 12, 2017 9:03 PM - Season 11, Episode 14

"Take the Most Terrifying Journey of Your Life!" "4,000 miles to the center of the earth is a world within our world." We've already been to the Center of the Earth with Kathy Ireland in a Jules Verne adaptation, let's now make the trip with Edgar Rice Burroughs why not. This one's got less vaguely Austrialian dystopia and more dinosaurs and cavepeeps. The day of Kinga's ordained wedding (by Kinga) to Jonah for ratings has arrived and Max isn't too happy about it. We also visit with Pearl and company again, meet the Head Observer, through whom we learn you can hire Observers out to fill out crowds, which is pretty enterprising of the omniscient brainguys. And we meet Jonah's robot Growther and a "Reptilicus Metallicus." Also, cliffhanger ending! Creepy outro! Episode 1114, the final episode of Season 11, is on Netflix.

Episode 1114 AT THE EARTH'S CORE
MST3K Wikia - MST3K Discussion Board - TVTropes


Movie
Rotten Tomatoes (Critics 33%, Viewers 36%) - Wikipedia - TVTropes
IMDB (1976, 5.2 stars)
"A Victorian era scientist and his assistant take a test run in their Iron Mole drilling machine and end up in a strange underground labyrinth ruled by a species of giant telepathic bird and full of prehistoric monsters and cavemen."
Directed by Kevin Connor. Written by Edgar Rice Burroughs (novel) and Milton Subotsky. Starring Doug McClure (again), Peter Cushing (again again) and Caroline Munro (Stella Starr herself).

Notes:
At of this moment, this is the last episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Of course, Netflix could pick it up for another season....

posted by JHarris (12 comments total)

And so we've come to the end of Season 11 of Mystery Science Theater 3000! You could view this as a preview, an echo of the upcoming end of the Classic series, which is still months off, but not as many as it was when we started, and is no longer years off.

This is our last showing, barring unforeseen circumstances, to be held at https://www.rabb.it/rodneylives, not a bad site overall (especially since it allows us to share a Netflix stream fairly easily, which I didn't think was possible when we started), but ultimately slower, laggier, less playlist friendly, and marginally less compatible than the site we'd used up until then. Next week we're going back to our old channel, https://cytu.be/r/Metafilter_MST3KClub. We still have the rabb.it room if we need it, and it's terrific to be able to share Netflix with it which brings up some interesting possibilities when we reach the Christmas marathon.

It's also the last showing to officially begin at 7 PM Eastern/4 PM Pacific, which I recognize wasn't an ideal time for West Cost viewers. The original plan was to do another show at a better time on Saturdays, but... well, it's been a weird few months for me. I've been focusing on researching and writing books in an effort to not be destitute quite so much. Unfortunately I need time and energy to work on those paying projects, and so, unfortunately, the Saturday showings fell by the wayside.

Here is the schedule for the today (Thursday, July 13), all times Eastern/Pacific:
7/4 PM: 1114 AT THE EARTH'S CORE
8:30/5:30 PM: YouTube Potluck Intermission
9/6 PM: 804 TERROR FROM THE YEAR 5000
10:30/7:30: Further YouTube Potluck until I'm called away or we get tired of it

I hope you'll join us, and thanks for using MST Club for all your sarcasm needs!
posted by JHarris at 11:17 PM on July 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

My memory of this one is that the host segments were better than the movie. I don't think I've rewatched this one.
posted by wittgenstein at 6:36 AM on July 13, 2017

There seems to be a whole subgenre of late '60s-early '70s sci-fi whose only commonality is that…I find it strangely, uniquely unwatchable. Something about the pacing, I think. Starcrash isn't quite in that category, but this very much is, and The Time Travellers sort of is too. Even Barbarella is kind of on the edge of it. (Lots of Italian ones, in fact, now that I think of it.) They're just so hard to focus on, almost inexplicably. And this from a guy who can actually actively watch Monster A-Go-Go.

Maybe the common factor, the defining factor for this proposed subgenre, is such a high concentration of drugs, in the cast and the producers and the editors, that everybody ended up phoning it in and nobody at the front office cared because it's just sci-fi and Star Wars hadn't come out yet.

Anybody else know what I'm talking about?
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 6:52 AM on July 13, 2017 [2 favorites]

That's interesting, because - like the other McClure one - I found the movie almost too good to be good MST3K material.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:37 AM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

There seems to be a whole subgenre of late '60s-early '70s sci-fi whose only commonality is that…I find it strangely, uniquely unwatchable.

Maybe the common factor, the defining factor for this proposed subgenre, is such a high concentration of drugs, in the cast and the producers and the editors, that everybody ended up phoning it in and nobody at the front office cared because it's just sci-fi and Star Wars hadn't come out yet.

I think there was also an unspoken understanding at the time, due to the success of things like 2001, that these movies were being made for two audiences: Kids who would watch anything with spaceships and monsters, and hippies who were too baked to care about anything beyond visuals.
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:54 AM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]

Another common thread with the movies named above is the weird sort of hangout vibe; even if there is some sort of explicitly called out ticking-clock scenario where the characters need to accomplish a certain goal in a short time frame, the movie remains firmly in travelogue mode and the characters just kind of passively drift from one obligatory special effects sequence to another. There's not really the sense of beat-to-beat urgency that you get from modern action/genre cinema.
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:07 AM on July 13, 2017 [7 favorites]

I've only watched it once, and the only thing I remember was feeling so incredibly embaressed for Peter Cushing.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 4:03 PM on July 13, 2017 [4 favorites]

I'm just disappointed they didn't get a Jesus Christ Superstar reference in there. I mean, they were so close. They even threw in a quick Godspell reference.

Yes, I get that it's a bit "on the nose," but have you watched the movie? It's not exactly subtle.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:38 PM on July 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

So, assuming the show gets picked up for a second season (which seems almost inevitable, Netflix is seriously just throwing money around for originals and this revival seems to have been pretty well regarded), how meta do you think they're gonna get in resolving the host segment plot? Is Frank's betrayal actually just part of Kinga's ratings scheme, intentionally crafting a cliffhanger to ensure their Liquid TV fans keep discussing the show during the off-season?
posted by tobascodagama at 7:59 AM on October 18, 2017

I feel like they're going to come up with some "repeat to yourself 'it's just a show'" kind of way to get out of it.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:57 PM on December 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

So who's the little red figure on the walkway in the outro? Is it a mystery or am I missing something obvious? 2001 reference? Red jumpsuit?
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:54 PM on March 17, 2018

Ok reading the MST3K discussion board, the answer is, it's been a while since we watched the other episodes so I'd forgotten that Jonah's been working on his red spacesuit. Phew!
posted by LobsterMitten at 11:02 PM on March 17, 2018 [2 favorites]