Monsters in the Madhouse: the Wild, Wacky, and Wonderful antics of Karlos Borloff (and his Cast of Crazies)

I had intended this to be just a Horror-host Review of Monster Madhouse, the program hosted by Northern Virginia’s Heavy-Metal Monster-Hunter, Karlos Borloff, named the Unimonster’s Crypt Horror-Host of the Year for 2010.  That was before I was fortunate enough to meet Borloff (aka Jerry Moore) at last month’s HorrorHound Indianapolis Convention [Ed. Note: a full article on the Convention will be posted with the May 2011 update].  After spending some time talking with the host of Monster Madhouse, I realized that there was much more to Borloff than cheesy old movies and a funny costume.  Underneath the scaly armor and heavy metal make-up is a fellow fan, someone who loves these old monster movies as much as those who regularly tune in to his show.

Beginning in 2006, Monster Madhouse has been thrilling fans in the Washington, D. C. metropolitan area with a combination of comedy, music, and monsters—especially the Daiei Studio’s Kaijû films featuring Gamera, the giant turtle.  Moore, who has a fondness for the “man in the rubber suit” movies, prefers the classic monsters to the parade of Slasher Films that began in the early ‘80s.

In the Horse Archer productions documentary VIRGINIA CREEPERS, released in 2009 and reviewed here [DVD Review: VIRGINIA CREEPERS: THE HORROR HOST TRADITION OF THE OLD DOMINION, 6 March 2010], Moore discusses his feelings regarding his choice of movies versus the more graphic forms of Horror,

So it’s all about monsters … they’re not going to celebrate Jason Voorhees or somebody coming up like, ‘oh look, there’s a beautiful woman, I’m going to kill her.’  That’s sick, garbage.  I don’t want to see that stuff … It’s not good for kids either, man.  I don’t like seeing little kids with a SAW III shirt on.

The popularity of Moore’s program has continued to rise, due in large measure to his family-friendly selection of Monster movies.  From Godzilla, to Gamera, to Zombies and Dracula, traditional monsters and creatures rule the Madhouse.  This may, in part, be dictated by the availability of these films in Public Domain.  Most of it is due to the fact that these are the kinds of films that Moore enjoys, and wants to share with his fans.

Another facet of Monster Madhouse’s success is the variety show format.  The large cast, including Jebediah Buzzard, Lizardman, Sally the Zombie Cheerleader, Sasha Trasha, Pvt. Beauregard J. Pettigrew, and numerous others, helps fuel this high-energy show despite the frequently low quality of the movies available from which to choose.  The jokes may not always work, but when you have this many people having this much fun, some of it has to transfer to the audience.

Helping all the insanity along is a rockin’ musical beat, courtesy of Moore’s band, the Monsterminators.  From the show’s opening theme to its signature tune Die Monster Die, the bands heavy metal music provides just the right accompaniment for the program.

Behind it all, though, is Moore himself.  When meeting the creative force responsible for the Monster Madhouse face to face, one is struck by the sheer volume of energy that he exudes.  It’s interesting to watch him as he works a Convention floor—greeting fans as though they were old friends, interviewing fellow hosts and celebrities, or just popping up here and there to enliven the proceedings.  Perhaps the reason he connects so easily with his fans is that he is one himself; he came out of our ranks.  Less than six years ago Jerry Moore was, in fact, just one of us, a member of a Count Gore De Vol fanlist.  His career as Borloff began in 2005 with an invitation to make a guest appearance on Gore’s Creature Feature: the Weekly Web Program.  Playing a contractor doing a remodel on Gore’s dungeon, Moore ends up being entombed behind the wall he’s building, as the Count winds up with Moore’s lovely assistant.

Less than a year later, he was back on Creature Feature, this time with the debut appearance of the new Monster-Hunter / Horror-Host in town, Karlos Borloff.  In August of 2006, Monster Madhouse Live debuted on Public Access cable in Fairfax County, Virginia, as well as being simulcast on the internet.  Live broadcast of a Hosted Horror show was rare even as long ago as the 1960’s, and simulcasting it on the web opened the program up to viewers around the world.

Since that debut, Moore’s Madhouse has served as the Rick’s Café of the Horror-Host world, echoing Claude Rains’ line in CASABLANCA—“… everyone comes to Rick’s.”  The list of those who have found their way to the friendly confines of the Monster Madhouse is indeed impressive, from fellow Virginians Count Gore and Dr. Sarcofiguy, New England’s Penny Dreadful, Chicago’s The Bone Jangler, to Troma Films head Lloyd Kaufman.  People in the world of Horror Fandom began to take notice of Moore’s show, and the character that headlined it.  They obviously liked what they saw.

Hosted Horror shows are enjoying a renaissance of late, as more and more would-be Zacherleys and Vampiras are discovering that they no longer need to be tied to the capricious whims of corporate media in order to make their dreams come true.  If one has imagination, some talent, a willingness to work hard, and a germ of an original idea, they can see their dream reach fruition.  A few, like Jerry Moore and the assorted loonies who inhabit the Monster Madhouse, might find their audience and become a success.

The Unimonster's Crypt Screening Room: SUCKER PUNCH

Title:  SUCKER PUNCH

 

Date of Theatrical Release:  25 March 2011

MPAA Rating:  PG-13

Since the first trailer was released at San Diego’s Comic-Con last July, this movie has been at the top of the Unimonster’s eagerly awaited list, thus there was no question that I would be comfortably ensconced in my local theater on opening night.  My expectations were high for Zack Snyder’s latest offering, after having been amazed by both 300 and THE WATCHMEN.  And I’m pleased to say that he exceeded those expectations.

First, let me say that I went into the film well aware both of what it was, and wasn’t.  If one chooses to see this movie expecting a tightly-plotted, cohesive story and great acting—well, they might be disappointed with what they get.  If the viewer, however, expects what Snyder is so obviously serving up, at least, based on every promo and trailer I’ve seen, then they’ll be more than happy with the movie.  And what might that be, one wonders?  What Snyder (who also wrote the screenplay, along with Steve Shibuya) is so capably offering his audience is a videogame—a visual feast that explodes in the mind like a light-storm.  It is a confection for the brain, one that requires very little thought devoted to following what plot there is—it’s best to just sit back and enjoy it.

The story follows a young woman referred to only as “Babydoll” (Emily Browning).  It begins with a silent sequence—only the musical score perfectly accompanies the action on-screen as her mother is dying—indeed, our first view of her mother is as the sheet is being drawn over her now lifeless body.  Both Babydoll and her younger sister are left in the dubious care of their stepfather (Gerard Plunkett), whom one is given cause to believe is responsible for the death of his wife.  These suspicions become more firm when we see the stepfather reading the mother’s will—everything, a vast fortune, is left to her daughters.  In a rage, the stepfather storms to Babydoll’s room, his intentions made clear when he sees her there in her pajamas.

She fights off his advances, leaving bloody scratches down the side of his face.  He then looks to her sister’s room and with an evil grin locks Babydoll in her room.  She climbs out the window, in the midst of a driving rainstorm, retrieves a pistol from a desk drawer, and confronts her stepfather just as he’s dragging her sister from her hiding place.  She fires, missing him, but her sister falls to the floor, dead.  She runs from the house to the nearby grave of her mother, where the police catch up to her.

Her stepfather commits her to a mental institution, where he secretly contracts with a corrupt orderly named Blue Jones (Oscar Isaac) to have his stepdaughter lobotomized.  While there’s no doctor on staff that will do the procedure, there is one that visits occasionally; he’ll be there in five days.  Five days, and Babydoll won’t even know her own name, much less anything that can hurt the old man.

The horror of her circumstance causes the girl to retreat into her own mind, creating an alternate reality that is the setting for much of the film.  Gone is the asylum, transformed into a nightclub-slash-brothel.  Babydoll has been sold to the owner, a man named Blue.  But she’s told she’ll be there only five days, at the end of which a mysterious “High Roller” will come for her.  She’s soon befriended by other girls there—Rocket, Amber, and Blondie (Jena Malone, Jamie Chung, and Vanessa Hudgens), who help her to understand what is expected of her in this place.  Only Rocket’s older sister, Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), is stand-offish towards the new addition, even after Babydoll rescues Rocket from being raped by the cook.

 

When the woman who trains and oversees the young ladies of the establishment, Madame Gorski (Carla Gugino), informs Babydoll that all the girls must dance for the customers, she discovers yet another reality within herself, one that might hold the key to her freedom.  As she begins to sway hypnotically to the music Gorski plays for her, she finds herself in the snow-covered courtyard of an ancient Japanese castle.  She enters the castle, and is greeted by an elderly wise man (Scott Glenn, with the best performance in the movie).  He tells her that, in order to gain her freedom, she must find five items—a map, fire, a knife, a key, and a fifth item, a mystery, one that only she can solve.  He gives her a Japanese Katana and a Colt 1911A1 pistol, to use in her quest for freedom.  As he closes the door on her, he adds, “Oh, and one more thing … Defend yourself.”

Stylistically, Snyder creates a uniquely hallucinatory landscape for his characters to inhabit, one that seamlessly blends diverse environments and the creatures that populate them into a visually orgiastic whole.  It is a world where the girls do battle, using both modern weapons and swords, in World War I trenches against the Steampunk-inspired reanimated corpses of dead German soldiers, and a B-25 bomber engages in air-to-air combat with an enraged mother dragon.  It makes no sense, but then, it doesn’t need to.  It’s the creation of a young girl’s tortured psyche, struggling to find a place where she is powerful enough to strike back against those who seek to harm her, and overcome her fate.

The grimness and despair of the brothel is offset by the fantasy worlds the girls escape into whenever Babydoll dances.  The CGI, which is usually the weakest link in films of this type, is spectacularly executed, helping the viewer with the necessary suspension of disbelief.  And the music is as much a part of creating these environments as is the imagery.  As Snyder has stated, “… music is the thing that launches them into these fantasy worlds.”

I loved this movie, because I got exactly what I had hoped it would be, what I said I expected four months ago.  “I don’t know what the full story is, or if there is a story.  From what I’ve seen so far, I can’t say I really care about a story.  This movie looks to be pure mind-candy, a psychedelic light-show for the eyes [2010 in Review, 1 January 2011].”  If you go into it expecting to see what Snyder is offering, then my bet is you’ll love it too.

Junkyardfilm.com's Moldy Oldie Movie of the Month: BIRDEMIC: SHOCK AND TERROR

Title:  BIRDEMIC: SHOCK AND TERROR

Year of Release—Film:  2008

An ambitious young software salesman reacquaints with a long-lost high school crush, now a high-fashion model.  But their budding affair is interrupted by the sudden and unexplained invasion of vultures and eagles bent on their destruction and that of the town.  Bloody carnage from above ensues as our brave couple flees along with their mutual best friends and two small children they rescued along the way.  Who will survive?

That's it, folks.  That’s the whole plot.  Director/ writer/ producer James Nguyen gives us a... well... homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS (complete with a cameo of Tippi Hedren by way of a small TV screen).  Billed by him as a “romantic thriller,” BIRDEMIC is a disaster.  But, not in the way that Nguyen envisioned.  Or is it?  This movie is so artfully filled with craptastic film work one wonders if Nguyen might not just be a genius.  Let’s examine the acting, which is so wooden that viewers run the risk of contacting Dutch elm disease.  Our young salesman, the aptly named Rod, walks down a sidewalk so stiffly that one imagines the director glued the actor’s back to a broom-handle.  He enters a restaurant and sits down.  A waitress approaches the table and says, “Here is menu.  I’ll return.”  On her face is an expression of such sheer terror one would assume she was handling nuclear reactor waste rather than a simple menu.  This is the level of the acting in this movie.

While we’re at it, let’s discuss the dialogue.  Watching BIRDEMIC is like watching a poorly dubbed foreign film.  Examples: “I like you and because you are pretty to me”.  And this conversation: “Where is Becky?”  “She’s taking a shit.  Nathalie is watching her back.”  In an interview, female lead Whitney Moore states “He only gave the cast the script in thirds, so I, yeah, the script was obviously broken English...you know, it wasn’t a great script.  But he wrote it himself.  He really was very strict about sticking to the script.”  Nathalie is certainly attractive eye-candy in her lingerie that one can actually imagine her garnering a job as the cover girl at Victoria’s Secret catalogue as she does in the movie.  However, that’s where her believability ends.  Aided by the fact that her “high fashion modeling” takes place at a One-Hour Photo Shop that also advertises cold beer for sale.  For the next 45 minutes, we see the young couple at their jobs (the software boardroom scene is priceless!), dining out, going to movies, taking long walks, visiting friends and family and engaged in a well-lit but otherwise passionless bedroom romp.  Then the birds attack!

Rod and Nathalie escape and, along with their best friends, Becky and Rick, flee into the countryside.  Along the way they find two small children, orphaned by the birds.  They also find AK-47 assault rifles with lots of ammo.  They encounter Mr. Tree-Hugger-Guy and another man who charges them $100 a gallon for gas.  A bad GIF forest fire and an attempted robbery later, we find them at the beach.  With nowhere else to run, it seems it's curtains for our young couple.  But wait!  Flocks of bad-GIF white doves are flying to their aid!  Doves of peace!  Doves of salvation!

The film is shot using a hand-held video camera that constantly swoops and dips leaving one with a feeling of vertigo.  Mr. Nguyen knows nothing about blocking a scene.  Scenes end abruptly or go one for too long and there is no cohesive flow from one scene to the next.  A prime example of this is where the couple is running through a forest fire and the GIF fire suddenly blinks out a full two seconds before the scene ends!  Dialogue is often over-shadowed by loud 70”s synthesizer music or lost completely by bad sound editing.  Some scenes are shot in total silence only to be interrupted by conversations that seemed to have been recorded using walkie-talkies.  When the microphone wasn't needed to capture some mindless blathering between the actors, eco-friendly Nguyen turned it off.  And, we mustn't forget the birds!  (I know I never will!)  Badly animated, low-resolution GIFs, they hover like 2D stickers in place, flapping their wings and cawing in a sound-loop.  People who are killed by the birds just cover their eyes, wait for the GIF to work its magic, and then fall to the ground with blood on their faces.  Because I cannot emphasize this enough, I offer you this youtube clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrxZblVUkMU

The birds “poop” acid and, when they are shot, they fall straight down to the ground and explode!

Mr. Nguyen, the self-proclaimed “Master of the Romantic Thriller” (he had that trademarked!), has a message in BIRDEMIC and that's that nature is going mad and it's caused by man's harm to the planet.  When not slamming us in the face with www.imaginepeace.com posters, Mr. Nguyen is assaulting our ears with bad John Lennon cover songs and Mr. Tree-Hugger-guy telling our heroes that he won't be attacked by the birds because he lives in the woods and not out on the road like other stupid man-animal civilizations.  Nguyen proselytizes by having his characters talk about solar panels and hybrid cars and going to see AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH.  He wields his “truths” in a heavy-handed manner that makes Michael Moore appear laid back.  At least we now know the name of Yoko Ono’s lone fan!

After seven months of weekend filming and at a cost of under $10,000, Nguyen finally had his film in the can.  And, like any director of vision, he headed to the 2008 Sundance Film Festival to submit his movie.  (He wasn’t invited.  He just went!)  Decorating his beat-up SUV with fake bird props, lots of phony blood and a poster advertising his movie (misspelled “BIDEMIC!”), Nguyen proudly pulled into Park City, Utah.  However, Sundance wasn’t ready for BIRDEMIC so Nguyen unspooled it in bars before drunken but stunned customers.  Word-of-mouth spread and soon it became a cult sensation on the midnight movie circuits in Austin TX, Phoenix AZ and Los Angeles, CA.  But someone else at the Sundance Film Festival noticed Nguyen, and that someone was Evan Husney of the UK-based Severin Films.  Intrigued not only by the movie but the audiences’ reactions to it, Severin Films picked up the DVD distribution rights and began showing it across the country.  Along the way it began to get encouraging notices from “Attack of the Show,” the horror movie web site Bloody Disgusting and Entertainment Weekly.  Midnight showings sold out across the nation!  BIRDEMIC: SHOCK AND TERROR was released on DVD and Blu-ray Feb. 22, 2011.  Mr. Nguyen’s ship had just come in!

In a Feb 24^th interview with Bloody Disgusting web site, Mr. Nguyen was asked about his struggles to make BIRDEMIC.  He states, “I make movies because I love making movies, like a painter who loves to paint.  I love making movies.  Making movies is my passion.  That’s why I made it.  I didn’t make it to make money.  I made it because I love making movies.  But it was a struggle, like anybody who wants to be discovered, to be recognized.  So I went on to make “Birdemic: Shock and Terror.”  I love making movies.”  And by accident, by chance, it became a hit.  It was my breakthrough movie into Hollywood.”  Encouraged by the movie’s “success,” Nguyen is working on it’s sequel BIRDEMIC 2: THE RESURRECTION in 3D which is anticipating a fall 2011 release.  Here’s hoping Nguyen can capture lightning in a bottle twice!

Enjoy!  “Yaaaaaayyy...”

MSTJunkie

Cambot's Voice by S. J. Martiene: EXPERIMENT 2: THE UNEARTHLY

In my initial experiment, I informed you (the readers) that I would not get into too much detail about cast changes and back-story information. I intend to keep this promise with one glaring exception.  Throughout the show’s run, there were two different “humans” in the Satellite of Love with the robots (Tom Servo, Crow T. Robot, Gypsy, Cambot, and the unseen Magic Voice).  Last month’s experiment involved Mike who was also a head writer throughout most of show’s run.  His banishment onto the SOL will be discussed on a future experiment.  Mike became more of a brother-type to Servo and Crow.  They picked on and pranked each other, but because Mike was the human, he had a certain amount of authority.

Joel, on the other hand, was different.  Joel….was the Bots’ creator.  Joel built them with spare parts he found on the Satellite so he would have some friends.  Tom Servo became the singing chick magnet, and rounding out the trio was the wise-cracking Crow.  Gypsy was the “girl” robot who ran the higher functions of the ship which is why she could never be in the theater with the guys except for one time. Cambot never spoke but could give you any camera shot within the parameters of the Satellite of Love.  “Cambot, give me Rocket Number 9,” was often shouted if the hosts needed to see something outside the ship.  Magic Voice was just the ethereal “voice” heard going in and out of commercial break from time to time.  During the course of the series, Magic Voice’s character was helmed by three different people:  Bridget Jones Nelson (wife of Mike Nelson), Mary Jo Pehl (Pearl Forrester), and Prop Diva Beth “Beez” McKeever.

I never got into the Joel vs. Mike wars that seems to overtake many a good MSTie conversation.  When Joel left the show, I was heartbroken.  I never thought I could watch the show again, and did boycott Mike’s first entry MST3K #513 The Brain That Wouldn’t Die.  Then I found, like many others in did, that though the show was a bit different….THE RIFFING WAS STILL GREAT.  I did give Mike a chance.  He was affable, self-deprecating, and melded well with the Bots in the new storyline.  From here on out, I will alternate, Mike and Joel movies as best I can, and this month Joel is up with a flick from 1957, The Unearthly.

HOST SEGMENT 1/INVENTION EXCHANGE

The Bots film a “spontaneous” home video with Crow wearing flammable pajamas.  Chaos ensues and Crow will need to be identified by dental records.

The Mads (Dr. Forrester and TV’s Frank) begin their Invention Exchange with Hard Pills to Swallow.  These pills have fish hooks, acids, poisons, rats, and life-size cartoon characters, because….we mustn’t forget…..THE CHILDREN.

Joel and the Bots show Celebrity Appliances such as:  The Emilio EstePEZ, The Jimmie “J.J.” Walker, The Jackie Mason Jar, Charlie Callas Massager.

*What do you think, sirs? ~Joel~* *I think you die, Joel. ~Dr. Forrester*

MOVIE SIGN!

Since the runtime for The Unearthly is only 73 minutes, the remaining time had to filled with “Shorts” (typically public domain short-features that either a) you remember seeing sometime in your life, or b) you are very grateful you have no memory of seeing these films in their original format~~yours truly DOES remember the FORMER which makes me even more appreciative of the latter).  These Short Subjects range from the Educational to Public Service Announcements to…well….let’s just called it “whimsical”.  Yeah…that’s the ticket.  This feature is fortunate to have TWO shorts:  The first one is called Posture Pals, and it is as exciting as it sounds.  We have a teacher, her students and the ongoing fight to stand and sit up straight.  While we enter into this world, we see the mutilation of a clown named Bombo…alcoholic and disappointed parents.  All this and more, JUST so they can be Posture King and Queen.  *And they’ll all go to Burger King and get crappy hats ~Joel~*

Short number two qualifies as an overview of life in the 1950’s.  In Appreciating Your Parents, we meet Tommy.  A little kid who doesn’t get enough allowance, and could use MORE money.  He also can’t figure out how the house gets clean or his clothes get washed.  Frankly, I’m surprised Tommy isn’t run over by a truck 30 seconds into the short since he is not the brightest-100-watt-incandescent-bulb-in-the-box.  Just as he becomes brave enough to ask Dad for MORE money   *Tommy calls many men ‘Dad’* ~Servo*  Tommy becomes enlightened, and suddenly turns into a “team” player.  We get an overview of what his Mom and Dad do all day  *Magic’s easy once you know Mom! ~Joel*  *Dad pulls the lever at the Big House. ~Servo*.  Tommy is ashamed that he’s been a slacker all this time, and we feel this shame.  You will too.

THE UNEARTHLY (1957)

Cast

Complete credited Primary cast:
	John Carradine	...	Dr. Charles Conway
	Myron Healey	...	Mark Houston (as Myron Healy)
	Allison Hayes	...	Grace Thomas
	Marilyn Buferd	...	Dr. Sharon Gilchrist (as Marylyn Buferd)
	Arthur Batanides	...	Danny Green
	Sally Todd	...	Natalie Anders
	Tor Johnson	...	Lobo II
	Roy Gordon	...	Dr. Loren Wright
	Guy Prescott	...	Captain Reagan
	Raymond Guta
	Harry Fleer	...	Harry Jedrow
	Gloria Petroff	...	Screaming Woman
	Paul McWilliams	...	Police Office

Courtesy Internet Movie Database ( www.imdb.com )

HOST SEGMENT 2

Servo tells the story of  “A Robot Named Crow”.  Like any sibling relationship they always try to make the other one look as bad as possible.  Here, Servo wants Crow to look like poor stupid Tommy, and Gypsy is cast as “Mom” who does ALL the work around the Satellite.

MOVIE SIGN!

Unlike last month’s feature, you should actually recognize some names in this cast:  John Carradine, Allison Hayes, and yes, even the beloved wrestler-turned-actor, Tor Johnson. John Carradine’s career speaks for itself.  It spanned nearly 60 years and he worked diligently up until his death and through the ravages of crippling arthritis.  You can see the effects this had on his hands in later movies like The Shootist and Crowhaven Farm.  Allison Hayes should be proclaimed the Queen of the MSTie.  She was featured in FOUR riffed films:  Gunslinger, The Undead, The Crawling Hand, and The Unearthly. Even Myron Healey (our hero) is known from other MSTied entries as The Incredible Melting Man and Gunslinger. Healey was also in a few cult classic TV shows including The Veil, Kolchak:  The Night Stalker, and the nearly forgotten Circle of Fear.

From the opening, The Unearthly is a bit muddled.  Dr. Conway (Carradine) seems to have gathered a few patients to “experiment” on.  Conway is trying to find a Fountain of Youth.  The patients are there under the impression that his hospital is a sanitarium of sorts.  Working in concert with Conway is his beautiful, but strangely jealous Dr. Sharon Gilchrist (Marilyn Buferd) and the always obedient Lobo II (Tor Johnson).  He also has one other co-conspirator, Dr. Wright.  Now, according to the IMDb, unlike Johnson’s Lobo character in Bride of the Monster (a movie that also got the MSTie treatment), this Lobo SPEAKS.  Just think of him as a bulging, lumbering, bald, talking Harpo.  You have to love Tor.  He commands it. 

Okay…so we have Grace Thomas (Allison Hayes) who arrives for her respite at Conway’s house of horrors.  We also have a side experiment of “Jedrow”.  I mention him because Jedrow figures prominently in the plot.  I think.

SUDDENLY (and I mean suddenly)… OUR HERO …Mark Houston (Myron Healey) enters the movie.

Tor throws him down, “I found him in the gar-DEN.”

Conway, “Whatareyoudoingthere?”  (For some reason, the eloquent-speaking John Carradine felt it necessary to speed through most of his lines in this movie.  Most of his dialogue is very difficult to understand)

*I’m a turnip. ~Joel*

Houston tells some story about why he is there, Conway doesn’t believe him and pegs him as an escaped criminal he heard about.  Never mind THAT WE, the audience, HAVE NOT HEARD ABOUT this escaped criminal UNTIL NOW.  Conway decides he is going to bargain with him, but will talk to him later.  More annoying characters are introduced (Natalie and Danny) but the riffing that includes scenes from WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? the song “Signs”, and banter from every soap opera ever shown in the 50’s and 60’s is priceless.  The male character is hauled off and given a shot…of something.  By this time, all of us need a shot of something as well.  Pick your poison.  I do not; however, recommend watching this movie in a horizontal position, particularly if you are over age 40.  Between Tor, Carradine, the script, and the host’s inclination to creep into Dead End Kids lingo, you will slip into forty winks in no time, or my name isn’t Rip van Winkle.

HOST SEGMENT 3

The Bots decide to honor the only DECENT actor of the bunch:  Joel thinks it is Carradine.  The Bots beg to differ and honor Tor Johnson instead.

MOVIE SIGN!

Dr. Conway tells Houston exactly what he wants to “use” him for, and Houston balks.  The girls are at the pool and Natalie (Sally Todd) has to go see the doctor.  Mark Houston starts making moves on Grace and discovers she is afraid of “things”.  *I’m afraid of sock monkeys, go figure. ~Servo* Jedrow dies.  *Long live Jedrow. ~Crow* Natalie is given the treatment, Conway starts playing the organ, and Tor announces with great authority, “TIME FOR GO TO BED!”  Now, I have used this phrase on my kids since they were little, I know it magically works. Having since reached middle-age…well, let’s say I just LOOK more like Tor than I want.  I think it may be a curse.  Now, everyone goes to bed like they are suppose to, the doctors operate on Natalie.  Houston blows the whistle on the doctor to Grace, she doesn’t believe him. 

Then eight hours later, Conway and Gilchrist see what happened to Natalie.  And it is obvious. *She’s turned into a Sleestak! ~Crow*  and my favorite *She’s been jerked! ~Crow*  Grace then tattles on Houston.  Tor is lumbering about, and Gilchrist’s jealousy heightens.

HOST SEGMENT 4

The Bots shake off cabin fever by combining leftover parts of all their games to make one huge game, John Carradine’s Unearthly Mansion.  Like any kid, BOTH Bots want to just PLAY, but Joel wants to read the rules so everyone knows how to play.  He closes the segment reading John Carradine dialogue card as Carradine.  The Bots give up.

MOVIE SIGN!

As we head back to the movie Tor is spotted burying Jedrow.  Houston investigates the coffin and lo and behold…Jedrow is not quite dead. *I’m getting better. ~Crow*  It is at this time The Dead End Kids Roundup escalates.  Grace, Danny, and Mark try to escape, figure out what’s going on, or try to DO SOMETHING..BUT..they get caught.  They are locked in a dungeon, except Grace.  Danny and Mark tell Tor a story.  Grace gets ready to go under the “knife”.  I can’t help but notice how many times Carradine’s hair color changes during this movie too.  But then, as Joel says, “It’s Confuse-O-Vision”.  Conway goes outside (why?  Who knows, he just does), the police arrive… Conway returns and Jedro—Jedro kills him.  Tor mourns.  Houston rescues Grace and they confusingly get past the fact that Conway is a cop.  The police find the *cast from Quest for Fire.~Servo* and *The birth of the WWF ~Servo*

And mercifully, the movie ends, except for the Dead End Kids stuff.  You have to admit, though, the guys are pretty good at it.

Helpful links:

www.mst3kinfo.com

www.imdb.com

www.rifftrax.com

www.cinematictitanic.com

http://mst3k.wikia.com/wiki/Mystery_Science_Theater_3000_Wiki