Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #79: Mystery Science Theater 3000: Santa Claus (1959, MST3K Version in 1993)

Forever at war.

Not sure what MST3k is? Read this first!

Apparently Santa was not in high standing in Mexico in '59. El Santo certainly was, but Santa and Christmas were, it was felt, a distinctly American tradition that had little place in the imaginations of Mexican children. How best to sell the Santa meme to Mexico? Why, the only way to properly bridge the gap is to put Santa in the service of god! You know, make him lock horns with satan and his minions! Kid movie stuff. The MST crew have a field day.

Santa lives in a cloud fortress made of crystal and filled with surreal anthropomorphic contraptions that monitor Earth. These contraptions were made by none other than fucking Merlin. Merlin lives in the fortress with Santa. Oh, and an army of 6 year old toy-making workers from every nation on the planet. These must be the purest child-souls to be found on Earth, to be working for god's newest general in a magic cloud city. The elves are nowhere to be found, and this will be a strange movie indeed. I can only assume that they, like the angels before them, grew jealous and rebelled and were cast down amidst the fire.

Soon enough we get a bizarre sequence with Santa playing organ and singing along with each nation's representatives in turn, and let me tell you, it is a badly dubbed buffet of racial stereotyping.

I'd have to say this episode possesses one of my favourite MST3K moments to date, a moment where the clockwork reindeer, having just been awakened from their year-long slumber, begin to laugh along with a merry Santa. Now, the reindeer's jaws open and shut in a jerking, string-pulled fashion and they can never blink. Their laugh grows into what I'm sure is an unintentionally disturbing cackle, a cackle the guys of course are compelled, in the evil spirit of Christmas, to join in on. It then becomes an unholy chorus of laughter akin to the scene in Evil Dead where Ash has his first true mental breakdown.

It's possibly the most offensive MST I've seen, and certainly one of the darkest. Given the subject matter of the film in front of them, the boys aren't afraid to make fun of every national culture they can think of in the name of fairness and in step with the flick, and poke fun at the rammed down your throat religiosity and fear of hell that this film tries to install into children.

So: Pretty damn awesome. Still with a bit a Hallowe'en in the brain yet ready for Christmas, this might be perfect for you sinners.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #75: Mystery Science Theater 3000: Night of the Blood Beast (1958, MST3K Version in 1996)

I've probably made reference to MST3k in other reviews and explained its basic concept, but now that I finally come to review one of their many, many episodes I'll give your lovely heart a refresher.

Dr. Forrester is an evil crazy-go-mad scientist who has decided that he wants to rule the world. But to do that, he is certain that he must break the will of earth's populace. The most obvious way to do this is to force them to watch the most incompetent, most embarrassing, most boring films ever made by their own feeble human hands. Naturally, this procedure should be tested first in a controlled environment. So Dr. Forrester kidnaps his laboratory janitor, Joel, and jettisons him into the seclusion of his secret space station, the Satellite of Love. He sends Joel awful movies and monitors the man's brain - but what's this? He manages to stay sane somehow! The key to Joel's survival is that he makes fun of the cinematic shit he's sent with the help of two robot friends he constructed from satellite parts. In the series, you get to watch the awful films Dr. Forrester sends with Joel and the bots riffing and cracking jokes all the while. Its like watching a terrible movie with some hilarious friends, the sort that makes any movie experience ten times better.

There's tons of episodes, and each one is an entire film minus the 15 or 20 minutes trimmed for the sake of the MST3k sketches that pepper the show. Some episodes are a great success, some are not, since some films just are so terrible that the MST crew can't win. Night of the Blood Beast, though, is fantastic. It comes from season 8 of the series and is probably one of the best episodes I've seen. Night of the Blood Beast is a Roger Corman wonder, filled with lots of dull walking scenes, awful dialogue, sci fi pontification, and rubbery alien monsters. The boys are in great riffing form, and I ended up laughing out loud, or LOLing if you will, more than once. I tend not to LOL when watching comedies, and usually just smirk and chuckle ever so slightly. This is due to the terrible burden I carry, the alien shrimps gestating within me. I identified with the astronaut in Night of the Blood Beast completely.

So: Wicked-awesome. This one features Mike instead of Joel, who is, I think, my favourite of the two Forrester victims.