This is one of those episodes which I didn’t enjoy so much when I first saw it, but upon reviewing it I found it to be hilarious; one of the best yet.
We start off with another episode of ‘The Phantom Creeps.’ The resolution to last week’s cliffhanger was…they survived the plane crash. Okay, but we saw it explode and turn over, so…Well, anyway, Bela’s wife isn’t one of the survivors, which leads to a pretty affecting moment when Bela finds her body. We get some really good acting from Lugosi here, as he realizes he’s killed his wife, but can’t mourn her without giving himself away. As for the rest…I really don’t remember a lot of what happened; the hero and reporter-girl team up, and there’s another spy ring out to steal Bela’s invention and then…well, no matter because we’re not gonna get the whole serial anyway (incidentally, that I think is one of the big flaws with the ‘serial’ shorts; we can’t really get into it because we know we’re just going to get part of the story).
The movie itself is a Cold War Propaganda film (a real one; not one made during the Cold War a labeled ‘propaganda’ by a smarmy critic decades later). The film makes no bones about it, with the narrator letting us know right away that the film is designed to drum up support for US Military spending. The story is about a spy sent behind the iron curtain to discover and destroy the Soviet ICBM program. He hooks up with a female spy (in more ways than one) who’s been sleeping with a Soviet general. Turns out the Reds are way ahead of us and, with the dubious help of a British spy (who has no accent whatsoever, by the way), they try to blow up the rocket. They fail miserably, despite the fact that there aren’t a lot of guards around (Servo later describes it as being ‘guarded by a photo-mat’). They’re both killed and the rocket is launched. New York get’s nuked and we end with a warning not to let this happen.
Now, as most of you know (say, four out of our five readers), I’m a political and social conservative, and very fond of the 1950’s. Few things bug me more than people sneering at the Cold War and acting as though the Soviet Union was no worse than we were and the whole thing was just a ‘they’re different, so they must be bad’ thing (Dr. Seuss, I’m talking to you). With that being said, this movie was far too heavy handed and fear-mongering for me. I’m probably more tolerant of propaganda (at least, in very certain situations) than most people, but this film was frankly pretty disgusting. Add that to the extreme cheapness and wooden acting, and you have a pretty awful movie.
The riffing, though, is great; lots and lots of hilarious riffs on the film’s woodenness, jingoism, stupidity, and heavy-handedness abound. The host segments are generally great too; my favorite being the ‘Charlie McCarthy hearings; even funnier now that I’m familiar with Charlie. The only thing that really marred the episode for me were the sneers at the Cold War (as mentioned above), although that wasn’t a really big deal, and one frankly tasteless joke about ‘The Conqueror.’ Guys, some things just aren’t comedic material, and a real-life tragedy like that is one of them.
Still, these aren’t enough to ruin the episode by a long shot and this is probably the high-water mark of the series so far.
One final note; this episode includes the very first ‘Stinger.’ Stingers were short (say, five second) clips from the movie that they’re play after the end credits. Usually, they were of a particularly, odd, stupid, bad, or funny moment in the film. This one is of a blind man walking down the street and suddenly saying ‘help me!’ It’s a great little clip, and you see why they wanted to draw more attention to it.
Thoughts while watching:
Opening song has some extra scenes; the invention exchanges from the previous episode.
Opening: Tom gets a hair-cut. You see, the executives thought Servo’s head was covering too much of the screen, so they make his head smaller here. It’s pretty funny, really.
Invention exchange: Joel; WAS going to do the Mexican-jumping-bean-bag-chair, but Gypsy ate it, so he makes a candy-adding machine (“You can eat your loses if things go bad”). The Mads; water foosball. Frank’s really starting to come into his own here.
So, another episode of the “The Phantom Creeps.”
Crow (as Bela): “This is my skull; stick around and see how that happened.”
You know, the ‘forward’ here is exactly like the one in ‘Star Wars!’
Pick up from last time…
Wife: “This wasn’t in my bag when I left.”
Servo: “Oh, a klepto, eh?”
(explosion)
Crow: “Woah! Now how do you feel about spontaneous human combustion?”
(as the plane crashes)
Crow (as girl): “I didn’t think you’d mind if I took the last parachute, thanks.”
What the…hey, the plane blew up! How is he completely uninjured?
You know, Bela’s a pretty decent guy in this one, or at least a human one. He just pulled over to help the girl for no reason other than he’s a gentleman!
Bela’s very good in the scene where he realizes he’s accidentally killed his wife; he gets some genuine emotion, both from the obvious irony and the fact that he can’t express his real emotions because he’s supposed to be hiding from the law. It’s really an affecting little scene.
Girl: “My paper would like an official statement from you.”
Crow (as hero): “’Get bent!’ Is that official enough for you?”
Crow (during ‘newspaper’ montage): “Extra! Extra! Fire Hydrant attacked by newspapers.”
Man, there is so much going on in this serial! There’s Bela, being evil, there’s the bad spies trying to get his invention, then there’s the heroes, and I’m pretty sure there’s even more.
(as a guard grabs Bela’s sidekick)
Crow (Elmer Fudd voice): “Be vewy qweit! I’m hunting swidekwicks!”
Sidekick: “I’m ready; get the robot to open the door.”
Servo (as Bela): “Alright…hey! I give the orders around here!”
Man, everyone just picks up those little discs in this film!
Joel’s riffs on the robot are hilariously perfect!
Joel: “Oh, be proud, you shot a spider!”
(sidekick has been shot)
Girl: “Is he dead?”
Hero: “No, just stunned.”
Crow: “’Just stunned?’ he took six bullets!”
The origin of the perennial favorite; “the driver is either gone or he’s hiding.” (said in a vaguely Reagan-esque voice).
And the guy just takes another one of those discs!
Crow (as Bela): “Ha ha! I kill me! And others too!”
First Host Segment: The Charlie McCarthy era. This is a hilarious sketch, even with the leftist jokes they do a little of.
When Joel hands Servo over I guess Kevin missed him cause he falls over. He just goes with it very well.
Servo: “Albert Smiler as a sad guy.”
So, basically this is a flat out propaganda flick.
That scientist guy does look sad and ashamed!
Narrator: “It wasn’t long before a coded message reached the desk of George White…”
Crow: “It said ‘drink more ovaltine.’”
So, the US sends an agent into Russia to find out how far their rocket program is.
The narrator laments that the Russian people didn’t want the military to take over. Uh, it’s a totalitarian regime, bud; the will of the people isn’t exactly the government’s first priority.
Joel gets up to beg for some service for the hero!
Good riffs on the café and the dancing girl.
Servo: “This must be the ‘Wine List Players’”
Man, the hero and his contact couldn’t be more obvious if they DID just come out and say they were spies!
Crow: “It’s the Pope on banjo!”
(it does kind of look like JPII)
Servo (as girl): “I think I’ll check the rat-trap…nope, no dinner tonight.”
(as the hero comes in)
Girl: “Did anyone see you?”
Crow: “No, just the guy in the club, the belly-dancer, the fire-eater, the cab-driver, everyone on the street, and the guy filming this.”
Girl: “What are your plans.”
Servo: “Uh, you just burned my plans.”
The hero talks his way into staying with the girl.
Joel’s ‘other side’ dialogue in the phone scene is hilarious; particularly the squeaky little voice he does.
Second Host Segment: Civil Defense Quiz Bowl. It’s pretty funny, despite a tasteless joke about ‘The Conqueror’. Crow’s final answer is great.
Hero: “Hard to believe a group of civilized men could sit around discussing how to murder five or six million others.”
Joel: “That’s why we’ve got to CRUSH them!”
The narrator narrates the meeting of the Russian government’s plans to nuke the US with all the emotion of a college golf match.
Really wooden dialogue leading up to a kiss. Whatever. I don’t care.
Hey! I think these are their first ‘Tor Johnson’ jokes (the one Russian looks like him). He’ll show up a few times later on in the series.
Hilarious bit where the Russian generals walk onto what looks like a firing line.
Yeah, the missile is clearly not there, there’s no shadow!
More good ‘other side’ quips for Joel.
And the hero teams up with a Brit (who has no accent whatsoever) and heads out to join the girl and take out the rocket. They trust each other pretty much implicitly.
Brit dumps the girl and hero right away.
These are the most incompetent spies in history!
Hah! The hero’s voice is echoing! There must have been trouble in dubbing.
Joel uses his ‘Bela’ voice for the guards.
And British guy get caught.
Interrogation with ‘audition’ quips.
Man, two call backs in one quip; ‘chili peppers burn my gut’ and ‘hamburger sandwich and French-fried potatoes.’
And girl gets shot, but she shoots the guard too.
There’s only ONE guard protecting the rocket’s perimeter.
You know, at this point, I would just detonate the thing and let it take me up too. I mean, there’s no way he’s getting out in secret and it’s pretty obvious what he just did.
Yeah, like I said, the Russians just take the bomb off.
Rather hilarious scene where the Russian soldier takes the bomb off and runs into the darkness and we hear an explosion.
Crow: “Uh, did I tell you to throw it?”
And the hero gets killed.
Cut to a reporter going to work despite his wife’s wishes, saying that if there’s an attack, there won’t be anything he can do for her anyway (!) and that he can do more good on the air.
Servo (as wife): “But you host the matinee movie, Bill!”
Third Host Segment: Servo starts having doubts about his hair-cut, and Joel’s Russian counterpart Sorri Andropoli (ironically played by Mike Nelson) visits. And the Hexfield is finally complete in its iris form! Now the set is pretty much complete; there’ll be some minor changes, but nothing major from now until the end of the series.
Now in New York, which is about to get bombed, where we see the oblivious, happy people.
Joel (on a weird guy): “I’m Mr. Dirt; I come here everyday and watch the filth.”
Ironically, the reporter guy says things are ‘brighter.’
Everyone is extremely wooden in this film! Crow emphasizes this by reading the punctuation marks for the reporter.
Every time the film cuts to the Russians Joel and the bots imitate the stilted narrator. This is one of those rare bits that just get funnier each time.
This IS really dull, Joel! We just cut back and forth from the rocket to a guy at the controls, with an annoying little beeping.
Joel: “That rocket’s run by real-to-real; it wasn’t until the seventies that they were run by eight-track.”
Stock footage and REALLY bad special effects to demonstrate the rocket’s launch.
Servo (as teenager-eating-pizza): “Oh, this is no time to die, I just got a single slice!”
And no one cares about the air-raid siren because their too used to it.
Crow (as reporter): “Remember that good stuff I told you about earlier? Well, forget it!”
Come on, this set is a blank wall!
Time wasting stock footage. Incidentally, I think we’ve already seen this stock footage of missiles once and we’ll see it again.
‘Panic.’
The presses actually stop!
Reporter: “Soldiers are asked to report to their bases as soon as they safely can.”
Crow: “Like in about five-thousand years.”
Reporter apologizes to his wife over the air.
General: “Get me the White House.”
Servo: “I quit.”
And New York gets nuked.
Final Host Segment: Joel and the bots complain. It’s hilarious! I love Tom’s ‘the missile guarded by the photo-mat’ comment. Weird letter; really weird letter.
Very First Stinger! Blind man on the street saying ‘Help me.’ A good start to the tradition.
Movie Quality Rating:
1. The Crawling Eye
2. The Black Scorpion
3. Mad Monster
4. Rocketship XM
5. Moon Zero Two
6. The Crawling Hand
7. Catalina Caper
8. Jungle Goddess
9. The Corpse Vanishes
10. Untamed Youth
11. The Slime People
12. Project Moonbase
13. The Sidehackers
14. Women of the Prehistoric Planet
15. Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy
16. Rocket Attack USA
17. Robot Holocaust
18. Robot Monster
Conclusion: A very bad propaganda movie, riffed very well and with some fun host-segments make this one of the best episodes so far.
Final Rating: 8/10.
