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| Thursday, February 14, 2008 01:02 PM |
| On the Viewer - Cinematic Titanic (The Oozing Skull) |
 by Fëanor |
I've been a huge fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 since I saw my first episode, which must have been over ten years ago now (!). The concept was simple: you watched some guys watch a bad movie, and they made fun of it for you. It was hilarious. I'm not sure, but I may have seen every episode - including the movie, of course. I loved every incarnation of the show - the Joel years, the Mike years, the Comedy Central years, the Sci Fi years. It was all great stuff. I was very sad to see it finally get cancelled for good. And I was very excited to hear the ways in which it was being reincarnated. First there's Mike Nelson's RiffTrax, wherein Nelson and Kevin Murphy of MST3K, along with various other random celebrities, do audio commentary tracks making fun of big, popular, Hollywood movies. You download the audio track, rent or buy the movie, sync up the movie with the audio, and enjoy. I'm curious about this, but haven't tried it. Some assembly is required, as it were, which is a bit off-putting. Plus, it means listening to somebody making fun of a movie that's actually pretty good, which doesn't seem as appealing to me.
But apparently the MST3K guys have split up and gone their separate ways (which makes me sad - hope there isn't any bad blood there), as Joel, Josh (the original voice of Tom Servo), Mary Jo (Dr. Forester's Mom), Trace (Crow/Dr. Forester), and (TV's) Frank are all doing their own thing over at Cinematic Titanic. This project is a lot more like the original MST3K. The five of them appear as silhouettes in front of the movie, sitting or standing on little platforms on either side of the screen, as a bad movie plays in front of them, and they make fun of it. Occasionally they stop the movie to do a little comedy skit, but they never leave the "theater," and you never see them as anything more than silhouettes. You can buy the DVDs on their website. Or I should say "DVD," as there is only one available at the moment, and that is The Oozing Skull.
As you might have guessed, I couldn't pass up this opportunity, and ordered a copy myself. It's a very reasonable price for a DVD ($15.94 all-told, including shipping), and it arrives by itself in a small, simple, slightly padded envelope with no extraneous packaging or liner notes. The movie itself (also known as Brain of Blood) is suitably terrible, and is about the political and spiritual leader of a small country who discovers he's dying. With the help of his (mostly) loyal friends and servants, he finds a mad scientist to transplant his brain into a new, healthy body. Unfortunately, said mad scientist decides to send his gigantic, super-strong, slightly retarded, slightly deformed, adopted assistant out to get said new, healthy body, and the assistant (whose name is Gor) comes back with something completely unusable (the crushed dead body of a would-be burglar). Even worse, the scientist sent Gor out for the body at the very last minute, so the brain is already sitting out waiting, and needs to go into a new body immediately. With no other options handy, the scientist pops the brain into Gor's body, with predictably wacky results. Oh, and it turns out the scientist's ultimate plan is to kill all the witnesses and take over the country. That's a mad scientist for you!
I should mention that the scientist also has a midget assistant (because you've gotta have one of those) played by The Master from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Angelo Rossitto. And that he keeps people chained in his basement (which is half-heartedly dressed up to look like a rat- and spider-infested dungeon, even though it's actually clearly a very nice, well-lit little basement) so he can take blood from them for his experiments.
The movie has terrible sound, awful acting, horrendous make-up, a ridiculous story, stupid dialogue, and it drags on and on, especially in the last fifteen minutes or so. In short, it's a classic subject for MSTing.
And the Cinematic Titanic crew do a classic MST job on it. I wouldn't say the comedy here is equal in hilarity to their best work from the old series, but this is certainly as good as your average episode of MST3K. There are constant chuckles and the occasional serious belly laughs. And regardless it was great to see (or at least, hear) them all (or at least, most of them) back in action again. I'll be looking forward to the next episode! |
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