Oh yah, and you know it was a good thing I had the snowmowbile suit for to run over by Evelyn’s house there.
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It was just so ding-dang cold, I go outside, da stuff in my nose just freeze right up!
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Ah, the Scandinavian sketch. Yeah.
5 Likes
Day the Earth Froze is in my top 5 episodes list along with Mitchell, Cave Dwellers, Danger Death Ray, and I Accuse My Parents. It represents riffing at its acme.
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The random, periodic riff done with a mock Scandinavian accent adds another layer to the riffs. That definitely adds to the humor level.
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I think one of Kevin’s best-ever moments was his turn as Ilya Muromets in Sword. I never hear other fans mention it, though.
I wish he’d come to Thanksgiving dinner, instead of that untidy Kitten. 
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Kevin’s Garrison Keillor in A Prairie Home Companion is SPOT ON.
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If it were JUST this movie, it would be remembered rather fondly by MST3K fans. BUT, considering it also has Here Comes The Circus catapults this to one of the all-time great episodes.
And I love the wedding scene.
“Are you with the bride or the failure?”
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Nope! It’s in the episode. They just deliberately talk over it so they can pretend they don’t know. But if you ignore the chatter, you can listen to the narrator explain the whole thing.
“The people toiled very hard. For it had been promised that if they worked the earth and the sea, one day they would be given as their reward the Sampo, the Mill of Everything. A marvelous machine which could turn anything into endless gold, silver, jewels, grain, and salt. Such was the magic of the Sampo.”
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Happy to confirm that Sampo and my VS titles arrived today. The slipcover and box art is as awesome as advertised. I have not been able to watch the film yet, as I’ve been ill, but the excerpts that they show in the main menu have some EXCELLENT picture quality. This is extremely worth the price if you’re a fan of this movie.
I can confirm that this interview is indeed real and it indeed lasts 70 minutes! I have a feeling VS forgot to list this on their website’s product page, because I was VERY happy to find this advertised as a back-of-the-box feature!
I haven’t finished this interview yet, but the conversation is REALLY respectful, well-researched and at least one of the moderators is a MSTie who shows the Shout! box art of MST3K’s Day The Earth Froze on camera.
7 Likes
ALL the Russo-Finnish movies are good, but this is probably my least favorite of them. It’s still lots of fun though. Truthfully, every episode has it’s moments and this one is no exception. My rankings?
Jack Frost
Sword and the Dragon
Magic Voyage of Sinbad
Day the Earth Froze
There. I said it and I’d say it again!
4 Likes
I got my copy in the mail today too! I watched it and it really is a beautiful film. I appreciated it a lot more now that it’s unedited, but I’ll admit that I couldn’t watch it without some of the riffs popping up in my head. At least I could have “I wish they all could be North Norwegian girls” in my head while watching a log flume in beautiful 4K. (Addendum: The co-founder of the studio that produced this release predicted that this would happen, and he was 100% right).
I’m watching the interview now, and it does seem to be really good as well.
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Mine arrived today too! Looking forward to popping that box open!
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I kinda wish that Deaf Crocodile could have gotten the rights for the MST3K episode for this release, if only for the interview with Mike Nelson to make more sense for the collection. As an MST3K fan, I thought it was great, but I’d imagine it could be confusing for got the Blu-ray strictly for Sampo. Granted, I’d imagine that the number of Americans who have heard of Sampo but not MST3K is a lot smaller than the number of Americans who have heard of MST3K but not Sampo, and I’d bet a lot of their Blu-ray sales have come from people like us (MST3K fans who love the The Day the Earth Froze episode).
On the other hand, if people who watch the interview and haven’t heard of MST3K go to the internet and discover the Gizmoplex, I won’t complain.
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Thanks to it being on the Winter/Wonderland vault picks this month, I have to say I love the log riding scene. Mind you it may be because of the NFC Short “The Log Driver’s Waltz”, but I love it more because of it.
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I used to show that cartoon to my daughter when she was little. One of her favorites.
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The short is a promotional piece for the Clyde Beatty circus which spends way too much time on the clowns. Dear Gawd, why did people ever regard clowns as being funny?
The main feature is a Soviet/Finnish adaptation of the Sampo tale from the Kalevala. It possesses many typical folk tale elements, such as a wicked witch kidnapping a fair maiden for nefarious purposes. In this case, the witch wants the maiden’s mystical blacksmith brother to make her a Sampo. So, what is a Sampo? As depicted in the film, it’s a mill that cranks out gold and salt and grain. However, earlier accounts define it a bit more vaguely as an artifact that bestows riches and good fortune on its possessor. Later, the witch steals the sun, hence the rather campy title.
Overall, this is a rather atypical movie for MST3K. While the print that is screened shows some wear and tear, it’s still plain the crew that shot it possessed far more competence than we’re used to seeing. The most memorable performance comes from the witch Louhi. Though much of the hamminess can be attributed to the English voice acting, I can’t help but think that there was a similar lack of restraint in the original Finnish.
5 Likes
I just rewatched this since it’s a Select this month and I noticed that the reason Joel and the Bots don’t know what a Sampo is is because they talk over the explanation at the beginning of the film.
Edit: Also, Joel namechecks The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t at around 1:17:00.
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My second favorite episode after The Lost Continent. Everything in this episode just works. Here Comes the Circus is my favorite short. Absolutely hysterical.
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“Do you want to be Finnish? Sure, we all do!”
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