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The restorer of Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966) and this has a few more of these for sale if you want them. It is a fantastic 4K restoration and I personally backed this during 2015 around the same time of the first MST Kickstarter. There is a limited number of these and I’m not sure they’ll ever be reprinted again. For any MST3K completist who collects the movies too, this is a must!
What if instead I just got a new cat and named him or her Xerxes? 
“Oh, this is gonna be some chase scene.”
The staircase sequences have such amazing song riffs.
“Orrrr, I could replace your brain…”
"SHE’S OLD. SHE’S OLD. SHE’S OLD. SO OLD."
This is one of those films where, while watching the protagonists, I find myself screaming “Do something!”
What’s the point of the short?
Teen delinquency is on the rise, at least in this one fictional town. Our “hero” is part of a gang who beat up a guy… for the kicks, as the kids say. Except it turns out it was his dad, which gets him to quit the gang. Okay, sure. In response, the city council is considering a harsh curfew and suchlike, because nothing addresses the problem of bored rebellious teens like having more rules and fewer social outlets.
The gang doesn’t want the other kids to go to the council meeting and plead for leniency because…? I’m drawing a blank here. The student council president has no evidence against the gang, and only wants the city council to consider alternatives to their reactionary measures.
Our hero is stuck in the middle of the two groups because his dad was the one who was attacked, and he knows who did it. (His dad also knows, but somehow that never comes up.) So we’re supposed to think about what he’s supposed to say to the city council?
Well, unless the entire town’s juvenile delinquency problem is those four kids, what’s he supposed to do? Turning them in is a start. But it’s not actually going to address the issue at hand, and (despite the school principal saying that the kids have ideas worth hearing) it doesn’t seem like he’s got any clue. Nor do the council members seem inclined to listen.
The short is supposed to spark classroom debate, but I really don’t see what debate they’re hoping to have.
Also, I’m pretty sure the city council does not have the power to set the driving age, let alone revoke existing licenses and permits, so that’s just weird.
As for the movie… It’s pretty dull. And oddly boilerplate.
One thing that gets me is her wheelchair. I remember on another site someone was saying that she’s faking her disability because she uses the wheelchair but is able to walk up and down the stairs from the second floor to the basement. Which is a common harmful myth about disabilities. Many wheelchair users are able to get up and walk, especially if there’s a railing to help, but still rely on the chair because walking extended distances and/or standing up for extended periods is exhausting and painful.
But why does she keep the chair on the second floor?? There’s almost nowhere to go up there. And the doors are too narrow for the chair. Wouldn’t it be much more useful to keep it on the ground floor? Or is she relying on the so-called gigolo to carry the chair up and down the stairs for her every day?
Wikipedia notes that this episode didn’t even make the top 100 in the fan poll, and I can see why. There are some good riffs here and there. I do like the Magic Voice host segment and I love the “invention exchange,” especially given Trace’s dual role. The aforementioned Prince/Frank Gorshin riff is a definite standout. Overall, though, this one just feels like dullsville.
Ikr, I can’t tell if she or Alexandra was the best as the Magic Voice, I remember when Mary Jo first did the Magic Voice in the Beatniks say something like “I hope you’re not playing too rough with those two” to Joel when he dominated Crow and Tom in rock-paper-scissors, when that falls on deaf ears, Gypsy rams him for it.
It just occurs to me that this movie would’ve been the proper watch for October 27th, which was National Black Day. Instead of Killer Shrews. Someone please mark our calendar so we can set that right in '24.
“Hold me closer, tiny panther…”