THEY TAMPERED IN GOD’S DOMAIN!!!
2 Likes
This, Carnival Magic (1981). It baffles the senses me how much we still haven’t seen. It’s almost a fresh start. A new beginning out of nowhere.
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Shhhh. Jazz.
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“This must be CBS’s replacement for the NFL.”
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“Yeah. That was Interrogation in D. Alright.”
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Now, I have a bad habit of tuning out during the riffing segments, so it may very well be a me problem, but woooooow was this movie eh. I actually remember the short better (though that may be from seeing it twice).
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@optiMSTie Placement in MST3K? Is this among Mike’s finer shows? Among the greatest of MST’s sleeper episodes?
3 Likes
I’d call it a sleeper episode. It’s definitely a solid outing, and I’d call it “well above average”. Is it top-20 material? Meeeeehhhh… probably not because the best 20 eps are some pretty tough material to beat. But this episode is a reliable performer, always worth a watch, and always delivers. This is meat and potatoes MST and there’s no caveats to its generalized goodness.
5 Likes
Definitely a sleeper episode. You’re never going to see this one named amongst the more popular Mike episodes, stuff like his riffing debut in The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, the Season 8 concluding combo punch of Space Mutiny and Time Chasers and Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, the Coleman Francis troika, The Final Sacrifice, etc. Does that make it any less worthy of an episode? HELL NO.
I’ll say this, too: if there’s one thing about the movie that keeps the episode from riding too high of a wave, it’s that the character of Henry Krasker isn’t in the majority of the film. It’s the Mikey conundrum from Teen-Age Strangler. In both cases, the rest of the episode is solid enough, but when you have THOSE characters at the heard of the riffing? You have absolute gold.
That introductory sequence where Krasker speaks directly to the viewer? It may be among the funniest, strongest riffed sequences in the show’s canon. Love that one part where he plays that coffin alarm thing, causing Servo to yell “YOW!” and Mike to quip “It’s hard for him to make friends, I think.” And there’s Servo’s super-sarcastic “GASP!” in reaction to Krasker’s intention to “communicate with the departed,” and Crow’s jovial “Let’s kill somebody!” as Krasker prepares to make a demonstration.
AND THERE’S SO MUCH MORE
That ending sequence with the goofy-as-hell “return” of Renee from the dead? Krasker is totally Krasker-ing there, and that brings out the best of the gang, as Servo shouts that a tactic isn’t working as hoped “because IT’S A RAZOR BLADE IN A GLASS!” And Mike’s observation that “four people are gonna confess just so they can get outta there”? Golden.
Again, it bears noting that there’s a lot more to the episode than the Krasker stuff, like the takedown of the fleeing nebbish guy with such quips as Mike’s “the loneliness of the long-distance dweeb” and “I’M SORRY I ATE ALL MY BAND CANDY!” Plus you have that recording of that uninspiring jazz number that inspires a riff of a deadpanned “TOOT TOOT-TOOT TOOT.”
The mystery is neat and the side characters help to make this fun, but it’s Krasker who makes this one very memorable.
9 Likes
The short on display, The Selling Wizard, is a fun ride, if not reaching the surreal over-the-top weirdness of Out of the World and Mr. B. Natural or the dopey 50s morally-drenched earnestness of Cheating and Appreciating Our Parents.
It may not be the funniest short to grace the screen this side of the Union Pacific deallymabobs, but it still gets the job done.
The riff about our main character being “the pizza dominatrix” is a hoot, and there’s great material to be mined out of mundane details, like Mike commenting on there being display space for “three different kinds of vanilla” and Crow responding that the HIGH volume for HIGH profit is intended “for HIGH people.”
And it’s all worth it for that wonderful end moment of the Ed McMahon impersonations.
8 Likes
Humbug to all trendsetters, I say! I’d rather watch this than many of the traditional favorites.
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As for the host segments? We’ve got a lot of wonderful trademark MST3K hilarity here.
I love a good running gag that gets run into the ground so hard and so much that it doubles back to sheer hilarity, and you get that with Crow’s guitar solo. I love the HELL out of everyone, including the Mads, getting bored to the point of sleepiness over his self-indulgent solo.
What’s neat is when the show can toy with its own presentational formula to keep things fresh and entertaining and novel. Here, I’m talking about how it looks like we’re going back into the theater after that second Movie Sign, what with the doorway sequence starting, but the sequence BACKTRACKS to come back to the SOL bridge where Crow is STILL jamming out! Love stuff like that.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND WE GET THAT SOLO DURING THE CREDITS FOR MAXIMUM HILARITY 
Dr. Forrester’s interrogation not going as planned is a hoot, as is the Bots’ radio call-in show of the dead.
Nifty stuff all the way around, and while this episode may not go down as an enshrined classic that’s talked about in the same hushed breaths as Manos and Laserblast, it’s still pretty damn good.
9 Likes
I feel like this episode has always gotten a bit of mixed reception from fans, but I’ve always liked it. The movie is weird, a bit dreary, and the riffing works beautifully with that.
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Yeah when Frank breaks down and earnestly screams that he killed that fat barkeep is gold rank comedy. 
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For the record, the coffin alarm is a real thing. Several versions were patented and sold.
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“I ATE ALL THE FRUSEN GLÄDJÉ!”
Just spectacular. Frank Conniff goes all out, and the results speak for themselves.
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I could go for some Frusen Gladje right now. Or the non-dairy version from whatever alternate universe we’d be visiting. (I tried Ben & Jerry’s sole currently available faux-cream a couple of weeks ago, and it was delightful.)
6 Likes
I thought the short was really strong, though granted, I haven’t seen legends like B. Natural.
2 Likes
Personally, I like the shorts that skew on the darker side, like “Here Comes the Circus” and the Union Pacific shorts. “Mr. B. Natural” goes there a bit, too. I think you’d dig that one!
But “The Selling Wizard” is sharp stuff, too.
While I’m not keen on The Castle of Fu Manchu, I can’t really think of any shorts I -don’t- like.
5 Likes
It’s a neat short that holds my passing gaze, and its presentation is fairly entertaining. I can definitely imagine the executive thinking “let’s put my daughter into this so that the new hires will pay attention to this.”
7 Likes