“Bob Lippert is the man to see…” “He produces junk for you and me…” “His movies span so far and wide…” “Thirty years and he even did The Fly!!!” 300 films, The “King of Bs”, “the word around Hollywood is: Lippert makes a lot of cheap pictures but he’s never made a stinker”. Oh really? “Bum bum bum bum bum… Lost Continent…” “Bum bum bum bum bum… King Dinosaur…” “Bum bum bum bum bum… Project Moonbase…” “Bum bum bum bum bum… Jungle Goddess…” “He worked a long time…” “And made us all cry…” “Bob Lippert, WE ARE THERE!!!” Regional Speech Patterns, Mirror Mirror, Joey The Lemur, Strategy, Torgo Computer, Agony Booth. “So even though the movie sucks, they still meant well”, “Can’t stress that enough folks, Last of the Wild Horses”, “With these people and plenty of vitamins and minerals.” “You lost the last of the wild horses, you dink!” or “Oh Robert Glasser, the man who holds you down and pummels you with music”?
I’m not a big fan of cowboy movies, but I like the ones the crew’s done. Well, maybe not the not-Lassie one. This isn’t as good as the Cormantastic Gunslinger or the “WTF, did you get bored making this?!” Beast of Hollow Mountain, but it’s got something they haven’t got. That’s right, the mirror universe! It’s a clever way of getting the Mads into the theater, and the evil versions of Mike and the bots are a lot of fun.
Without those host segments, though, I think this would be a “oh yeah, that exists” episode.
I can’t say I like Westerns much as a genre as a whole, although there are a few standout films.
But this movie, Gunslinger, and movies that are basically westerns like The Black Scorpion and The Beast of Hollow Mountain have convinced me that, when they do it quick and cheap, it is a genre that is perfect for riffing. Especially because it conforms to so many tropes. I would watch a lot of B-movie Western episodes.
I really enjoyed this episode. My wife picked it out, and she enjoyed it too. But the resolution at the end stinks lol. I do love that the begining references the end.
It’s rare when the host segments overwhelm the film segments so thoroughly. This occurs here in part because the movie is a bland and unmemorable range war horse opera. It’s somewhat notable for being the only film where shlock producer Robert L. Lippert tried his hand at directing. It didn’t come naturally to him, and he ended up hiring another guy to finish it up while he would stick with producing for the rest of his career. But otherwise the only thing that distinguishes it from the mass of westerns Hollywood was crapping out at the time is the unfortunate overuse of coincidence to drive the plot. Coincidences are fine when used sparingly and in the first act. Often a coincidence is necessary to get the story rolling. But the degree in which they get used to drive the narrative here is just lazy.
It’s the host segments that really carry the day and make the episode worth viewing. While someone unfamiliar with Star Trek can probably get a few chuckles out of it, true appreciation requires that you have seen the fan favorite episode “Mirror, Mirror”. Seeing as how most MST3K viewers have at least a passing familiarity with that franchise, this was likely not an issue.
Do it quick and cheap? Well then every corporation in America could be deemed as riff worthy. I’ve never seen a larger group of self-inflated middlemen who have absolutely no concept of what they’re doing and all their solutions are to every problem is do it faster and cheaper.
