But if I don’t inspect my horn I might never have a son!
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It’s a good question. I checked out the Episode Guide of the Satellite News, but it’s telling me nothing there except that the movie is largely forgotten.
Head on over to TV Tropes for the MST3K recap section for this particular episode, and they have this trope entry:
Inherently Funny Words: Squanto: A Warrior’s Tale. The only reason it could have possibly been used, because the film itself is a drama that earned mostly positive reviews (save Roger Ebert).
My guess? Maybe it’s a bit of that, possibly combined with one (or more) of the writers thinking that the movie was being overpushed in TV ads or something like that. Just one of those odd fixations on a work, kinda like the movie commercial for Switch that had them riffing “SWITCH! Jimmy Smits” at the drop of a dime way back when.
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I wonder if they were trying to imply that Amazing was the Squanto of its day, and vice versa. lol.
Whenever they name drop The Road To Wellville, I remember that I have a super-ancient Kellogg’s catalog with all that patent medicine from their pre-kids’ cereal days. Every product has a 3,000-word sermon attached, and yes it’s as out there as you’d expect. I keep meaning to scan and post some of those treasures, but I never do.
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Also the Mike on the Organ sketch puzzled me. Who was he trying to be? According to one of the MST sites it was Rick Wakeman.
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Ha! Yes, he’s Wakeman. My old roommate had that Six Wives LP so I heard it a few times.
That’s one of the more obvious tie-ins they did. Nobody in the actual movie was allowed to play the ever-present organ, so Mike -trouper that he was- took matters into his own hands. 
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Makes sense. Thumbs up on explaining it! Those organ riffs noted a longing the sketch itched. 
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Now, in my book, I think that the episode is underrated and underdiscussed. Granted, this was never destined to become an upper echelon episode like Pod People or Space Mutiny, and I’m not saying that it’s a top-tier installment, but it’s a pretty solid episode that may take you by surprise if you give it half a chance.
The star attraction is that short, The Days of Our Lives. Hooooooooooo boy. That short is so dark that light can’t escape from it, and what that draws out of the gang is exemplary.
This may make me a horrible human being, but I laugh so damn hard at Crow saying “Shouldn’t have thought of Mamie Eisenhower!” as a man keels over from a heart attack. And then there’s Crow’s avant-garde piano composer riff and Servo’s cry of “BORING!” as the blinds are pulled on a funeral. I love how spectacularly overblown the darkness of the piece is and how that brings the best out of Mike and the 'Bots. One of the series’s best shorts, easily.
Our feature presentation doesn’t quite rise to the dizzying heights of the short, but it’s still a capable effort in its own right. What’s amazing here is that the movie is bleak, downbeat, drab and shabby (seemed to be a hallmark of more than a few Season 6 movies, no?), but the gang rises above that admirably.
In particular, I love the ornery hired help of the mad scientist. The “Goofus pisses me off” riff as he reads a paper? Sensational! And the guinea pig running jokes offer up a lot of great comedic mileage as well: “There’s… a… guinea pig on my neck!” as Crow ventriloquizes a choked character.
The focus on invisibility (I know) and special effects failures here are amusing in and of themselves, but when put into the hands of the SOL wisecrackers, it’s something’s special. I particularly love Mike summing up the ridiculousness of the premise: “Think of it! People might think there’s NOT a guinea pig in the room when there actually IS!!! HAHAHAHAH, it’s brilliant!”
It’s very Projected Man when you think about it, although the movie here is tackled with greater efficacy here than that Season 9 entry.
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Oh, and the local color for Auntie McFrank’s Tangleberry Inn? With Mikey wanting matches, Servo screaming not to give him any matches UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, and Crow freaking out as the llama?
10 out of 10. Easy 10 out of 10.
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Trace’s screams as the llama are seared into memory. I can hear it now as I’m writing this. Is it me or did Trace scream a lot that season? Crow was burned alive more than once on top of that stinky old llama.
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Zapped with a death ray, strafed from Servo’s plane, run over by Servo’s car, put in a double jock lock, inconvenienced by contact lenses, failure to use gentle pressure in this very episode… Crow goes through a LOT in Season 6!
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@optiMSTie I read somewhere that this is part of a series of Union Pacific shorts the gang riffed. What were the others? The Days of Our Years (1955) makes me curious to see the rest.
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Hmm… not sure what else Union Pacific did outside of the MST3K-featured shorts, but I know that the gang took a swing at Union Pacific’s Last Clear Chance for the Season 5 episode Radar Secret Service.
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There’s a Union Pacific yard in town. Most of the buildings are derelict now, but it looks as though the short could have been shot there. I’d completely forgotten.
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I think there’s also the fact that it bombed at the box office. Hence Forrester saying something like, “Frank, Squanto opened and closed six weeks ago.”
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Squanto did not do well, critically, or popularly. Roger Ebert gave it 1.5 stars, and it only grossed $3mil. I find this more positive review (C, which would equate to 3 stars) from Lois Alter Mark at Entertainment Weekly fascinating:
“Squanto: A Warrior’s Tale, the story of the first Thanksgiving as told by the Native American who brokered the event, has valuable lessons to teach, but it’s so self-conscious (not to mention misguided in parts) that it will probably be out of the theaters long before Turkey Day.”
Perhaps the writers had read the above review, and that prompted the idea for the segment.
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That and ahead of it imploding I recall it was buzzed about as a movie to watch before actually being seen. I suppose that’s why. That combination.
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A middling season 6 episode to me. The short outshines the movie, but the movie riffing isn’t bad either. Nothing really memorable to me about this one but every episode has it’s moments.
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