I think I remember The Magician – starred Bill Bixby, didn’t it? I don’t want to look it up, I want to see if my memory still works. 
4 Likes
It did. I dug The Magician as a kid, but I haven’t seen it since it first aired.
3 Likes
Yay! I’m not as senile as I thought I was! XD
I probably haven’t seen that show since it first aired. I don’t remember being wowed by it, but it was okay. I mainly remember Bixby from The Courtship of Eddie’s Father and (of course) The Incredible Hulk.
3 Likes
Strictly speaking, it was filmed downwind from a nuclear test site.
For my dream season, I would go for a theme season of movies from any series previously used on MST3K. More Ator. More Master Ninja. More Fu Manchu (I’m given to understand that the first couple of installments are halfway watchable, and Castle was the last one that came after the series had worn out its welcome). More Rocky Jones. More Samson/El Santo. More Gemini Man. And so on.
2 Likes
I’ll admit it… I liked the magician. I found it when I was a kid in the old Sci-fi Channel. They used to show one season wonders and that was on for a bit. 
3 Likes
Yes, that scene in particular stuck with me. There appears to be a woman drowning in the ocean accompanied by distant cries of help, and when Weaver swims out to rescue her, she’s the mannequin the psychotic teens have been carrying around. The sequence is filmed in that distorted fish-eye lens style so popular around that period. I’d like to see this movie get a re-release on DVD, with or without riffing.
1 Like
My dream season would mostly be Toho movies (I wouldn’t even need to touch Godzilla to make it). However, what about a mini-season of bad shark movies? Seven cheesy shark movies so MST3K fans can celebrate Shark Week:
1: Jurassic Shark (Dudez Productions)
2: Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy (Syfy) (Note: Also known as Sharkman)
3: Sand Sharks (Little Dragon Productions)
4: Ghost Shark (Active Entertainment)
5: Mako: The Jaws of Death (Mako Associates, Universal Majestic Inc.)
6: Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus (The Asylum) (Note: Same company that did Atlantic Rim and first in a four-movie series)
7: Jaws: The Revenge (Universal Pictures)
1 Like
LOVED this show when I was a little boy.
2 Likes
They didn’t do Attack of the Puppet People either. I wish they did.
4 Likes
And from a couple of different Star Trek series.
3 Likes
Rifftrax has done that one as well. Another one I think MST3K writers would do a better job with.
4 Likes
It’s a Toho movie, sequel to Frankenstein Conquers the World and technically part of the Showa-era Godzilla universe.
3 Likes
I probably wouldn’t want an entire season of sequels (though that might have made for an interesting thematic follow-up to “The Gauntlet”) but a lot of those movies have legs.
There were four Ator movie all together, but I’d love them to riff the fourth movie from the 90’s, Quest for the Mighty Sword (1990) which is also occasionally known as Troll III or Ator III: The Hobgoblin, because it was produced by Joe D’Amato, who brought the world Troll II and reuses several of the same props and costumes. While there’s no Miles O’Keefee in this one, it is a really really bad movie.
There were a total of 8 Master Ninja “movies” released on VHS, although the commercial video releases have the original TV show intro and not the goofy pixelated FVI slow motion intros that most MSTies are familiar with.
For Fu Manchu, there have been numerous versions of character portrayed over the years (including Boris Karloff and John Carradine), but the movie you’re looking for is The Blood of Fu Manchu (1969). This was the final of the “Christopher Lee needs a paycheck” Fu Manchu movies, and from the same production team that brought you Castle as well as Rifftrax and KTMA era classics Girl from Rio and Million Eyes of Su-Maru. While it’s bad, it’s not quite as mind numbingly tedious as Castle thankfully. It was shot back-to-back with The Girl from Rio and even reuses some of the same footage.
For Rocky Jones, as I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, there are still 8 movies left unriffed, as well as a few 30 minute stand-alone episodes that could potentially be riffed as a (somewhat longer than normal) short.
My personal choice would be to go for the second movie, The Gypsy Moon since it introduces everybody’s favorite gregarious alien… John Banner!
Though as a side note, Crash of the Moons is actually the last Rocky Jones movie to feature Winky and Professor Newton. The actor who played Professor Newton tragically died of a heart attack shortly after completing filming on the first season, and the character of Winky quietly got replaced by another sidekick named “Biff” because the actor who played Winky ended up fleeing the country because he was involved with a hotel robbery and wanted on weapons charges. He ended up down in Mexico, where he passed a bunch of bad checks, ended up in a shootout with the cops, got arrested, sent back to the US, served 4 months, then decided to pursue a career in law, failed that, became a used car salesman, failed that, got badly injured after crashing his car while driving under the influence, spent the next few years in and out of rehab, and then died under mysterious circumstances after he was found severely beaten, presumably by one of the several shady individuals he owed money to.
For Samson/El Santo, there were a ton of El Santo movies made, but only 4 of them were ever translated into English. One of those was, uh… not really the sort of thing they’d show on MST3K. That leaves us with two options, Dr. Death (or El Santo vs. Doctor Death), or the clear winner Samson In the Wax Museum (1963), which is the only other El Santo movie besides Vampire Women to be given the K. Gordon Murray treatment and use the odd “Samson” name in the title.
For Gemini Man, sadly, Riding With Death was the only one of that series to be given the “movie” treatment.
4 Likes
That’s right- in my programming list, I thought it would be fun to show it first, then Frankenstein Conquers the World later in the season.
Having it backwards just seemed to be more fun in my head.
1 Like
I certainly do not possess the vast cinematic knowledge of most of you, so, my list skews toward stuff that I would have seen when I was a kid in the '70s and '80s, much of it being movies that I would have come across on late-night television.
-
Night Of The Lepus (1972) This one often popped up on the CBS Late Movie in the '70s and I dug it as a kid. Giant rabbits wreaking havoc was such a weird concept and it had a cast chock full of recognizable faces including Stuart Whitman, Janet Leigh, Rory Calhoun, and DeForest Kelley. I know RiffTrax did this one, but I want to see this one with 'bots.
-
The Giant Claw (1957, black/white) '50s giant monster zaniness with one of the most ridiculously goofy looking threats mankind has ever faced featuring Jeff Morrow (This Island Earth) and Mara Corday (The Black Scorpion) under the direction of Fred Sears (Teen-Age Crime Wave).
-
From Hell It Came (1957, black/white) Tod Andrews, the ill-fated Skipper in Beneath The Planet Of The Apes, battles the spirit of a wronged island prince who is exacting his vengeance as a tree monster. The tree monster was brought to life by Paul Blaisdell known in the MST3K world for his effects work in It Conquered The World, The She-Creature, Earth Vs. The Spider, and Teenagers From Outer Space.
-
Terror On The Beach (1973) I saw this as a five-year old when it premiered on the CBS Tuesday Night Movie. McCloud himself, Dennis Weaver and family, including Lori Partridge (Susan Dey), are targeted by Fisher-Price hippies in this bit of made-for-TV movie goodness. For full disclosure, some of this - mostly some eerie mannequin use, creeped me out at the time. To reiterate, though, I was five.
-
Equinox (1970) This was a staple on our weekly Saturday night Science Fiction Theater. Frank Bonner, best known as Herb Tarlek on WKRP In Cincinnati, and friends battle demonic forces and some cool stop-motion animation unleashed from a Satanic book. This low-budget, cult film began as a student film by SFX legend Dennis Muren (The Empire Strikes Back, E.T., Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and Jurassic Park to name just a few) with assistance from Dave Allen (Laserblast, The Day Time Ended) and Jim Danforth (The Day Time Ended).
-
Phase IV (1974) In the thread about MST3K experiments that feature movies you genuinely like, this was my choice. I grew up on early '70s sci-fi flicks and would love to see them revisit this one from the KTMA days. I find the story interesting (albeit a bit slow), and the desert setting, cinematography, and effects are really cool. The soundtrack adds to the trippy vibe.
-
Ben (1973) I thought that Willard was a pretty good flick, but this sequel to that tale of a boy exacting revenge with his rats…not so much. You’ve got a goofy/annoying kid with a heart condition who bonds with the titular rat, a young Meredith Baxter as his sister, and veteran character actor Joseph Campanella as a detective tracking Ben’s army of rats in the LA sewers. As an eight-year old, the ambiguity of Ben’s fate as Michael Jackson sang the theme song over the end credits left me a sobbing mess.
-
The Deathmaster (1973) Our long-running horror host in central Indiana, Sammy Terry, featured this movie often on his Nightmare Theater. Robert Quarry, of Count Yorga fame, is the Deathmaster, a Manson-like guru and vampire who casts his spell over a group of beachside bikers and hippies. There’s flute music and veteran actor John Fiedler, the voice of Piglet in Winnie The Pooh, as Pops, a kindly old hippie who assists our headband-wearing hero Pico.
-
The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant (1971) Oh boy. Bruce Dern as a scientist focused on grafting second heads onto animals, Kasey Kasem as his friend, and Pat Priest of The Munsters as his wife. Of course, what fun is creating two-headed snakes when you can graft the head of an escaped killer onto the body of your groundskeeper’s giant, slow-witted son? (played by John Bloom who was the monster in Dracula Vs. Frankenstein). And, save room for the goofy, melodramatic closing song.
-
Idaho Transfer (1973) Peter Fonda directed this obscure little flick starring a cast of unknowns - aside from Keith Carradine - that he had found locally in Idaho where it was filmed. A group of young people are sent into the future to figure out how to circumvent some apocalyptic event that is never really defined. Ever wonder what it would be like if an entire movie was made out of “rock climbing?” This might give you an answer. There’s a lot of wandering around, but at least the landscape - Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve - is kind of cool.
-
Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster (1966, black/white) This movie taunted me as a kid. On the rare occasion that it would appear in the TV Guide, it seemed to be airing at 2:00am. Frankenstein is actually a disfigured, cyborg astronaut named Frank. The Space Monster is under the control of a Martian princess played by Marilyn Hanold (The Brain That Wouldn’t Die). The showdown promised in the title lasts for roughly thirty seconds, but you do get James Karen, the unscrupulous land developer from Poltergeist, in a small role.
-
The Legend Of Boggy Creek (1972) There are probably a lot of younger MST3K fans unaware that there is a film detailing the Boggy Creek monster before he was…you know…continuing. There’s no Crenshaw and director Chuck Pierce remains behind the camera, but there is a young Chuck Pierce, Jr. in a small role before he developed his allergy to shirts. You also get Travis Crabtree and most of his extended family. In truth, parts of it are genuinely creepy, aided by the remote setting. It provided quite a bit of nightmare fuel for us kids at the time, was a drive-in phenomenon and ended up as the 10th highest-grossing film of 1972.
-
Godzilla Vs. The Smog Monster (1972) The first movie that I recall seeing in the theater. I was four and Godzilla Vs. The Smog Monster served as my introduction to the cinema, Godzilla, environmentalism, young Japanese kids named Kenny in short pants and Japanese girls go-go dancing in bodysuits…all before I had even started kindergarten. Yes, it is unlikely that Toho would ever grant the rights, but this is our dream season, right? And this is my dream.
7 Likes
I’d have to think at some length about a whole Dream Season, but one thing I know, and that is for the opening experiment, Joel should go all the way back to the Genesis of MST3K and do a full riff of ‘The Green Slime’.
That would be a fitting case of unfinished business, plus it has a truly rockin’ theme song.
3 Likes
Lotta good stuff on this list!
2 Likes
I’d heard bits and pieces of this before, but didn’t know there was this much to “Winky’s” saga. The character is loathably obnoxious, but it was presumably just a character and the actor was not like that. What a sad tale, and somehow also surprising considering how long ago this was.
2 Likes
Yeah, there’s actually an even more in-depth bio of his troubled life up on IMDB. I had forgotten that he also got arrested as a drug mule, assaulted his wife, tried to stab a neighbor, and attempted suicide multiple times.
From what I can tell, Beckett was very much the prototype for the Diff’rent Strokes style child actor gone rogue. He went from being one of the Our Gang kids, to a fairly impressive film career for a young actor, but he liked to party and didn’t like paying his gambling debts, which meant his career was already on the rocks by the time he took the part on Rocky Jones. Still, you wouldn’t know that by looking at him in those old serials. He may have played an obnoxious dink living in his own rich fantasy life, but at that point he still appears to have had his act together enough to make it through recording sober… or at least hide it well enough that it took committing a felony to get him fired.
3 Likes