The name’s Plex… Gizmoplex. September’s Vault Picks will leave you shaken AND stirred from all the thrills bound up in Espionage & Intrigue Month!
This month’s roundup offers globetrotting action of a debonair variety, including a clandestine Japanese team contending with underhanded plots, the brother of a top British secret agent taking on a world domination scheme, a Soviet invasion wreaking havoc on American soil, a counterespionage mission unfolding on the streets of Hawaii, a dashing superspy tracking down a death ray (used only for peaceful purposes) in Spain, and a Texan sheriff tearing Malta apart to find a dangerous gangster.
It’s no secret that these MST3K episodes about secret agents and high-stakes ploys bring the laughs in style like a vintage Aston Martin of hilarity, but only one installment can stand tall when the votes fall. How will you make the sadistic decision at hand? Which MST3K adventure has what it takes to save the day? Whose cuisine will reign supreme?!
Favorite of the Gizmoplex Vault Picks: Round 7 - September 2022 (Espionage & Intrigue Month)
invasion USA is a close second for me because I love the film’s premise so much. We must immediately nationalize the means of production - otherwise, COMMUNISM WINS!
It goes without saying that my opinion is definitive in this case…
Danger!! Death Ray! … 9 out 10. Clearly the best movie in this roster by a wide margin. The movie is top-10 All Time MST material so this is no contest. The host segments are all brilliant. The movie itself is vaguely watchable, but at the same time has plenty of issues to poke at. The riffing is spot on, top notch, class-A material, and the movie has some legitimately catchy music. DDR is a favorite of mine and easily leaves all the others in this list in the dust. It’s freshly baked.
Operation Kid Brother … 8 out of 10. Like DDR, this movie is not a BAD movie … it just doesn’t quite rise to greatness and so it makes an easy target. Niel’s presence as a budget Sean gives plenty of material along with the 60s chic and so many spy tropes. The fact that the movie had so many Bond staple actors in it is also great. They tried to hypnotize me into a #1 spot, but no dice.
Final Justice … 7 out of 10. A pretty good outing, resurrecting Joe Don Baker in a Mitchell 2: Mitchell Goes to Morocco. Good host segments, great riffs, but not quite as fun a ride as DDR or Double 007. Its close, but no Goosio for JDB and he takes the bronze.
Mighty Jack … 5 out of 10. The last 3 in this list really kind of tie for a distant fourth place. They’re all equally mundane. Mighty Jack is number 4 just because of reasons. Its so forgettable that I often don’t remember what is happening even while I’m watching it. A couple good host segments help to put above the other 2 but only just because of the sillyness of the international casting and the German freeze ray.
Code Name Diamond Head. 5 out of 10. What was this movie? Did I watch something? Huh? This is a tepid glass of water of a movie and just doesn’t have the zip of a normal MST. It’s not bad. Just not very memorable either.
Invasion U.S.A. is in my unthought-out top 10, so I voted for that. I really love it. And the very amusing message of “if you don’t devote all of your time, money and energy to fighting the Russians, we’ll all be screwed.”
Kid Brother is a shameless knockoff with an amazing cast just having fun.
Danger!! Death Ray is… well, it’s everything the title implies.
Final Justice… Joe Don Baker takes himself and his gun-toting macho “I can do no wrong” Texas vigilante “justice” very seriously, and Mike does not hold back at all.
Invasion USA is… somehow both drab and paranoid. Deadly serious, about a deadly serious part of our history, and yet utterly ridiculous.
Diamond Head… I admit I’m going to need to refresh my memory on that one. Haven’t watched it in a while. I can’t remember a thing about it. (I remember climbing the Diamond Head volcano in Hawaii 20 years ago better than I remember this movie I watched 5 years ago…)
But I gotta give it to Mighty Jack. I think the TV series could have been genuinely good to watch if we’d had all the episodes. Instead, we get the Sandy Frankenstein version, with pieces of the series cut out, stitched together, and brought back to life in a shambling monstrosity of a “movie” that leaves subplots dangling, major plot twists unexplained, and just enough of what’s going on that you can make some semblance of sense of it if you try or get gloriously bemusedly lost if you don’t. It was already a goofy show with cheesy effects and a nonsensical superhero premise. The riffing just makes it that much better. Although I do miss the bits that got cut for time. The KTMA version had the show’s opening sequence, which is fun to watch, and a couple of extra scenes (like the hilariously stupid first attempt to rescue Atari from the island prison, which just leaves them with another guy they have to rescue). But come on. It’s an elite crew of guys who have to constantly run out on their day jobs to meet up in the back room of a souvenir shop so they can stop a global terrorist anarchist spy ring by flying around in an invincible submarine rocket jet aircraft carrier flying fortress. What’s not to love?
OOOO. Touch calls here. I LOVE the spy films they did. Super Dragon especially so really looking forward to that.
But from these…yeah. I gotta squeeze Danger: Death Ray just to the top. Loves me some Mighty Jack and 00-007. And Invasion just gives me the chuckles. But Death Ray has a death ray. And it is just trying SO hard to be cool it’s kinda amazing.
But the only one missing that clearing beats them all is, Rex Dart, Eskimo Spy!
Watermelon man! 
for the Iron Chef reference.
