So I was re-watching the MSTSK take on “The Pumaman” (as I do if only for the haunting Pumaman flying theme music!) recently and i had a thought.
The makers of the film really misunderstand their own characters since clearly Vadinho (the Aztec) is actually the hero since he is brave, capable, smart, etc. and frankly Tony (Pumaman) is really more the goofy comic relief side-kick. Yet they insisted on making the film as if that wasn’t true. If only they had just recognized that truth!
Any other MST3Ked films that you watched and thought wow what if…
What if Bigfoot hadn’t warned Paul that his father was in great danger in Cry Wilderness? (and what the heck was the great danger, anyway? Did Bigfoot need Paul’s help to save Will from the great danger?) What would the movie be about? Would Morgan Hicks still be alive? Would he have captured the tiger and left a hero?
Most of the movies have classic themes. Like, we’ve seen “King Dinosaur” and “Lost Continent” and “At The Earth’s Core” done well, right? “Adventurers discover ancient world of cavemen and dinosaurs”?
Wait, have we? Maybe we haven’t. Sounds like something George Pal would do, though. Fred Olen Ray and Jim Wynorski did one in 1994 called Dinosaur Island, which even stars Ross Hagen and I may not be helping my case.
Probably the best version of Journey to the Center of the Earth is the 1959 James Mason one, and probably the best version of Land That Time Forgot is the one riffed in season 11.
But my poorly made point is that there are good versions of most of the films—they’re what the B-movie was derived from, like Avalanche is basically The Posiedon Adventure or Earthquake. Now, Pod People? That one’s kind of interesting because it was meant to be Alien but then E.T. came out and they switched gears. I don’t think I could even list all the derivatives of Alien and Mad Max.
Indicating some sort of reversal or trend or something, most of the big Hollywood movies today are poorly remade Roger Corman films, demonstrating that there is something worse than cheesy low-budget films—namely, cheesy big-budget films.
And as an aside one thing that always struck me as interesting about Ed Wood is there is often an important theme buried in his movies but they are difficult to see within the stinking pile of poop of films that are wrapped around it. Heck James Nguyen is very much the same.
I dearly love that film, cheesy as it is. I could sit down and watch it at any time all the way through and thoroughly enjoy myself. Despite Pat Boone.
I have not seen it since I was a kid and what I recall is that it might’ve been great but for Pat Boone. And I don’t know why I think that, but I have this vague recollection of him being the lead balloon of actors.
The worst part about him being in the movie is that he’s supposed to be Scottish but he only tries doing the accent 2 or 3 times in the movie and it’s terrible.
Oh, absolutely. And there’s a distinct difference between a movie like Plan 9, Birdemic and Cat Women of the Moon, where they just have too many ideas for the budget to support, versus, say, Fire Maidens where it’s just “You gettin’ all this, Cy?”
Cat Women is just gonzo with concepts. The early sci-fi flicks featured a lot of telepathy between earthlings and celestial beings for obvious reasons. Cat Women’s ancestral inspiration may have been movies like Aelita: Queen of Space and…oh, I forget which 1910s movie it is where Mars is a socialist paradise.
And with Plan 9, I find myself wondering what Ed Wood was trying to say. The alien would-be overlords are horrible—but so too is the meathead earthling whose idea of First Contact is a punch in the jaw.
What if all the names in Space Mutiny were actually rejected names for the hero? Also, for anyone who caught the gamera vs guiron kickstarter livestream, what if season 13 is 12 episodes of riffing Back to the Beach over and over?
I Accuse My Parents has the seed of a very moving, emotional story, and Arthur Caesar’s Oscar-winning work on Manhattan Melodrama is proof that he can write a great gangster story. Just have Jimmy’s parents be a greater role in how he starts working for gangsters, rather than just his own stupidity that has nothing to do with them; maybe instead of alcoholics they’re gambling addicts who get in debt to the boss, and Jimmy has to work for him to pay it off.
This, exactly. Ed Wood movies have within them a really good idea desperate to get out… but if the movie had been made by anyone other than Ed Wood, it wouldn’t be as much fun to watch. It’s a really weird dilemma.
This is what makes me so fond of the Phil Smoot movies (The Dark Power and Alien Outlaw). Yes, they’re goofy, but they’re so close to being good … except for that whole “competence” thing.
