That basically sums it up. Along with the home movieness and flat out cheapness of it all. There is a “golden statue of Ishtar,” misidentified throughout the film as an Egyptian goddess, that is obviously an indifferently-dressed gold-painted mannequin. And not the cool kind that turns into Kim Cattrall, either.
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I expected to come in here and see Tom and Crow wearing smoking jackets and holding bubble pipes.
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Which is exactly what we need.
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IIRC–and again, I’m shocked at how little of this film I recall–the “Egyptian” set is the decor in a Miami motel?
I will say that it has this over Manos: the sound is okay and the print (at Internet Archive) is actually terrific. Brightly lit, colorful and sorta charming in a “You don’t expect to see a splatter film from 1963” way.
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Here’s another one:
Shriek of the Mutilated (1974)
Aka Mutilated, aka Scream of the Snowbeast, aka Video Is Amazing You Can Film Anything No Matter How Creepy and Weird. This film is terrible on so many levels, it’s hard to know where to begin. To call the direction amateurish is an insult to amateur filmmakers everywhere. The acting, by a number of people with no other IMDb credits, betrays the back story that they were mostly members of the director’s porno troop making a non-x-rated movie. The soundtrack is just recorded music played in the background with a vague relationship with what is going on on the screen. WARNING: There is a “plot twist.” More cannibalism, because that’s how you can be edgy without sex.
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The “Egyptian” set is the back room of Fuad’s delicatessen, where keeps his shrine to Ishtar.
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In 1988 somebody decided a recent big-budget adult Blade Runner ripoff was compelling enough to edit down to a clean version (just nudity) for a mainstream video release. Of course there wasn’t much left after cutting all the explicit stuff, so the runtime is padded to just over an hour by endlessly repeating the same shots. The result is chopped up dialog scenes that hint at a plot interrupted by surreal montages that feel like a covert psychological experiment to drive the viewer mad.
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Would there be a running joke in which they all carried bullhorns into the theater so we could actually hear the riffs? 
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They’re already doing it! El Vampiro y El Sexo is the “sexy” version of Santo en El Tesoro de Dracula!
Y’all are in for a big treat, btw - this movie is crazy, even by luchador movie standards!
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Okay, here’s another one:
Deathsport (1978)
This one goes on After Dark for nakedness, rather than gore. Considered a sequel “of sorts” to Death Race 2000, Deathsport is considerably cheaper and overall less entertaining, although I (at least) can see a mildly interesting concept behind the weird dialogue, clumsy direction and cheap sets. The Wikipedia article at least is worth a read.
In an interview from 2005, David Carradine said that Corman had advised him not to do Deathsport : “He was right too. I knew it the moment I saw the picture. He warned me and I didn’t listen. He was determined not to pay anybody, except me. He didn’t want to put any money into it. He paid me what I was worth back then – this was right after the Ingmar Bergman picture – and that was pretty much the whole budget of the movie.”
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I mean, the entire oeuvre of Claudia Jennings would probably work for MST3K After Dark.
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She was an actress of singular talent.
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Does that mean yousall watched it together one time while making fun of it or did you produce a script we can read?
I was going to ask if gratuitous Annette was in it, but now I wonder how a baby bell features.
He might be upset about it not being 400 years ago Japan, but what else is there to be understandably upset about? He was alive during the breakdancing craze. Did he not like how popular ninja stars were because ninjas are his enemy or something?
Ed Wood seems to want things to be moral, but somehow still ends up making movies where you’d question him having that stance.
Don’t question your instincts.
The Adult Swim website used to have cable-access-style live-streaming shows made by employees and one of them was called Blood Feast. It was a sort of avant garde performance art thing disguised as a crowd sourced crossword puzzle solving event.
That’s almost a description of Blood Freak, but the guy was dressed up as a human turkey monster instead.
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Nah. It was all as ephemeral as the movie itself. On the other hand, the “script” for the DIY MST of Ninja Terminator got as far as being a google doc made up by our host. Perhaps it still waits in an underground vault… somewhere.
Yes, I made it through the Blood Feast trailer once years ago, but saw no need to take the relationship to the next level.
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There must be a place for an Andy Sidaris flick in MST3K After Dark. Either Hard Ticket to Hawaii or maybe Do or Die.
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Isn’t The Film Crew an after dark MST3K?
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The Recon series.
Recon 2020
Recon 2022: The Mezzo Incident
Recon 2023: The Gauda Prime Conspiracy
I suspect they might have too much violence and nudity to edit down for MST. They feel like what happens when a 00’s forum troll whose only exposure to cinema is video game cutscenes gets together with some friends and says, hold my beer this is how you make a really badass movie. They’re obviously passion projects that have an ambitious giddiness that’s easy to get caught up in, despite their ineptitude on every level.
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I think The Lost Empire (1984) would make a good trashy riff. There are some real bizarre characters in it, and the plot has that certain wtf about it.
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Ah, Jim “Popotopolis” Wynorski.
Lettin’ us all know what he was about in his very first shot of his very first directorial effort.
(And still one of his better films.)
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