What’s odd is what the movie does show us… You’re stuck in a bubble, trapped indoors with your immediate family while everyone else around seems to be dazed and bewildered and nothing seems to make sense and time just stretches and distorts while endless nothing happens and you’re not sure how we got here but meanwhile some cruel hand seems to just snatch people away day by day and you have no idea what happened to the outside world or if there even really is an outside world anymore and there’s no ending in sight… How did this movie get so much of 2021 right?
(And is that part of what traumatized the MST writing room?)
It’s never clear quite how much time has passed. But there are places where they mention that it’s been at least a week. And then we skip ahead several more weeks. And then a few more. After she has the baby, she’s in the hospital for several days, at least. After she’s discharged, the baby is kept in the incubator for another week. Tony wanders off drunk and they don’t see him for a week. They settle into living in the mine for a while. Tony takes a couple of weeks to circumnavigate The Bubble. More time passes. They move into the mill. Mike starts digging a shaft, which takes… several weeks, at least. He’s digging down by hand, bracing the shaft with wooden beams, has set up a pulley system to clear the dirt out, keeps going, starts to despair, picks up again… I don’t know how much it adds up to, but it’s got to be at least a few months.
I didn’t think this was a bad flick…slow, uneven and maybe not the best dialog. But there was a sense of dread (and not the kind the crew were talking about) and horror to it all.
I did feel bad that the team had such a rough time with it, and they didn’t even want to continue discussing it on the after show! But solid riffs, and good host segments too. Plus Joel!
And I’ve mentioned before I love the after show. Hearing the thoughts and creative process, not to mention the jokes flying around, are a lot of fun to watch.
I think The Bubble benefits slightly, in the worst of all time discussion, because it’s sci-fi. There’s a slightly interesting premise there. And to me that puts it above something like Skydivers, or Carnival Magic which rely on character drama.
Michael Cole, I was surprised to learn, is still with us at age 82. I wonder if he has any thoughts to share about this movie?
The role of Tony was played by singer Johnny Desmond. Sure the name doesn’t mean squat to you kids today, but he was a “name” back in his day. While he was never one of my favorite singers, I know him from records he made during his WWII stint with Maj. Glenn Miller’s Army Air Forces Orchestra.
It would seem Arch Oboler called upon some actors he knew from his radio days.
The Taxi Driver was played by Vic Perrin who appeared in lots of radio shows such as Gunsmoke, Dragnet, Escape and Have Gun, Will Travel. Accoring to Wikipedia, “His first credited role came in 1943, when he served as the announcer for “The Last Will and Testament Of Tom Smith”, a radio episode of Free World Theatre, which was produced and directed by Arch Oboler”. He also had guest roles in many TV series and did lots of cartoon voice work (most notably for me, as the voice of Dr. Zin on Jonny Quest). He may be most recognized by many people as the “Control Voice” on The Outer Limits.
Ticket Lady was the great Virginia Gregg, a terrific actress whose extensive resume included guest spots on virtually every memorable radio or TV series from the 1950’s through the early 1980’s. She appeared a lot in Jack Webb produced radio & TV shows. She was also the voice of Mrs. Bates in Psycho, Psycho II and Psycho III. And she played bass! What’s not to love?
The Watch Repairman was played by Olan Soule. He began in radio on shows as varied as Captain Midnight and The First Nighter Program. He then went on to work as a character actor in TV and films for decades, appearing in everything from I Love Lucy to Simon & Simon. He was also the voice of Batman for the Filmation and Hanna-Barbera animated TV shows produced from 1968 to 1980.
This is one of those movies that is hard to judge how bad it is, especially if you do some research on it.
Technically it’s good, and that makes sense since it was a vehicle for a new way to film 3D, so they had a real crew, new cameras, good equipment.
It was shot as fast as possible using existing back lots just to get a film out using the new 3D process, so the movie does riff on itself when they mention the “town” looking like a movie lot.
The acting is kind of hard to judge because of the terrible directing and terrible plot. The actors did seem to know how to act.
The plot is just a complete mess, people being stupid and unaware, obviously no thought given to how or where the bubble could have been made. It would have been better to keep things a complete mystery, but they had to get in their 3D gimmicks so they showed enough to make you realize things didn’t add up.
I can imagine riffing this being worse than movies like Manos or Birdemic, watching it over and over and just having the terrible plot to pick apart while those others had technical and acting issues to joke about. Only watching it once it’s not as bad as those 2, but close. Of course Rollergator is a special circle of hell that can’t be compared to anything else.
FYI: The new 3D process was a way to put widescreen 3D on a single roll of 35mm film. The left and right images were stacked on top of each other. I haven’t found any info on how much of a pain this must have been to set up in the theater, needing to make sure the projector was on the correct frame. And mechanically the projector would have to jump 2 frames instead of one, that must have been brutal on the film and the projector.
Sorry to keep referencing Carnival Magic but they’re both Available Filming Locations in search of a plot. One had a carnival to film at and the other had access to a backlot for a weekend. They both unsuccessfully hung gimmicks on top to try and make them interesting, with 3D and a “talking” ape. AND they both get weird in the end by threatening to kill the baby and ape!
It looks like The Bubble got stuck on an old “1920s Main Street” set that was being used as a storage lot, which is why there were things like carnival rides and Greek statuary randomly scattered around. Oboler might have written his screenplay around the set he had.
But in “ SP A C E•V I S I ON ” that carrot really would appear dangling just out of reach above your head!
Part of the “Space Vision” 3-D innovation was its simplicity. It required only a single camera with a special lens rig that put both left & right images into a single 35mm frame (top half & bottom half). And the attachment for a standard projector apparently was a similarly simple optical rig that overlapped the top and bottom halves of each projected 35mm frame.
It was a polarized light system, so no annoying red/blue. And it presented a wider aspect ratio: vs
I’ve never watched an MST movie where I felt more actual irritation with a character in the movie than I did with the husband in this stinkburger. He was so wooden, so boring, so flat, so dull, and so STUPID that I really wanted to have the 3D version so I could reach out and punch him in his obnoxious, uncomprehending, vacuous face.
There’s only two other characters in MST-dom that have ever come close. Kim Cattrall’s whiny voiced twit in Alien from L.A. and the “Cabot?!?” load from Outlaw of Gor. Those two other characters annoyed me … but the husband in The Bubble? He is the first movie character that I can honestly say I have actually HATED. I hate him so much I really don’t think I could ever watch The Bubble again … MST version or not.
I do wonder if this premise was something left over from Arch Oboler’s radio days, perhaps even an unfinished script or something – although I’m not convinced the script for this movie was ever actually finished either. There’s not a lot of action so there was no need for it to be a “movie” (other than the 3-D gimmicks). I could easily see all the basic story points being made in an hour long radio drama where the theater of the mind probably would have created a creepier and more effective entertainment for each of us.
Among the questions I had about the “story”, the foremost is what happened in all the places where these people and buildings came from? Weren’t these people missed by their spouses, parents, siblings, neighbors, any one? The taxi driver took the cab with him (or vice versa) so he must have been reported for theft at least. Didn’t some one somewhere notice, “Hey, our hospital is gone”? Nobody in law enforcement noticed a sudden uptick in missing persons reports?
And the creatures that assembled this mish-mash collection of buildings were interested in including an old West saloon, but they passed up on say the Taj Mahal, one of the Great Pyramids or the Palace at Versailles? To each their own, I guess.
vs 
But your point stands.