Unexpected Cast in MST3K Movies

I thought he was great in the new Twin Peaks.

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He was also in 2017’s Small Crimes on Netflix in a small but meaningful role. As always, professional and entertaining.

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Olivia Hussey in Quest of the Delta Knights

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She used to take parts based on stuff her fortune teller would say, I’ve heard. That’s how she ended up in “Black Christmas”, “Turkey Shoot”, “Ice Cream Man”, etc…

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This has been discussed in another thread, but having Mel Torme and Paul Anka in Girls Town and having Anka be the only one that sings was pretty unexpected.

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I interrupt your regularly scheduled broadcast to point everyone’s attention to this forum post.

I actually though about making a forum post akin to this one about the behind the scenes of films, I always find those stories almost more interesting than the films itself.

Hope to breathe new life to the post linked below, and see some of the cinema stories Mysties have collected over the years.

Bonus points if you have any from the MST3K catalog.

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I would guess that was an important reason why Mel Torme took that role. He was known to have a pretty sizable ego, so I’m sure he wanted to prove he could be a serious dramatic actor just as the big singers turned actors before him – Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra – had done. He had already done a few musical movies and had some dramatic roles in The Fearmakers and The Big Operator. The movie career didn’t exactly pan out for him, but at least he was a far better actor than Tony Bennett was.

(P.S. – Mel Torme, Paul Anka and Mamie Van Doren would all be reunited in The Private Lives of Adam and Eve in 1960, a year after Girl’s Town.)

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City Limits is chock-a-block with talent - James Earl Jones, Kim Cattrall, Rae Dawn Chong, and John Diehl have all done excellent work. It also includes Norbert Weisser, aka “I can’t believe it’s not Lance Henriksen!”

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Don’t forget special appearance by Robby Benson as Carver! Beauty and the Beast had JUST come out the year prior, which raised his stock quite a bit.

Honestly, Weisser looks more like Great Value Brand Ed Begley Jr. in this film.

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And future Independence Day director Dean Devlin.

Oh, wait, you said excellent work. My mistake.

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Graham Greene in Atlantic Rim was a big shock. And it’s just bizarre that they wasted the character on a bunch of generic “old people are stupid” jokes without a single reference to his illustrious career OR sharing a name with a great writer. The opportunities are just staring you in the face!

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I think Joel is trying to make MST3K appeal to younger audiences.

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I read her memoir and many of her mid-90s roles (like Ice Cream Man) were a direct result of her taking just about any work offered so she could finance a lawsuit against her former management.

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I think it was Donnie Darko where one of the characters quotes Graham Greene the writer and someone responds with “We’ve all seen Dances with Wolves!”

Ahhhh. Classic Hollywood.

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And in Dragon Wars on Rifftrax…and this was AFTER his comeback in Jackie Brown.

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And also… David Warner :wink:

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Back when Talking Toons incorporated its streaming audience… 9 years ago (shivers) I asked about Hobgoblins when he was on. And the episode started with them acknowledging the gangbusters of the Veronica Mars movie Kickstarter (what a way to circle it back to MST3K relevance)

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Gregory Peck and Gene Hackman, Stranded in Space

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I’d say the two who surprised me most when they showed up in an MST3K movie were Gregory Peck (not just a movie star, but a MOVIE STAR) and Little Richard (a genuine rock & roll legend).

But I guess “they showed up” would also be an accurate summary of their performances in those movies.

:smirk:

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Similarly, you have Christopher Plummer show up in Starcrash. And it really was just a showing up. I read an interview with him where they asked about the movie and he just laughed and said he got a paid vacation to Italy just to show up on set for a day.

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