101 – The Crawling Eye
(aka The Trollenberg Terror)
éééé
Things I liked about the movie:
I have never seen such a monster!
The beautiful paintings used as backdrops.
The way people go mad and start killing other people to save on monster screen time.
Impressions
Overall a decent if forgettable episode with one exception – it’s the first one on commercial TV! Josh Weinstein is Clayton’s coiffeurific assistant Larry. His humor lame and campy as a Mad, but he’s also Tom Servo, and he’ll do Tom through the rest of season one. Joel feels obligated to helpfully tell us that the Mads shot them into space and explains where Deep 13 is, for those of us just joining the show.
The monster is oh so goofy! It looks like a shell-less turtle with a spherical body about 20 feet high made out of egg white with an eyeball instead of a head. Or imagine a squid that crawls like a slug with one eyeball in front that swivels back and forth like a child’s pull-toy. The movie is so embarrassed of how silly the monster looks that they only show it for about a minute and fifteen seconds at the end (and most of that is partial shots obscured by flames). I told a friend I had just watched The Crawling Eye and he started laughing even though he hadn’t seen it in 20 years! And that wasn’t the MST version!
Amazingly, this film stars Janet Munro of Darby O’Gill and the Little People and Swiss Family Robinson. She shares the screen with the sizzling Forrest Tucker from F-Troop. The riffing is funny but sparse. It picks up at the end, when lots of eye jokes start rolling. The movie itself would actually have been a lot better if they had just used a lizard with a fin glued to its back. This is the worst movie reviewed by the crew yet! Disclaimer.
A resort in the Alps is losing business because climbers keep losing their heads, literally! A mind-reading girl, Anne, decides she has to go to the mountain but can’t explain why. Forrest Tucker from F-troop is in the area to visit the observatory and do a little investigating. Forrest meets his old friend Groucho Marx in the observatory and Groucho is very excited about his new high tech equipment, like movie cameras that show fat guys walking by. Exciting stuff! Groucho and Forrest get to talking and we find out that Forrest investigated a similar phenomenon in the Andes but was laughed at when he concluded there was an alien infestation. Forrest wants some better proof this time before he reports aliens to the U.N.
Fatty and skinny, aka eyeball bait, climb the mountain. While they’re up there, Anne is down here doing a mind-reading act for some guests. Suddenly, she goes into a trance and says the climbers are being attacked. Forrest Tucker calls their cabin to make sure they’re ok. Fatty answers the call and seems calm, but breaks out into a screaming fit. A group of rescuers rushes to the rescue, er, to their deaths. First, they find fatty decapitated. Second, they find Skinny, who kills two rescuers with a pick-axe and “heads” for the lodge. When he gets back to the lodge, he sees Anne. Just the recollection of Swiss Family Robinson makes him turn hostile and tries to kill her.
The guests knock Skinny out and lock him in a room but he escapes and tries to kill Anne again. Forrest Tucker shoots him, which seems to kill him. The guests decide take the cable car up to the observatory to keep safe from the roaming gangs of eyeballs. At one hour and eight minutes into the movie, the monster smashes in the doors to the lodge and we get our first laugh at him. The monster tries to grab a little girl with one of his crepe paper tentacles. Forrest saves her and races to the cable car, which delivers the guests to the observatory. But the cable car breaks down, so they’re stuck. Forrest invents the Molotov cocktail and they light up the eyeballs. Finally, the Air Force accidentally bombs them and they fry like eggs. Credits roll like your eyes.
Segment One (Invention Exchange): Joel invents electric bagpipes using a leaf blower and makes the worst music I’ve ever heard! (No disclaimer!) Larry’s corneas bleed as a result. The Mads invent an antiperspirant based on the fact that dogs don’t sweat. Clayton injects it into Larry, who turns into a dog. Joel says maybe they’ll get a Nobel prize. They explain where Deep 13 is.
Segment Two: Joel asks the Bots what they think of the movie. Crow says it has a Julie Andrews quality and Tom says that’s a contradiction in terms. They don’t understand why humans make a big deal about losing their heads--it happens to them all the time. Joel explains that when people lose their heads they can’t put them back on. They ask Joel about a bunch of different expressions (losing your head, got your head up you’re a**, etc.) that seem to imply people do lose their heads. They ask him to explain head cheese, but he says he can’t. No one can.
Segment Three: Tom and Crow find a bunch of tubing filling up the SOL cabin. Gypsy has uncoiled. She has an itch, so Joel and the ‘Bots scratch a bunch of her coils trying to find it.
Segment Four: The ‘Bots are traumatized by the movie. You think they mean the monster, but they mean Forrest Tucker. They don’t know why a big eye is scary. Joel says any giant free-roaming body parts are scary to humans. Tom says he was attacked by a pack of pituitary glands. Crow suggests throwing salt at the eye. Joel explains they like to live on mountain tops. But Tom finds that illogical because giant sharp points are the eye’s natural enemies. Crow points out they spent more time examining the plot than the writers ever did.
Segment Five: Joel plays good thing/bad thing. Crow says a good thing was it wasn’t longer. Bad thing—it was this long. Tom’s good thing—we didn’t have to watch them clean up the vireous humor. Bad thing—the movie. It lacked vision! They get RAM chips. Gypsy couldn’t answer but Joel gives her all the rest of the chips. No fair.
(No Stinger)
Funny Riffs
Tom as the train conductor calling out the next stop:
Trollenberg. Home of the crawling eye. All stops lead to a bloody death.
To make it look like they’re driving, they project a film behind the car.
Joel: They’re being followed by a movie!
One girl tries to tell the other that the reason she knows so much about the mountain is because she must have read about it.
Girl: I probably read about it.
Tom: In the script!
The movie shows the mountain.
Crow: Hey! It’s that painting we saw earlier.
The Geiger counter crackles as a monitor sweeps over the mysterious cloud.
Tom: It’s a cloud of baked beans, I guess.
Tall guy: Too many things missing!
Crow: Like a plot!
The mind-reading girl describes a hidden object (a snow globe) and says, “When you shake it, there’s a snow storm.”
Crow: When you shake it, their heads come off.
The Groucho-Marx-looking guy is talking to the older sister who is wearing a low-cut dress. He seems to be looking straight at her cleavage.
Groucho Marx guy: Some minds can pick up signals from other minds.
Tom: Let’s start with a simple test. Can you tell where I’m looking right now?
There’s a ball on the floor.
Tom: Is that the crawling eye, Joel?
A shadowy man advances up stairs towards a female victim.
Crow as Mother from Psycho: Norman, I told you not to bother the guests!
The possessed climber reaches through a hole in a door and grabs a guy’s head.
Servo (singing): I'm Popeye the sailor man, I've got a guy's head in my hand.
Tom: Give him a giant scissors and he’ll put himself out
Joel: What's a giant eye going to do, pick you up and wink you to death?
Tom: Hanz is on the fritz.
Crow: That eye is lashing out against society.
Tom: Whoever cast this movie had an eye for talent.
Joel: Long longer longest. Eyelashes that grab people and strangle them.