108 – The Slime People with short: Commando
Cody Part 6
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Things I liked about the movie:
The slime people have cute, sad faces.
The super low prices advertised at the butcher shop.
The dramatic climax where the old chemist spears the fog machine causing it to explode in a spectacular $10 special effect.
Impressions
Short
It’s Commander Cody. ‘Nuff said. I guess I can be glad this is only one episode instead of two. If the Mads really wanted to drive Joel crazy, they would just show him six of these in a row. Aeeeeiiiii!
Movie
If Dawn of the Dead had large rubbery monsters and thick smoke obscuring the entire movie, but for the grace of God, it could have been this movie. Every detail seems to have been accounted for—even things I couldn’t have thought of. The conversations are too terse. The actors’ timing is off. The space often seems too cramped. The condescending explanations are nonsensical and boring. The acting is deliciously incompetent. I’d say the cinematography is terrible except I couldn’t see anything because of the smoke. The music comically misfires and the “science” consists of referring to salt as sodium chloride. It seems like something you might make in your backyard with a video camera in a single day. Well, maybe not you. You’d do a better job. The riffing is a bit flat, so it didn’t do much to save it.
Synopsis
Short
Cody escapes last week’s cliffhanger. The moon men use their cowardly human surrogates to nuke Mt. Alta. This, in turn, causes the volcano to erupt and ruin Earth’s weather and cause floods. George W. Bush would have been proud. Cody fights the bad guys and gets knocked off a cliff, falls limply about 100 feet, and . . . cliffhanger.
Movie
As the movie explains to us, humans’ nuclear testing disturbs an undiscovered race of sewer-dwelling lizard people. These slime people, or “people of slime” as they prefer to be called, emerge and plod around clumsily, occasionally harpooning the unfortunate human. They like it cold, so they set up a fog machine about the size of a beach ball that emits enough fog to cover the entire Los Angeles area and totally obscure the entire movie from view. It was a poorly lit movie to begin with, so between the lighting and the fog, you’re only able to guess how bad the visual component of the movie would be based on the inane dialogue.
The fog turns into a wall. This is a big issue in the movie, but I was never able to see this alleged wall. This wall seals off Los Angeles and the people who refused to evacuate earlier are stuck inside with the slime guys, who seem intent on killing all the humans.
The survivors are culled down to an old chemist, a former marine, a sportscaster, and two girls, who are the daughters of the chemist. Of course, the sportscaster and the marine pair up with the girls who seem willing to take what they can get. Everywhere they go, they see dead people, abandoned cars, and try to find romance.
This bunch holes up in a butcher shop. They lock themselves in the cooler for almost a whole minute before the marine and one daughter wander off to seek death. The daughter gets captured by the murdering, mindless, ruthless slime people who have killed thousands and thousands of people and left none alive. They don’t kill her. The rest of the group goes out to rescue her and does! They destroy the fog machine by throwing a spear at it. Ingenious! This causes the slime people (and the plot) to become even more lethargic and fall down.
Everyone lives happily ever after—except all the dead people and the audience.
Host Segments
Prologue: Joel and Tom Servo are not morning people. Crow comes in and is all cheery. Joel explains the concept of MST3K. After the commercial, they’re playing poker. Invention exchange: Joel has goggles with popping eyeballs useful for making surprised expressions. Dr. F invents cotton candy that screams when you bite it.
Second: Joel is a judge presiding over a trial against Commando Cody. He has endangered people, broken the laws of physics, and acted badly. The trial is a parody of the trial Miracle on 34th Street.
Third: Crow doesn’t understand why anyone would create such a movie with such a bad premise and so many loose ends. Joel explains that the beauty of the movie is that the guy who made it was able to get it made. Thanks to people’s gullibility, it worked. The ‘Bots get an idea for a show about a guy on an island with robots watching bad movies. Joel says it would never work.
Fourth: The SOL is foggy. Crow and Tom are trying to convince him there are slime people on the SOL. Joel says there’s nothing scary about out of work actors parading around with papier mache skin conditions. Tom says unfortunately the only way the slime people know how to communicate is by impaling people with their spears. They’re just misunderstood.
Final: Joel remembers home cooking back on Earth. He wants to cook some silicon chips. He reads a letter.
Stinger: No stinger.
Funny Riffs
Short
Servo: The Cessna Skyhawk is usually your best choice for bombardiering missions.
Movie
A set of footprints is shown on the beach.
Joel: I noticed that during the most troublesome times in my life, Lord, there were only one set of footprints.
The camera follows the footprints to a corpse.
Man: Will somebody please tell me what’s happening?
Crow: Well, you signed a contract that your agent couldn’t get you out of and uh . . .
Newscaster: Do not try to evacuate.
Crow: If it’s yellow, let it mellow.
Cal kisses Bonnie
Cal: Maybe I shouldn’t have done that.
Crow as Cal: Gimme back my gum!
Joel: That fog is thicker than grandma’s mustache.
Joel: Anyway, it’s a good thing they’re in a butcher shop in case somebody gets a black eye, they’ll have a steak there. They can put it on it.
Hero: Fear killed Toliver.
Tom Servo: No, I thought it was those big guys in the costumes.
Bonnie: Ew! What a smell! What is that stuff, Lisa?
Crow: It’s the rest of the movie.
Crow: They gave the slime the slip!
Crow: If we meet more slime people, we’ll just roll ‘em down a hill. They hate that.