211 – First Spaceship on Venus
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Things I liked about the movie:
The crawlercopter.
Good science requires lots of figgahs.
The A-shirt guys.
Impressions
The story seems kind of interesting, but the movie itself doesn’t seem to have enough energy to get itself off the couch. The actors read their lines as if the cue cards don’t have any punctuation. When they’re on Venus, you really can’t ever figure out what you’re looking at mainly due to bad lighting, bad sets, and lack of purpose. The riffing is fair. Tom Servo, has taken to saying things in an overly sarcastic way because in the last episode, Joel adjusted his sarcasm sequencer too far. For example, when a rock hits some magma and everything seems to collapse, he says, “Oh! A planet you step on and it starts to crumble? Oooooh! I wanna go!” He uses a resentfully sarcastic tone that comes out of nowhere. If you ignore the bad special effects, the poor acting, and the tired 1950s sci-fi theme, it’s not too bad, really.
Synopsis
A rock is discovered in the desert, which they call “the spool.” Then (this is really the narration) “somebody remembered a meteorite crater in Siberia” and they decide the spool is associated with it. Scientists go out on a limb by saying “our calculations” show that the meteor that caused the Siberian crater was a Venusian spaceship and the spool is a document. They have no luck translating it because it’s so damaged. They decide to fly to Venus to ask for a translation.
Earth promptly sends an expedition to Venus assuming that if someone crashed with a spool, they must be nice. There’s a cute robot involved. It looks like a tiny M-1 tank with a cute face made of switches and lights, but it talks nonsense. On the way to Venus they find out they’re going to run into a “meteorite swarm,” whatever that is. We discover later that it’s space popcorn. The space popcorn knocks them off course and toward a bigger “meteor swarm.” The engines get broken so they send an expendable character out to fix them. He fixes them just in time to evade the meteor swarm. Whew! Close one! For a minute there, it looked like something might happen!
In a heart-warming side story during the flight, one of the astronauts who doesn’t seem to have a job keeps losing at chess to the robot. The only woman on board convinces the engineer to put in a heart so the robot will let him win once in a while. This is done and then he (the lazy astronaut) wins and his self-esteem is restored. Yay.
Just as they are arriving at Venus, the linguist deciphers the spool. As Tom points out, it says, “Ooblebebeleddle umbleble bldeldeldeldle.” The actual translation is something like, “We’ll bombard Earth with radiation, and then it will be easier to exterminate the inhabitants and occupy the planet.” One astronaut brilliantly deduces from this text that Venus plans to attack Earth.
Finally the ship reaches Venus and settles into orbit around the planet. To make the story more exciting, we learn they can only land and take off one time. This requires a scout to go down to the planet’s surface. The scout will take – DUN DUN DUN! – the crawlercopter! Woohoo! It’s the Willy Wonka Mobile. The Fintoozler!
Brinkman takes the crawlercopter to the surface and it gets blown up right away. He wanders around until he falls down a hole populated by jumping metal bugs of some kind. The main ship lands and Brinkman is fine. They begin exploring the planet on foot and by crawler.
Back on the ship, the crew decided the metallic insects are actually recording devices and the hole Brinkman fell into was an archive of sorts. A senile old scientist guy keeps demanding “more figgahs.” Then he declares some vitrified forest was a weapon of aggression but a catastrophe happened on the planet and broke everything. They become curious and go exploring to see if they can find any Venusians. The explorers drive Dr. Seussian spacecars around slowly until they come upon some frozen loogies accompanied by dramatic music. They get out and examine what we are told is some terrible damage, but you really can’t make out what they’re looking at. The terribleness of the damage is overshadowed by the terribleness of the lighting and set.
It turns out what killed the Venusians was The Blob. Yeah. We must have accidentally sent it there. The Blob chases the astronauts around for a bit, but now it’s afraid of lasers, so they shoot it and get away. They run away from it for an excessively long time before coming up with the brilliant idea of shooting at it with their weapons.
Senile scientist deduces this scenario: The Venusians planned to attack Earth with a large radiation weapon but it blew up and they were all destroyed. The weapon was still lying latent and when they (the Earth people) shot it with a laser, they started up another chain reaction like the one that killed the Venusians.
One of the crew is injured and undergoes surgery back in the ship. The ship is damaged and must be repaired. Two crewmembers explore the Venusian “nerve center” (a hole in the ground) in hopes of restoring the Venusian power grid. One guy goes down into the hole trusting the other guy to hold the rope, but he’s a wimp and eventually drops it, leaving the lower guy (Herringway) to try to climb out with no rope. The wimpy guy is losing air because his suit was punctured. Brinkman takes off in a shuttle and tries to save him. Apparently Herringway fixes the power, because some sphere turns white again. Unfortunately for Herringway, it was just too inconvenient to pick him up before leaving, so he’s left behind.
The remaining crew on the ship determine that because of the repair to the Venusion power station, “The negative gravity is increasing and we’re going to be thrown off the planet like a catapult.” Brinkman also gets reverse-gravitied off the surface in his little shuttle and apparently will die alone in space. No mention of the wimpy guy Chenu. I guess we can assume he died since his suit was punctured.
The main ship arrives back at Earth, remaining crew apparently intact. A huge crowd gathers, controlled only by the thin A line (guys with a big A on their shirts). Each of the astronauts delivers a short, dramatic speech to the camera. The end. Bravely, the movie does not have Brinkman show up having flown all the way home in his shuttle, which I actually expected.
Host Segments
Prologue: Tom is extra sarcastic. In anticipation of commercials, “Oh, 30-second materialistic sound bites? Give me more of those!” Joel decides to turn down his sarcasm sequencer, but adjusts it too far. Invention exchange: Joel invents junk drawer helper to help people start junk drawers. The Mads just copy it outright as always.
Second: Tom and Crow make a robot for Joel as a present. The XT5000. Joel asks it a complex math question and it answers in foam. That’s how it communicates! The foam fills the SOL.
Third: Tom and Crow are hosting the game show Match Game 78. A strange cubic girder structure approaches the SOL. It looks like the Borg ship. Joel is missing, so the ‘Bots panic and act like the robot on Lost in Space. The strange ship is a cage with a feisty ape in it. Tom calms him down by talking to him like he’s a dog. Tom sings a song and finally the ape ship goes away.
Fourth: A “commercial” from the show’s sponsor – Klack. They make salad-ooze based snacks that include such ingredients as grandma’s earlobes, skunk stomachs, and hellbeast.
Final: The crew discusses the movie. Joel says it felt like when he ate too much sugar crisp and watched The Three Stooges. Crow says it wasn’t that bad, lots of action. Servo says it’s like nodding through the whole Jerry Lewis telethon complete with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis reunion and you only wake up during the lame local public access portions. He gets louder and louder sarcastically demanding hours more of that until his head explodes like an old-fashioned flashbulb. They read some letters. Tom seems dead, but later weakly says, “I’m not dead, I’m getting bettah.” Dr. F is throwing up over the sentimentality and Frank is giving himself a chin rascal. During the show credits, Dr. F can be heard ralphing.
Stinger: Crowd waving with A guy in front.
Funny Riffs
A man runs up to a Japanese woman to greet her.
Man: Sumiko!
Crow as woman: I will as soon as my lawyer gets here.
Brinkman: My heart is . . .
Sumiko: No, Brinkman. No. No, please, we mustn’t speak of that, ever.
Crow as Sumiko: Let’s talk about your pancreas.
Narrator: It is because of them that we are relieved of many tiresome tasks.
Tom: Like acting.
As Brinkman flies down to Venus in the “crawlercopter” he encounters some fog and snow or something.
Crow: Hey! I’m flying through some confetti. Apparently they’re throwing me a surprise party. Woohoo!
Brinkman lands.
Crow: Hey. He landed on a witch.
The little tank-like robot seems to be running away from Brinkman on the Venusian surface.
Crow (in robotic monotone): I’m bolting. This is bogus.
When Brinkman meets the jumping metal bugs:
Joel: We are the planet of novelty items!
And later . . .
Joel: We make excellent stocking stuffers. You will come to know that in time.
The Earth ship lands and the crew gets out and starts exploring the planet’s surface and looking for Brinkman.
Joel as crewmembers: Plastic doggy doo? Rubber vomit? What is this?
Movie: Dr. Herringway, should we keep going?
Tom: Joel, what’s a
herringway?
Joel: About a pound.
The senile old scientist goes on a “scientific” rant about how the Venusian glass forest weapon works.
Crow: That’s interesting, but does it belong in the script?
Chenu is dying because his suit is leaking.
Sumiko gets on the radio and tells him his seeds are growing.
Tom: I’m dying an agonizing death and yet my seeds are growing! I’m the happiest boy on the planet!
The main ship is ejected off the planet because of the anti-gravity force, which mysteriously doesn’t affect the crew members still on the surface outside the ship. Herringway, an African-American astronaut, sees the ship flying away and calls on the radio, “Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!” Later, the Cosmostrator enters the Earth’s atmosphere. A radio operator announces their return:
Radio Op: The Cosmostrator is returning. The Cosmostrator is returning. We have called them, but at the moment, there is no reply.
Crow (in falsetto): There’s an angry black gentleman on line one!
What appears to be security is a bunch of guys in sweatshirts with a large A on them. They line up to block the crowd.
All: Aaaaaaaaay!
As the last crewmember exits the ship to greet a surprisingly small crowd after a trip to Venus:
Crow as crewmember: We’re more popular than the Beatles!
In a dramatic address, the captain says we lost three brave men . . .
Captain: . . . and Brinkman
Joel: Who screamed
like a baby when we flew off and left him.
First Spaceship on Venus IMDB Page