Impressions

This is a stunningly terrible movie. Think Mad Monster meets It Conquered the World. The riffs were fun and this is what MST3K is all about – mocking movies that need to be punished. This movie is laughable without the riffs, but some excellent jabs made it even funnier. One of the best features of the film is that the audio is so bad that the director had to hire a narrator to tell you what the actors were saying. This resulted in some hilarious moments like “He then told the doctor to . . . go to hell.” That moment was funnier than any intentional humor by Mike and the ‘Bots.

Synopsis

A spaceship lands in a small town filled with people so stupid that they can’t even figure out to run away from a monster that averages about a meter per minute. As Mike put it, “The creeping part is apt.” Later on, one of the crew remarks, “I got it! If we just don’t crawl into his mouth . . . “ This think looks like a centipede about 8 feel tall followed by a Chinese dragon body made up of a huge carpet with four men laboring under it. It eats people by having the editor splice the film such that the victims are instantly halfway into the creature with just their legs sticking out. A typical “attack” goes down like this: the creature is spotted about 50 feet away and the people just wait patiently while the creature takes 10 minutes to cross the distance before eating them. Then they scream, or at least we think they do, but it’s very faint because of the bad audio track.

There’s also a dance scene that shows up with no explanation. This seems to be part of the formula bad monster movie – the monster kills a few individuals, but then happens upon a dance hall and threatens to kill en masse. However, in this case, you end up rooting for the monster. This “dance” is made up of what appears to be drugged up trekkies and their parents “dancing” as if competing for a goofiest dancer prize to “music” that you or I could write. To give more support to the pro-monster contingent, the people at the dance just cluster in a corner waiting to be eaten. If you weren’t laughing so hard, you might find yourself yelling “Come on, at least try to get away!”

Here’s the plot: a creature meanders around the countryside and eats whatever people he happens upon. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Finally, an army guy figures out that a grenade might injure it and successfully kills it. Then we find out there’s a second creature! Who knows how long it will take to figure out what to do to stop this one! Luckily, the main character accidentally runs into it with his car, which surprisingly, kills creature number two without much hullabaloo. This “plot” is very thinly stretched out over 90 minutes by the magic of filming every single step this goofy thing takes.

Host Segments

Opening: Crow makes Mike sign in and out of a room on the SOL for security reasons. The Mads are doing laundry. Dr. Forrester mentions that people can’t go to coffee houses without becoming pretentious. He challenges Mike and company to try it. Back on the Satellite of Love, they becomes pretentious coffee house snobs.

Host segment 2: Crow and Tom have made an SOL flag. They hoist it and Crow pledges allegiance.

Host segment 3: Hilarious parody of Love American Style.

Host segment 4: Mike has an impressive stereo. He plays the goofy music from the dance scene in the movie. It last about 5 minutes and he just stands there seeming dorky.

End: Gypsy is eating Tom and Crow by having them climb in. Mike saves Crow and they read two letters. Gypsy sneezes Tom out. The Mads are still doing laundry. Dr. F runs Frank through a wringer and he comes out flat!

Stinger: People screaming, girl yells, “My God, what is it?”

Funny Riffs

Narrator: Everyone who experienced that catastrophe and survived would never go there again.

Servo as Narrator: And those who did not survive such a catastrophe also would not go there again.

The alien is devouring a victim

Mike: If you could help me out by crawling in.

The creature is partly on top of a car and wiggling in a strange way.

Mike: When a small car and a monster love each other very much . . .

The screen is black as the movie starts.

Crow: The point of view of Helen Keller

The army men move a fallen log out of the road.

Mike: We push more logs before 9:00 AM than most people do all day.

Mike: Did anyone know how to run in the 50s?

The Creeping Terror IMDB page

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