Sunday, April 29, 2012

Svengoolie: This Island Earth (1955)

I first saw 'This Island Earth' (1955) in the theaters. It was a very special treat as my father drove the whole family downtown to see the limited screening. The van overheated in the middle of traffic and stalled. The old man had to pop the hood, find some bottled water and poor it into the radiator while we sat back in anticipation. Could we make our one chance for this once in a life time screening? Would we be too late? It was all like something out of a Jean Shepherd novel. However my Pa got the engine turning again and with the exorbitant parking fees aside made it on time to see this limited engagement of Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie. Yes, much to the condemnation of old school sci-fi fans everywhere this was my first exposure to this science fiction classic.
 
Tonight however the scene would be set by another genre host Svengoolie, a local TV host who's now broadcast nationwide like Elivra and has been at it for twice as long. Rich Koz started out in the late 1970's as Son of Svengoolie before finally playing the role for so long he himself became our beloved singular Svengoolie. I'd seen This Island Earth a few times as stand alone since my first exposure through MST3k but I must admit I've seen The Movie version so many times its riffs are engraved into my memory patterns. But we shall focus on how Sven presented tonight.
 
What's most interesting is the edits made between the theatrical cut, the MST3k cut and Svengoolie. Sven made trims to Cal's scenic flight, all the dialog between delivery and just before assembly of the Interocitor montage, seemingly some trims to the inner plane ride to Georgia (my memory is fuzzy on that one) and some trims to the escape from the house in Georgia. It's worth noting that MST3k made fun of how quickly Cal and Ruth dried off from their trimmed scenes, but even in the full length version it is a clear change from wet to dry. What's interesting is what MST3k left in like the scenic flight and some minor dialog, and that while Sven kept most of the footage from the escape there's some segue footage cut there that MST3k included. MST3k of course relishes deadspace for jokes while Sven would looking to keep people from changing channels. The MST3k version is brief but flows fairly well while the Sven footage doesn't always quite match up. Partially I think it's because MST3k took more time to edit the film theatrical then Sven did for their broadcast. Also interesting was Sven's use of letterboxing for the whole lead inserting in the toaster scene when looking through the giant viewmaster. MST3k didn't maintain that illusion as well as the Sven transfer did although the rest of Sven's footage is full screen. At one point the channel MeTV showed an old commercial for a theater which advertised free popcorn for anyone who got a soda with a red star on it.
 
As for the film itself it's probably not worth the time to spell out the plot for you so I'll run over the more interesting details. Faith Domergue claimed she had nothing on underneath her alien speedsuit and sports some near cameltoe as she looks simply poured into that tight outfit. I still prefer the pink wet t-shirt and bullet bra ensemble she wore during their escape from the house. There's also an underplayed black maid in a french outfit in the heart of the South. Sven pointed out that the Mork & Mindy connection with the aliens went so far as the character name Exeter being used again although this time spelled as "Exidor." He also noted that the reporter Cal talks with is Olan Soule who would later voice Batman in cartoons. I also just noticed at the fog drenched airport Cal is operating the manual windshield wipers on the Army Jeep.
 
Some of my favorite moments happen when they're first on the spaceship as it seems someone else was writing parts like this line of dialog, "Ruth, don’t tell me as a woman you’re not curious about our destination?" What part of being a woman makes you more curious about your destination then men, boys or even young girls for that matter? Was this some kind of dig about how woman are willing to ask for directions? Plus when Ruth asks him how they're able to create artificial gravity all he says back is that they make artificial gravity. That doesn't answer the question at all! And if the aliens are migrating to Earth why bother to destroy your only base of operations on Earth to bring some Earthlings all the way to Metaluna for just an hour or two when you know you're about to go back? No wonder they lost the war with strategic planning like that. Also Exeter comments that now his planet can be a sun for some other world but if his solar system already has a sun it'll still be pretty useless for most any orbiting planet.
 
Continuing the trend from earlier this evening when Curly smoked from a "water pipe" our fearless adventures step into giant bong and let'er rip. Sven directly follows up this scene appropriately enough by parodying the Creedence Clearwater Revival song "Lookin' Out My Back Door" from the stoner favorite The Big Lebowski with some psychedelic Interocitor styled camera view to match. A lot of This Island Earth's score had its own experimental flavor with generous use of the theremin; standard in sci-fi since its use in The Day the Earth Stood Still and Forbidden Planet.
 
There's also some consistently bad blocking through the movie and some poorly lit moments where characters are in shadow because of the blocking. Then on the spaceship they didn't matte the movement of the camera to the second exposure and so the stars move with the camera instead of remaining their own steady motion. Though while on the alien world there's some pretty good matte paints, models but a truly bad blue screen effect that really should have been cut out. Surprisingly MST3k did in fact cut this out while Sven left it in with some comment. Also it appears they didn't bother to matte the close ups in the airplane and just left the blue screen alone as blue skies.
 
So while this movie does have an interesting premise, a decent budget and a well cast ensemble of actors this has not aged as well as some of its contemporaries. But modern sci-fi would be so lucky as to still be seen and discussed some sixty years later. There's something iconic and everlasting about 50's sci-fi that I think no other era (except perhaps the 80's) as been able to re-capture.

Saturday, April 28, 2012

9th Anniversary “Stooge-A-Palooza”

Here in Chicago today was the 9th anniversary of "Stooge-a-Palooza," a weekly two hour block of Three Stooges shorts on local TV hosted by Rich Koz. Rich had been local color here in Chicago for decades now. I grew up watching his morning kid's TV show screening cartoons and he's been a staple as local TV horror host Svengoolie, or more accurately Son of Svengoolie, since the late 70's.

Rich hosts the Stooges by giving some factoids and sometimes placed the films in proper context. Unfortunately I missed most of the first hour of this Saturday's block, coming halfway through the Shemp short Three Arabian Nuts (1951). As a Shemp fan I'd like to review it but having only seen half of the episode I will save a full review for another day.


 
The first full short I saw from the block today was the Curly entry 'Playing the Ponies' (1937). Financially inspired by the Marx Brother's success with 'A Day at the Races' released earlier in the year, this is still some of the Stooge's better moments. Curly even honks a horn for a gag very much as Harpo Marx would. Like much of their 1930's output there's a more down to earth tone to the routines and the film stock itself is grittier. A team of five writers hammered this one out for our boys, and as pointed out by the host Rich Koz this was the last hurrah for many of those writers. Who's really unsung from the Three Stooges' shorts are their foley artists. Even in the earliest shorts from the 1930's they produced top notch foley work even compared to today's standards and that really help emphasize the Stooge's performances. However there's a really odd moment here where Larry sits on a pitch fork and his cries of agony are dubbed by Curly. The dubbing itself is fairly obvious with a dramatic increase in the noise floor but for the most part Curly does a pretty good Larry Fine impression that could rival Billy West. There's some scenes that border on other restaurant routines the boys would later do but it's somewhat refreshing to see them going in another direction this early in their careers.
 
Next up on the block is the highly praised but just as regularly banned from TV short 'I'll Never Heil Again' (1941). Being Jewish themselves our boys relished the opportunity to lampoon Adolph Hitler and his cronies. Moe gives a spookily spot on imitation of Adolph's fiery German speeches that seems to reveal his own hatred of the Nazi's themselves. The film opens with the all too familiar to modern audience's legal declaration to being unrelated to anyone living but, "anyone resembling them is better off dead." One of the many politically incorrect statements that helped to ban this short from the air while also being the very reason why we love it so. Rich Koz noted that Hitler is said to have hated the Three Stooges which is somewhat interesting if not unsurprising as it is said he loved Charlie Chaplin's portrayal in The Great Dictator the year before. Speaking of which, the Stooges could not help themselves with taking their own turn at tossing the globe around as the tramp so eloquently did. But this time the boys get rough and tumble while tossing it around like a pig skin. A nice contrast of the Stooge's more every man sensibilities.  
 
Mary Ainslee plays a bombshell princess of the dethroned King who really shows she knows how to rack'em up when she puts a bomb in the shell of a 13 pool ball.
There's also a very hot brunette french maid, which must have happened during the French Occupation, who so far seems to remain an unknown combatant even to the internet. The aforementioned pool ball has a surprisingly well executed scene with some stunning SFX's that are done in live action wide shoots. There's some other nice classical touches too like Curly and Larry Fine walking into a room backwards to show their ignorance and a vision of hell where the Stooges are roasting on a spit fire while red suited devils poke them with pitch forks. There's also the politically incorrect mix up of ethnicity with the Asian Indian speaking like a Native American who gives curly a portable "water pipe." You'd almost expect them to call it a peace pipe but they are Nazi's after all. Speaking of stereotypes the Japanese delegate is portrayed as being obsessed with taking photographs at inopportune times. I never would have imagined this image to be so ingrained in American culture as to be funny already by 1940. It just goes to show the more things change the more things seem to stay the same. 
 
As part of the Stooge-a-palooza anniversary they showed an old clip of Rich Koz parodying a modern monster Osamba bin Laden and the propaganda videos he did for Al-Qaeda. This time they called back to the playing card decks the USA passed out with pictures of their most wanted; this time Bin Laden presents what is America's most violent members in the Three Stooges as Al-Qaeda's most wanted. Moe Howard would be proud me thinks. Before our final short Rich Koz also addressed a fan letter about the fact that the current owners of the Laurel and Hardy shorts are "not interested" in licensing out their films for broadcasting on local TV. This really is a shame as my parents raised me watching many a Laurel and Hardy routine. How corporations can sit on their properties and say "No" to more money really boggles my mind sometimes when all they truly do is for money! But I digress.
 
Our final short for the night was 'Loco Boy Makes Good' (1942). It's about the Stooges trying to build a case to file a lawsuit against a hotel. Ironically Harold Lloyd would later sue them for stealing some gags for this short from Movie Crazy (1932). One Take Rich made a flub saying "Local" instead of "Loco" in the introduction of the title but he recovered rather nicely so they let it slide. Rich also states that there's an edit in the film but no one knows why it was made. While watching the scene in question I couldn't even figure out what cut would be made but in a later scene is seems obvious that Curly pulled a few more things out of his Magician's jacket (which Moe is now holding) that were cut. Early on there's a real good gag with Moe talking to a double of Curly's that I even had to do a double take on because it fooled me too! There's also a surprisingly risque close up of a girl lifting her skirt to extensively show her nylon legs and garters. Curly also calls a gal "toots" which is a word I don't use nearly often enough. Already five years after 'Playing the Ponies' the finer grain prints and lack of depression era routines already seem to be watering down the Stooges. With World War II in full swing at this point people were coming to the theaters to forget their troubles and I don't think the Stooge's fully bounced back comically after that.
 
With two outta three shorts being ones I hadn't seen before (and the half a Shemp short being another) all and all this was a good night to learn that there's a lot more Stooges left for me to discover. And I don't mean the Farrelly Brother's. "Just Say Moe" indeed. Although Kate Upton as a bikini suited nun I have to given the credit for that one but apparently it was CUT so to hell with that.