Dear Festividder 2014
Oct. 19th, 2014 03:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jetpack_monkey_ljarchiveI'll try to keep the pre-amble short this year, because the requests themselves tell a story. This is a Festivids request list that is as much for my mom as it is for me, as we'll see in a second.
Mystery Science Theater 3000
"He'll try to keep his sanity with help of his robot friends..."
Not to start on a downer, but my parents divorced when I was 9. I ended up living with Dad in the Quad Cities. Mom stayed in Des Moines, and I only saw her on school breaks and two weeks in the summer. This sucked for me because I had so much more in common with Mom than Dad.
Anyway, a couple of years into this arrangement, Mom said there was this thing I absolutely had to see. We went to Video Warehouse and rented this weird-looking thing in a purple box called Mystery Science Theater 3000. I don't remember which episode it was -- it might have been "The Unearthly" or "Pod People" or "Cave Dwellers", but I know it was like a light went on in my brain. Somehow, this super-low-budget puppet show that snarked at terrible films was the most magical thing I had ever seen.
Mom and I both connected to it on the same level and we had constant running in-jokes, fueled by as many MST3K tapes as we could locate. We would watch other bad films, like those made by Edward D. Wood Jr., and riff on them by ourselves. Mom, who had cable channels I did not, would tape episodes as they aired and send them to me.
A couple of years ago, Mom and I went to see the post-MST3K project "Cinematic Titanic" live and it was amazing. I've followed both Cinematic Titanic and Rifftrax, although neither does for me what the original MST3K did. Needs more robots!
Beyond the memories, I just liked how smart the show was. There's a story about someone asking show creator Joel Hodgson whether anybody will get a particularly obscure reference and he answered that the right people would get it. The riffs would bounce from high-brow to low-brow in a single scene and sometimes even make weird passing references to people the writers knew in the Twin City area. Tom Servo remains one of my all-time favorite characters on anything ever, a robotic avatar of chutzpah. Of the two hosts, I go back and forth. They both have different energies and overall different approaches to the same material. They are both equally awesome.
I also can't say enough about Dr. Forrester and TV's Frank. They are my favorite Mads. Much love to Brain Guy, though. Much love.
I have no idea what you would do with a vid for this show. The theater sequences are practically unviddable (if you could integrate them somehow, I would be in awe) and the host segments tend to use the same medium shot consistently (although the show gets more visually dynamic as it progresses). Perhaps my other requests will help. You see, Mystery Science Theater 3000 isn't just a request. It's *every* request. The rest of the fandoms are all sources that have been covered, in one way or another, on the show. Feel free to integrate MST3K into any vids for the individual fandoms or don't -- up to you entirely.
The rest of my list comes in the order they appeared on the show:
Experiments 302, 304, 308, 312, and 316: Gamera (Shōwa series, 1965-1980)
"Gamera is really neat! He is filled with turtle meat!"
Let's say you're in the mood for a giant monster movie, but you feel like giant dinosaur-like lizards are, perhaps, overdone. Maybe you want a little more child-like wonder in your wanton destruction of property. I have something for you! It's the Gamera series, featuring a giant flying turtle, who is, as the story goes, a friend to all children! He's just not a friend to your local real estate owners. Through a series of seven films made between 1965 and 1971 (and one belated stock footage tribute film made in 1980), Gamera fought a variety of weird looking monsters and made friends with a bunch of ridiculously precocious youngsters who were all about 1/5th the size of one of his jutting tusks. In Season 3, MST3K covered five of these films (those owned by film distributor Sandy Frank).
Series list (* means riffed on MST3K):
Gamera (1965)*
Gamera vs. Barugon (1966)*
Gamera vs. Gyaos (1967)*
Gamera vs. Viras (1968)
Gamera vs. Guiron (1969)*
Gamera vs. Jiger (1970)
Gamera vs. Zigra (1971)*
Gamera: Super Monster (1980)
Me? I love my giant monster fights, as should you.
Experiments 413 and 417: Rocky Jones, Space Ranger
"I’m feeling stupid today."
This is actually a 1950s kiddie sci-fi show that was later edited into features for theatrical release after the show ended. MST3K riffed two(?) of the resulting films, Manhunt in Space and Crash of Moons. The series has survived better than many of its contemporaries because it wasn't a live broadcast, but a fully edited 35mm production with specialish effects. It's about our hero Rocky Jones, co-pilot Winky (no joke), and navigator Vena Ray as they fly about the ill-defined universe/galaxy/solar system righting wrongs and saving lives. They're usually up against the evil Cleolanta, dictator and not-nice lady. It's an adorkable show, lots of fun, and both Vena and Cleolanta come off a lot better than the scripts would seem to allow.
You can find a good chunk of the series on Archive.org. Don't feel limited to the episodes covered in the MST3K episodes.
Experiment 423: Ed Wood's Kelton Trilogy (Bride of the Monster / Plan 9 from Outer Space / Night of the Ghouls)
"It's a sinister day in the laboratory, a sinister day in the lab."
Despite his notoriety, director Edward D. Wood Jr. was only riffed twice on MST3K -- the juvenile delinquency drama The Sinister Urge and the sci-fi flick Bride of the Monster. However, Bride of the Monster shares characters and, um, continuity with two later Wood productions, Plan 9 from Outer Space and Night of the Ghouls, so I've used that to include them as well.
Plan 9 was one film where Mom and I, not having MST3K to guide us, created our own independent riffs. To this day, we just have to say, "Bela! NOT Bela! Night! Day! Day! Night! TOOOOOOOR" and we have a whole film's worth of giggles.
Here's the thing about Ed Wood, though. He didn't make the worst movies ever. The worst movies ever are the films that are so mind-numbingly boring that talking about them is kind of tiring (see my next request). He made extremely entertaining films that actually zipped along and went in unexpected places. I mean, yes they were awful, but they were FUN awful.
Also, a lot of the flack he gets for bad framing choices is unwarranted. His films were shot, like many films of the time, in 4:3 with the intent of having them matted to 1.66:1 when released theatrically. Because people are assholes or ignorant or both, video releases of his films have been open matte, leaving in the bits that were supposed to have been blocked out by the projectionist. Ahem. Anyway.
Things I love about these films: ridiculous special effects, Bela Lugosi (even when not played by Bela Lugosi), Tor Johnson, Kelton the Cop, random stock footage.
Experiment 424: Manos: The Hands of Fate
"Every frame of this movie looks like someone's last known photograph."
You don't watch this film so much as you survive it. Mom and I have. You can, too. Probably.
If Manos is not the worst film ever made, it's a contender. It really brings that Deep Hurting that the Mads go for. Made on a bet by a fertilizer salesman in Texas using a camera that could only film short, soundless chunks, this is the epitome of "just because you can, doesn't mean you should." Bad continuity, terrible acting with poorly synced vocal performances, a henchman with a bizarre verbal tic and giant knees...
So basically, any vid that makes this look like a brilliant film by an American Ingmar Bergman will be an absolutely dream. Or maybe it's an actual terrifying backwoods experience like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (minus chainsaws, plus giant knees). Spin gold from fertilizer, my friends. SPIN!
To date, the best looking footage I've found for this is the Rifftrax Live recording.
Experiment 820: Space Mutiny
"Flint Ironstag! Bolt VanderHuge! Thick McRunFast! Blast Hardcheese!"
Mom and I still watch MST3K together in my adulthood. This is one we pretty much died during. It's a space, um, epic, about sabotage on a starship that's represented by stock footage from the original Battlestar Galactica.
Great stuff. I would love an epic ode to heroism played as straight-faced as humanly possible. Power ballads earn bonus points.
Experiment 1013: Danger: Diabolik
"Oh, God, is someone gonna tell us that something is shagadelic, man?"
An actual good movie. Phew! My definition of "good" may be significantly different than yours. However, this film has the highest IMDb rating of all films riffed on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Also, this Italian flick brings director Mario Bava back to my requests after a gap year.
It's a pop-tastic adaptation of the classic fumetti character Diabolik, a charming thief with a Bond-like appreciation for ridiculous gadgetry. Bava doesn't disappoint and we get some great visuals like the main character and his girlfriend literally rolling in money. Any actiony appreciation of the film and its visual splendor would be much, um, appreciated.
As for music: go with your heart. Or your head. Or your spleen. Whatever you feel works best. Nothing is off limits.
Mystery Science Theater 3000
"He'll try to keep his sanity with help of his robot friends..."
Not to start on a downer, but my parents divorced when I was 9. I ended up living with Dad in the Quad Cities. Mom stayed in Des Moines, and I only saw her on school breaks and two weeks in the summer. This sucked for me because I had so much more in common with Mom than Dad.
Anyway, a couple of years into this arrangement, Mom said there was this thing I absolutely had to see. We went to Video Warehouse and rented this weird-looking thing in a purple box called Mystery Science Theater 3000. I don't remember which episode it was -- it might have been "The Unearthly" or "Pod People" or "Cave Dwellers", but I know it was like a light went on in my brain. Somehow, this super-low-budget puppet show that snarked at terrible films was the most magical thing I had ever seen.
Mom and I both connected to it on the same level and we had constant running in-jokes, fueled by as many MST3K tapes as we could locate. We would watch other bad films, like those made by Edward D. Wood Jr., and riff on them by ourselves. Mom, who had cable channels I did not, would tape episodes as they aired and send them to me.
A couple of years ago, Mom and I went to see the post-MST3K project "Cinematic Titanic" live and it was amazing. I've followed both Cinematic Titanic and Rifftrax, although neither does for me what the original MST3K did. Needs more robots!
Beyond the memories, I just liked how smart the show was. There's a story about someone asking show creator Joel Hodgson whether anybody will get a particularly obscure reference and he answered that the right people would get it. The riffs would bounce from high-brow to low-brow in a single scene and sometimes even make weird passing references to people the writers knew in the Twin City area. Tom Servo remains one of my all-time favorite characters on anything ever, a robotic avatar of chutzpah. Of the two hosts, I go back and forth. They both have different energies and overall different approaches to the same material. They are both equally awesome.
I also can't say enough about Dr. Forrester and TV's Frank. They are my favorite Mads. Much love to Brain Guy, though. Much love.
I have no idea what you would do with a vid for this show. The theater sequences are practically unviddable (if you could integrate them somehow, I would be in awe) and the host segments tend to use the same medium shot consistently (although the show gets more visually dynamic as it progresses). Perhaps my other requests will help. You see, Mystery Science Theater 3000 isn't just a request. It's *every* request. The rest of the fandoms are all sources that have been covered, in one way or another, on the show. Feel free to integrate MST3K into any vids for the individual fandoms or don't -- up to you entirely.
The rest of my list comes in the order they appeared on the show:
Experiments 302, 304, 308, 312, and 316: Gamera (Shōwa series, 1965-1980)
"Gamera is really neat! He is filled with turtle meat!"
Let's say you're in the mood for a giant monster movie, but you feel like giant dinosaur-like lizards are, perhaps, overdone. Maybe you want a little more child-like wonder in your wanton destruction of property. I have something for you! It's the Gamera series, featuring a giant flying turtle, who is, as the story goes, a friend to all children! He's just not a friend to your local real estate owners. Through a series of seven films made between 1965 and 1971 (and one belated stock footage tribute film made in 1980), Gamera fought a variety of weird looking monsters and made friends with a bunch of ridiculously precocious youngsters who were all about 1/5th the size of one of his jutting tusks. In Season 3, MST3K covered five of these films (those owned by film distributor Sandy Frank).
Series list (* means riffed on MST3K):
Gamera (1965)*
Gamera vs. Barugon (1966)*
Gamera vs. Gyaos (1967)*
Gamera vs. Viras (1968)
Gamera vs. Guiron (1969)*
Gamera vs. Jiger (1970)
Gamera vs. Zigra (1971)*
Gamera: Super Monster (1980)
Me? I love my giant monster fights, as should you.
Experiments 413 and 417: Rocky Jones, Space Ranger
"I’m feeling stupid today."
This is actually a 1950s kiddie sci-fi show that was later edited into features for theatrical release after the show ended. MST3K riffed two(?) of the resulting films, Manhunt in Space and Crash of Moons. The series has survived better than many of its contemporaries because it wasn't a live broadcast, but a fully edited 35mm production with specialish effects. It's about our hero Rocky Jones, co-pilot Winky (no joke), and navigator Vena Ray as they fly about the ill-defined universe/galaxy/solar system righting wrongs and saving lives. They're usually up against the evil Cleolanta, dictator and not-nice lady. It's an adorkable show, lots of fun, and both Vena and Cleolanta come off a lot better than the scripts would seem to allow.
You can find a good chunk of the series on Archive.org. Don't feel limited to the episodes covered in the MST3K episodes.
Experiment 423: Ed Wood's Kelton Trilogy (Bride of the Monster / Plan 9 from Outer Space / Night of the Ghouls)
"It's a sinister day in the laboratory, a sinister day in the lab."
Despite his notoriety, director Edward D. Wood Jr. was only riffed twice on MST3K -- the juvenile delinquency drama The Sinister Urge and the sci-fi flick Bride of the Monster. However, Bride of the Monster shares characters and, um, continuity with two later Wood productions, Plan 9 from Outer Space and Night of the Ghouls, so I've used that to include them as well.
Plan 9 was one film where Mom and I, not having MST3K to guide us, created our own independent riffs. To this day, we just have to say, "Bela! NOT Bela! Night! Day! Day! Night! TOOOOOOOR" and we have a whole film's worth of giggles.
Here's the thing about Ed Wood, though. He didn't make the worst movies ever. The worst movies ever are the films that are so mind-numbingly boring that talking about them is kind of tiring (see my next request). He made extremely entertaining films that actually zipped along and went in unexpected places. I mean, yes they were awful, but they were FUN awful.
Also, a lot of the flack he gets for bad framing choices is unwarranted. His films were shot, like many films of the time, in 4:3 with the intent of having them matted to 1.66:1 when released theatrically. Because people are assholes or ignorant or both, video releases of his films have been open matte, leaving in the bits that were supposed to have been blocked out by the projectionist. Ahem. Anyway.
Things I love about these films: ridiculous special effects, Bela Lugosi (even when not played by Bela Lugosi), Tor Johnson, Kelton the Cop, random stock footage.
Experiment 424: Manos: The Hands of Fate
"Every frame of this movie looks like someone's last known photograph."
You don't watch this film so much as you survive it. Mom and I have. You can, too. Probably.
If Manos is not the worst film ever made, it's a contender. It really brings that Deep Hurting that the Mads go for. Made on a bet by a fertilizer salesman in Texas using a camera that could only film short, soundless chunks, this is the epitome of "just because you can, doesn't mean you should." Bad continuity, terrible acting with poorly synced vocal performances, a henchman with a bizarre verbal tic and giant knees...
So basically, any vid that makes this look like a brilliant film by an American Ingmar Bergman will be an absolutely dream. Or maybe it's an actual terrifying backwoods experience like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (minus chainsaws, plus giant knees). Spin gold from fertilizer, my friends. SPIN!
To date, the best looking footage I've found for this is the Rifftrax Live recording.
Experiment 820: Space Mutiny
"Flint Ironstag! Bolt VanderHuge! Thick McRunFast! Blast Hardcheese!"
Mom and I still watch MST3K together in my adulthood. This is one we pretty much died during. It's a space, um, epic, about sabotage on a starship that's represented by stock footage from the original Battlestar Galactica.
Great stuff. I would love an epic ode to heroism played as straight-faced as humanly possible. Power ballads earn bonus points.
Experiment 1013: Danger: Diabolik
"Oh, God, is someone gonna tell us that something is shagadelic, man?"
An actual good movie. Phew! My definition of "good" may be significantly different than yours. However, this film has the highest IMDb rating of all films riffed on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Also, this Italian flick brings director Mario Bava back to my requests after a gap year.
It's a pop-tastic adaptation of the classic fumetti character Diabolik, a charming thief with a Bond-like appreciation for ridiculous gadgetry. Bava doesn't disappoint and we get some great visuals like the main character and his girlfriend literally rolling in money. Any actiony appreciation of the film and its visual splendor would be much, um, appreciated.
As for music: go with your heart. Or your head. Or your spleen. Whatever you feel works best. Nothing is off limits.
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