102 – The Robot Vs The Aztec Mummy. Short: Commando Cody Part 1

First the short. USA energy facilities are being destroyed by an unknown weapon. The head of federal security visits Commando Cody and his colleagues to get help with the investigation. Cody and crew have invented a “rocket suit” which Cody uses for his missions. It’s just the Rocketeer suit. Using the rocket suit, Cody thwarts a train sabotage and discovers a ray gun. Cody and crew speculate that the ray gun uses technology never before seen on Earth. They focus their attention on the moon, where ‘unusual amounts’ of atomic activity have been detected. Cody and crew take their rocket ship to the moon to investigate. Once on the moon, they find a hidden city, and Cody encounters Retik, Ruler of the Moon. Retik tells Cody about his plans to invade Earth. He also tells Cody about the element “lunarium,” which he will use to conquer the Earth. Cody fights the Moon men in an effort to escape, as Retik tries to disintegrate him with a ray gun blast. Will he survive? Tune in next time! Same Rocket time, same Rocket Channel!

Now the movie. This apparently the third movie in the franchise! Shocking I know. So the Doctor gives us a primer on what happened in the previous two movies. There are some legendary Aztec treasures and no one believed in them. So he hypnotized a girl so she would dream about her previous Aztec life. So the girl was a special maiden who had to stay a virgin, but she loved an Aztec warrior. So he was buried alive and cursed for eternity. So after using stock footage for like five minutes they finally say she was sacrificed, while wearing the sacred Aztec stuff. She then gets her heart cut out and the girl wakes up screaming and they thought she died. She got better and they look around the ruins as the play more stock footage. Jesus it already has more stock footage than a Godzilla movie! They reach the bottom of the temple and they find the girl’s former body with shockingly good lighting for being at the bottom of a burial tomb. They steal the golden breastplate and leave I guess. They forgot the bracelet though so they go back. CUE STOCK FOOTAGE! They find it, but like dumbasses they wake up the mummy of the warrior. Unsurprisingly if you shine a flashlight in its face it flips out and goes blind. They escape and cut back to the current time. So they proceed to shoot new foota- Wait I guess we can use more stock footage. Jesus Christ this movie is so lazy! Okay so the mummy came to his house to take the treasures back and kidnaps the girl. The mummy wants to sacrifice her to his god, but the others rush in to save her (By rush they mean walk at a somewhat brisk pace). Oh and standing perfectly still as the mummy finishes the prep for the sacrifice. Then the main scientist/narrator shoots the dagger out of the mummies hand. It starts to strangle him, but one of the guys shoves a cross in his face. So the power of Christ compels him? So after the doctor was saved by religion they untie the girl and flee without the other guy. They go start to go back for him, but he tosses a stick of dynamite in a nearby fire and kills himself to bury the mummy in rubble. Apparently there was an informant that was involved and escaped from prison, captured the Aztec future girl and the doctor’s daughter. Say it with me here this triggers another goddamn flashback! The doctor does a thing involving the mummy for the informant and instead of setting them free he tries to kill them for outliving their usefulness. Then the mummy swoops in to save them! Somehow! It pushes a guy and he breaks down and cries. Hilarious. Watch the mummy flip tables! Also hilarious. Then the mummy carries the informant off and throws him into a pit conveniently filled with rattlesnakes. Then he walks off with his crap. Some cops investigate the informant’s hideout and everything and everyone is gone! Apparently the informant survived rattlesnakes and got away in a secret compartment. Okay then they go back to real time then just jump cut to another flashback! This time it shows that the informant has psychic powers to make the other girl walk out to his car. He uses her to find the mummy and they drive off. They go to a graveyard and look for the mummy, but are held up by a Mexican grave keeper. Whom the informant’s bodyguard promptly knocks out. He was pointless. They find the grave with the mummy and they threaten to destroy the body. So apparently the guy who was pushed fell on some chemicals and burned his face. Cause science! He wants the stuff first, and then the guy can kill the mummy. Why doesn’t he just destroy him then take the stuff? They do realize they can’t fight him so they withdraw for the moment. So they bring the girl back to the house and…Wait…was that last scene just a flashback or no? It really did seem like one! They jump cut to the girl walking down the stairs to the house and they have breakfast! Was that last scene a flashback?! HOLY CRAP THAT WAS NEW FOOTAGE AND NOT JUST TAKEN FROM THE FIRST TWO! HALLELUJAH!!! So they come to the conclusion that the informant (now called the Bat) has taken over her body to find the mummy. They are right. So they analyze the mud on her slippers to find out where she was. Apparently they have to be discrete about it for some reason. They find out she did indeed go to the crypt! The good doctor goes to investigate and after two minutes of wandering aimlessly they are relieved to find that the treasures are still there. WAIT! THAT WAS STILL A FLASHBACK! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!    Uh…Okay then they reveal that Bat had stole a body and a brain. They doctor and some other guy goes searching for Bat’s hideout and its super scientific. The sneak in, but are caught by melt face guy. They are brought to Bat who explains his evil plan. Make a robot to fight the mummy and defeat him so he can take the artifacts for himself. A lighter and gasoline would be much easier. So Bat and the Robot leave to fight the mummy. Get ready to see the dull battle of the century! That lasts half a minute. The result is the mummy destroying the robot in a curb stomp battle and Bat being killed with melt face guy. Then the Aztec reincarnation just shows up! She tells the mummy to leave now and never come back.

The invention exchange is the Chalkman a record player that plays nails on a chalkboard. Joel’s is airbag helmet. Dull. Dr. Forester’s was better. The short is not my taste. Sure I love Campy Sci-Fi, but I don’t like the old serials. The sketches aren’t funny. A bunch of red fish bones called Demon Dogs attack the SOL and pee on them. This goes on for all the sketches. This movie sucks! It’s 80% stock footage and you only see the Robot for like the last ten minutes. This is like watching the series re-cap to a TV series you’ve never seen before. The robot effect is garbage as well. I shouldn’t have even been made. The riffs aren’t even that funny. Only a few jokes made me laugh out loud and only a bit more made me chuckle or smirk. Nothing makes sense! Don’t watch it!

Episode Rating – 2/10

Movie Rating – 1/10

Favorite Riff – ‘Flora’s father held a cross in his face’ “Which is odd considering he’s Jewish.”

Possible Stinger – Robot walking around aimlessly as they watch.

Episode – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERXD-SHbwyU
Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhsFAt9ju2o Spliced in with a much better movie.

 

101 – The Crawling Eye

the-crawling-eye

The movie starts out on a mountain by showing us a bunch of guys climbing it.  Two of the guys are wearing turtlenecks…smart dressing at least they’ll be fashionable in death. Then suddenly one of the hikers freaks out, falls, and is dropped by the others when they saw that he had no head. Apparently he LOST HIS HEAD (Pun totally intended)! Okay so the credits role by with arrows pointing around at all the credits…as if we could miss the large text. Then we are introduced to a girl, her sister, and a dude. The younger sister looks at the mountain and she falls right in the dude’s lap. Then he gives her his flask. Not kidding. They get off on a different stop with the dude and they meet his friend. As they drive to a hotel the other guy offers them a cigarette and after they both decline he says he doesn’t smoke. Then why does he have them? They arrive and meet more Eye Creature foo- I MEAN characters. Okay the jump cuts are really noticeable. Almost as noticeable as a future notorious movie on the show. It will randomly cut back to the same scene when the dialog is done. The guy meets with a scientist and they talk about science, clouds, and the headless dude. This causes concern for the doctor, but not the other guy. The hikers rest for the night and bad thing they left the hotel, cause there’s’ a party going on! At this point I realized that the sister is psychic. She sees one of the hikers leave the cabin then faints. They call the fat hiker. He looks around for his friend and he opens the door to see the monster AND they cut away to the people trying to keep contact! That is how you build suspense! Then I think he dies…but the cloud moved away from the hut and towards them! *Lightning crash!* They go up to the hut to find the hikers leaving the girls alone with some other guy. The psychic sees the guys climb the mountain. They find the fat guy and he also lost his head. The sisters talk about how they’ll be leaving, but the psychic girl doesn’t want to leave. The girl flees and the guys get a helicopter for the body. They find a bag full of blood and I guess one of the hikers tries to attack them and kills two guys with a pickaxe! They arrive at the observatory and meet the Psychic girl there. The scientist concludes that the cloud has it’s own atmosphere because….I don’t know the Kool-Aid man is red. The murderous hiker comes back and he looks like he needs a good stiff drink. Not kidding that’s the first thing he asks for. They give him a cigarette and like the drink he’s too shaky to use it right. Quote from Joel, “What are they gonna do next? Make him drive a forklift?” Then he tries to kill psychic girl because reasons and he falls face first on a dog statue killing him! Turns out he has no blood! That explains why he couldn’t drink. Then he’s not dead I guess. He wakes up and strangles a guy walking past her room. Crazy Hiker – 3. Killer Eye – 2. He goes walking around with a cleaver as the non-psychic sister walks around and sees him. He tries to kill the psychic, but they shoot him. Then he melts! Like a Popsicle, he was frozen and now he’s a skeleton. Huh. To make things better they go up to the safe observatory, but one of them is smart and just drives off. Good thing they left cause the Crawling Eye reaches the place and we finally see it! Pretty good effect too! A Giant Brain with a single large eye and tentacles. And a kid is about to die! That would be incredibly ballsy for 1950’s, but they get away fine. So the cloud moves up with the eyes. That’s right multiple of them! They use Molotov Cocktails to kill/wound the eyes to stall until the air raids. They throw some, they light on fire, shot of airplane. For the next 4 minutes. So the air raid falls and the eyes die, but the people are unharmed. Okay that’s one tough observatory. Everyone’s happy and the psychic runs off with some guy.

The invention exchange was funny in Dr. Forester’s side. It was an injection to stop sweating by adding dog DNA to a human. They don’t sweat, but they start acting like dogs. Kind of funny side effect if you ask me. Joel’s was an electric bagpipe and those suck. The first skit sucks. It’s the bunch joking about the losing his head joke that the episode and I made. The robots don’t get human heads. The next skit is them extending Gypsy’s wire. Not funny. Third skit is taking about how the zombie dude is scarier than the CE. Just another confused skit about explaining the joke. Honestly the episode itself is funny enough and the movie isn’t that bad. Sadly this trend may hold for the rest of the season considering my distaste for it. The jokes were fine, but the movie was all right unlike a lot of junk on the show this one looks to have an actual budget. The jokes don’t fall flat most of the time, but I was laughing more at the beginning or middle. Joel and the bots narrating the scenes are kind of funny at times. The effects were fine and story went along smoothly. The problem was the previously mentioned cinematography and the pacing. They eyes are unseen for the whole movie and when they do they all die within 7 minutes. The episode was fine. Really lightens my spirit for the rest of the season.

Episode Rating – 5/10

Movie Rating – 6.5/10

Favorite Riff – “These four brave men!” “Ahhh!” “Uh Three brave men!” “Ahhhh!” “These two brave men climbing the mountain shall go down in the annals of history!”

Possible Stinger – Crawling Eye charging at the camera.

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXAfJ1QYQUM

Episode – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjJUkLoIPII

Welcome!

I have finally obtioned a website to review movies and such. The updating schedule for my MST3K Retrospective is a random time on Friday and Sunday so keep your eyes open for that. I’ll probably post it on my facebook page when a new one is up. Anyways I shall regularly review movies. Doesn’t matter if its old, new, bad, good, in theaters, direct to video, or shot on video. It’ll be reviewed. If you have any requests for movies just say so.