Season Two Episode Six: Ring of Terror w/short Phantom Creeps Chapter 3
Network: Comedy Channel
Riffers: Tom Servo, Joel Robinson, and Crow
Mads: Dr. Clayton Forrester and Frank w/Assistants Gerry and Sylvia
The Movie's Plot Synopsis: A medical student (and Dawson Casting advocate) named Lewis Moffitt protects his fear of the dark, which stems from a shocking ordeal from his childhood, which involved a dead body. Despite this he acts unaffected during the first autopsy witnessed by his class. His frat brothers are impressed by this, and they want to give him a proper induction based on his seeming stoicness, but things turn out worse than you'd expect.
The Short's Plot Synopsis: Dr. Zorka desperately tries to guard a meteor fragment from which he derives his destructive powers. Dr. Mallory invents the “neometer,” an instrument he believes will detect the presence of Zorka’s meteorite. Government agents Bob West and Jim Daly, armed with the neometer, capture Zorka's assistant Monk while he is trying to escape with a heavy case. While taking Monk to headquarters, Bob attempts to open the insulated case. But the case contains the dangerous meteorite fragment, and opening the case unleashes such a destructive force that it demolishes several electrical towers along the roadside, not to mention the agents’ car.
Host Segments:
Prologue: The Bots trick Joel with a fake movie sign.
Segment One/Invention Exchange: Joel takes the fake movie sign with good graces. Dr. Forrester turns Frank into an oversized game of Operation game board, while Joel presents Pin-Bolus and turns his inner organs into a pinball game.
Segment Two: JatB presents Old School, a college for the elderly based on the old-looking "students" in this film.
Segment Three: Joel demonstrates robotic anatomy for his class by autopsying "Mr. Hoover". The bots are predictably sickened by it.
Segment Four: Joel gives RAM chips for naming good things about the movie. Despite Crow and Tom trying to name something good, Gypsy gets the RAM chip. The good thing: The movie was short! Because of that, The Mads send up a short!
Ending Segment: The crew complains about the short, and Frank sings a tribute to the chauffeur from the short, "If Chauffeurs Ruled the World".
Stinger: "Weird. Yeah, I guess that is the word for it. Weird."
Review:
If you took out all the padding and useless crap from this movie, you'd have (maybe) a ten minute long flick with no scares. Who thought this would be a good movie? Not to mention the stupid insults to fat people. Terrible movie, is all.
I can see why they didn't try to put the short behind the movie more times than this. I guess it sorta feels like Arc Fatigue. You just want it to end and really don't want to give the short much thought.
Alright episode, but with all the changes to the usual formula, it didn't feel as good as it usually does. If you want to see one of the strangest looking MST3K episodes from the national broadcast, this would be it. Odd-head Servo, short after the movie. There were plenty of grat riffs as well, so it's not that it was bad, but the straying from the formula did hurt it, in my opinion. 6.5/10
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In the not too distant future
Next Sunday A.D. ....