CINEMATIC TITANIC'S DOOMSDAY MACHINE REVIEW

[Andrea Speed]

Reviewer: Andrea Speed andy@comixtreme.com
Quick Rating: Good

In the second of Cinematic Titanic’s offerings, astronauts find themselves the lone survivors of the Human race.

Starring: Trace Beaulieu, Frank Conniff, Joel Hodgson, Mary Jo Pehl & J. Elvis Weinstein
Written By: Trace Beaulieu, Frank Conniff, Joel Hodgson, Mary Jo Pehl & J. Elvis Weinstein
Directed By: Sharp-Ford

This time out, the Cinematic Titanic crew found themselves a doozy of a bad film. No budget, no stars, and a script that seems to just stop, it’s a mess. In fact, it seems like the end of the film includes footage from another film just slapped on to extend a story point or just wrap this dog up, as it’s just so pathetic and anti-climactic it couldn’t have been planned, and only written hastily after the budget ran out or it was discovered the shot film was unusable. I hope so at least - it’s hard to imagine someone was so bereft of imagination that they couldn’t even finish their own script.

This putrid pile of poo was made in the early ‘70’s, which shocked me, as you’d think they wouldn’t make a science fiction film this poor after 2001. But then I remembered all the horrible sci-fi films since then, and took that thought back. Amongst all the bad science, poorer sets, flimsy script, and sexism, it’s hard to single out what’s the worst part of this film. So it’s perfect for riffing.

And yet, while the group does a great job (and there’s an introduction this time, a framing device), there were times when I felt there were missed opportunities. It’s funny, and I actually admire them for sitting through this movie enough to write jokes for it, because I think I would have thrown in the towel. It’s not even Manos: The Hands of Fate bad, which was essentially a cinematic car wreck - you kind of had to watch it, because it was so excruciatingly awful you couldn’t help but think “It can’t possibly get worse”, and watch in awe as it did, every single time. It reached new levels of suck every five minutes. This one settles on a single level of suck early, and rarely deviates from it, which is a shame. It would have been more watchable if it didn’t settle on vaguely repulsive and went for full throttle nauseating, but it never does. It’s just sad and easy to hate, like a velvet painting of a big eyed clown. The ending, where the tempo (and the film?) switches abruptly, seems to slow things to a crawl both on screen and amongst the riffers, as there’s almost nothing left to say. It’s where you throw up your hands and say “I give up”, because clearly the filmmakers did.

Available for both download (but warning, it’s a long sucker) and in a hard cased DVD format, visit Cinematic Titanic for more details.

[Richard Davidson, Jr.]

If I remember the explanation about the movie viewing that I was told during my tour of Best Brains Productions, they watch the film at least 3 times to get as many jokes as possible. This includes time for stopping and starting the tape when whoever is working the computer (at first Mary Jo) needs extra time to type out the whole joke. Then the main people, like (back in the early days) Joel, Mike and so on, would watch the film again with the print-outs and start to pick the jokes they wanted to use. All of the jokes were timecoded so it was easy to figure out where they were placed during the film. One final run through decided who would get which joke to say and then it would be ready for taping. So, by my estimation, I'd say that the normal film was watched back in the MST3k days around 7-8 times.

[Gabriel Diaz]

Andy, I have to ask, is it your goal in life to find the most left field, unknown and obscure things in the world to review?

[Andrea Speed]

So, by my estimation, I'd say that the normal film was watched back in the MST3k days around 7-8 times.

Holy crud! They're better men than I. Imagine sitting through Manos seven times in a row ... that's probably banned by the Geneva Convention.

Andy, I have to ask, is it your goal in life to find the most left field, unknown and obscure things in the world to review?

Yes, yes I do. I'm doing a boffo job, don't you think?

[Zap Rowsdower]

Originally Posted by Andrea Speed

Holy crud! They're better men than I. Imagine sitting through Manos seven times in a row ... that's probably banned by the Geneva Convention.

I probably wouldn't mind watching my starring vehicle, The Final Sacrifice seven times.

[Andrea Speed]

Oh now! That's way too much Rowsdower. (And whatever the name of that weenie kid was ... I just want to call him Wormy.)

[Zap Rowsdower]

There's no such thing as too much Rowsdower! Me and my little pal Troy provided the most accurate depiction of life in Canada ever.

[Richard Davidson, Jr.]

Originally Posted by Andrea Speed

Holy crud! They're better men than I. Imagine sitting through Manos seven times in a row ... that's probably banned by the Geneva Convention.

If you read the official book that they put out after the end of the sixth season, you'll find a really funny bit written by Frank Conniff (aka TV's Frank) about what he termed as the most painful movie they ever watched... and no, it wasn't MANOS. It was MIGHTY JACK.

What made this episode so painful? Frank's explanation went something like this - Each episode came to BBI with a timecode already on it. They were told the running time of the film (in timecode settings) so they would know when it would begin and end. Due to some mistake by the person supplying the tape of MJ, he didn't write down the timecode correctly and the film just went right through what was supposed to be the end point with seemingly no plan to stop. The writers were left trying to finish off the work when they didn't have a clue how much time was actually left in the movie.

[Richard Davidson, Jr.]

Originally Posted by Zap Rowsdower

There's no such thing as too much Rowsdower! Me and my little pal Troy provided the most accurate depiction of life in Canada ever.

"Rowserdowser... Can you please put out the fire on my head?"

* quoted from memory so it will probably be wrong *

[Andrea Speed]

If you read the official book that they put out after the end of the sixth season, you'll find a really funny bit written by Frank Conniff (aka TV's Frank) about what he termed as the most painful movie they ever watched... and no, it wasn't MANOS. It was MIGHTY JACK

Yes, I have that book somewhere ... and Mighty Jack was horrendous. I barely sat through that turkey once.

Me and my little pal Troy provided the most accurate depiction of life in Canada ever.

Yeah ... I'm sure some Canadians would say they've never seen a deep voiced Malcolm McDowell wannabe evil cult leader in their life. And at least half of them would be telling the truth.

[Zap Rowsdower]

Invasion of the Neptune Men.

I dare you.

[Andrea Speed]

And right back at you with Fire Maidens From Venus.

[Andrea Speed]

Oh, and I wanted to point any MST3K fans to Rifftrax's shorts. The URL is www.rifftrax.com, and while I haven't splurged on a a movie track yet, I have to say the shorts are great. The best ones, the ones that really remind me of MST3K, are the shorts Coffee Rendezvous, Drugs Are Like That, Are You Popular?, and Why Doesn't Cathy Eat Breakfast/Peteluma Chicken. The first two are earnest treatises that completely undercut their own message beyond a shadow of a doubt, the third is one of those '50's "how to" social films that make you wonder how the Human race survived the '50's, and the last is two film clips with absolutely nothing in common slammed together, to comic effect.