This is a little weird, when our pal Randall Landers left a comment on the John Agar post about not being able to find this title, I was browsing through my MST collection and found it there, season 1... Even if our MST pals appear at the bottom of the screen, we can now add this little title to our big list of posts!
MST hit the airwaves back in 1988, after 10 seasons, they ripped their way through 197 films that each had around 300 jokes (or, is it 600?) each! You do the math.
Joel Hodgson plays Joel Robinson, he gets shot into space by his bosses played by Trace Beaulieu (on the right) and Josh Weinstein. Joel spends his time in space with his robot pals, Tom Servo, Crow T. Robot and Gypsy.
This movie stars Wendell (AGENT FOR H.A.R.M.) Corey, John (NIGHTBREED) Agar, Keith (
SPACE PATROL) Larsen and Merry (THE HYPNOTIC EYE) Anders. The story goes like this... A space ship crash lands on the third planet of a distant solar system, killing all hands except for a boy named Tang. The rescue ship arrives some 20 years later, one of the crew, a girl named Linda, meets Tang and falls in love with him. And, our crew encounters strange creatures on this somewhat familiar world.
Okay, so, lets get this out of the way...
This movie sucks!
Anyway, our heroes are on their way to locate a missing crew from a previous space mission, meaning, there's plenty of yakkity-yak about what could have possibly happened to them.
So's you know, the spaceship's name is COSMOS III... The poster shows the saucer from THIS ISLAND EARTH but this one looks like a toy from the forties... Whatever.
In a flashback, Admiral King, played by Wendell Corey, tells the tale of the mission that crashed 20 years earlier... Pow!, right into a miniature lake!
Back to now... We're getting ready to land on the third planet of the distant solar system!
John and the gang cross deadly streams and the like, a fun cheap thrill when one guy falls in.
They find an old mad lab full of weird shit!
It's hard to make out but dude has a big stuffed spider on his back! When the guy shoots the spider, it explodes and fills the whole place with smoke! I'd bet that the guy in charge of explosives effed up!
People get frisky, you know... But, that very cool toilet seems to be out of place!!
Joel and the Bots try to dismantle a doomsday satellite they find next to their ship and it turns them into Isaac Asimov characters. They have til the end of the show to get the job done.
The earth's a shakin' like a B and it looks like mother nature is now in charge. It's time to gather up the crew and get the Hell out of Dodge!..
Good news!!.. Washer's fixed, grab the towels!..
Anywho, Linda gets to stay with Tang and the crew in the COSMOS III jet off into space, back to their home planet, out there somewhere.
Then, Admiral King finishes his tale... The planet they're leaving is called... Get ready...
EARTH!!.. Mofo!
There you go Randall, glad to get this one under our belt, too bad the movie's so bad. We'll end with this double bill with a version of NAVY vs, THE NIGHT MONSTERS, also from 1966...
5 comments:
This movie has about the most mixed bag of actors of any space movie I know. John Agar makes perfect sense, of course, but there's Adam Roarke, Stuart Margolin, Robert Ito and Irene Tsu (whom I mainly know from one of the beach movies!).
As far as ones who aren't surprising (apart from Agar), according to the credits it has Glen Langan, "The Amazing Colossal Man"! But I've never been able to spot him.
Grant, that's part of why I want to see it, sans MST3K, of course! All these character actors together!
Thanks, Eegah and Tabonga, for the article!
And yes, I love NAVY VS THE NIGHT MONSTERS too!
Grant: Glenn Langan is on the other ship (Capt. Ross on the Cosmos III).
Randall: I got to see it many times, sans the MST3K stuff, thankfully!
PS: The Cosmos ship indeed looks like a toy, probably because it was used in an episode of the '50s Captain Midnight TV series where it was a foot-long, floor-roaming remote robot. Said prop was revamped in 1965 to become the ship miniature(s) in this movie, a design choice that Mr. Pierce didn't like at all, but when you're up against the wall, production budget and shooting schedule-wise, you take what's available...and you go ahead and shoot while the paint is still wet on the spaceship set! -KD
Oh yeah, none other than Jim Danforth made (revamped) the "toy" spaceship, and said miniature ship turned up online several years ago in an online auction/sale for which I'm sure some snarky MST3K fan bought it just to pelt with baby lizards.
Pierce had no pretensions about his films, as he did what he could with the less-than-adequate budgets and shooting schedules. In fact, while shooting WOMEN OF THE PREHISTORIC PLANET, Gene Roddenberry was shooting the second STAR TREK TV pilot, right across the street! They visited each other's sets, too!
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