Overdrawn at the Memory Bank

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Ah, Public Television, where would we be without you? You were there when we were kids, with your Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers. And you stick by us until we die, what with your opera concerts and shows like American Playhouse.

And it is one of those American Playhouse episodes that Derek and Larry sat down to watch this time around--a little flick from 1983 called Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, starring Raul Julia and literally nobody else that you might recognize.

Seriously...Who are these people?
(Side note: There are almost no pics of this movie that are not from MST3K.)

Aram Fingal (Julia) is bored at work. Work, in this particular case, is a giant mega-corporation that controls a portion of the world, including its weather, and is run by a tubby guy known only as the Chairman (Donald Moore).

Fingal likes to kill time at work ogling his coworker, Felicia (Wanda Cannon) and watching "cinemas"--films from the past that are now, for some reason, illegal. When he gets caught watching Casablanca, he is sent to see a psychist (Helen Carscallen), who determines that what Fingal really needs is to have his consciousness vacuumed out of his head and stuffed into a Disco Cube (not the actual term used), so she prescribes a mandatory "doppel". (This movie is filled with ridiculous terminology in an attempt to make it sound futuristic.)

But to get you in the Disco Cube, they have to saw off the top of your head
and install 5.1 surround sound.

When he gets to the clinic to have his brain wired, he meets Apollonia Jones (Linda Griffiths), a computech in charge of running doppels, although, as her voiceover informs us numerous times, this is her first time doing a mandatory one. This, apparently, will make it more difficult, for reasons that are never quite clear.

Once Fingal drinks some old Tang and they put him under the bandsaw, he is shipped off to the medico (Denise Pidgeon), a fumble-fingered Olive Oyl simulacrum who not only has to wire Fingal for doppeling, but also has to deal with a group of filthy schoolchildren who are being shown around the clinic by their teacher. One of the kids (Audra Williams) tries to put her mustard-covered fingers all over Fingal's brain, and another, a horrible little monster named Marco (Hadley Kay) uses the teacher's distraction to switch out the routing tags on some of the bodies in the room, including Fingal's, which identifies him as a doppel.

With his brain now wired to the Disco Cube, it is taken and plugged into a baboon in Africa named Daisy, giving Fingal control over the poor monkey, forcing it to do cartwheels and eat something called "maruba(?) fruit," which apparently get the animals drunk.

Later, while Fingal/Daisy is in a tree, trying to recover from a massive fruit-induced hangover, an elephant tries to knock over the tree, causing Fingal to freak out and try to end his doppel experience. Instead, he is sucked into a fake world similar to his own, created by Novicorp's mainframe computer.

But somehow even more uninteresting than his real world.

Apollonia makes contact with Fingal and tells him to just act normal. When that fails to work out for him, she tells him to make small changes so things aren't so mundane for him. Naturally, he decides that the best way to do that is to convince Felicia to let him bone her, only to discover that it wasn't as great as he imagined it would be, which kind of contradicts the whole premise, being as it all takes place in his imagination.

While this is going on, Apollonia is informed that Fingal's body has been misplaced, and she has to go speak to the Chairman about it. He wants to just forget about the whole thing, but Apollonia convinces him to let them find the body before the Disco Cube self-destructs in forty-eight hours, because they are apparently made of C-4 and scotch tape. The Chairman agrees after it is explained to him that letting a doppel die because they've misplaced the body could have a negative impact on profits.

But then how will I afford my gravy baths?!

Fingal, now completely insane, has combined the world of Casablanca with his own, resulting in a lot of sweaty people, a nightclub called "The Place", and a Humphrey Bogart character (also played by Julia) named Rick. Apollonia tries to intervene in weirder and weirder ways, showing up as Fingal's soup-delivering mother (Jackie Burroughs), and even coming down from the heavens as Eve to drop off the Ten Commandments of not fucking around with the computer simulation, but to no avail.

When Fingal starts messing with Novicorp's finances, the Chairman gets involved himself, appearing at The Place as The Fat Man. (Jake, as far as the guys can tell, was nowhere to be found.) He also tries to convince Fingal to knock it off, but uses a Telly Savalas lookalike to work as a bully for him.

Say there, handsome...Come here often?

As time runs down and the danger of disappearing completely escalates, Fingal keeps trying to figure out the password to Novicorp's computer so he can get himself out of there and get out of town. The Fat Man makes numerous offers, and even almost convinces Fingal to let it all go, but Rick convinces him otherwise, telling him he can bring down Novicorp and get his body back.

But will he? Will Fingal figure out the password and save himself before his Disco Cube explodes? Or will the Fat Man die of a heart attack before he can take out Fingal? Why was Apolonia's coworker, Djamilla (Chapelle Jaffe), licking her watch? If Apollonia was supposed to stay in constant contact with Fingal, why does she keep dropping out on a disturbingly regular basis? WHAT THE HELL DOES "I AM INTERFACE" MEAN?!

You'll have to tune in to find out!

Derek is angry about so much of this movie, but he is happy to acknowledge the one shining light in this train wreck of a film: The enigmatic and fascinating Tooby (Gary Farmer), a medico assistant who appears to have suffered some sort of internal head trauma, but still maintains his professional life. Good for him!

Larry was the one who wanted to watch this one soooooo bad. And now he is regretting that choice. He had only seen the MST3K version until now, and although he loved it on that show, he is nowhere near as happy with the unriffed version. He promises that he will never watch this monstrosity of a film again.

So drink your Reconst, get ready to Fingal your Doppel, and tune in to this week's episode!

Extra Terrestrial Visitors (aka Pod People)

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For the third episode of Derek's Narcissistic Month-Long Birthday Celebration, he chose one from a classic MST3K episode: Pod People (originally known as Extra Terrestrial Visitors), a knock-off of E.T. the Extra-terrestrial starring Ian Sera, Nina Ferrer, Susan Blake, Sara Palmer, Óscar Martín, Maria Albert, Emil Linder, and a bunch of other people you have never heard of.

And whatever the hell these are supposed to be.

We begin when a group of poachers (Frank Braña, Guillermo Antón, and another, uncredited guy) arrive in a quiet wooded area to murder a bunch of animals "in peace and quiet," as one of them says. None of them seem to like the others, and they spend more time arguing than anything else. While trying to climb a tree--presumedly to murder some birds while they sleep in their nests--they send one of their number (the uncredited guy) to go get a rope from the truck. On his way there, he sees a meteor fall and decides to take the group's truck and investigate, and finds a giant hole that glows red. So, of course, he goes inside to have a look.

What Uncredited Guy finds is what appears to be a nest of some kind. There are a number of giant eggs on the ground, and they're all bathed in the red glow and some sort of goop. Duly unnerved by this, Uncredited Guy grabs a stick and starts pounding on the eggs, revealing them to be filled with what looks like the same stuff they used to fill Stretch Armstrong dolls with, as well as raw chickens. While doing so, he is attacked by...something.

Burt (Braña), who looks like George Peppard, looks for critters to shoot.

Without warning, it seems we are thrown into a second movie, where young Tommy (Martín), an on-the-spectrum boy who collects pets (which he refers to as his "specimens") and demands everyone call insects by their scientific names. He gets into an argument with his father (Manuel Pereiro) about what to call a centipede, but Tommy's mother (Concha Cuetos) intervenes and tells Tommy to go to his room. High drama, indeed.

We are saved from this emotional rollercoaster by being violently tossed into yet another movie, where a singing group, led by the smarmy Rick (Sera), tries to record a terrible song. It's pretty clear from the start that Rick is not impressed with the work his backup singers, Sharon (Ferrer), Kathy (Palmer), and Tracy (Albert). He berates them and demands that they try to keep up with him. When they try again, making it all the way through. When the producer, Brian (Linder), tells them that it sounded good, Rick offers his own opinion.

The iconic "It's adequate" scene.

Having half-assed their way through two takes, the group takes the weekend off, intending to go camping and having lots of sex. But when they get out to their RV, they are met by Lara (Blake)--a woman that Rick "accidentally" hooked up with and invited to go with them.Sharon, who is currently dating Rick, is upset, and she storms off. Brian chases her down and tells her that being a lying, cheating asshole is part of Rick's act, and she falls for it. Then they all leave to go camping.

So, of course, it's time to check in with what's going on in the poachers in the first movie. They are still trying to find animals to kill, but are not having much luck because of rangers and an absurd amount of fog that permeates the entire movie.

There's probably tons of cool stuff happening in this scene, but we'll never know.

Checking in with movie number two, we find that Tommy has gone out to find more bugs to argue about with his father. While blindly trudging through the forest, he runs across the same hole in the ground that Uncredited Guy found, and he goes inside, where he finds the body of Uncredited Guy, all the eggs that were broken, and one unbroken one, which he promptly stuff into his coat and takes home.

Back to movie number three, where the group has reached their destination and made a fire to cook over. Small talk and pleasantries take place as Lara tells everyone about Rick inviting her to come with them. Sharon makes a sarcastic remark, Lara returns one, Sharon throws coffee at Lara, and Lara runs off into the woods.

Good times, if you hate being comfortable.

The rest of the group go looking for Lara, but she is found by the remaining poachers from movie number one. They make some lewd comments and she pulls away from them, only to fall down into a pit where she no doubt suffered multiple broken bones and lacerations. The poachers split because they only want to murder four-legged animals.

Rick finds Lara at the bottom of the pit and, with the help of Brian, the pick her up and move her back to the camper, despite what even the most rudimentary first aid training might suggest about moving someone who may be injured. After putting a blanket on her and trying to pour some whiskey down her unconscious throat, they decide to maybe try finding some help, which eventually leads them to the home of Tommy and his family. And his new pet alien.

Please...Just let me die...

From here, people start getting picked-off, one-by-one, and thrown onto the ever-growing pile of dead bodies stacked in the spare bedroom. Rick wants to stay where they are. Tommy's dad wants them to get the hell out of his house so he can drink and shoot at things in peace. Tommy wants his new pet alien, which he named Trumpy after it hatched (that took about ten minutes after him getting the egg home), to do tricks for him, and Trumpy is happy to oblige, resulting in a ridiculous sequence involving a Simon game, a jigsaw puzzle, a generous amount of peanuts, and a terrified bunny.

The poachers have taken up residence in a cave, hoping to ride out any fallout from being partially responsible to what is at least the crippling of a Valley Girl. As they try to decide what to do, they are attacked by a familiar-looking alien that kills the younger of the two and brands him with a weird, glowing mark on his head.

Mick "Mankind" Foley joins a cult.

So the George Peppard-looking guy goes running to Tommy's house, because it's the only one around, we guess. He teams up with Rick and Tommy's now visibly drunk father, and they go looking for an alien to kill!

But will they find it? And is it Trumpy? Will Rick be considered an accessory to murder for the terrible injuries Lara sustained by being manhandled by him and Brian? Will Tommy's balls ever drop, allowing him to sound like a male? Will this thing ever end, possibly with a very Harry and the Hendersons-style sending-off of the alien? You'll have to tune in to find out!

Larry was visibly shaken after watching this, having entered into this with high hopes that he would be surprisingly entertained, like he had been from the last two movies. He is disappointed by the poorly-designed alien, as well as the goo in the eggs. Why was there a raw chicken in there?!

Derek is deeply upset by the lack of simple first aid knowledge in this film. It's very likely that Lara and all the other victims may have survived, had it not been for Rick and Brian flopping their unconscious bodies around like ragdolls. Those guys are the real monsters in this film.

So fire up the RV, load up your innocent animal killin' guns, put on some hip waders, and listen to this latest episode!

Catalina Caper

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For the second episode of Derek's Birthday Month Un-Riffed MST3K Movie Fest-O-Vention, he chose a film that even the MST3K writers had a hard time writing jokes for: Catalina Caper (aka Never Steal Anything Wet) starring Tommy Kirk, Del Moore, Peter Duryea, Robert Donner, Ulla Stromstedt, Jim Begg, Sue Casey, Lyle Waggoner, Michael Blodgett, Peter Mamakos, and dozens of other people you probably don't recognize, not to mention Little Richard, Carol Connors, and the Cascades! It's a musical romp of mystery, comedy, scuba diving, and art theft. Not to mention the biggest draw of all...

Pensive-looking ship stewards in bowties.

It's summer! And Don  Pringle (Kirk) is heading to Catalina with his buddy Charlie (Brian Cutler), a chick-magnet who wants Don to have himself the best time ever. And Charlie recruits another friend, water cop Bob (Blodgett), to help him get Don some action/

For his part, Don is into the idea of having fun, but he has no interest in the girls because on the boat to Catalina, Don meets the mysterious and enigmatic Katrina (aka "Creepy Girl," played by Stromstedt). She is dark and vaguely European, with a thick accent. Don is immediately smitten, despite Charlie throwing girl after girl at him.

So...You have those. I like that.

Everybody else on the boat, however, is busy listening to a doped-up Little Richard blandly lip sync a song called "Scuba Party". You would think a live performance from Little Richard in the mid-sixties would be pretty exciting, wouldn't you? But no...He looks like he's not even sure where he is for most of the song.

Look at that face. He has no idea where he is.

Over on Catalina, Lawrence (Begg) has been dispatched to the local museum to steal a valuable scroll as part of a plan to rip off an art collecting criminal named Lakopolous (Lee Deane), whom Derek and Larry refer to throughout the show as "Totopoulos." because they didn't pay close enough attention.

Lawrence's boss, Arthur Duval (Moore), and his wife, Anne (Casey), spend their time trying to not look like criminals while also avoiding their straight-as-an-arrow son, Tad (Duryea), who looks almost as old as his father.

After Lawrence delivers the scroll, Don and Charlie arrive, and Arthur takes the opportunity to dump Tad off on them, allowing the elder Duval and his wife to get on with arranging a meeting with Lakopolous.

Say, fellow teenager, do you happen to have a copy of the Wall Street Journal?

Arthur's plan involves having his wife make a replica of the scroll and, after showing Lakopolous the real scroll to convince him to pay up, switching it out for the fake scroll, and then putting the original back in the museum, leaving nobody the wiser. Tad, of course, is suspicious, but as a 45-year-old teenager, he cannot blow off the opportunity to look at young girls in bikinis and go scuba diving.

And that's exactly what they do, but dumb ol' Don is still hung up on Creepy Girl. And it gets even worse when she shows up on the beach in a modest bathing ensemble that, for some reason, everybody freaks out about.

But the guys seem to like it.

This causes some anger from the other girls on the beach. They all storm off to go stand on a boat and look sad, and most of the guys follow and try to make them dance by kicking them in the ass. Seriously. That happens.

Don, however, stays behind to talk to Creepy Girl, who goes into the water and almost immediately loses her top. Don, ever the gentleman, offers her his jacket so she can cover up, and her boyfriend Angelo (Waggoner) shows up to yell at her and Don. Creepy Girl wants no part of that, and she sends Angelo packing.

Lakopolous sends one of his goons, Borman (Mamakos), to meet with Arthur on the Duvals' boat. A scuffle ensues, and the scroll, which is stuffed into a protective tube, is thrown off their boat and into the water. Whoops. Fortunately, Bob is going by on his boat and interrupts the fight. When Tad finds out about it, he checks on his parents who offer to throw a diving party as a cover for getting the kids to find the lost scroll.

As all of this is going on, a detective by the name of Fingers O'Toole (Donner) is keeping an eye on Arthur, hoping to catch him doing something sketchy. Unfortunately for Fingers, he misses a lot because he spends a lot of his time falling into the ocean.

You're a moist sonofabitch, aren't you?

The kids get together for the party and start diving, trying to find the the scroll, as well as a bunch of other junk Arthur threw overboard, for prize money. Don and Charlie find the scroll, but they are harassed by Lakopolous's men, who try to steal it back. Charlie gets punched a lot, so at least it's fun to watch. But where is the scroll?

Will the scroll be returned to the museum? Will Don realize that Creepy Girl will never truly be his because she's like the wind, baby? Will Tad start collecting Social Security before his own father? Will we get to see the inevitable doctor visit for Charlie where he learns he has all the STDs? Will Fingers ever stop being soggy? You'll have to tune in to find out!

Larry was surprised to find that he actually enjoyed this movie. He also thinks that Creepy Girl is "beautiful." (His own words.) Also, he is a big fan of Robert Donner falling into water. It's a little weird, to be honest, but who are we to judge?

Derek just doesn't understand anybody's attraction to Creepy Girl. She is by no means CHUD-ugly, but he doesn't think she is all that great, and goes out of his way to point out that there are many more women on the beach that he finds more attractive. It's kind of rude on his part, really.

So put on your swimsuit, get your flippers, and tune in to this week's episode!

Jack Frost (1964)

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Guess what, you guys! It's Derek's birthday month! (That's a thing, right? He sounded like he knew what he was talking about...) And to celebrate, he is picking four weeks' worth of movies! And he even picked a theme: Unriffed versions of movies he loves from Mystery Science Theater 3000.

This week's movie is the 1964 Russo-Finnish co-production, Jack Frost starring Aleksandr Khvylya, Natalya Sedykh, Eduard Izotov, Inna Churikova, Pavel Pavlenko, Vera Altayskaya, and Georgiy Millyar.

Georgiy is there to provide the raw sexuality of Baba Yaga.

Ivan (Izotov) is a narcissistic, kinda dumb pile of muscles who can't stop looking at himself in the mirror. He is off for a walk in the woods, as one does, to see what he can see. And one of the first things he sees is a bunch of bandits who want to rob him and possibly eat him. Most disturbing of all is that the chief of these bandits (Anatoliy Kubatskiy) looks like a Schnauzer.

He robs people to fund his chew toy habit.

When he and his bandits confront van, he makes short work of them, and throws all their clubs in the air. When they don't immediately come back down, Ivan tells them they will come fall when the next winter comes. Then he goes on his way.

Meanwhile, somewhere else, young Nastenka (Sedykh) is doing the best she can to appease her evil stepmother (Altayskaya), as is normally required for this sort of story. The stepmother demands that Nastenka knit some new socks for her stepsister, Marfusha (Churikova), the stepmother's pride and joy. In order to get them done by her stepmother's arbitrary deadline, Nastenka convinces the sun to hold off on coming up, potentially throwing the entire Earth into total chaos, just so she can finish her little socks on time.

Back in the forest, Ivan continues strolling around and runs across Father Mushroom (Mikhail Yanshin), an elderly dwarf who is so hard-up for entertainment that he asks Ivan to play hide-and-seek with him, offering Ivan a new bow and some arrows if he catches the old man.

C'mon, old man...Lemme just lick your head once.

The game goes on for way too long, but the old guy cheats, so he gives Ivan the bow and arrows anyway. However, when Ivan refuses to bow to the old man in thanks, Father Mushroom decides to teach Ivan a lesson.

Blissfully unaware that Father Mushroom has all but doomed him, Ivan comes across Nastenka, who has been tasked by her stepmother to water an old stump until it blooms flowers. Ivan is instantly infatuated and asks her to marry him, despite the fact that he is in his early- to mid-twenties, and she is only about fourteen. She refuses, telling him she's not feeling it because he's too full of himself.

Not to be refused, Ivan tells her he'll shoot a bear with an arrow to show he can provide for her. She's not keen on it, and sticks a bucket on his head to keep him from doing it. When he pulls it off, he has the head of a bear.

Oddly, it makes him slightly less annoying.

Ivan is upset, so he goes looking for Father Mushroom to get his normal head back. Father Mushroom tells him that he must stop being such a self-centered dickhole, and, of course, Ivan gets it all wrong and assumes that all he has to do is a good deed, so he sets off to find someone in need of his help. His first few tries don't work, but when he finds an elderly woman who is having trouble carrying a bundle of wood, he gives her a piggyback ride across the mountains to her house.

Unfortunately, it still doesn't change him back, and he runs off into the forest, only to find the old woman's walking stick. Knowing she won't be able to get around without it, he decides he has to take it to her. Father Mushroom suddenly appears and sees that Ivan is finally willing to do something selfless, and he turns the young man back to his human form. Ivan realizes what happened, and heads out to find Nastenka again and win her love.

Nastenka's stepmother, meanwhile, is trying to get Marfusha a man of her own. She has arranged a meeting with a potential husband for her daughter, and she wants everything to go perfectly, so she gets Marfusha all gussied up.

Maybe she's born with it...Maybe it's beets and pancake batter.

However, when Marfusha proves unable to strangle a goose to cook dinner for her potential mate, he says he wants Nastenka, which sends the stepmother into a blind rage and she demands that Nastenka's father (Pavlenko) take his daughter into the forest and leave her there to die. She's super fun like that.

Nastenka's father takes her out into the woods, which are now covered in snow, but before he gets to the spot where he is supposed to leave her, he decides to stand up to his wife. He's not going to leave Nastenka! He's going to put his foot down!

Nastenka, however, is not willing to let her father take the fall for her, so she jumps off the cart and runs into the forest without her father realizing it until he gets back home. She finds a nice tree to sit under and maybe freeze to death, if that's okay with everyone. But before she can, she is found by Father Frost, who takes her to his castle where it is a little bit warmer. He leaves her there wtht he warning to never touch his staff, because it will cause her to freeze.

They have to call it an ice castle because "frozen sex dungeon" was not
received well by audiences.

Ivan, now lost and still unsure where to find Nastenka, decides to speak to a local witch, Baba Yaga, who lives in a cabin that rests on giant chicken legs. (No, really.) She tries to kill him by stuffing him in her oven, but he turns the tables on her and forces her to tell him where Nastenka can be found. When Ivan leaves to go after her, Baba Yaga sends her cat out to kill Nastenka.

The cat finds Nastenka before Ivan, and in doing so, causes her to do the one thing she was warned against doing: Touching Father Frost's staff. She freezes, the cat leaves, and Father Frost comes home to find her as a Nastenka-sicle.

Will Ivan arrive in time to save her? Can she even be saved? Will Mafusha ever get hitched? Is the sex between Nastenka's father and stepmother as hot as we all imagine it to be? You'll have to tune in to find out!

Derek picked this one because he is fascinated by the mixture of beautiful cinematography and batshit crazy storytelling. And the people who are a part of it are totally committed to it. You've got to respect that.

Larry was surprised to find that he enjoyed this movie. He gets a lot of fun out of the the stepmother and Marfusha. And what's not to like? They're funny, and they work well together. Also, we're pretty sure Larry thinks they're hot.

So put on your babushka, stretch out your barely-working bow, and tune in to this week's episode!