MST3K-OZ #10 8 July 1998 Welcome to the tenth issue of the Antipodean MSTie Newsletter! As always, anyone who wants to get off this bus, let me know. If you know someone else who might want to see this, please get them to e-mail me to add them to the list. I won't add anyone who doesn't request it directly. Feel free to print this, show it to your friends, blow your nose on it - whatever works for you. Remember, this effort works best as a co-operative effort. If you've got something you want to share with us all, even if it's only a paragraph long, send it to me and I'll include it! I'm not fussy! As long as it's got something vaguely to do with MST3K and is somehow relevant to us, I'm happy to see it! As an editor I have a pretty relaxed style . -------------------------------------- A CONTEST Due to a small mixup in my last order from the Info Club, I found myself with an additional copy of each of the Rhino "Manos" and "Gunslinger" tapes, and a Tom Servo "I'm Huge!" t-shirt. Barbbb advised that I should not bother sending them back, and I should use the extra stuff to help needy MSTies Down Under somehow. OK, thinks I. But how to make two tapes and one t-shirt fit around this big brown continent of ours? And how come I never really have enough new stuff to put in this newsletter? Wait a minute .... Announcing the first ever Oz-MSTie newsletter contest! How to enter: send me something to include in the newsletter. Something meaty, chewy or at least something that lies fizzy on the tongue. Be original! Be verbose! Be in ASCII format! I don't really care what it is, just make it *good*, relevant to MST3K in some way, and (hopefully) something of interest to everyone. I'll choose the best three, who will each get one of the three items available. Note that the tapes are NTSC format, and the t-shirt is XL size. Please state your preferred prize order with your entry, otherwise I'll just randomly pick it. Roolz: well, in the interests of promoting local talent, the contest is open to Australian and NZ folk only. Sorry about you US guys, but if you knew the state of our dollar, you'd realise it would be cheaper for you to buy a new tape or shirt than it would cost me to post it to you! (You can still send me articles any way! I'll be ever so grateful!) If this doesn't give me material, I don't know what will .... ------------------------------------- WE'RE ON THE WEB! Quintas has been working hard and has updated our Web site! I think it looks spiffy, if still a little sparse. But it's young, it'll grow! Visit http://www.fortunecity.com/lavendar/pimlico/131/oz.html! You know you want to! This is a site in continual development, so mind the girders and don't step in the paint! Suggestions for improvements always welcome! If you have any great ideas, or material to contribute, please forward them to Quintas (syntax@picknowl.com.au). -------------------------------------- JUNE MELBOURNE GATHERING REPORT June actually saw a couple of Gatherings, as I make a noble effort to wade through the backlog of MST tapes that I've collected in the last few weeks (see last month's newsletter). Early in June was an intimate meeting of Dean, Tina and myself to watch episodes 101 "The Crawling Eye" and 102 "The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy" - the latter episode also featuring the first breath-taking installment of "Radar Men From The Moon". "The Crawling Eye" tells us that if you go skiing in Switzerland, huge alien eyeballs will take control of your mind! Actually it's not really that bad a movie. "Aztec Mummy" however is a genuine stinker. It doesn't really have a plot as such, it's just an excuse for people to run around shooting at each other, looking for an ancient Inca treasure guarded by a Mummy who just won't quit. Don't hold your breath waiting for the Robot, though, he doesn't turn up until near the end and really wasn't worth waiting for. A more accurate title for the movie would be something like "Aztec Mummy Kicks Pathetic Robot's Arse". As for "Radar Men", it's up to Commando Cody and his nipple-twisting rocket suit to save the Earth from fashion victims from the Moon! It's a good thing that the Moon has lots of gravity and heat and air and stuff, so nobody has to worry about the fact that no-one has invented space suits yet. To be continued! The next week was another relatively sparsely-attended meeting of Alison, Dean, newcomer Dale (?) and myself where we watched 103 "Mad Monster" and 105 "The Corpse Vanishes". (What happened to 104? I have *two* copies of "Women From The Prehistoric Planet" and both of them are out on loan. So much for the plan to watch every episode in order.) "Mad Monster" details the amazingly logical plan of a mad scientist to create a werewolf by injecting a village idiot with wolf blood. Why does he want to do this? So he can kill the scientists who told him that he wouldn't be able to do it! Featuring an amazingly unconvincing (and yet strangely obedient) werewolf, everybody in this film is really rather pathetic. Also featured: Part 2 of "Radar Men From The Moon"! "The Corpse Vanishes" demonstrates that Bela Lugosi was really just a hack, as he stars as a mad scientist who kidnaps beautiful women just as they're about to be married and drains their, ahem, virgin life force so he can make his nagging, shrewish wife young and beautiful again. Well, young again, any way. Young-ish. OK, it doesn't seem to help at all. Maybe his methods would work better if he kidnapped *actual* virgins, you know, nuns or something. It's not like kidnapping a bride-to-be *at the wedding ceremony* is inconspicuous or anything, right? I take it back - he's not a *mad* scientist, he's a *stupid* scientist. And you can't blame the drugs and decline of his acting career - this film was made only a few years after "Dracula". Sad, really. Also featured: Part 3 of "Radar Men From The Moon"! How will Commando Cody get out of *this* predicament? Stay tuned! Tentative next gathering date: 18 July (with various supplementary gatherings as well, hopefully). Mark your calendars! "A platypus?" ------------------------------------- REVIEW Rocket Attack USA Oh my God, this movie bites. Imagine a movie that's directed by Ed Wood, written and produced by Coleman Francis and starring the cast of the Myer Christmas Window displays. Well, such a movie would be ten times the film *this* one is. The situation? Remember the Cold War? You know, the one where everyone didn't die in a horrible nuclear war? OK, well, forget that, because it has nothing to do with this movie, which poses an eery "what if" scenario - "what if everyone in the world were wooden actors in charge of nuclear missiles?" The chilling conclusion: Soviet generals, although demonstrating a tendency to fall into catatonic stupours from drinking too much vodka while raping beautiful young women, are much smarter than earnest, well-meaning US generals in charge of scientists who couldn't build a functioning rocket out of toilet rolls and lighter fluid. The result: the mighty Soviet nuclear arsenal (one small warhead) is launched at the United States (defensive arsenal: nothing. Zip. Not a brass razoo), or more specifically, New York! Oh, the humanity. It's kind of implied that everyone dies and the Soviet Union conquers the world, but given the inspired leadership demonstrated by the people of the free world, it's probably a good thing, really. Also presented: Episode 2 of "The Phantom Creeps". This one stars Bela Lugosi yet again, and nope, he isn't any better in this than he was in "The Corpse Vanishes". Not having yet seen Episode 1, I'm not really sure what it's supposed to be about - something to do with him being invisible and killing people with big rubber spiders. Kind of bizarre, really. I was particularly amused by the scene depicting several people parachuting out of a crashing airplane, except for Our Hero - but since the total effect of the crash is only to make his suit a bit rumpled, one wonders why everyone was so anxious to jump out in the first place. Notable for featuring a robot even more goofy than the one in "Robot Monster vs the Aztec Mummy", something I wouldn't have thought possible. Meanwhile, on the SOL, Joel gives Tom Servo a "haircut". Curiously, the result of this stays throughout the whole episode (Tom's head becomes kind of thin and cylindrical). Joel describes the paranoia rampant in the US during the '50s during his discussion of the sordid "Charlie McCarthy" hearings, when too many "innocent" television puppets were revealed to be Soviet infiltrators! Good thing we don't have any of those stinking Commie-lovin' puppets on our favourite TV show, right?! Also, in a curious prediction of the unfortunate Mir, the Soviet SOL swings by for a visit. Nothing works on it. (I wonder what movies *they* have to watch?) ------------------------------------- That's it for this time around. Please let me know about anything you liked (or didn't like)! Keep those cards and letters coming! Time to push the button .... Bruce MSTie #72759 Any of these e-mail addresses will get to me, all are checked regularly: bprobst@vitgbsd3.telstra.com.au -- work bprobst@ibm.net -- home generic internet