MST3K: Jungle Goddess

Episode Rating: 2 stars

Plot: George Reeves and a guy with a thin mustache head off into darkest Africa searching for a missing girl so they can get a big reward. Because Africa is only about six miles wide, they quickly find her, being treated like a goddess because she's white. Well, within minutes of arriving mustache shoots a native for no good reason, and everyone is surprised that he receives a death sentence for, you know, murder. Still, the goddess doesn't really plan to go through with it, ha ha, and they prepare to escape. However, Bob and his Tony Stark mustache has snuck a gun in and is plotting to sneak off early, which leads to a fight between Iron Man and Superman, during which Bob kills yet another native, forcing the three to flee into the jungle. Then they fight for a while, and eventually Bob gets a spear in the back while the hero and the girl fly off into the sunset.

Short: The Phantom Creeps - Bela Legosi plays -surprise surprise- a mad scientist with a big robot, an invisibility belt, and spiders that chase little disks. After refusing to give his secret discovery to the government, he runs off with his henchman, coincidentally picks up a hitchhiker who looks just like himself, and they get into an accident that kills the hitchhiker while leaving them just fine. "This simplifies everything!" declares Lugosi.

Opening: Joel and the bots are playing hide and seek with the forces that control the universe. Crow: "I wanted to play hop scotch with the impenetrable mystery of existence, but he stepped in a wormhole and had to go in early."

Invention exchange: Joel makes a remote control car into an electric saw, then accidentally cuts a hole in the floor around himself. Dr. Forrester's head is mounted onto a saxophone and sings when Frank blows into it.

Host segment 1: An infomercial trying to sell Bela's exploding spiders. "If you tried to sneak into a mad scientists lair and try to buy all this, why you'd be up into the millions!"

Host segment 2: Various scopes. "The Scopes Monkey Trial Scope, also known as the Inherit the Windowarama."

Host segment 3: Some British explorer types show up in an old airplane and demand mineral rights, women, scalps, and "the cute one's head." One of the Brits keeps trying to shoot them.

End: The sitcom, My White Goddess. Joel is frightening with his wig and apron. Tom is the gun-wielding explorer.

Stinger: None

Music: The theme music to My White Goddess

There was a bungle in the jungle
It caused a real big fright
But one was made a goddess
And she happened to be white.
But then she was rescued
And now she's in the states.
She's just an average housewife
But cleaning up the place.
My, my, my, my
My White Goddess.

Zingers

Crow: Yeah, nice speech, but he's trashing the place!

Henchman: You're not going to tell her about the new element you discovered, are you?
Tom: (as Legosi) You mean, upsie-daisium?

Crow: (as Legosi) Burn the file on the electric dance belt and pick up my manhood, it's under the chair.

Crow: (as Legosi pulls on a rubber glove in front of robot) Now turn your head and clank.

Legosi: Pick up that man!
Henchman: You mean give him a lift?
Crow: (as Legosi) No, I mean ask him out. Of course I mean give him a lift!

Tom: Say, did you take my red underwear with the big S?

Oily pilot: I think a little trip in the jungle will do you good.
Tom: No, I went before we got here.

Crow: Uh, don't tell them that we're white.

Goddess: When did [my father] die?
Superman: About a month ago.
Tom: My partner shot him, too.

Goddess: Obey my every command, no matter how strange it may seem.
Joel: Oh wow.

Tony Stark: It's carnithite, I'd stake my life on it!
Crow: Eh, it's already in the kitty, Bob.

Bob: White goddess getting tired?
Crow: White fascist getting smart?

All: Hail, Dorothy, the wicked witch doctor is dead!

My Thoughts

The racism runs so thick in the film you can cut it with a knife. At one point the goddess says she thinks Bob the mustache guy doesn't deserve the rescue they're planning, to which our hero says, "Bob's all right. A little trigger-happy, but all right." Could you imagine that in any other context, especially in the same time period? One of Elliot Ness' men gets gunned down, "Eh, Jimmy the Weasel's all right, just a little trigger happy."

Jungle Goddess was back in the early days, when they used serials to pad out particularly short films. Later this season would be the appearance of the first real short, X Marks The Spot, that would be used instead. For the most part, the serials died off, making only a minor resurgence in season four with two of Undersea Kingdom and three General Hospital bits. Still, it's hard not to love these old cheeseball films and the way Joel and the Bots treat them. Bela as mad scientist just lends itself to their type of humor, and it's kind of a shame we only get three parts to this series.

One of the things that date this episode are a number of drunken pilot references, both for our protagonists and the other pilots that appear throughout the story. Then again, the movie is now sixty years old, so I suppose an extra decade and a half doesn't add much.

Servo does a reference to Rocketship X-M, by quoting Walt Disney: "We're on our way!" Also, after the final skit, Joel introduces the players ala Jackie Gleason and the Honeymooners, referring to Crow as "Art Crow," which would later on become a running gag after a young viewer assumed "Art" was Crow's first name.

Still Store

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