MST3K: Ring Of Terror

Episode Rating: 2 stars

Plot: An exceedingly long bit with a guy in a funeral home as host bookends this lame story. The story is about med students who all appear to be in their forties or older trying to get into a fraternity. Our hero, Harold Moffitt, was traumatized by his mother when, as a child, she said that if he didn't stop asking for the light to be kept on the night his grandad's body was in the living room that the body would get up and give him a licking. Shockingly this perfectly normal parenting has kind of f**ked this guy up.

Short: The Phantom Creeps - The final chapter we see of this serial. Bela shows his chaufferre the source of his ultimate power, so the doofus tries to steal it and take over the world himself. Doesn't go to plan and he gets caught like five seconds later. Plus, Bela just starts shooting his men - a real morale booster that guy.

Opening: The bots trick Joel into thinking its movie sign. "What a maroon." They then have trouble hitting the button because their arms don't work.

Invention exchange: Dr. Forrester creates an oversized version of the game Operation to do surgery on Frank. Joel lights up his innards with a flouroscope, swallows a barium meatball, and plays pinball with his organs.

Host segment 1: The Old School, for really old college students. The school song: "It's a really good day for a BM."

Host segment 2: Joel performs an autopsy on a vacuum cleaner while the bots pass out. "He inhaled deeply from the carpet of life and left the world a little cleaner."

Host segment 3: Joel offers a RAM chip to whoever can say a good thing about the movie, but the movie is so bad they can't think of anything. The Mads punish them by sending a short.

End: Frank does "If Chaufferres ruled the world"

Stinger: "Weird... yeah I guess that is the word for it... weird."

Music: If Chaufferres Ruled The World

If chauferre's ruled the world
It's what I'd like to see
'Cause everyone in the world
Would take a back seat to me.

I wouldn't have to drive
I wouldn't have to steer
'Cause all would bow down before me
In total abject fear

All the gorgeous dames
Would worship at my feet
Why I could have any of them I want
Even Merryl Streep

I'd have complete respect
Of everyone on the planet
Including intellectuals
Even David Mammett

Tell me why do I have to take
Orders from this guy
I'd like to drop him in a bucket of boiling grease
And watch him slowly die.

If chauferre's ruled the world
It's what I'd like to see
'Cause everyone in the world
Would take a back seat to me.

If chauferre's ruled the world
It's what I'd like to see
But I guess some other palooka will rule the world
No, not me.

Zingers

Creepy Narrator: Some filled with happiness... some filled with sorrow.
Joel: Some filled with a creamy nouget center.

Our hero: I've gotta keep hitting the books.
Buddy: Betty will be at the cafeteria.
Tom: I've gotta keep hitting her, too.

Tom: Let me see here. See Dick. See Dick make a lateral incision...

Girl in a room full of sorority sisters: Well, it's going to start getting pretty sticky in here.
Joel: (interrupting Tom and Crow as they start) Uh, uh, let it lay, you guys.

Joel: Gosh, she's the ginchiest. Life does begin at forty.

Crow: Have you ever been whipped with a magnolia frond, dear?

Crow: Ah, where were we- I believe I had my tongue down your throat.

Professor: Hello, Moffitt.
Tom: How's the toffit?

Crow: And so all fifty-five students crammed like clowns, their aging, brittle bones carefully placed in the station wagon, with not one hip bone rising above the seat, and they kept their blinker on the whole way.

Joel: Now, earlier today I baked a corpse at 450 degrees...

Tom: (as guy grabs a book from his roommate) Give me that! And go tell your mother to come to bed.

Wormie: Hey, if you're thinking what I'm thinking!
Tom: That makes me psychic!

Girl: It's not just the dance, it's the way you've been acting.
Crow: Woodenly!

Crow: I think the only plot was back in the cemetary.

Tom: Have you noticed all these guys look the same? How do they know who they're shooting at?

Crow: Even chaufferres can't resist the rich taste of ultimate power.

My Thoughts

Nasty burn that I felt needed it's own place here. As Crow reads the Foreward on The Phantom Creeps, he messes with it a little. Best is: "'By using a device which makes him invisible,' a contract on The Comedy Channel." Particularly appropriate to me, because The Comedy Channel was so small that when it finally came to my area, the first episode of MST3K I was able to catch was, yup, this one.

This is one of those movies that makes me curious in its awfulness, so in a rare moment, I went off to check it out on IMDB. First, and most uncomfortable, George Mather, the main character who is frightened so much he has a heart attack, passed away in 1997 because of a heart attack. Mather had gone on to do production supervisor work in his later years, including Big Trouble In Little China, Poltergeist II, and a little flick called Star Wars. As for the crew, this was the first and last film for our two writers, and this was the only movie the director directed (he assistant directed a bunch of B movies the rest of his career). Incidentally, a wonderful comment on IMDB about this film: "The overall sappiness of the production clashes with the sinister aspects, making this like 'Leave it to Beaver Goes to Hell'."

Joel makes a mistake, he starts giving the "This was last year!" line about ten second early, stops, and then delivers it again on cue.

A very long push-in shot on a gate is dealt with via a panic attack by Joel that they're going to crash into it with Crow trying to reassure him. This is one of those things I love about MST3K, the way they take nothing happening and fill it in. It was done particularly well in Cave Dwellers, with scenes like the bad guys just walking endlessly and silently through this cave.

Still Store

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