As Bad Movie Month draws to a close,we must salute the champions of bad cinema known as Mystery Science Theater 3000(fondly called MST3K by many),who made sitting thru the likes of Manos,The Hands of Fate,a humorous and tolerable experience. Whether it was Joel and his trusty bots,Tom Servo and Crow or later on,Mike Nelson,MST3K endured more bad movies than an army of film critics and always came out the other side sane,snarky and smiling all the way.
There are so many MST3K films to choose from but ,since Labor Day is almost here,the PBS produced movie, Overdrawn at the Memory Bank,seemed to fit just right. Raul Julia stars in this pre-Matrix virtual reality flick as Aram Fingal(boy,do the guys have alot of fun with that name!),a data processor bored with his corporate job so much that he "scrolls cinemas" at his work computer. Basically,Fingal's a furturistic Dilbert who downloads music from Napster on the company dime.
Fingal gets busted and has to go to "rehab"(insert Amy Winehouse joke here)for a mandatory vacation which involves "doppeling". Doppeling has folks getting their brains jacked into VR trips as animals(anteaters seem to be very undesirable). Fingal is all set to be Daisy the Baboon,when some bratty kid on a field trip switches his location tag,causing some merry mishaps for the poor guy. On the bright side, atleast he didn't wind up with mustard on his brain!
Fingal's dopple goes wrong and with his body being misplaced,he becomes a ghost in the machine. His Dopple Tech,Appollonia James(who named these characters,Prince?)tries to keep track of him by appearing to him online as his dead mom,complete with a bowl of nice hot soup. However,the evil head of the corporation decides to make his presence known:
Fingal starts trying to reprogram the mainframe computer,along with creating a Casablanca like world within it. Things get wackier and more convoluted,as Fingal's hijinks start affecting the corporation's control of reality and Appollonia is caught between a rock and a hard place in trying to protect one side and please the other:
In between all of these movie madness,the MSTie gang treats us to a nice spoof of PBS pledge drives hosted by Pearl Forrester who is out to make a few bucks to pay the ponies with. As much fun as the original Dr. Forrester and TV's Frank were,I must confess that the silly sinister antics of Pearl,that"evil gal who wants to rule the world" along with her faithfully foolish flunkies,Bobo and Brain Guy,totally crack me up bigtime. Check out this duet between Pearl and the Observer for the special,"Pearl!Pearl!Pearl!Pearl!Pearl!":
Instead of torturing you with the rest of ODATMB,let's watch a nice Gumby short instead! I always loved it when the MSTies ripped on old school movie shorts and Robot Rumpus is one of the best. Have a nice Labor Day Weekend,folks and I'll be seeing you in September!
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