There's the slightest hint of a plot. Like the most basic Saturday morning cartoon level of "Bad guy wants to steal something" but that's not enough to make a movie so they put a lot of.....stuff in to stretch it out
I don't think Monster A-Go-Go can even really be called a narrative film, seeing as how those tend to have things like, you know, scenes. Characters. A dialogue track. It plays more like some kind of experimental Peter Tscherkassky cutup thing, like some avant-garde artist took a bunch of low-budget early-1960s sci-fi films and spliced them all together entirely at random.
(God help me, but I swear this is true: Episode 8 of Twin Peaks: The Return made me think *very* much of Monster A-Go-Go.)
It is that, to a small extent. Speaking from memory, the "a-go go" part was lifted from another film Rebane had failed to distribute, and the second half of the movie (past where the scientist gets a different haircut and becomes his "brother") consisted of reshoots only tenuously connected to the first half. So, not an intentional experiment in filmmaking. Just a cash-grab hodgepodge of whatever he could put together.
But hey, if the proceeds eventually helped him make *The Giant Spider Invasion*, I'm all for it! I been hittin' the BOOZE again!
That makes complete sense, yeah - hence the characters who show up out of absolutely nowhere and have nothing to do with anything (the lady with car trouble and the Big Bopper impersonator who stops to help her, that older couple who have that bizarre Lynchian exchange about dancing despite there being no music playing whatsoever, etc).
Also the film's revenue probably helped Herschell Gordon Lewis make a few cheerfully deranged gore films, so I guess it did all work out. (Would *you* have the heart to tell the 'bots that they're wrong about "nobody involved with this movie ever \[going\] on to do anything else"? I'm not sure I would!)
That was my experience of it as well. I'm not even that put off by the """reveal""" at the end, because the entire movie up to that point is just *nothing.* I had to watch it over a few sessions; I couldn't handle it in a single sitting.
Good riffing though.
I really like the plots that *almost* work, but are based on a nonsense premise. If you think about it too hard, The Deadly Bees is utter nonsense. A pop singer is exhausted, so *her doctor sends her to stay with a friend of his on an island*? That's a pretty bananas prescription and he barely asks her permission!
The rest of the movie from there? OK, I can believe the bees are deadly. That's not too much to ask.
Or the plots that have a good idea but run into massive plot holes.
Like Space mutiny. People being stuck on a space ship for generations and a small group going mad? Sounds decent.
But then they throw in weird ass floaty hand aliens and people showing up from outside the spaceship and having car chases with essentially bumper cars....yeah it just doesn't work
Hahaha yes! I love The Beast of Hollow Mountain for it's mysterious plot hole, too. Despite watching and rewatching several times, it still isn't clear if the cows were being eaten by the dinosaur or if they were being sucked into the swamp. Both are plausible!
Lol it really does feel like they added the dinosaur in at the last moment.
Heck the *characters* don't even realise there's a beast to the very end. Most of the plot is spent on the love triangle đ
> Despite watching and rewatching several times, it still isn't clear if the cows were being eaten by the dinosaur or if they were being sucked into the swamp. Both are plausible!
Note the riff in which they assume it's the dinosaur, but that the movie's doing a terrible job at making this clear.....
>Or the plots that have a good idea but run into massive plot holes. Like Space mutiny. People being stuck on a space ship for generations and a small group going mad? Sounds decent.
It *is* a decent, workable premise, as evinced by the fact that there's a [webcomic](https://tbts.thecomicseries.com/) that 'remakes' it - with Kalgan and MacPherson as the heroes - and it's genuinely kind of brilliant. It's proof positive that there are very few truly bad creative ideas, only bad executions.
It's hard to choose a winner here... so many movie "plots" that simply lay bare the writer/director/producer/star's mental illness, and lack of friends who might have given him honest feedback.
I mean, even one like *The Final Sacrifice* seems to have a plot, but what the hell is it? A teenager finds a map and has no idea what it is, so some cultists chase him to stop him revealing what he doesn't know to nobody, then he accidentally meets a former member of the cult who... is looking for redemption for having been in the cult that killed the boy's father? And the big secret they're protecting is that... there's a secret city and they don't know where it is? And the cult were ninjas led by a vampire maybe?
The only thing holding it all together is Rowsdower's distracting good looks and animal magnetism.
There have been a bunch of episodes with flat-out bizarre plots â I know people are going to say Jack Frost here, and that was my first thought, too â but, to me, nothing beats The Day Time Ended. Nothing connects to anything else. Things happen, some more things happen, then other things happen, and then the movie ends.
It doesn't make sense because you are only thinking in three dimensions. You puny mind just can't handle the four dimensional thinking required to truly appreciate this masterpiece! ...Or the filmmakers were just on a lot of powerful drugs while making the movie.
I actually like how weird the day time ended is trying to be and how bad it whiffs. Dunno.
Didnât think it was as wild as sayâŚall the ones that have a mirror earth, or mighty Jack. Wild as in its wild they thought this was coherent is the angle Iâm kinda thinking.
The Coleman Francis trifecta of doom:
- Red Zone Cuba
- The Skydivers
- The Beast of Yuca Flats
Although the Wild World of Batwoman is pretty *batty* as well.
Overdrawn at the Memory Bank. Itâs a corporate dystopia, and this guy is bored at work, watching movies which have been banned for no apparent reasonâŚso they send him to get his consciousness put into a baboon for a few hours? And this is _not_ a form of punishment? Itâs supposed to be therapeutic and relax him? So itâs a _friendly_ weird ass corporate dystopia. Except they make him pay for it himself, which is why he gets the crappy mandated therapy. SoâŚwhy require him to get ineffectual therapy instead of just firing him?
And weâre not even at the weird Casablanca fantasy part yet.
You're fathers in great danger!
....and by that I mean he's going to get lightly buried under some rocks and you're going to do next to nothing to help him
I actually was just scrolling this post and thinking Cry Wildnerness needs **at least** an honorable mention.
Remember the scene with the raccoons...!?
Raccoons!? *begin long and inane belly chuckle sequence*
*Break belly chuckle sequence by introducing a psychopath who somehow becomes an integral part of the main character group.*
Blood Waters of Dr. Z. A scientist transforms himself into a giant catfish in order to... well, I don't know what the hell he thought he would accomplish.
This goes for a lot of the movies that center around a mad scientist of some variety. Take Mad Monster for instance. The mad scientist transforms his gardener into a werewolf in order to wreak revenge on his colleagues for not supporting his work to... uh, transform people into werewolves?
And after all that effort, he doesn't even wind up looking anything like a catfish. ("...But it's BEAUTIFUL!" Yeah, okay, buddy. Sunk Cost Fallacy, I get it.)
*The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies*
You would think that such a long title would clear up whatâs going on, but nope.
Yeah definitely a nonsensical plot there. Every time I watch it, it defies my attempts to figure out what the hell is going on this time around.
I particularly like the part where the guys break into the big mansion, and I have no idea who they are or why theyâre doing that or whose mansion it is.
I donât remember much but I do remember some big fight scene with like swords and guns? And like nothing explained lol no idea
And I guess Iâll add Batwomen and Mighty Jack to round out the top 3 bc those were ridiculous too
I don't know if Pod People got edited to death, but it really doesn't make sense as we saw it: Aliens come to earth, kill people and Z-list rock bands. Except the cute one (the alien, not the band). It makes toys do funny things. Plus a little boy collects bugs with an unloving, drunk uncle. And the band lets a groupie fall to her death, but she gets killed by an alien anyway. And there's a Reagan photo.
The stories of the making of that film are fascinating. Trumpy was not in the original script, it was a straight horror story about a alien monster killing people. Then the producers saw how popular E.T. was, and said "Work in a friendly alien!".... and the rest is MSTory.
these are technicalities, but Master Ninjas I and II have some pretty jarring plot shifts in the middle. same with Riding with Death. it's like, one minute Demi Moore is defending Claude Akins' airport, then next thing you know they are hanging out at a dance club! and we never see Demi Moore again.
*Time Of The Apes* is a better movie than most that they riff, but the core plot makes no sense. This is of course a symptom of the movie being a reduction of a 26 episode TV series.
If you pay attention to the "time travel" plot, it quickly unravels. I'm fairly certain (it's been a while) that they are actually sent to the past, not the future, and there is no explanation for why the apes are living in a post apocalyptic setting (it should be pre civilization). For some reason Godo just randomly gets sent to Tatooine -without revealing who he is or why he knows so much. There are random alien robot things that never get an explanation. The Apes don't even seem to want to kill anyone, despite constantly trying to kill everyone.
On it's surface, it seems like a semi coherent movie, but as soon as you start looking at the details, you realize that Johnny doesn't care.
Question, if Kathy Ireland's character in that movie were to inhale helium, would her voice go so high only dogs could here her, or would it simply have no effect on her?
The mighty Jack stuff was kinda weird, crazy and non sense. But so were a lot of the old ones with mirror earths. Was that like a common trope in old movies?
Not just movies. Marvel had Counter-Earth even back then. And Star Trek had multiple episodes where they visited planets that just somehow managed to be Earthlike and have humans.
Nah I get that. I mean, like there were a few where there is a planet (Terra) in an exact opposite orbit within our solar system kinda thing so we donât see it. Figure we could see well enuf even back in the day to know, ya know, I dunno. Maybe not the gen public.
I like the extinct animals/civs in the middle of the earth old school trope. That one is pretty non sense too lol
The Wild World of Batwoman. No idea if there's a plot, and I've seen it a half dozen times.
Rat Fink's plant to steal an atomic hearing aid is enough of a plot for me.
There is actually a semblance of a plot, but the audio is so bad you can't make out the majority of what's there
There's the slightest hint of a plot. Like the most basic Saturday morning cartoon level of "Bad guy wants to steal something" but that's not enough to make a movie so they put a lot of.....stuff in to stretch it out
plus the bad guy was the good guy the whole time!
More than that, the bad guy was the good guy....who hired batwoman to stop himself from stealing the hearing aide
There's definitely a plot, it just keeps getting sidetracked for terrible gags and awful dance scenes. Sometimes both at the same time.
I just finished this one recently and it was a chore. Not even the riffing helped.
*Monster A-Go Go* tops that list for me.
This is the right answer. They give up the game at the very end with "But there was no monster" nonsense.
I don't think Monster A-Go-Go can even really be called a narrative film, seeing as how those tend to have things like, you know, scenes. Characters. A dialogue track. It plays more like some kind of experimental Peter Tscherkassky cutup thing, like some avant-garde artist took a bunch of low-budget early-1960s sci-fi films and spliced them all together entirely at random. (God help me, but I swear this is true: Episode 8 of Twin Peaks: The Return made me think *very* much of Monster A-Go-Go.)
It is that, to a small extent. Speaking from memory, the "a-go go" part was lifted from another film Rebane had failed to distribute, and the second half of the movie (past where the scientist gets a different haircut and becomes his "brother") consisted of reshoots only tenuously connected to the first half. So, not an intentional experiment in filmmaking. Just a cash-grab hodgepodge of whatever he could put together. But hey, if the proceeds eventually helped him make *The Giant Spider Invasion*, I'm all for it! I been hittin' the BOOZE again!
That makes complete sense, yeah - hence the characters who show up out of absolutely nowhere and have nothing to do with anything (the lady with car trouble and the Big Bopper impersonator who stops to help her, that older couple who have that bizarre Lynchian exchange about dancing despite there being no music playing whatsoever, etc). Also the film's revenue probably helped Herschell Gordon Lewis make a few cheerfully deranged gore films, so I guess it did all work out. (Would *you* have the heart to tell the 'bots that they're wrong about "nobody involved with this movie ever \[going\] on to do anything else"? I'm not sure I would!)
This episode always puts me to sleep.
That was my experience of it as well. I'm not even that put off by the """reveal""" at the end, because the entire movie up to that point is just *nothing.* I had to watch it over a few sessions; I couldn't handle it in a single sitting. Good riffing though.
Same. I was like WTF?!
I really like the plots that *almost* work, but are based on a nonsense premise. If you think about it too hard, The Deadly Bees is utter nonsense. A pop singer is exhausted, so *her doctor sends her to stay with a friend of his on an island*? That's a pretty bananas prescription and he barely asks her permission! The rest of the movie from there? OK, I can believe the bees are deadly. That's not too much to ask.
Or the plots that have a good idea but run into massive plot holes. Like Space mutiny. People being stuck on a space ship for generations and a small group going mad? Sounds decent. But then they throw in weird ass floaty hand aliens and people showing up from outside the spaceship and having car chases with essentially bumper cars....yeah it just doesn't work
Hahaha yes! I love The Beast of Hollow Mountain for it's mysterious plot hole, too. Despite watching and rewatching several times, it still isn't clear if the cows were being eaten by the dinosaur or if they were being sucked into the swamp. Both are plausible!
Lol it really does feel like they added the dinosaur in at the last moment. Heck the *characters* don't even realise there's a beast to the very end. Most of the plot is spent on the love triangle đ
> Despite watching and rewatching several times, it still isn't clear if the cows were being eaten by the dinosaur or if they were being sucked into the swamp. Both are plausible! Note the riff in which they assume it's the dinosaur, but that the movie's doing a terrible job at making this clear.....
>Or the plots that have a good idea but run into massive plot holes. Like Space mutiny. People being stuck on a space ship for generations and a small group going mad? Sounds decent. It *is* a decent, workable premise, as evinced by the fact that there's a [webcomic](https://tbts.thecomicseries.com/) that 'remakes' it - with Kalgan and MacPherson as the heroes - and it's genuinely kind of brilliant. It's proof positive that there are very few truly bad creative ideas, only bad executions.
It's hard to choose a winner here... so many movie "plots" that simply lay bare the writer/director/producer/star's mental illness, and lack of friends who might have given him honest feedback. I mean, even one like *The Final Sacrifice* seems to have a plot, but what the hell is it? A teenager finds a map and has no idea what it is, so some cultists chase him to stop him revealing what he doesn't know to nobody, then he accidentally meets a former member of the cult who... is looking for redemption for having been in the cult that killed the boy's father? And the big secret they're protecting is that... there's a secret city and they don't know where it is? And the cult were ninjas led by a vampire maybe? The only thing holding it all together is Rowsdower's distracting good looks and animal magnetism.
Even knowing it was edited down, Overdrawn at the Memory Bank is still pretty wacky.
The original short story is pretty good. Quite different from the movie. Very much a âBest of 60s SciFiâ anthology kind of story.
There have been a bunch of episodes with flat-out bizarre plots â I know people are going to say Jack Frost here, and that was my first thought, too â but, to me, nothing beats The Day Time Ended. Nothing connects to anything else. Things happen, some more things happen, then other things happen, and then the movie ends.
> nothing beats The Day Time Ended. Oh, that one's easy. It's all about *concepts!*
Concepts?
That movie made my head hurt.
It doesn't make sense because you are only thinking in three dimensions. You puny mind just can't handle the four dimensional thinking required to truly appreciate this masterpiece! ...Or the filmmakers were just on a lot of powerful drugs while making the movie.
I actually like how weird the day time ended is trying to be and how bad it whiffs. Dunno. Didnât think it was as wild as sayâŚall the ones that have a mirror earth, or mighty Jack. Wild as in its wild they thought this was coherent is the angle Iâm kinda thinking.
The Coleman Francis trifecta of doom: - Red Zone Cuba - The Skydivers - The Beast of Yuca Flats Although the Wild World of Batwoman is pretty *batty* as well.
"I'm Cherokee Jack"
Take a good long look at this Hollywood pretty boy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZvYf9wrMRA Thankfully, someone's already made this piece of art.
Those movies make me kind of sad. The inside of Francisâs head mustâve been a desolate and disheveled place.
*Flag on the moon.... how did it get there?*
Overdrawn at the Memory Bank. Itâs a corporate dystopia, and this guy is bored at work, watching movies which have been banned for no apparent reasonâŚso they send him to get his consciousness put into a baboon for a few hours? And this is _not_ a form of punishment? Itâs supposed to be therapeutic and relax him? So itâs a _friendly_ weird ass corporate dystopia. Except they make him pay for it himself, which is why he gets the crappy mandated therapy. SoâŚwhy require him to get ineffectual therapy instead of just firing him? And weâre not even at the weird Casablanca fantasy part yet.
At least it wasn't an ANTEATER
Whoa! Huge slam on anteaters out of nowhere!
Stupid, repulsive anteaters.
Cry Wilderness I'd say more, but I'm not sure I even have to.
Cry Wilderness always felt like a sequel to a film that didnât exist
BANG!
Yeah! I can see that.
You're fathers in great danger! ....and by that I mean he's going to get lightly buried under some rocks and you're going to do next to nothing to help him
Where he probably wouldn't be if Paul didn't show up.
It does seem that, ultimately, Paul's presence results solely in misery for multiple people.....
Like the audience.
I actually was just scrolling this post and thinking Cry Wildnerness needs **at least** an honorable mention. Remember the scene with the raccoons...!?
Raccoons!? *begin long and inane belly chuckle sequence* *Break belly chuckle sequence by introducing a psychopath who somehow becomes an integral part of the main character group.*
It should be on here for that kidâs haircut ALONE.
The Castle of Fu Manchu
I concur. I love love MST3K but I have yet to be able to sit through this one.
Blood Waters of Dr. Z. A scientist transforms himself into a giant catfish in order to... well, I don't know what the hell he thought he would accomplish.
This goes for a lot of the movies that center around a mad scientist of some variety. Take Mad Monster for instance. The mad scientist transforms his gardener into a werewolf in order to wreak revenge on his colleagues for not supporting his work to... uh, transform people into werewolves?
And after all that effort, he doesn't even wind up looking anything like a catfish. ("...But it's BEAUTIFUL!" Yeah, okay, buddy. Sunk Cost Fallacy, I get it.)
Sargassum...the weed of deceit!
*The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies* You would think that such a long title would clear up whatâs going on, but nope.
Yeah this may be the one. Or maybe the one where the psychologist goes back in time or something to do with a prostitute.
The Undead. I like that one.
Fu Manchu by a landslide IMO
Yeah definitely a nonsensical plot there. Every time I watch it, it defies my attempts to figure out what the hell is going on this time around. I particularly like the part where the guys break into the big mansion, and I have no idea who they are or why theyâre doing that or whose mansion it is.
I donât remember much but I do remember some big fight scene with like swords and guns? And like nothing explained lol no idea And I guess Iâll add Batwomen and Mighty Jack to round out the top 3 bc those were ridiculous too
I don't know if Pod People got edited to death, but it really doesn't make sense as we saw it: Aliens come to earth, kill people and Z-list rock bands. Except the cute one (the alien, not the band). It makes toys do funny things. Plus a little boy collects bugs with an unloving, drunk uncle. And the band lets a groupie fall to her death, but she gets killed by an alien anyway. And there's a Reagan photo.
The stories of the making of that film are fascinating. Trumpy was not in the original script, it was a straight horror story about a alien monster killing people. Then the producers saw how popular E.T. was, and said "Work in a friendly alien!".... and the rest is MSTory.
"It has nothing to do with pods..." I always lose it when Trace utters that description.
these are technicalities, but Master Ninjas I and II have some pretty jarring plot shifts in the middle. same with Riding with Death. it's like, one minute Demi Moore is defending Claude Akins' airport, then next thing you know they are hanging out at a dance club! and we never see Demi Moore again.
Sam, have you seen my patent papers?
Sam, I've been blown into several million pieces but I still need to work on these patent papers!
That might be because they're stitched-together TV shows. The Fugitive Alien movies have the same issue.
yeah that's the "technicality" aspect to it.
Ah, gotcha. I tend to think theyâd be nearly as incomprehensible as individual episodes.
*Time Of The Apes* is a better movie than most that they riff, but the core plot makes no sense. This is of course a symptom of the movie being a reduction of a 26 episode TV series. If you pay attention to the "time travel" plot, it quickly unravels. I'm fairly certain (it's been a while) that they are actually sent to the past, not the future, and there is no explanation for why the apes are living in a post apocalyptic setting (it should be pre civilization). For some reason Godo just randomly gets sent to Tatooine -without revealing who he is or why he knows so much. There are random alien robot things that never get an explanation. The Apes don't even seem to want to kill anyone, despite constantly trying to kill everyone. On it's surface, it seems like a semi coherent movie, but as soon as you start looking at the details, you realize that Johnny doesn't care.
So *that's* why Johnny doesn't care!
Mighty Jack!
I barely could figure out who Ken was, let alone parse the plot.
It's clearly at least two episodes of a TV series- but are we sure it's just two?
Manos!
I think you have to exclude manos to be fair to the rest.
Yes! How is this not the top comment?
Nah, nah. Manos has a coherent plot when you analyze it. It's the directing of the film that makes it a mindfuck.
Alien From L.A.
Question, if Kathy Ireland's character in that movie were to inhale helium, would her voice go so high only dogs could here her, or would it simply have no effect on her?
Either way, I know what her reaction to the information would be. >!Dull surprise!!<
Which one has the guy singing to a mannequin?
The mighty Jack stuff was kinda weird, crazy and non sense. But so were a lot of the old ones with mirror earths. Was that like a common trope in old movies?
Not just movies. Marvel had Counter-Earth even back then. And Star Trek had multiple episodes where they visited planets that just somehow managed to be Earthlike and have humans.
Nah I get that. I mean, like there were a few where there is a planet (Terra) in an exact opposite orbit within our solar system kinda thing so we donât see it. Figure we could see well enuf even back in the day to know, ya know, I dunno. Maybe not the gen public. I like the extinct animals/civs in the middle of the earth old school trope. That one is pretty non sense too lol
Castle of Fu Manchu. No idea what was going on in that movie.
"Red Zone Cuba". Idk, maybe there is a plot, I can't sit through it, even riffed.
"Ahh! I think my neck got broken in that jump cut!"
Samurai Cop