MST3K Review

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401 - SPACE TRAVELERS

Genre: Hollywood Drama (1969, Color)

Synopsis: This long movie opens as an Apollo capsule called Ironman takes off with three astronauts (played by Gene Hackman, Richard Crenna, and James Franciscus) aboard. The capsule soon docks with a small space station, where the astronauts can hang around on wires and ride bicycles until they get tired of not having a window, so they then go extra-vehicular to hang around on wires outside the station. After five months in orbit (I told you this was a long movie), Mission Control Head Honcho Gregory Peck decides to bring the crew down two months earlier than scheduled because astronaut Gene Hackman is screwing up in space. After leaving the space station, Ironman attempts retro-fire to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere, but the retro rockets fail and they don’t even have enough thruster fuel to re-enter or re-dock with the space station (so the astronauts are SOL, and I don’t mean the Satellite of Love). Due to this crisis, Peck has a press conference so he can be as vague as possible and tell nothing to the press. Up in Ironman, Hackman wants to fix the engines, while Franciscus notices a hurricane developing south of Florida (foreshadowing! foreshadowing!) and Hackman plays with his food. At a conference meeting, Peck plans out the week of public deceptions and spin control. But then the Air Force proposes a rescue mission using an experimental spacecraft called the XRV, which Peck rejects it as taking too long to put together (too long? For this movie???). However, the President orders Peck to attempt the rescue mission anyway. Meanwhile, the astronauts on Ironman still want to EVA to try to fix the engines, but Peck nixes the idea due to oxygen loss and tells the astronauts to instead take their pills and go to sleep. While the astronauts are sleeping, the hurricane has changed course and is now headed to the Cape (who didn’t see this plot-point coming?). Peck allows each of the wives to talk to their doomed husbands to boost morale (doesn’t work in Hackman’s case, though) and to make sure their insurance is up-to-date. At the Space Center, they prep the XRV for launch with David Janssen (aka the guy from The Fugitive) on board despite the hurricane outside, as Launch Control goes over their ALD for the XRV with the LD and the STC doing a PSO in the TCED and the SRO all a go in C-Band (whatever the hell that all means!), while the Q Alpha Beta Plot isn’t ready (huh?!??), but Peck has to hold the launch due to wind speed (insert-own-joke-here). While busy lying to the press, Peck is informed that the eye of the hurricane will pass directly over the Cape and allow another launch window. However, this later launch window means the three astronauts will run out of air before the XRV gets there, so there’s only enough oxygen for two men. Without enough oxygen, one guy has to go, and since Richard Crenna can’t take another 55 minutes of Hackman’s constant whining, he decides to go outside to “fix the engines” (hint hint... ya know, die?!), inexplicably releasing what little oxygen is left in the capsule into space (a development the movie completely ignores). Stuck alone with Hackman, Franciscus now starts flipping out due to either oxygen deprivation... or being stuck alone with Hackman. Then, in a surprising out-of-left-wing development, a Soviet Soyuz capsule show up out of the blue (...make that red) to help. Peck ordered the delusional Franciscus to put on his helmet and then open the hatch (or was it open the hatch and then put on his helmet?), but first Franciscus and Hackman have a tickle fight. Outside the capsule, Franciscus plays a game of “Toss the Hackman” with the Russian cosmonaut, but soon finds out that the Russian can’t catch worth a damn. Meanwhile The Fugitive guy arrives in the XRV and jetpacks over to rescue the drifting Hackman. After the Russian cosmonaut and The Fugitive guy help Franciscus in the Ironman capsule, someone at Mission Control just became the one-millionth customer, so everyone celebrates. The XRV re-enters the atmosphere, while the Ironman – and Richard Crenna – are left behind still floating in space.

Host Segments:

Prologue: Tom presents Crow as the escape artist “The Great Crowdini” (...who isn’t quite as great at this as he thinks he is)
Segment One (Invention Exchange): Crow was able to escape by chewing his own head off; Joel invents the Dollaroid, an instant camera that puts a face on a dollar bill (which Tom and Crow demonstrate); The Mads invent Facial Tissue, which is nothing to sneeze at
Segment Two: J&tBs present items that were advanced by the Space Age technology of the Space Race
Segment Three: J&tBs do their own take on the movie, highlighted by Crow’s killer Peck impression (but he soon goes off-script into a Fugitive impression)
Segment Four: Joel asks the ’Bots if they noticed that their situation is like the one in the movie, but soon regrets bringing up the topic
Segment Five (End): Joel shows the ’Bots a trick called “Find the ‘Finder of Lost Love’”; two letters; an aggghh from the Mads

Stinger: Hackman is “acting”

Don’s Review: Although a bit dated, Space Travelers, better known as Marooned, is arguably the best movie ever featured on MST3K. In fact, BBI really showed some real yarbles taking on a movie that is generally well-regarded, given that some people do get somewhat offended when what they see as a “good movie” is heckled. But I’m very glad that BBI did this one, even though I do actually think this is a good (but not great) movie – the acting in it is pretty good throughout (even though Hackman’s constant losing it gets a bit over the top at times) and the drama of the story actually holds up pretty well, especially in the non-MST uncut version (which is about 50 minutes longer and flows much better than the choppy cut version that was edited down by BBI to fit in MST3K’s time slot), although the storyline thankfully doesn’t become muddled from such extensive cuts. (This is a movie I watched uncut first for my synopsis, so some plot-points I mention are actually missing in the MST version.) This used to be one of my favorite MST episodes, but that once exalted status has dropped a bit in my “relative rating system” as I later saw more and more MST episodes. The riffing by J&tBs starts off rather slowly at first, but then begins to pick up some steam as the movie gets going. I liked the early-on reference to the Marx Bros (one of my all-time comedy favorites) and also really liked Joel’s sight gag as he looks in the same direction as the characters on-screen. Some riffing highlights in this episode are during the committee meeting when the rescue mission is first proposed, the insurance riffs by Crow, and Joel’s Russian riffs. But most memorable of all is Crow’s killer Peck impression (although Joel’s Peck impression, while not as good, does have some of the best lines in the episode). The host segments are a decent and enjoyable lot, but overall are not a strong set of segments. However, I do have a bit of a soft spot for this episode (unlike most MSTies) and constantly return to it again and again due to the appeal the riffing has for me and the build-in watchability of the source movie.
Trivia Notes:
(1) Although the plot for this film somewhat resembles the Apollo 13 accident, that real-life event actually happened about a year after this film came out (and the later movie version of that story is a much, much better film than this one).
(2) This is the only MSTed movie to actually win an Oscar, in this case for Visual Effects (...which really haven’t held up that well).

Don’s Rating: