510 - LASSIE: THE PAINTED HILLS with short: BODY CARE AND GROOMING

Don’s Short summary:  This experiment starts off with a short, the last one of the Joel era.  It’s about how to comb your hair and wash your face.  (This short is on the first Rhino MST Shorts tape, although without the companion host segment.  Why do those tapes not include any related host segments?).

Don’s Synopsis:  The feature is a Lassie flick in which the famous Collie appears in the gender-bending role as a male collie named Shep (although everyone in the film continuously call Shep “girl”).  Shep is the dog of a bearded old, freakish-looking prospector named Jonathan, who lives in a cabin in the mountains and is searching for gold.  After Shep digs Jonathan out of about 4 millimeters of sand, the old man finds some gold and is sure he can find the motherlode if he keeps looking.  He returns to the town below the mountain to report his find and drops in on the family of the fatherless boy, Tommy.  Jonathan gives Shep to Tommy and returns to the mountain but soon, Shep refuses to eat and Tommy has to bring him back to Jonathan, who has been sick with fever (somehow Shep knew – I guess that dog read the script!).  Jonathan shows the gold he found to Tommy and Lin Taylor, the man who brought Shep and Tommy up the mountain.  Taylor stays to help Jonathan dig for the gold while Tommy returns to town with Shep in tow.  Tommy soon sends Shep back to Jonathan.  But before Shep can get there, Taylor pushes Jonathan off a cliff so he can have the gold to himself.  Shep attacks Taylor, who runs back to the cabin to get away.  Taylor then poisons Shep’s food and the dog is about to die near a river when a couple of American Indian kids find Shep and take him back to their father, the local vet.  He’s able to save Shep, so Tommy goes back into the mountains to once again return Shep to Jonathan.  When Tommy gets there, Taylor lies about what happened to Jonathan.  Shep soon leads Tommy to the grave where Taylor buried him.  Taylor lies some more and is able to convince Tommy that he didn’t kill Jonathan.  But when some other men show up to see Jonathan and Tommy overhears Taylor telling another lie, Tommy tells the men that Taylor killed Jonathan.  None of the adults believe Tommy, so now it’s time for Shep to take Taylor on, mano-a-dogo.  Shep attacks Taylor and gets Taylor to chase him into the mountains, where his gun freezes up – right according to plan – and Shep causes Taylor to fall to his death, just as Jonathan died.

Don’s Review:  This Lassie feature with its greed-based plot is basically a low-rent version of Treasure of the Sierra Madre.  The riffing on this movie is great all the way through, in fact, just thinking of some of the riffs still causes me to chuckle.  The host segments are good too, with Crow doing a funny riff on Jay Leno (every joke is Congress and sex – if this episode was made a bit later, every joke would’ve probably been the President and sex) and all of the movie related segments are all great.  And the riffing on the short is absolutely hilarious and the host segment making fun of the short is pretty funny too.  All-in-all, yet another great episode in the Joel-era of the show.

Don’s Rating:    [ S: F: ]

Forrest’s Review:  Okay, I don’t want to sound cynical, but I’m going to have to disagree with Don and Mighty Jack saying that this is one of the best episodes on the show.  Yes, I did get a bunch of laughs from this episode, at least 1 every minute, and yes, there were plenty of big laughs, and yes, the montage scene is hilarious – however – I watched Zombie Nightmare along with The Painted Hills, and while this episode had me laughing all the time, with a bunch of hilarious bits, I simply laughed more at Zombie Nightmare.  The problem is simple, the movie in this episode is too good.  It’s not a good movie by any stretch.  There’s Pile On Pete, plot-holes, and they also keep calling Shep-the male dog- "girl".  And when MST3K riffs these scenes, it just adds so much more, and the result is laughter. But!!!!– In Zombie Nightmare, there were parts that had my sides aching, riffs that had me laugh my ass off!  I would have to rewind back to certain riffs, and laugh about them all over again, and the movie was just hideously bad, that laughs often came through by themselves with no need for riffing, and the host segments in Zombie Nightmare were very enjoyable.  If all these element add together, they deserve a 5-CROW rating.  On the flip side, the writing for The Painted Hills was brilliant.  It’s incredibly clever, and all the riffs were dead-on.  I had a lot of good laughs, and this was a fun, fun episode.  However, it did not ever have me in fits of hysteria.  Don’t get me wrong, the montage scene is a classic, and it had me laughing til my sides hurt, but in Zombie Nightmare, there were multiple scenes where is tickled my funny bone just as hard.  Now that you may understand better on how I rate episodes, I’m going to get down to the point.  The riffing in this episode is good throughout.  The short was alright, but really not one of their best efforts, the riffs in the movie made me laugh all the way through, and had quite a few hilarious scenes in it as well.  The host segments were okay, and the opening is great; plus the movie was enjoyable.  All-in-all, a damn good episode, but just not up to par with what I give 5-CROWS to, once again, in my opinion.

Forrest’s Rating:    [ S: F: ]