MST3K Review

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512 - MITCHELL (RHINO DVD & VHS)

Genre: ’70s-era Detective (1975, Color)

Synopsis: This cop movie opens as a sleazy John Saxon type bad guy named Deaney (played here by – surprise! – John Saxon) shoots a burglar in his home and sets it up to look like self-defense before calling the police. The movie then shifts to a police car receiving the order to investigate the burglary, but they first must carry a fat, intoxicated slob in the backseat to the drunk tank… no wait – that drunk slob is Detective Mitchell, the star of this movie! (Oh boy, I think we’re in trouble). At the crime scene, the sober cops are okay with the well-setup self-defense story, but the un-sober Mitchell doesn’t believe a short burglar could possibly use a chair or something to reach an arsenal of guns high up on a wall, so he doubts Deaney’s story as he proceeds to get his fingerprints on every item at the crime scene. The next day at the police station, Mitchell vows to catch Deaney for some unexplained reason (was he mad that the guy didn’t feed him?), but is yelled at by the chief of police to stay away from Deaney. (And we already know how well that cop movie cliché works.)
      To keep Mitchell busy, the police chief assigns him to conduct secret surveillance on some old guy named Cummings who’s connected somehow to a shipment of heroin coming in from Mexico. So first thing Mitchell does is to knock on Cummings door to let him know that he’s watching him. (Umm, did anyone ever explain to Mitchell how surveillance is supposed to work? Maybe he was too hung-over on that day in police training.) At night when not watching Cummings, Mitchell decides to break into Deaney’s house to wander around the crime scene some more, getting his fingerprints on even more stuff, when Deaney chases him off with a gun. So the police chief once again warns Mitchell to stay away from Deaney because the police are already investigating him for other crimes (such as bad over-acting).
      A hot, high-class prostitute named Greta (Linda Evans, aka Bo Derek Sr.) inexplicably shows up at Mitchell’s hole, I mean, home. Mitchell quickly spills beer on her, which, unfortunately, is the least revolting thing he does to her. Because Greta soon has oily, disgusting sex with the grotesque creature, I mean, Mitchell. Greta then leaves right after sex with Mitchell (to probably go somewhere to throw up).
      Mitchell is back tailing Cummings, which leads to a car chase – an actual action scene – with the exception of having any excitement or even any action in it, that is, which ends when Mitchell’s car is pushed off the road by a Mustang. Cummings meanwhile, meet with Italian guys named Gallano and Mistretta to talk about the secret heroin shipment arriving soon that everyone, including the cops, already knows about. (How these guys succeed at being criminals is beyond me. Oh yeah, they’re dealing with cops like Mitchell – never mind.)
      Mitchell eventually discovers that Greta is a prostitute and someone is paying for her to have sex with him. (Well, duh!) He thinks it’s Cummings, but it turns out that Deaney is paying for the hooker to sleep with Mitchell. So how does Mitchell thank him for the first female lovin’ he’s had since at least his last bath many years earlier? By vowing to lock him up!
      Deaney tells Cummings that he wants to kill Mitchell (join the club!) and they sets up Mitchell to get his car stuck in the mud so Deaney can try to kill him with some dune buggies. But Mitchell gets one of the dune buggies and chases Deaney, who wrecks his dune buggy, which explodes in a huge fireball for some unknown reason, killing him. (This, the one somewhat exciting scene in the whole movie, is cut out of the MST version.)
      With Deaney out of the way, and no one paying for his prostitute anymore, Mitchell can now focus all of his attention on watching Cummings. Of course, this being Mitchell, there’s first a pointless scene of him arguing with an annoying kid in front of Cummings house. Finally, Cummings actually does something in the movie and promises to help Mitchell capture the Italian drug guys. He sends Mitchell along with some old lady to pick up a car with the heroin in a briefcase. However, Cummings is actually setting Mitchell up with fake heroin to get killed by the Italian drug guys, while he gets away with the real heroin on his boat. (Although didn’t it just come in on a boat? Where is he planning to take it – back to Mexico?) Mitchell finds out that the heroin he has is fake and sends the decrepit old granny for a walk in a bad part of town. He then rigs the car’s gas tank to explode. Meeting the Italian drug guys, Mitchell blows up the car to get away and then kills the drug guys. Boarding a police helicopter, Mitchell heads out to sea to find Cummings’ boat. They find the boat and, and in a typically pointless scene, begin to beat on it with a yellow buoy hanging on a rope. Mitchell jumps on boat and kills Cummings’ bodyguard/butler/cook/driver and then Cummings himself (in a complete rip-off of the final scene of Key Largo – with the exception of being good, that is).
      After all that excitement (sarcasm intended), Mitchell returns home and finds Greta in his apartment. (I guess she hasn’t gotten the word yet that Deaney is dead and no longer paying for this.) Mitchell then actually takes a bath (!) and arrests Greta for smoking grass (…now we finally know how she was able to have sex with Mitchell all those times – she was high!)

Host Segments:

Prologue: Joel shows the Bots his toothpick sculpture of Monticello, but the Bots just want to destroy it (which is okay with Joel)
Segment One (Invention Exchange): The smoldering ruins of the toothpick sculpture; the Mads have hired a Temp named Mike to help out with their audit by the Fraternal Order of Mad Scientists, so no invention from the Mads; J&tBs invent the “Daktari Stool” (but barely show it)
Segment Two: J&tBs are busy off the SOL bridge doing an outward bound experience, so Gypsy is left alone and she overhears the Mads planning to kill Mike the Temp, but thinks they are talking about killing Joel
Segment Three: Gypsy is brainstorming on how to get Joel off the SOL, but can’t get any help from Crow and Servo
Segment Four: Gypsy gets help from Mike the Temp, who tells her about a secret escape pod on the SOL hidden in a box of hamdingers
Segment Five (End): Joel starts to read a letter, when Gypsy drops him into the escape pod and launches it off the SOL; Joel’s final words (and plaque) for the Bots; the Bots panic; Frank has to tell Dr. F that Joel escaped; Dr. F and Frank are trying to think of someone else to send into space to continue their experiments, when Mike the Temp walks in with his timecard

Stinger: Mitchell is arguing with the bratty kid and eventually yells “I SAID BUZZ OFF, KID!!!”

Don’s Review: The movie in this episode is a dated cop flick from the ’70s, one in the run of similar such anti-establishment cop movies from the late ’60s/early ’70s that were kicked off by the success of films like Bullett and Dirty Harry. This movie, however, is one that shows the decline of that sub-genre, because it, well, just sucks. Mitchell is one of the worst anti-establishment heroes ever written, maybe the worst ever. Why we are supposed to even like this guy is never once established. Instead of trying to get us, the audience, to pull for this character, far too much of this movie is a lot of scenes of him just sitting around on surveillance and of him lying on his ass drunk. It ends up being a lot easier to hate Mitchell than to like him. And, with the exception of the decent dune buggy scene (missing from the MST version), all of the action scenes in the movie are just plain lame. As for MST, this episode is historically important due to being Joel’s last episode. However, it stands on its own as a great episode in which the riffing is frequently dead-on hilarious. If the episode has a weakness, though, it is in the final four host segments. While there are some clever references to 2001: A Space Odyssey and Dr. Strangelove, overall the segments dealing with the host changeover are not that funny. Particularly weak is the overuse of Gypsy in these segments, a Bot that I think works only as a support character and really can’t handle carrying entire host segments when left basically alone. Although the need to deal with Joel’s exit and Mike’s entrance as the show’s host was very important, it’s still a real shame that at least one of the segments wasn’t devoted to a Mitchell spoof, because this is a movie that very badly needed to be spoofed. However, the weak host segments aren’t enough to drag down this episode, so this classic episode is a must-have for all MST fans. And although it really is sad to see the show lose Joel in this episode, it’s great that the show was able to go on and continue to be the funniest show on TV with Mike at the helm.
Trivia Note:
(1) Mitchell was actually an R-rated movie, so the version seen on MST is the edited-for-TV basically “PG” version, which toned down some mild language (for example, Mitchell actually told the annoying kid in the R-rated version to “piss off” instead of “buzz off” ) and then was further edited by BBI to fit in the shorter MST running time.

Don’s Rating:

Forrest’s Review: Mitchell is an episode I originally gave only a mediocre review for, but now re-watching that episode, I found this to be one of the very best episodes of all time. Joe Don Baker is Mitchell. This episode had me laughing as hard as anything. Mitchell was the Rowsdower of the Joel era, and while Rowsdower was bashed a lot, no MST3K character has even been abused as much as Mitchell was. The host segments are very good spoofing yet another Sci-Fi movie, a trend of host segments that appears in the show very often. And while I found Gypsy to be a bit annoying, the host segments are really good.
As for Joel leaving the SOL, I was sad, but my happiness comes out stronger as Mike enters the SOL. In my opinion Mike is vastly superior to Joel, and you must understand that during my MST3K television watching years, I had only seen a few Joel episodes when I stopped watching the show. And then I grew up on a good helping of Mike episodes, and I had even pretty much forgot about the few Season Three episodes I saw, so Mike was really the only host I had the opportunity to see. So naturally, watching Joel episodes later on Rhino Home Video, I can see a change in the riffing, and I had a hard time adapting to it. Though Joel is the host in my favorite season of the show, Season Three, that was mostly because of the movies picked for that season were of my taste, and so the riffing was just a big bonus, hence a lot of the episodes in Season Three had me laughing as hard as ever. However, I find that the KTMA Season, Season One, half of Season Four, and parts of Season Two and Five – all Joel era – were rather weak, where I find none of Mike’s seasons to be weak at all. However, Mike doesn’t do many things as good as Joel. While I disagree with Don that the host segments took a nose dive when Mike came in (I will agree that the host segments took a downfall in the Sci-Fi years though), I really do think Joel had the very best host segments, and his relationship with the bots was more fatherly as Mike’s relationship with the bots was more of the big brother. I guess I prefer the random riffing more than Joel’s punch-line routine, but you have to remember that Mike Nelson was always head writer, and a lot of Joel’s humor comes out from Mike’s writing. Joel is a very funny guy, but Mike, overall, is superior in my opinion.
Back to Mitchell. The first time I saw this was a long time a go when I bought it on VHS from Amazon.com , and I was at first disappointed because the reviews there said this episode was one of the very best, but I initially found it overrated. But, as it happens on many MST3K episodes, on the second viewing the episode grew on me and I accepted it. Mitchell is genuinely funny, and give it a few tries. What I like to do is watch either a bunch of Joel episodes at the same time, and a bunch of Mike episodes at the same time, I don’t like watching Joel, Mike, Joel, Mike, because there’s such a great change in the riffing that you’d get used to one, and then the other seems so different you’re not sure what to laugh at.

Forrest’s Rating: