MST3K Review

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607 - BLOODLUST! with short: UNCLE JIM’S DAIRY FARM (RHINO DVD Box #1 and VHS)

Genre: Madman’s Private Little Island of Horror (S: 1960, Color; F: 1959, B&W)

Short: This starts with a great short about a couple of city kids as they are dumped off by their parents at their uncle’s farm for the summer. (This short was originally listed as being on the MST Shorts Vol. 2 tape but wasn’t there where the tape came out, and hasn’t been on any of the subsequent Shorts tapes either).

Synopsis: In the feature, two young couples on a boat cruise decide to take go ashore on an isolated island after their stumbling drunk captain passes out. Once ashore, they are taken by some sophisticated guy who dresses like Hugh Hefner back to his giant home on the island. There, they meet the rich guy’s wife and drunk partner, who it turns out are having an affair. These two secretly tell the two young couples that this is a “house of death” and that they all need to escape from there. The drunk partner then tells the young couples his plan to escape: he and the wife will sneak out and steal a boat to leave while the young couples stay there and keep the rich guy and his henchmen occupied (sounds like a great plan, as long as you aren’t the young couples). So the partner and wife take off to steal the boat but the rich guy is on to them, so he kills them with a spear as soon as they are outside the house. The young couples, meanwhile, discover a rocky basement where one of the henchmen is busy boiling heads of earlier victims. (I suggest skipping the soup at dinner time.) And they also discover the rich man’s hidden trophy room, where he keeps the stuffed bodies of other people he has hunted. (I also suggest skipping the meatloaf at dinner as well.) This is when the movie finally takes on a “Most Dangerous Game” plot as he plans to hunt the two young guys and the drunk boat captain for sport, while keeping the two girls as replacements for his wife. He give the three men a head start, then he follows, hunting them with a crossbow, with his dumb ugly assistant in tow. Out in the woods, the boat captain tries to shoot the rich man with a non-working gun, so the rich guy kills him with an arrow. Then the two young guys run into a yelling guy, who they have to knock out. The rich guy comes along and kills the yelling guy with an arrow. He then leaves his dumb ugly assistant in some quicksand and continues the hunt. Meanwhile, the two girls escape the house and run into the two young guys in the woods. They sneak back to the house to try to find some guns, but before they can find any ammunition, the rich guy returns and catches the young couples in his hidden trophy room. But the dumb ugly assistant, having gotten out of the quicksand, returns and impaled the rich guy on his own trophy mounting wall.

Host Segments:

Prologue: Tom Servo is psychoanalyzing Crow
Segment One: The session continues until Mike shows up and Tom begins to spill Crow's secrets; Dr. F is getting Deep 13 ready for his mother Pearl’s visit (but when she arrives, she only is interested in visiting Frank); M&tBs read a prepared “show” praising Dr. F.
Segment Two: Crow is running a vegetable (make that “vegable”) stand, but Tom just zooms by
Segment Three: M&tBs are square-dancing, but it descends into moshing
Segment Four: M&tBs are putting on a Mystery Murder Dinner Show, but Crow quickly ruins it
Segment Five (End): Due to the movie, the Bots are now worried about Mike being on the loose; two letters; the Bots net an unsuspecting Mike; Dr. F makes a big dinner for his mother, but Frank and Pearl already have plans to hit the town

Stinger: Guy with arrow in his stomach screams

Don’s Review: This “Most Dangerous Game” based film was a so-so movie – not completely awful but not very good either. It stars a young Robert Reed long before he became the Brady dad and even longer before everyone knew he was gay (although the super-tight shirts he wears in this movie already hints at that fact). The riffing is good and I enjoyed the film, but nothing in it really stood out for me. However, the riffing is great on the very dated short so it’s rapidly become one of my favorites. So, overall, this is a good, but not great, release from Rhino.

Don’s Rating: [ S: F: ]

Forrest’s Review: I have gotten multiple e-mails from MiSTies saying I should give Bloodlust! another chance. So last night I got out my MST3K Collection Volume One DVD set, popped in the disc for Bloodlust! and I got ready to perhaps laugh hard this time. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen and so I still really don’t like this episode very much. I’ve seen it four times, and yet, I still don’t like it that much. The riffing has no energy in it. Yes, they do say funny lines occasionally, but the riffing just doesn’t have the charm that most of the Season Six episodes have. The Short, A Visit To Uncle Jim’s Dairy Farm, is a very good short with plenty of laugh out loud moments, but the feature Bloodlust! has to little in it to riff on.
     Frank Conniff picked all the movies seen on Season Six, and sometimes he seemed to pick excellent choices and sometimes bad choices, but he usually picks excellent choices. I believe he found some better picks than Mary Jo Pehl, but I think Mary Jo’s movie picks were more consistent. [ed: I definitely disagree with you on this point!]   Every movie Mary Jo Pehl picked could easily qualify for an MST3K movie (except perhaps for Season Ten’s Hamlet, that is). While Frank Conniff did a great job finding so many great movies for the show, but some of the movies he picked just weren’t the right choice for MST3K, such as Kitten With A Whip, which was fun, but had way too much dialogue. Another example would be Girls Town. In my opinion, Girls Town overall wasn’t a very good choice, even though for some miraculous reason, M&TBs still riffed it to shreds, and so I’m glad they did that episode. But the movie Bloodlust! has nothing to work with at all. Not one thing in the entire movie. It’s not a terrible movie, but it’s also not a fair movie either. It’s just a very forgettable movie and makes for a very forgettable MST episode.
     As for host segments, the introduction to Pearl is nice. Many MiSTies seem to hate Pearl, but I don’t. True she was no replacement for Frank, but even though Pearl has never made me laugh as hard as Frank and Clayton Forrester, I still think she’s funny and I do somewhat enjoy her character. But once again, she’s nowhere near as good as Frank was. However, the host segments are, overall, terrible. These are some very lame, lame, lame host segments. Except the one where Mike and the ’Bots have to read Dr. Forrester’s greetings to Pearl, which is pretty funny, and the fact that it’s the only episode where Gypsy curses, all of the rest of the host segments were very lame.
     So in summary, the movie has nothing to work with; the host segments were awful; and the only good thing was the Short. Now remember, there’s no such thing as a bad episode of MST3K, but to the handful of MiSTies who e-mailed me, I’m sorry, this episode is still one of my very least favorites – although, in its defense, I will say that I enjoyed the Short even more on my third repeat viewing, so my rating will go up.

Forrest’s Rating: [ S: F: ]