610 - THE VIOLENT YEARS with short: YOUNG MAN’S FANCY

Synopsis:  The feature is about a rich daughter who is ignored by her parents, even though they give her everything she could want.  So she goes bad and heads up a robbery gang with three other girls.  They first knock over a gas station, then they rob a couple at lover’s lane and, worst of all, they force the guy to have sex with them!  Poor guy, being forced to have sex with four attractive women – he must have been traumatized for weeks because not in a million years would he ever be that lucky again!  Once he figured that out, it had to be tough to deal with!  The bad girls are fencing the goods they stole through another woman, played by a very talented actress with two enormous talents.  This talented woman gives the girls a new job to perform:  she wants them to trash a classroom at the school, a particularly un-American thing to do, apparently.  So the girls go into a classroom in the school and they ERASE THE CHALKBOARD!  Those dirty un-American pinko commies!!  They also flip some desks over and THROW SOME BOOKS ON THE FLOOR!!  Why it’s such a mess, it’ll take someone at least five minutes to clean it up!!!  Oh, now one of the girls has thrown a globe through a window, so that’ll take even longer than five minutes to clean up!!!  Someone hear them messing up the classroom and calls the police.  A shoot-out with the cops erupts and two of the girls are killed.  The other two, including our spoiled little rich girl, escape in their car and go to the home of the largely talented woman.  She won’t help them so they shoot her and try to escape in her convertible but the police pursue and the girls crash into a plate-glass window, with only the spoiled brat surviving.  The brat is in the hospital cut up from the crash and pregnant with the child of her lover’s lane “victim.”  She has the baby and dies with the movie ending as the judge denies the brat’s “selfish” parents custody of their own grandchild (better he live in some dank orphanage than have rich parents... hey, wait a minute!)   The movie ends with the judge giving a sappy speech that parents should to turn to the church to raise their kids “right.”

Don’s Review:  This movie is based on a Ed Wood’s script and it shows.  Same stilted Ed Wood dialogue and acting, as well as moralizing and preaching (You do know, Ed, that the church also frowns upon cross-dressing?)  The movie is funny in its own dated, clunky way and M&tBs do a great job riffing it.  The host segments are only so-so, with the gag about a new country station called “FRANK” going on too long, but this still is an excellent experiment to watch.

Don’s Rating:    [ S:   F: ]

Forrest’s Review:  I wasn’t looking forward to this episode, but after seeing it, I believe this is one of the best episodes of the entire show.  The movie has Ed Wood written all over it, and it shows. The riffing is so incredibly good, it had me laughing at almost everything.  The movie was great material for Mike and the Bots, I especially love the part when the girl gang are shooting at the cops, then kills one of cops, then the cops shoot back, and one of the girls say in a surprised voice, “They’re shooting at us.”  To which Mike adds: “Those bastards!”  This line had me rolling on the floor in fits of laughter.  This episode started out slow for me, though the first host segment is excellent (it seems that the majority of host segments in Season Six are excellent then the rest of the host segments for the episode fall flat) and when the movie started, I felt that I would be disappointed, and it wouldn’t be funny, but I started laughing so much that I changed my mind in an instant.  The best part in the movie is the part when the girl gang pulls over the couple in the car.  That part has so many damn good riffs, and it was probably the most hilarious scene (because of riffing) in any MST3K episode.  The host segments are also very good, and the first one is a classic (I especially love Dr. Forrester and Frank’s theme song (“Badda-been, we’re living in Deep 13”), and Tom Servo’s is hilarious, while the Mike and Crow theme songs are so inept, they’re actually hilarious.  The only downside in this episode is the Short, A Young Man’s Fancy.  I really believe that if this Short were to be seen in a Joel episode, it would have been so much better.  In my opinion, Joel’s best Shorts are the kind that have a lot of characters talking and interacting in it, where Mike’s best are the kind where there’s a person narrating the story.  I really think that Mike is better than Joel at making fun of movies, while Joel’s better at making fun of Shorts.  Despite the low-keyed Short, the laughs in the movie make this episode an A+ classic.  Very highly recommended.

Forrest’s Rating:    [ S:   F: ]