619 - RED ZONE CUBA with short: SPEECH (RHINO DVD & VHS)

Synopsis:  As for the feature... well, if there was any doubt that Coleman Francis is the worst director of all time, I think it is settled by this film.  It stars Coleman Francis (who could easily win the Curly prize in a Three Stooges Look-a-Like contest) as an escaped criminal who teams up with a couple of illegal tire-changing ex-cons that he runs into (actually he first hides rather conspicuously in the back of their pickup truck, but they somehow don’t notice the fat guy in back).  Together, the three of them go bumming around until they trade their pickup truck in for a plane ride by Cherokee Jack to join up with a group of four, maybe five, mercenaries training to invade Cuba.  Next thing ya know, all seven or eight of them are off invading Cuba by climbing a rope and then fighting the troops of a guy in a really fake-looking beard... oh, that’s Castro!  Anyway, the mercenaries, including our three criminals, are all captured and one-by-one they are getting shot by a firing squad. (Appropriate punishment for being in this movie!)  But the three criminals come up with a devious plan to escape by asking for water.  Before escaping, they tell one mercenary with gangrene that they will drop in on his wife.  (And, boy, do they!)  After stealing a plane and getting back to America (I think), they kill some more innocent people and steal more cars before finally dropping in on the unlucky wife.  They take her with them to get something out of an old mine, but the police close in and Coleman Francis shoots down the poor wife just before her injured gangrene mercenary husband shows up too late to save her (no, wait, she’s still alive... no, she’s dead again... I think), having somehow escaped from Cuba himself. (He must have used that asking-for-water trick too!)  After capturing the other two criminals, the police (or possibly film critics) then surround and shoot down Coleman “Curly” Francis for his many, many crimes (of which, this movie is just one).

Stinger:  Blind woman stares off into space while playing the piano

Don’s Review:  What can I say that hasn’t been said?  This is an awful movie, one of the worst ever!  Nothing really connects together at all with the plot – I mean how do these criminals all of a sudden become mercenaries fighting Castro?  And why do they go around killing people as soon as they get back from Cuba?  Plus John Carradine is listed as a star and he’s only in the first 42 seconds of this film in a pre-credit scene that really has nothing to do with anything else! (Coleman pulled a “Bela Lugosi starring in Plan 9 From Outer Space” scam on us there!)   Although M&tBs riff it pretty well, the tedium of this bad movie still can make watching this episode tough to do in one sitting.  As for the host segments, the SOL segments are just okay at best, but the Mad segments are pretty funny as Dr. F gets beaten up by Mobsters trying to collect a debt Frank owes and are a definite highlight of this episode.  And M&tBs, of course, riff the short well and the goofy little knee-swaying technique taught by this short will feature later in the episode.  As an offering from Rhino, give this one a gander – but be prepared, be very prepared!

Don’s Rating:    [ S:   F: ]

Forrest’s Review:  Coleman Francis. Yes, Coleman Francis. You got to love the man. let’s go over the plot of Red Zone Cuba, shall we?  Okay, here it goes (deep breath)... okay, okay, here we go: Coleman Francis is a fugitive, he teams up with two drifters who then go to a man named Cherokee Jack.  They fly to an army base, where they are trained to take out all communications in Cuba, are you still following? Good, because this is only the beginning.  They train by jumping off of small hills.  Soon they are all invading Cuba (California) with a whopping force of seven soldiers!  (Mike: “Man, can you imagine being Castro and seeing that force swarming up at you?”)  The men invade Castro’s driveway.  Sadly for them, they are all captured by a man who was taking a crap.
     They are all put into the most cheapest, unconvincing prison cells imaginable, and there is a man with a diseased leg.  He wants water, so Coleman and his buddy’s take his cup of water, and drink nearly all of it, leaving him a drop. They are all shot one by one.  Coleman makes a devious plan of asking the guard for more water and then escaping.  Coleman kills the guard and the three escape Castro.  They then go to a coffee shop in Cuba, where a ghoulish old guy and his blind daughter hang out. Still with me? Good.  They kill the old man for no apparent reason, they then go out and kill more people just for the hell of it, and then Coleman gets shot at the end. What was the point of this movie?  Exactly! There was no point!!  This may be the worst movie of all time, beating Manos by a hair.
     I love this episode dearly. It is excellent!  The host segments are not all that wonderful, given that none of them are memorable, except for some funny mobster spoofs with the MADS. The riffing is, well, excellent – about as high as the riffing quality was in Season Seven and the Sci-Fi years. There are so many good riffs, with most of the funny ones directed towards Coleman Francis, the writer, producer, star, and director of Red Zone Cuba.  The best thing is Coleman resembles Curly from the Three Stooges (a show that IMO is neck and neck in hilarity with MST3K; it’s my second favorite show next to MST, actually). So that’s a big plus.  Yes, we did see Coleman in Skydivers, but in this movie, you get a real good look at him, as I quote Kevin Murphy in The Amazing Colossal Episode Guide: “Coleman Francis looks like Curly Howard possessed by demons from hell...” That’s him!  He’s like Curly Howard’s alter-ego... his evil alter-ego.  This may as well be my favorite episode of Season Six and my personal favorite MST3K treatment of the Coleman Francis Trilogy Special Edition.

Forrest’s Rating:    [ S:   F: ]

Josh’s Review:  Coleman Francis episodes are always going to get mixed reviews among viewers because the movies directed by the man are such contemptible abominations.  These movies are so void of anything resembling beauty and decency, that were they not so inept in execution, they would send even hardened military veterans into crying frenzies.  However, it is this aforementioned ineptitude that we as the loyal MSTies tend to embrace.  It is this that makes a movie like Red Zone Cuba, arguably the most popular of the featured Coleman Francis films, so much fun to tear apart.
      What I find the most interesting about Red Zone Cuba in particular is how hard it tries to be menacing and ugly.  The movie is like a rolled up ball of barbed wire, and Coleman Francis is right there to try to shove the wire down the viewer’s throat.  The film is indeed ugly, but it’s hard to tell how much of this ugliness is intentional, and how much is based on bad film making.
      The scary thing about any Francis film is how seriously it takes itself.  Francis seems to genuinely try to give Red Zone Cuba an artistic touch by slowing down the pacing and throwing in bits of useless, overly dramatic dialogue, most of which he gives to himself. (He is the lead character in this movie.)  Francis seems to also believe that nothing adds art to a movie like cigarettes.  The tobacco budget on this movie had to be roughly $10,000.  Everyone smokes, and if you didn’t know any better, you might think that the smoking was a major plot point or a significant symbolic element.  The scenery is always hideous at best, and everything in the movie seems abandoned.  There are hardly any people in this movie.  Francis acquires just enough actors to advance the “plot” and forgets about believability.
      Mike and the bots make quite the valiant effort to save this movie and the results are pretty spectacular considering the material.  Francis himself serves as the primary fodder for Mike and the bots, which is certainly fitting considering he directed the piece of garbage.  Some of these riffs are very funny, and some of them seem to be reaching a little bit.  The best of these riffs come as reactions to Coleman’s silly monologues, and bold one-liners that are likely intended to seem profound.
      The only dry spots in the riffing occur when the movie itself gets too dry to provide any material.  Indeed, there are multiple scenes that are more boring than horrible, such as the training sessions, and a brief rock climbing sequence, though it’s not Lost Continent by any stretch.  There is also a scene where Coleman and the gang get captured by the Cubans and are locked up in a very questionable security prison. (I use the term prison loosely.)  I hesitate to mention this, because while it’s amazingly boring at times, the escape, and the plan leading up to it are both damn ridiculous, and are riffed accordingly.
      The short featured before the film is one of my favorites, entitled “Speech: Platform Posture and Appearance.”  This short is extremely goofy by itself, featuring highly exaggerated “bad” speakers and the famous “knee test” which TV’s Frank demonstrates in a hilarious host segment.  The riffing is phenomenal, as it should be considering the provided material.  Everything hits the mark on this one.
      The host segments are average for Season Six.  There’s some good material with TV’s Frank nursing an injured Dr. Clayton Forrester, but even this becomes too big a focus, and wears out after a bit.  This is a fun episode that requires a bit of patience to get through. Enjoy!

Josh’s Rating:    [ S:   F: ]

Related Links:
    (1) The Agony Booth (Humorous Movie Review)
    (2) DVD Verdict (Rhino MST3K DVD Disc Review)
    (3) GenreOnline.net (Rhino MST3K DVD Disc Review)
    (4) Bookworm’s Episode Review