814 - RIDING WITH DEATH

Genre:  ’70s TV Action Show (1976, Color)

Synopsis:  This is another movie edited together from a couple of episodes of a short-lived TV show (like episodes K09, 322, 324 – and even 306, 314, 310, 318).  This time the original show was called the Gemini Man and had an interesting premise of a government spy who, due to an accident, could turn invisible for up to 15 minutes a day, but if he stays invisible longer, he’d die.  Interesting Sci-Fi premise, though, is given the usual run-of-the-mill TV treatment, rendering a good idea into yet another lame, generic action TV show.  The government spy/invisible man is named Sam Casey (played by ultra-mellow Ben Murphy, completely miscast as an action star).  His undercover team consists of Dr. Abby Lawrence (Katherine Crawford) and Leonard Driscoll (William Sylvester, aka Heywood Floyd from 2001: A Space Odyssey).  In the first section (i.e. episode) of this movie, the team is responsible for transporting a new synthetic fuel formula that will allow cars to get better gas mileage, but unfortunately turns out to be unstable and highly explosive (I guess everything has a few drawbacks).  The scientist who created the new fuel plans for the unstable compound to blow up the transport truck carrying the formula and, presumably, him with it as well allowing the scientist to fake his own death and cover up the fact that his formula doesn’t work.  A radical group of “oil cartel” terrorists will be blamed for the explosion, which will allow the scientist to sneak out of the country with $10 million of research funds.  His devious plan calls for mellow Sam Casey to drive this truck with the snooping Abby locked in the back, as the scientist flies overhead in a helicopter radioing in to Casey so he doesn’t suspect that the scientist isn’t really in the back of the truck.  Obviously, this is a devious plan so convoluted that only a TV script writer under the pressure of a short deadline could’ve devised it!  The whole story does end with the transport truck blowing up, but – unfortunately – without Sam Casey or Abby in it.  The second part (i.e. episode) of the “movie” – clumsily set “weeks” later to explain Sylvester’s extensive facial hair growth – concerns Sam Casey investigating a corrupt stock car owner by going to visit his redneck trucker buddy from the first “part” of the movie, Buffalo Bill (who looks like a country-fried Andy Kaufman).  Buffalo Billy Bob is no longer a truck driver and instead is now a stock car driver for the evil corrupt guy that Sam is investigating.  Hmmm, Billy Bob was a truck driver and now drives NASCAR-type racecars… what other redneck stereotype can he fill?  Why, country singing and picking, of course, which he performs in a dumpy redneck hole-in-the-wall bar and which results in the inevitable bar fight. (You know, I’ve been to country bars on rare occasions and not once did a single bar fight break out – did I go on slow nights or something?)   Buffalo Bill was a somewhat “dignified” (for lack of a better term) country boy when he was a truck driver in the first “half” of the movie, but here he’s a country bumpkin so dumb that he makes Jethro Bodine look like Albert Einstein.  Sam stupidly tells Bill that he’s actually a government agent, which Bill soon blabs to Cupcake… no, that’s not the name of his horse, but the name of his girlfriend.  Well, it turns out Cupcake doesn’t have a nice fluffy center but is quite bad because she’s actually working for the evil stock car owner to spy on Billy Bob.  (Why exactly anyone would need to spy on someone as dumb as Billy Bob is never explained.)  So the evil owner finds out Sam is an agent and, therefore, rigs his own racecar with explosives and has a drugged-up Billy Bob driving it.  However, an invisible Sam sneaks into the racecar, completes the race and, together with his buddy Bill, drives the car into a field where it blows up (providing the continuity in the title of the “movie”).  Also, in this second part, a mostly dazed-looking Abby is able to magically watch everything Sam does – with editing – on a TV screen, so she can act as a cheerleader when Sam is in trouble.  (Although I wonder if she was also watching the scenes in which Sam and Bill were in the Men’s room?  Abby: “Sam, after you made tinkle, you didn’t wash your hands. Go back in there and give it the old college try!”)

Don’s Review:  Once again, a cheesy ’70s era movie makes for another MST episode I really enjoyed a lot.  The riffing was very good throughout the first segment (I especially liked the riffs about the “Patent Papers”) and still pretty good in the second segment (Buffalo Bill alone provides great riffing material). This episode is also a typical example of the almost dual-personality nature of the show during its Sci-Fi run: hilarious riffing during the movie, but astonishingly lame and unfunny host segments. Watching this again, which is the first Sci-Fi era episode I’ve watched in many months, I was amazed just how utterly unfunny the host segments are here – even the ’70s song by Servo is just a somewhat lame one-note joke (he sings about the 70s of ancient Rome, not the 1970s).  Now I know a lot of fans like the song, but I didn’t think was worth even a smile.  Unfortunately, this dual-personality would come to characterize the show, with few exceptions, through its entire Sci-Fi Channel run.  Still, the riffing is the main thing in MST and it’s good enough to earn this experiment a good rating.

Don’s Rating: