902 - THE PHANTOM PLANET

Genre:  Very Dated Space Flight Sci-Fi (1961, B&W)

Don’s Synopsis:  In the way-off, far-future date of 1980, the odd-looking Captain Frank Chapman and his good-and-beautiful loving navigator Lieutenant Ray Makonnen are in a rocketship investigating the disappearance of another rocketship in the same area of space.  They run into a Cracker Jacks shower and suffer some sort of damage to their rocketship.  So both go outside the ship, untethered, to repair the damage.  Some scratches on the film, though, suddenly appear and knock out Frank.  Ray succeeds in pushing Frank back into the rocketship when another scratch on the film knocks him off the rocket and he floats away into space.  Frank regains consciousness and records a message when a very large Cracker Jack (or is it a giant Chicken Finger?) appears and pulls his rocketship onto its surface.  There, he walks out in his suit and collapses to the ground, where he sees 6 inch tall people.  He, for some reason, opens his mask and, once he breathes the air there, also shrinks to 6 inches tall.  The Little People take him prisoner and have a trial in which they pronounce him guilty of something, which means he’ll have to stay there and can never leave.  Sesom, the old leader of the Little People, offers Frank a choice between his daughter, Liara (played by the Leech Women herself, Coleen Gray), or the mute Zetha (who looks like a young Liz Taylor) as possible brides.  But another guy named Herron has a thing for Liara and is jealous of the time she is spending with Frank.  Herron challenges Frank to a “duel to the death” of sorts, in which they use an iron see-saw bar to try to push each other onto deadly disintegration plates.  Frank wins but spares Herron’s life at the last moment.  The little people tell Frank that their planet (Chicken Tender?) is named Rehton and that they control gravity and are at war with the dog-faced Solanites (who apparently think their planet is a giant chew-toy).  They have one Solanite (played by an unrecognizable Richard Kiel!) as a prisoner, who is there solely so he can later escape and terrorize the women.  Next thing you know, the Solanites are attacking in their ships of burning... popcorn (I think).  Sesom, by moving his hands over some glass cups succeeds in repelling the attack and everyone is relieved – after all, no one likes that burnt popcorn smell.  But damage from the attack, of course, releases the Solanite prisoner and it terrorizes Zetha, causing the mute girl to scream for the first time.  Frank and Herron fight the Solanite and succeed in pushing it onto one of the disintegration plates, where it is destroyed.  Now because she screamed, Zetha can talk and she and Frank are in love.  But Herron then has a secret plan to get Frank off their planet by putting him back in his suit – where exposed to his own air again, he’ll grow back to normal size – and then piloting Rehton close to the moon which will draw another rocketship to investigate and rescue Frank.  Will Frank stay because of his new love or return to his own world?  More importantly, who gives a rat’s ass???

Don’s Review:  Another extremely dated ’50s/early ’60s era sci-fi film, one of my favorite MST genres, is the subject of this experiment.  The riffing by Mike and the ’Bots is pretty good throughout (the doggie riffs for the Solanites are the best), although not quite as great as past episodes of this genre.  And the host segments are mildly amusing, but mostly forgettable (although I really liked the one in which the ’Bots are slowly learning glass rim music when Mike shows up and effortlessly plays Debussy’s Arabesque #1).

Don’s Rating: 

Forrest’s Synopsis:  Nothing great, just a typical early 60's/late 50's science fiction film. Two guys - a strange looking blonde man and his fruity, philosophical co-pilot - are launched into space (for some reason).  After nearly being killed by meteors, they try to repair their ship, and although the blonde guy survives, the fruity philosopher guy floats off and dies (obviously 2001: A Space Odyssey stole this idea!). The blonde guy ends up on a giant Chicken McNugget, shrinks in size (obviously Honey, I Shrunk the Kids stole this idea) and meets some leprechauns.  They take him to their leader (a senile old guy), the blonde astronaut apparently pisses off one of the leprechauns and has to battle to the death with combat rods.  The blonde guy is merciful, and let's him live.  Somewhere in the science fiction film there is a really half-baked, uninteresting love story (obviously Star Wars: Attack of the Clones stole this idea) that goes nowhere.  Soon the entire planet is invaded by malevolent aliens (obviously Independence Day stole this idea) called Solarites.  The Solarites are eventually destroyed, but one Solarite survives and tries to kill everyone on the planet.  Yup, the whole planet, all three feet.  Richard Kiel is the Solarite (clearly The Spy Who Loved Me stole this idea) but he doesn't last long as two old rivals (the blonde guy and the hater) must combine forces to stop the Solarite (obviously every buddy cop movie stole this idea).  The Solarite dies, and all is well as the blonde guy grows to his normal size and returns to earth, to live happily ever after... that is, until he takes a piss and notices that not everything grew back to normal size...

Forrest’s Review:  This episode starts out great. The riffing is easily 5-CROW worthy in the first theater segment... but after that the riffing gets pretty mediocre, and the episode really dies down a bit. There are still a number of good jokes here and there, but after that hilarious first theater segment, the rest of it is a bit of a let-down.  I've seen this episode many times, and it seems to lose quality every viewing.  However, the host segments are reasonably good, and the movie has a ton of nostalgic cheese, so this is a very good episode.  So, even though the laughs decline as the episode progresses, it's still a solid episode, and the first theater segment was so hysterical that I'm gonna raise the rating a bit.

Forrest’s Rating: