910 - THE FINAL SACRIFICE

Genre:  ’80s-type Cheesy Cult or something (1990, Color)

Synopsis:  This incredible cheesy movie is the worst thing to come out of Canada since Yahoo Serious.  What – he was Australian?  Well, then, make that:  this incredible cheesy movie is the worst thing to come out of Canada EVER!!  It begins as some sort of black ski-mask and tank-top wearing cult chases down a man and kill him in some secluded woods.  Seven years later, the dead man’s uber-geek son named Troy M... (hmmm, I’ll omit the last name – no need to besmirch it even further) is digging around in his father’s stuff and finds a map to some place called the lost city of Ziox.  As soon as Troy finds the map, the cult that hunted down his father all of a sudden decides to end their seven-year retirement and invades the boy’s home.  Troy escapes in the back of a truck owned by a man with a cheesy mullet hairdo named Rowsdower.  The evil black ski-mask and tank-top cult and its hammy overacting leader are still after the boy, so Rowsdower helps Troy escape but his run-down pickup truck breaks down.  Geeky Troy goes in search of water and – what do you know? – accidentally finds the Lost City of Ziox from the map.  Troy goes down into the underground city, where he somehow translates some ancient writings in about 90 seconds.  Troy and Rowsdower then get away from the cult for a little while and meet Yosemite Sam... I mean, meet some old coot who worked with Troy’s father to try to find the lost city.  It is revealed that Rowsdower was once part of the cult and may have even killed Troy’s father – but what effect does this shocking news have on their relationship for rest of the movie?  None whatsoever.  So Troy and Rowsdower leave the old coot and then run around a lot trying to get away from the black ski-mask and tank-top wearing cult.  In the end, they kill the cheesy cult leader and destroy a cheesy temple, which somehow causes the lost city to rise up from its burial place.

Don’s Review:  Very bad movie that almost defies description makes for excellent MST fodder.  M&tBs do some great riffing in this experiment, some of the best riffing since the show’s Comedy Central heydays, making this a very funny episode to watch (I still chuckle over the Yosemite Sam riffs).  With the notable exception of the funny Canada Song segment, the host segments are only mildly amusing as they deal mostly with the bad mullet hairdos seen in the movie.  But, due to the great riffing, this is one of the absolute best episodes of the Sci-Fi Era and is highly recommended.

Don’s Rating: 

Forrest’s Review:  Pod People is my favorite episode, but I have to admit, The Final Sacrifice is funniest!  I have probably seen The Final Sacrifice more times than any other episode on Mystery Science Theater 3000.  The movie comes from Canada, home of many horrors such as the band "Rush", "Dudley Do Right", "Ed- The Sock" and it is filled with French people.  But even though many bad things come from Canada, nothing as bad as The Final Sacrifice has peaked from the good ol’ land of cowards.  And speaking of Canada, the riffs in the feature start out with a huge number of Canada-related riffs.  And each and every single one is hilarious!
      The reason why this episode is so hilarious is simple: The movie sets up itself.  It seems it was custom-made for MST3K.  As I said, the first part of the movie is filled with Canadian riffs, and then we meet Troy MacGregor, Don’s long lost relative. [ed: No!!!!]   Actually, he’s a super geeky kid that Mike and the bots’ riff without mercy ("Well it’s time to get to reading my X-MEN comics."  "Must sell candy bars for band!"  "Waaaaait, I haven’t read Tolkien in almost a week!")  And oh so much more!  Troy’s father looks a lot like Larry Csonka, and of course, the riffs fly.  Then there’s the antagonist, Satoris.  William Shatner has always been known as the ultimate over-acting person of all time, but it is clear that the person who played the part of Satoris is the ultimate over-actor.  Mike and the bots riff him to shreds as well, and Satoris’ indescribably cheesy, deep voice also contributes to the hilarity.
      If there wasn’t enough to riff on already, we meet Zap Rowsdower.  Not since Joe Don Baker in Mitchell has BBI abused an individual as much as Zap Rowsdower.  There’s the drunk jokes ("I wonder if there’s beer on the sun."), the hockey-hair jokes (Troy: "What’s wrong?" Crow: "Look at my hair!"), the backward-ass redneck jokes (Rowsdower: "Troy!?" Crow: "Are you dead? Because if you’re not I’m just going to leave."), the car-won’t-start jokes ("This is the kind of clown who puts ten cents worth of gasoline in his car"), and last but not least, the making-fun-of-Rowsdower’s-voice jokes.  And then there’s Mike Pipper, and old-timer who is a lot like Yosemite Sam (plenty of riffs there!)  There’s just SO much to work with in this episode!  In fact, I recommend it above all other episodes, and if you don’t like this episode there’s something wrong with you! Even Don, given his overall view of the Sci-Fi era, gave this episode a perfect rating!  So it must be damn good!  Hell, even the riffs in the end credits were hilarious, with Tom Servo’s version of the theme song in the movie, as well as the Danny Elfman song.
The host segments were very good.  I really enjoyed the Castle Forrester host segments, as I really liked Pearl’s attempt to take over the world one person at a time!  The SOL host segments were also great, with some funny skits on hockey-hair and Crow and Tom’s hilarious description of their new murderous cult, where they bake muffins.  But best of all is Tom Servo’s Canada Song.  All in all, this is the VERY best episode on the show, and it is slowly crawling up the ranks of my favorites and may very well replace Pod People as my favorite episode.
      Trivia Note: Even though BBI believes that Rowsdower killed Troy’s father, in fact, Satoris did it.  Watch at the end of the movie, when Satoris and Rowsdower are fighting in the final battle between fire and grapple-hook.  If you pay attention very closely, and listen to a piece of incomprehensible Rowsdowerian dialogue, you will realize that Satoris actually killed Tory’s father.  But the revelation is delivered so nonchalantly and so poorly, that BBI never realized it, and it took me thirteen viewings of this episode to figure it out!

Forrest’s Rating: