MST3K Review

PREV Season Ten

1013 - DANGER: DIABOLIK

Genre: ’60s Super-Thief / Spy (1968, Color)

Don’s Synopsis: In this goofy Italian-made movie, that comes across as a James Bond knock-off crossed with the campy Batman ’60s TV show with a strong dose of ’60s swinger-isms thrown in, we meet master thief, Diabolik, who dresses in a costume that covers everything except his eyes, but is so skintight that he’s very easy to recognize with it on. Diabolik and his girlfriend, Eva, like to steal... and they steal big. So the movie opens as they steal $10 million from the guy who played Number Two, Largo, in Thunderball. Diabolik and Eva get away with the theft and retire to the secret Batcave – make that the Diabolik cave – complete with ’60s décor, an internal observatory and an organ-playing burglary alarm. There, they make sweet love in the pile of money they just stole, like some sort of super-agent Scrooge McDuck. Of course, having $10 million isn’t enough for Eva (what a gold-digger!), so she wants Diabolik to steal a famous necklace with eleven priceless jewels on it. So Diabolik has to invade a castle via scaling the outside wall to steal the necklace, which is so well guarded by Diabolik’s law-enforcement arch-nemesis, Inspector Ginko, that it takes Diabolik the time it takes a Polaroid to develop to steal the thing. But Diabolik’s other arch-nemesis, the Number Two guy, figures out who Diabolik’s girlfriend is and so he kidnaps her and holds her for $10 million ransom... plus the necklace. Diabolik meets with the Number Two guy on a airplane but tricks him by pulling him out a trapdoor with only one parachute. Back down on the ground, Diabolik kills the Number Two guy, rescues his girlfriend and, to elude capture, pretends to be dead in the ancient Tibetan way. His not-so-dead body is put into a morgue from which he first dresses as an old guy and then escapes with the jewels from the necklace. Now Inspector Ginko is transporting a huge 20-ton chunk of gold, so Diabolik moves into action to steal it. He succeeds (again) but Inspector Ginko finds Diabolik’s ultra secret cave and, in the ensuing assault, Diabolik – wearing a heatproof suit – is encased in solid gold which somehow means he eluded Inspector Ginko again (I think).

Don’s Review: This movie was a lot of goofy fun and would have been fun to watch without the MST treatment. But the MST treatments adds a lot to it as the riffing on this was some of the best of Season Ten. In addition, the host segments dealing with the shutdown of Castle Forrester and the crash landing of the SOL were also very enjoyable and provide a nice end to the show, as Mike, Tom, and Crow end the episode in their new apartment on earth together, watching on TV the first movie from the cable run of the show, The Crawling Eye (nice circular closure even though, ironically, when that movie was originally featured on the show, Mike was not on the SOL and the two ’Bots were both voiced by other people). This episode is a very good ending to a great show. Although I hate to see the show go, I’m glad it ended on a high note.

Don’s Rating:

Forrest’s Synopsis: First off, I don’t know how Don was able to actually understand this film, and actually write a synopsis, as this movie is so confusing. Diabolik, the hero of the film, make that anti-hero, likes to steal with his girlfriend Eva. They steal cars, gold, diamonds - you name it - in fact Diabolik steals everything, except the movie. We are supposed to like Diabolik, but he’s a nothing more than a common thief with big toys. Is he supposed to be like a super hero? It was based on a comic book I believe, from Italy. This makes sense, because Italians are the source of evil - mobsters, Romans, etc... You can’t trust them, and since I myself am one fourth Italian, you can only trust about three fourths of this review. The plot is too confusing to put into words, but aren’t all crime/spy films from the 60’s confusing? Too many characters look the same, there’s too many scenes of flat dialogue, and of course there’s a lame hero. All I know is Diabolik likes to steal things, while the “bad guys” do nothing but try to protect their fortune, as the heroic Diabolik kills innocent people along the way to steal big. All ends well, as Diabolik ends up being encased in gold, and that’s FINE with me.

Forrest’s Review: This hopelessly confusing film tries to make us like Diabolik, who does nothing but steal from people who are supposed to be bad guys, but I have no idea why they are “bad”. It’s okay to center a film around an anti-hero, Clint Eastwood and Malcolm McDowell have pulled it off well, but Diabolik is like an evil James Bond. The only good part about this film is that’s it’s nice to look at. The camera angles are interesting, the sets look cool in some scenes, and the film looks nice, too bad that everything else totally sucks, and cries out for the treatment served by Mike Nelson and his pals. And speaking of Mike and his pals, this is the last (?, or better yet, FINE) episode of MST3K. Laserblast didn’t seem to end the series well, and I’m glad the Sci-Fi channel picked up MST. Sure the 2001 spoof was funny and all, but the host segments in Diabolik were a much nicer way to end the show, what with the funny and MiSTie-only song “To Earth”, and the great ending with Tom, Mike and Crow landing on Earth, sharing an apartment - but their lives haven’t changed a bit, now they watch bad movies on their own free will. One thing that Laserblast did do better, however, was riff the movie. Diabolik is riffed well, but the gut bursting riff count is pretty low (especially when compared to the previous episode, Squirm), and while it does have its moments, the riffing in this episode is rather average. I really wish they had done Plan 9 From Outer Space for the last episode, or maybe a Godzilla film, or the last Gamera film, anything but Diabolik really. So, while the theater part isn’t classic, the host segments are what count most in this episode, and they are excellent.

Forrest’s Rating: