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Movie Summary  Short: Snow Thrills:  The short is a super high-energy 1950’s romp through a whole raft of snow sports: bobsledding, skating, that entire genre. Ultimately the film is a failure in that one is not moved to engage in these activities. A sad waste of some fine performances.  Movie : It Conquered The World:  The movie, by Roger Corman, is one of the great ones, and served as our introduction to the marvelous Beverly Garland. Lee Van Cleef is Dr. Tom Anderson, a goofball who wants to help a pickle from Venus take over the world. The pickle hijacks a satellite and arrives on Earth, where it releases little weird flying thingies that attach themselves to hapless humans, inserting antennae that control their brains. At the end of the day the pickle turns out to be not that great a threat: Peter Graves, as Tom's friend Paul, convinces Tom to get a grip, and Tom kills the pickle with a jury-rigged flamethrower. Ends with a long, moralizing speech by Pete about the folly of the unemotional Utopia the pickle was planning. — Paul Chaplin Host Segments  Prologue:  Joel rehearses for Star Search. He's a ventriloquist: Crow's a Woozle and his name is Peanut. Servo is Ed McMahon: "We'll be right back, haww-haw. "  Invention:  Frank and Forrester wear nooses, meant to work as dead-guy costumes for Halloween. (Actually a pretty good idea.) Joel listens to the Sony Sea-Man: headphones attached to a conch shell. Dr. F: "I think yours was almost as lame as ours, skin puppy."  Segment 2:  Servo narrates the SOL's own frantic version of a Winter Sports Cavalcade! "It's so long to the midnight sun and hi-ho-Kokomo as Hoosiers cool their heels with a rousing game of hockey ball!" Joel and Crow chaotically enact the sports.  Segment 3:  Joel, Crow, and Servo trade insults, just like in the movie. "This coffee tastes like it came out of an oil derrick. What'd you strain it through, a mummy?" "Yeah, it tastes like mud. Roger Mudd."  Segment 4:  Taking off from brothers James Arness and Peter Graves, the Crew sings of celebrity siblings with the same last name! "You can name three, well, I can name four / Dudley, Dinty, Roger / and Mary Tyler Moore!"  Segment 5:  All on the SOL listen to Peter Graves's climactic speech: "He learned too late that man is a feeling creature, and because of it the greatest in the universe..." Then Frank and Forrester listen to the speech while eating TV dinners. The speech plays under the credits.  Stinger:  The speech. "He learned too late that man is a feeling creature, and because of it the greatest in the universe..." Reflections I guess what I find most disappointing about this movie is how little Roger Corman did with the concept of a terrifying pickle. Really—I hate to say this—the pickle in this film is almost laughable. And that seriously undermines any tension Corman had hoped to build. However, enough of the negative waves—I'd like to spend some time praising Beverly Garland, who plays Tom Anderson's clearly more intelligent wife here. She's been in a number of our movies—mostly Roger Corman films—and she plays woonderful characters in all of them. Her women always have spine, and zing, and obvious integrity to go with the undeniable beauty. Ms. Garland was a guest of honor at the 1994 MST ConventionCon Expo Fest-A-Rama, and she did not disappoint. She has a great sense of humor, and she looks great. I need to make myself clear: I like Beverly Garland a lot. — Paul Chaplin