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Movie Summary  Movie: Master Ninja I:  In the mid-1980's there was a TV series called The Master. This is it, in the form of two hour-long shows packaged brutally as one movie. Timothy Van Patten plays Max Keller, and Lee Van Cleef plays John Peter McAllister—"the only Occidental American ever to become a Ninja." What do you want to know beyond that? Let's see. Max has a van and a gerbil. They save Demi Moore and Claude Akins, who own an airport threatened by Clu Gulager and a rapacious sheriff. Then they save a nightclub threatened by the Japanese mob. Throughout, Tim's speech is essentially incoherent, particularly when he's excited or sexually aroused. Poor Demi has to look pouty and pretend Tim turns her on. — Paul Chaplin Host Segments  Prologue:  The 'Bots build a hot though sloppy model car. Gypsy quotes Springsteen: "Wrap your hands 'cross my velvet rims..."  Invention:  Forrester feeds Frank his Boil-In-The-Bag Intravenous Dinners. Joel has pop-up book versions of Anna Karenina and others. Forrester smothers Frank with a pillow.  Segment 2:  Crow details the Van Patten Project, Dick van Patten's plot to place his kids (his "hellish drop") in bad movies.  Segment 3:  Joel and the 'Bots have a battle of musical themes.  Segment 4:  The crew presents different ideas for nunchuks: thumb-chuks, numb-chuks, ground-chuks, up-chuks, etc.  Segment 5:  With the 'Bots providing oral instrumentation, Joel sings "Master Ninja Theme Song!" and reads a letter. Frank smothers Forrester with a pillow.  Stinger:  Timothy Van Patten sloppily mouthing some line. Reflections For this whole show we referred to Clu Gulager as "Clu Gallagher." We never noticed how wrong we were until we did experiment 0614 - San Francisco International three years later (another failed TV show). You can't blame us for the mistake. What sorta weird-ass name is "Gulager?" Nevertheless, I think he's a fine actor and he provided one of the few bright spots in the show. All told, we covered four hour-long episodes of this show. Of those, two plots involve small towns in America's heartland ruled by vicious murderous industrialists working hand-in-hand with local El Salvador-style police. Understand, I too have misgivings about unfettered capitalism. I'm just not sure this kind of thing really exists. I think it's Hollywood's idea of the Midwest. I may be wrong. If any of our viewers know of places where shopping-mall developers routinely kill until their semisecret graveyards are filled to bursting, I'd like to hear about it. If you yourself live in a town like that, for God's sake let us know! Maybe MST can help. — Paul Chaplin