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#912: The Screaming Skull
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SHORT: Robot Rumpus stars Gumby, of "dammit" fame. Gumby is a strange,
disturbingly high-crotched, nude green clay figure. He has elephantine legs
tapering up to a thin, flat body, on top of which is perched a head which
resembles a moss-covered Chippendale chair as designed by Salvador Dali, in that
one side appears to be melting. In this adventure, Gumby and his equestrian
friend Pokey - who at least in some sense looks like a true horse - making us
wonder what Gumby is technically supposed to be, dammit: a reanimated blob of
spearmint gum? Sentient mucus? - well anyway, he and Pokey enslave some robots to
do yard work. Gumby's mother, who wears clothes, is very pleased with her son's
ingenuity, as long as it's working.
But the robots run horribly amuck. They
start tearing down the whole world, dammit! Mom summons Dad, who is named Gumbo,
though I fail to see his resemblance to the tasty shrimp, okra and sausage soup I
had in New Orleans. (Gumbo also runs around naked, in this universe with no
rules.) But Gumbo gets trounced by the robots until finally Gumby finds a way to
kill them. The delightful movie climaxes with the maiming and dismemberment of
many robots, and the white-hot rage of Gumby's parents, who by story's end have
taught their son that their love is always highly conditional on his success in
finding innovations in yard work. And that his failure in yard work endeavors
will be met by blistering punishment and the withholding of their love, replaced
by the purest of hate. I'm glad I grew up watching this stuff.
The Movie:
The Screaming Skull... Or (my preferred title), I Swear
Before All That Is Good And Holy I Will Never Watch Another Movie
Starring The Twisted Worry-Faced Mother From The Space Children
(Experiment 906) Ever, Ever Again, With God As My Witness. The
story: a shifty creep and his pathological worrywart of a new bride
move into a Southern mansion owned by his late wife, and now bequeathed
to him. His deceased wife died recently from a bashed-in head, under
mysterious circumstances. This brand-new groom's new wife is loaded
with family money too, and is more than a little unstable. That is to
say: HE'S GUILTY! HE'S REALLY, REALLY GUILTY! HEY EVERYONE, HE'S
GUILTY!
...This is clear in the first ten minutes or so of the movie,
but they go on spending an hour of our valuable time pretending there's
some real mystery at hand. Mr. Creepyhusband tries to drive his wife
batty by putting skulls in odd places. Mrs. Looneywife repeatedly
contorts her face in horrible twisty fear (this is the scariest effect
in the movie, by far) and bores us to tears walking around looking for
things in a nightgown (making me think as I watched it: no, movie,
yeah I know you're from the fifties and all so we have to cut you some
slack, but I will never accept this fear-furrowed woman in
her twelve-layer pegnoir as sexy. Damn you for even suggesting it!)
Anyways, some pie-faced minister and his mannish wife hang around a
lot listening intently and absorbing little. And a slow-witted,
Snagglepuss-sounding, Torgo-Lite gardener named Mickey is tossed into
the mix for a highly unsuccessful red herring.
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Prologue:
Servo turns into a butterfly. Apparently all along the Servo we knew
had been a mere larva of what he was destined to be eventually.
Segment One:
Down in Castle Forrester, Pearl, Observer, and Bobo run around in
penguin suits, pathetically trying to pull a practical joke on Mike and the bots,
convincing them that they'd agreed to meet them there, also with penguin costumes
on. Mike and the 'Bots throw together some makeshift animal costumes of their
own, and everyone looks pretty dumb in the end. (An editorial: As an MST
performer, what I find most refreshing about acting on this show is the inherent
dignity of the work: where else would one find the challenge to one's "craft" of
playing a fey omniscient albino alien who then dresses up in a goofy penguin
suit? Go to hell, Shakespeare! ...This is the real stuff.)
Segment Two:
The bots work through the trauma of having to watch Gumby mutilate
robots by having their own clay figure show.
Segment Three:
Servo tries to scam a free coffin, as guaranteed at the beginning
of Screaming Skull for people who die of fright (not boredom) while watching this
movie.
Segment Four:
Now Crow tries to pull a joke, becoming a Screaming Skull and
frightening Mike. Mike freaks out and bashes both the bots with a variety of
sporting goods, screaming himself the whole time.
Segment Five:
Servo's coffin arrives. He has to pay the full delivery cost of
returning it. But no harm is done, as he uses Mike's credit card for this.
Down in Castle Forrester, Bobo dresses like a ape, trying to fool them that he is
an ape - that is, an ape other than Bobo. At Pearl's request, Brain Guy makes
him tiny. Why? See below.
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I dearly love my job and my colleagues here, but permit me to whine a bit, as I
am very skilled and practiced at it. To wit: sometimes I wonder if we here at
Best Brains aren't the butt of our own joke. While producing a show about a man
and his robots who are tortured by watching bad movies, we have become the
real-life victims of our own smarty-pants premise. Why do I say this? Answer:
The Screaming Skull. Making someone watch this even once is specifically
outlawed by the Geneva Convention. But many, many times, as is our practice?
That is the custom-fitted hell that we've brought upon ourselves, worthy of a wry
introduction by Rod Serling . I found this movie to be the Deepest of Hurting:
like watching bacteria grow in extra-slow motion. This situation, I would
contend, is true irony, Classic Greek in nature -- unlike the Alanis Morrisette
version, which applies the word to slight inconveniences and minor gross-outs.
(By this Morrisettian standard, then, it is "ironic" when one of her songs come
on my favorite FM station.) Thank you, my whining is over and I am happy again.
The Gumby short, on the other hand, was a complete party to do. Good clean fun,
though disappointingly short at six minutes. I always loved the shorts as a fan
of the show, and hope we can get more.
Other things: we all loved doing Segment Four -- the Crow-as-Screaming-Skull --
though I ruined a few takes by cracking up at Mike as he carefully chose a golf
club while yelling in stark terror. The Segment Five bit of Brain Guy shrinking
Bobo down into his fist was completely off the slight story we had, but we got
excited at it as a sort of tribute to the many MST3K movies that have used this
cheap forced-perspective effect. I think we were no more successful than they
were - I kept trying to see it as something other than Bobo standing on the other
side of the room, but could not. But it was fun to try, and fun is the most
important meal of the day. Lastly, a stunning acting debut by Barb
Tebben, as the officious free-coffin representative for AIP. Barb
literally phoned in her performance, which made us
not want to cross her. Those of you who have dealt with Barb on the phone
or taken the Best Brains tour know that she is the nicest person in the
world, but: there's obviously some demon inside her that I wouldn't wanna
tangle with. Don't hit me, Barb!
- Bill Corbett
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