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in: MST3K Episodes, Season 5, Episodes with shorts

Changes: MST3K 520 - Radar Secret Service

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'''Prologue:''' [[Mike Nelson|Mike]] performs [[Crow T. Robot|Crow]]’s maintenance checkup, but has no idea what he's doing. The result: Crow becomes Arnold Horshack.
  
'''Prologue:''' [[Mike Nelson|Mike]] performs [[Crow T. Robot|Crow]]’s maintenance checkup, but has no idea what he's doing. The result: Crow becomes Arnold Horshack.
   
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'''Segment One (Invention Exchange):''' Mike has an escape plan: tear up everything aboard the [[The Satellite of Love|SOL]] made of fabric (including [[Gypsy]]’s bra Crow’s [[wikipedia:Underoos|Underoos]] and pants from [[The Killer Shrews]], and [[Tom Servo]]'s pantyhose) and tie the scraps together to make a very long rope. He might be a bit delusional. The [[Mads]] present Hypno-Helio-Static-Stasis (containing X-4), a device which slows down movies and fills them with "subliminal poopie".
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'''Segment One (Invention Exchange):''' Mike has an escape plan: tear up everything aboard the [[The Satellite of Love|SOL]] made of fabric (including [[Gypsy]]’s bra, Crow’s [[wikipedia:Underoos|Underoos]] and pants from [[The Killer Shrews]], and [[Tom Servo]]'s pantyhose) and tie the scraps together to make a very long rope. He might be a bit delusional. The [[Mads]] present Hypno-Helio-Static-Stasis (containing X-4), a device which slows down movies and fills them with "subliminal poopie".
   
 
'''Segment Two:''' Based on the tragic short, Trooper Tom presents the playlet "Why Don’t They Look?" Dryer lint is more dangerous than one imagines!
  
'''Segment Two:''' Based on the tragic short, Trooper Tom presents the playlet "Why Don’t They Look?" Dryer lint is more dangerous than one imagines!

Revision as of 23:47, 24 June 2010

The Short

Synopsis

Friendly Patrolman Hal Jackson (Boyett) visits the Dixon family to instruct their youngest son, Alan (Bosworth), in the art of safe and courteous driving. He relates many grisly tales of various young drivers, his main advice being to pay attention, but Alan's older brother Frank Jr. (Bill Agee) isn't listening, and drives with his girlfriend Betty (Lynch) into the path of an oncoming train while turning around and waving at the car behind him.

Information

  • Patrolman Hal utters the amazing line: "I thought this would be a good time to come by and tell you a few of the facts of life about driving, before you get started."
  • The most memorable dialogue, though, is probably the engineer at the train crash, who says ruefully "Why don't they look, Ralph. Tell me, why don't they look?" This line is referenced in the next episode, Santa Claus, and later in The Skydivers and The Deadly Mantis.
  • The film supposedly concentrates on accidents at level crossings because it was financed by Union Pacific. [1]

The Movie

Synopsis

Its 1950 with Communists under every bed and atomic power on everyone's mind. This is the superlatively dull story of how radar prevented a truckload of atomic material from being stolen.

In this film universe radar is everywhere and can do anything - find valuable mineral deposits deep underground, locate large schools of fish underwater, etc, and all from thousands of miles away! Worship radar at the church of your choice.

A woman of a certain age named Lila enters a cafe cleverly named "Cafe". She learns from waitress Marge, her "plant", about "arriving U238". She calls her boyfriend Mickey, a gangster, to arrange for him to grab the stuff. She arranges with Michael, her other suitor/gangster and Mickey's doppelganger, to buy the stuff from Mickey. He plans to sell the stuff to unspecified foreigners.

"Radar Secret Service - (RSS)" is alerted. "Mr. Hamilton", the boss, is informed of the U238 headed for the local power plant. RSS is to safeguard it by tracking it - with RADAR! Radar, we observe repeatedly, has the ability to send back to HQ what the ignorant might consider "television" pictures of just about any remote location where a radar beam can reach. It does so by using stock footage of microwave antennas and a patrol car with a radar device of some kind on the roof. We never really learn what the car device does.

RSS locates the U238 truck on the highway. When it passes through a tunnel, hidden from radar, it is hijacked by Mickey's men. When the truck emerges from the tunnel and turns off the highway unexpectedly, Hamilton radios agents Bill and dim-witted Static to investigate.

Mickey is waiting just off the highway. The gangsters dump the original drivers just as Bill and Static arrive on the scene in a radar car. Blackie, who is one of Mickey's men and Marge's boyfriend, battles Bill, rather half-heartedly. The truck gets away and arrives at Mickey's country hideout while Blackie is nabbed.

Mickey meets Michael at Lila's to arrange for delivery and secure a down payment for the U238. They agree Mickey will deliver the stuff to Michael's boat.

Back at RSS HQ, Static has acquired a photograph from Blackie's "little black book": It's Marge in a waitress uniform. The agents go looking for her in a montage of various cafes. When they find her, Bill tells her he is a friend of Blackie's. Marge, suspicious, calls Blackie's colleague and learns Blackie's been nabbed. Bill copies down the telephone number and vamooses.

An agent from RSS begins tracking Marge who arrives at Mickey's place where she confronts him about springing Blackie. Mickey is not very interested.

Mickey sends a car with some U238 off to meet Michael's yacht. RSS spots the car and radios the plate number to Bill in radar car OX3. They intercept the criminal's partial shipment.

Meanwhile, Marge arrives outside Mickey's place. Agent Bill is inside in Mickey's apartment. Benson, one of Mickey's boys, arrives, and he and Bill have at it. Bill gets knocked out and Benson leaves. Marge enters. Bill wakes and persuades Marge to work with the cops for Blackie's benefit.

Mickey sends out a decoy car while the rest of the stuff is moved to the yacht. RSS sends out a teeny helicopter and notifies OX3 to look for the car with the U238. In a double cross, the decoy car has been sabotaged by Mickey and it flips and rolls over and turns into a Ford. The other truck departs for Michael's yacht but is spotted by the helicopter, which flies at an altitude of twenty feet at all times. The gangsters pull off the road to make the drop and get paid, while the helicopter lands unseen and somehow unheard one hundred feet away. Michael's men arrive to pick up the stuff. In a double cross, Michael is not only not going to pay Mickey, he is going to have him taken care of - permanently.

The RSS men arrive and a skirmish ensues. Mickey, wounded by Michael's henchman, escapes in a car.

As Lila and Michael are just about to depart, Mickey arrives, gun drawn, eager for revenge. Will Lila and Michael pay for their treachery? Will the U238 be recovered?

CAUTION: Ingredients include kettle drums, rice cookers, golden grahams, beach balls, bobbers, stainless steel truffles, silver almond cookies, toilet tank floats, Swedish meatballs, and other round things, and way too much Sid Melton. It's like a 90 minute long Commando Cody episode.

Information

The Episode

Host Segments

Prologue: Mike performs Crow’s maintenance checkup, but has no idea what he's doing. The result: Crow becomes Arnold Horshack.

Segment One (Invention Exchange): Mike has an escape plan: tear up everything aboard the SOL made of fabric (including Gypsy’s bra, Crow’s Underoos and pants from The Killer Shrews, and Tom Servo's pantyhose) and tie the scraps together to make a very long rope. He might be a bit delusional. The Mads present Hypno-Helio-Static-Stasis (containing X-4), a device which slows down movies and fills them with "subliminal poopie".

Segment Two: Based on the tragic short, Trooper Tom presents the playlet "Why Don’t They Look?" Dryer lint is more dangerous than one imagines!

Segment Three: The Bots simulate Mike’s 10-year high school reunion, based on what they found in Mike's yearbook. The theme: "Hungry Like the Wolf".

Segment Four: Mike and Crow have built the Quinn Martin Nature Preserve so old actors have a place to go when they’re no longer useful. Servo eventually recognizes that the Hypno-Helio-Static-Stasis is taking effect on them.

Segment Five: The Mads are foiled by Ecstato-Euphoro-Fun (with patented Hinder 90), a device which takes a B movie and turns it into a "Yippee movie"! Frank eventually falls under Hinder 90's spell.

Stinger: The hysterical French maid shouts, "Thank you!"

Obscure References

  • "Don't cry out loud..."

From the song "Don't Cry Out Loud" by Melissa Manchester.

  • "Hey, my 'Advocate' is here!"

A reference to the gay-oriented magazine The Advocate.

  • "Stop the near-insanity!"

Mike is paraphrasing fitness guru Susan Powter.

  • "Jack Kevorkian throws a tailgate party."

Jack Kevorkian is a famous proponent of doctor-assisted suicide.

  • "Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry, NO!"

A reference to the 1974 movie Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry.

  • "Kill da wabbit, kill da wabbit..."

A line sung by Elmer Fudd in the 1957 cartoon What's Opera, Doc?.


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