MST3K 606 - The Creeping Terror

606 - The Creeping Terror
Air/Release Date	September 17, 1994
MST3K Director	Jim Mallon
AKA	Dangerous Charter The Crawling Monster
Movie Director	Arthur Nelson
Year	1964
Cast	Arthur Nelson (billed here as Vic Savage) Shannon O'Neil William Thourlby
Preceded by	605 - Colossus and the Headhunters
Followed by	607 - Bloodlust!

“	"Now we need a narrator, but he clams up; what's going on?"	”
	- Tom Servo

The Movie

Synopsis

The Creeping Terror

A mute alien creature lands on Earth in a NASA rocket and starts ingesting people. A newly-married deputy sheriff (director Arthur Nelson), a handsome scientist and an army "special unit" manage to defeat the creature. It is eventually revealed that the spacecraft containing the creature also contains another, similar creature that gets loose as soon as the first one is stopped. The second creature is eventually defeated as well.

Information

• According to rumors, a more impressive-looking monster was originally designed and built for the movie. However, only a few days before shooting was to begin, the monster was stolen. Pressed for time and out of money, director Arthur Nelson and his crew hastily threw together the infamous "pile-of-carpets" monster that appears in the film.[1]
• Another legend surrounding this film is that the original soundtrack recordings were lost due to falling into Lake Tahoe. In reality, while Lake Tahoe was desired as a shooting location, the much cheaper Spahn Ranch was used instead. The reason for the lost dialog is unclear, as it has been stated that the recordings were lost, that sound was never shot as a cost-saving measure, or that most of the shot sound was simply too low quality to make use of. The narrator was a local radio announcer. [2]
• Production of The Creeping Terror inspired the 2015 film The Creep Behind the Camera. Part documentary, part dramatization, the film explores the personality of director Vic Savage and his (somewhat unscrupulous) efforts to get the film made. Trace Beaulieu spoke highly of the film and promoted it on Twitter.
• Like Monster A-Go Go, most of the dialogue in this film is spoken through narration; though in Monster A Go-Go it was used to try and heighten terror and suspense while here in The Creeping Terror it was used to describe what was happening in the scene and replace some of the actors' lines. Coleman Francis would combine both narrative methods for The Beast of Yucca Flats.
• Received two nominations in The Golden Turkey Awards series: Most Ridiculous Monster and Most Laughable Concept for an Outer Space Invader. It lost the first one to Robot Monster, but "won" the second.

The Episode

Host Segments

The new SOL flag

Prologue: Tom Servo takes his new job as security guard on the SOL very seriously.

Segment One: While it's laundry day down in Deep 13, Dr. F uses Mike and the Bots to prove his theory that you can't be in a coffee house without becoming pretentious.

Segment Two: Crow creates a flag for the Satellite of Love and demands Mike salute it. Mike is declared a Tory when he refuses to take cyanide.

Crow: Love America Style

Segment Three: Mike and the Bots engage in a hard-hitting satire of Love America Style.

Segment Four: Mike goes audiophile when he sets up his stereo, but has a hard time convincing the Bots of its features while playing the 1960's dance theme from the movie on it. Note how he enhances his CD's with green marker during the listening test.

Gypsy swallows Crow

Closing (Segment Five): Crow and Tom are partly successful in convincing Gypsy to swallow them like the Terror from the movie until Mike intervenes to reads a letter, while Dr. F "presses" Frank about the laundry.

Stinger: "My God! What is it?" a girl at the dance party blandly exclaims.

Notes

• Unusual credits: The dance party music from the movie plays instead of "Mighty Science Theater".
• The look of Deep 13 gets an overhaul (more detailed foam rocks, vent pipes, and a passageway where there used to be an elevator) beginning with this episode. However, it's not mentioned or "explained" until Bloodlust!.
• This was the first episode produced to feature Mike's light blue jumpsuit (though because episodes in this period were aired out of order, the first appearance broadcast was in The Skydivers).

Obscure References

• "And to think he's getting $4.35 an hour."

In 1994, the national minimum wage in the United States was $4.25/hr, so Servo's is apparently doing a little better than that in his security job. Adjusted for inflation, that would be around $8/hr in 2019 (still slightly higher than the minimum wage of $7.25/hr).

• "Ponch and Jon are calling!"

Ponch and Jon are the heroes of CHiPs, a TV show about California highway patrolmen from the late 1970s and early '80s.

• "Looks like the inside of Robert Morley's nose!"

Robert Morley was British character actor.

• "Oh, no - cops!"

Mike is imitating the Simpsons character Snake.

• "Darkness at the edge of town!"

A reference to the Bruce Springsteen album "Darkness on the Edge of Town".

• "Oh God, it's Far Out Space Nuts!"

A reference to the Sid and Marty Krofft TV show Far Out Space Nuts.

During this sentence (Oh God...) Tom is making strange noises. He is imitating the sound effects used in Forbidden Planet (1956), when the invisible monster is inside the spaceship while the crew is sleeping.

• "Geez! My back is killing me! I came to this planet because I heard they had Doan's pills!"

 Doan's is an over-the-counter medication specifically marketed for back pain relief.

• "Annette Funicello wore khakis!"

A play on a Gap ad campaign from the mid-1990s. Annette Funicello was an original Mouseketeer on The Mickey Mouse Club and later starred in several popular teen-centric beach movies.

• "Apparently, Dan Blocker had been there!"

Actor Dan Blocker is best remembered for playing the bulky Hoss Cartwright on Bonanza.

• "We push more logs before 9 A.M. than most people do all day!"

A parody of an old U.S. Army recruiting slogan.

• "Are we inside Television City?"

A reference to the CBS Television City studio complex in Los Angeles.

• "He thought it was Boog Powell!"

Boog Powell was a first baseman for the Baltimore Orioles during the 1960s and early '70s.

• "...no trace of either Ben or Jeff." "Or Akbar!"

Akbar and Jeff are two characters from Life in Hell, a comic strip by Simpsons creator Matt Groening.

• "Is she really going out with him?"

A reference to the Joe Jackson song "Is She Really Going Out With Him?"

• "The Unbearable Whiteness of Being!"

A play on the novel and movie The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

• "I shoulda gone to DeVry instead of Harvard!"

DeVry University, formerly known as the DeVry Institute, is a nationwide chain of adult-education centers that, unlike the latter, are not known for being that intellectually demanding nor prestigious.

• "Suddenly it's Wild Strawberries!"

Wild Strawberries is a 1957 film directed by Ingmar Bergman.

• "El Kabong will kill it!"

El Kabong is the guitar-carrying, Zorro-esque alter ego of Quick Draw McGraw. He was so named for defeating his enemies by giving them a "kabong" on the head with his guitar.

• "Only Tom Paxton can save us now!"

Tom Paxton is a folk singer/songwriter.

• "You can see why the British Invasion was so easy."

The British Invasion refers to the worldwide increase in popularity of music groups from England (notably The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Who) during the mid-1960s (reignited and continued by the new wave of British heavy metal in the 1980s).

• "Sponsored by Thom McAn!"

Thom McAn was a now-defunct chain of shoe stores, which were often found in shopping malls.

• "He slides like Ron Santo."

Ron Santo, third baseman for the Chicago Cubs in the '60's and early '70s.

• "Ray Manzarek on organ!"

Ray Manzarek was keyboardist for The Doors.

• "Now somewhere in the black hills of South Dakota, There lived a young boy named Rocky Raccoon!"

Opening lyrics to The Beatles song "Rocky Raccoon".

• "When the agents reached the Spahn Ranch; Manson and his followers were nowhere to be seen."

Referring to the Spahn Ranch which was notorious for being the residence of Charles Manson and his followers. A relevant riff as it was also one of the locations used to shoot The Creeping Terror itself.

• "This is Andy Warhol's Driving."

A reference to artist Andy Warhol's experimental film Sleep, which consisted of eight hours' worth of footage of a sleeping man.

• "He knew what he had to do." "Become a huge fan of...LARRY STORCH."

Larry Storch is an actor who is primarily known for having appeared alongside Forrest Tucker of The Crawling Eye in such television comedies as F-Troop and The Ghost Busters (which is not to be confused with the more famous movie property).

• "After his release; Stacey Koon gets a job at Cray Computers!"

Stacey Koon is a former LAPD officer, who was charged with using excessive force in the beating of Rodney King. Cray is a supercomputer manufacturing company.

• "Superman's Dead...."

Crow's response to the letter claiming 'Superman is a graphic novel, not a comic book' is based off the 1992-1993 DC comic book event The Death of Superman.

• "Please, God, I'm only 17..."

A reference to a much-reprinted letter to Dear Abby, written in the voice of a reckless teenage driver who has just suffered a fatal car crash.

Video Releases

MST3K VHS

• Commercially released on VHS by Rhino Entertainment in March 2000, the episode was also released at the same time as a part of a 3-VHS set with Bloodlust! and The Side Hackers.
• Commercially released on DVD by Rhino in November 2002 as part of The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection: Volume 1, a 4-DVD set with The Skydivers, Catalina Caper and Bloodlust!. The DVD release is a double-sided disc, with the MST version on one side and the un-MSTed movie on the other.
  • Re-released in September 2015 by Shout! Factory.
    • Re-release DVD special features include the extended trailer for The Creep Behind the Camera, the Screamfest 2014 trailer for The Creeping Terror, and a Q&A from Screamfest 2014 on The Creep Behind the Camera with Frank Conniff and Trace Beaulieu.
• Available for rent or purchase on Amazon's streaming service.

preceded by: Season 5		MST3K Season 6					followed by: Season 7
		1994 - 1995
601	Girls Town	1994-07-16	609	The Skydivers	1994-08-27	617	The Sword and the Dragon	1994-12-03
602	Invasion USA	1994-07-23	610	The Violent Years	1994-10-08	618	High School Big Shot	1994-12-10
603	The Dead Talk Back	1994-07-30	611	Last of the Wild Horses	1994-10-15	619	Red Zone Cuba	1994-12-17
604	Zombie Nightmare	1994-11-24	612	The Starfighters	1994-10-29	620	Danger!! Death Ray	1995-01-07
605	Colossus and the Headhunters	1994-08-20	613	The Sinister Urge	1994-11-05	621	The Beast of Yucca Flats	1995-01-21
606	The Creeping Terror	1994-09-17	614	San Francisco International	1994-11-19	622	Angels Revenge	1995-03-11
607	Bloodlust	1994-09-03	615	Kitten with a Whip	1994-11-23	623	The Amazing Transparent Man	1995-03-18
608	Code Name: Diamond Head	1994-10-01	616	Racket Girls	1994-11-26	624	Samson vs. the Vampire Women	1995-03-25