MSTable movies: T

TARZAN, THE APE MAN (1981)

See Miles O'Keefe in his pre-Ator days as the legendary Edgar Rice Burroughs hero, never once saying a word, but still a massive screen persona nontheless (even mono-syllabic was still too good for this guy).

See Bo Derek in her post-'10'days, stripping off layer after layer of useless clothing (even at one point attaining the help of tribal,african mid-wives to do so), all the while picking her teeth,and playing someone you might remotley mistake for Jane.

See just what a shambles a bunch of low-life studio execs and some middle-school brained marketers made out of an epic series beloved by all in every possible medium for 70 years. Although Bo stands by her claims that there was nothing sexual about her nude scenes, that's probably why she did'em. And I'm guessing the director was probably just ecstatic she saw it that way.

Frank Lund, w.bate@sk.sympatico.ca

TEENAGE BONNIE AND KLEPTO CLYDE (1993) Trimark Pictures/21st Century Film Corporation/Grove Park International

Have you ever wondered how Scott Wolf kept himself busy before "Party Of Five"? Did you ever fantasize about seeing Evie from the 80s sitcom "Out Of This World" take off her top? If so, then here's the movie for you. Scott Wolf plays Clyde, an unpopular wimp who's room is filled with his collection of stolen merchandise (Why is he a klepto? No reason whatsoever.) For no discernable reason, he attracts Bonnie (Maureen Flanigan, of the aforementioned fame), the daughter of the police chief and rebel-wannabe. After some minor shoplifting and a dumbfounding dinner-in-a-fancy-restaurant scene, the two decide to embark on a full-fledged life of crime. Armed with a couple of stolen tommy guns (?!), they rob convience stores, have sex, rob banks, have sex, and become national folk heroes without leaving their home town. They eventually head to Mexico, but are shot by police (Bonnie's dad included) after Clyde waves a candy bar at them (Don't ask.)

My brother-in-law rented this and we had a blast riffing on the atrocious acting, inadvertently hilarious sex scenes, stupid dialogue (Bonnie calls Clyde a "pistol-packing sex outlaw), and the overall shodiness of the whole affair. If you can find it, this would be a welcome addition to any Bad Movie Night.

Kris Bluth, ringo@gladstone.uoregon.edu

TEENAGE ZOMBIES (1957)

Directed by nobody in particular and starring nobody with any acting ability, this cinematic gem appears to have been filmed in the same basement (sorry! make that ...on the same set) as The Wild Wild World of Batwoman. No zombies, but plenty of teenagers and a killer gorilla thrown in for good measure.

Curt Wiederhoeft, cjw9505@Jetson.uh.edu

[Editor's note: This was directed by Jerry Warren, who directed, edited, and produced The Wild, Wild World of Batwoman.]

THE TERROR OF TINY TOWN (1938) Columbia

It's a really old Western (c. 1930s) starring a cast of midgets riding Shetland ponies. They go into the saloons UNDER the doors! Comes complete with songs. Hilariously awful.

Phil Catelinet, catelinp@gunet.georgetown.edu

THEM (1996)

Here's something which has become an MST3K tradition - the failed TV pilot. It is fortunate for all humanity that this drivel never made it to become a series. Alien beings which can travel instantly in the form of lightning come to earth in order to melt people for their DNA (or something like that). As a result of this invasion, we have to deal with 90 minutes of bad acting, dull scripting, and a few mediocre computer-generated special effects. Oh boy! This film brings up a lot of questions, gives only a couple answers, and then ends in the typical TV pilot manner... Only since this *isn't* a TV pilot, the audience is left hanging.. Fortunately, though, the audience doesn't really care much.

Demian Katz, katz@netaxs.com

THERE'S NOTHING OUT THERE (1991) Walkhn Films/Prism Entertainment

Thoroughly horrible. Five teens spend a weekend at a cabin in the woods, only to be stalked by an alien that resembles a wet green sock, who attempts to impregnate the females and kill the males. Quality action scenes like the hero swinging on a boom mike to avoid the monster (no lie) and completely arbitrary biker-chick nudity make this a must-see.

Crary Myers, lmyers@panther.middlebury.edu

Rebuttal

THEY SAVED HITLER'S BRAIN (1963) Crown International

They don't get much worse than this. This is like "Manos": The Hands of Fate, The Brain That Wouldn't Die, and a Nazi flick all rolled into one. I woke up to this late one night and was so dumbfounded I thought I was still dreaming. This mess has something to do with a woman and her husband travelling to a remote island in search of her kidnapped scientist father only to discover a bunch of nazis carrying Hitler's head around in a mason jar! Hitler's head doesn't talk much, he just sneers sinisterly alot to let you know he's still evil. The nazis want to destroy the world with nerve gas or something and find a new body to slap Hitler's head onto. Looks like it was thrown together from two or three different movies. They Saved Hitler's Brain is also known as The Madmen of Mandoras, and it stunk under that title, too. Oh, the pain...the pain...!

Mike Martin, mmartin@toltbbs.com

THE THING THAT COULDN'T DIE (1958) Universal Pictures

Involves a nasty pirate who refuses to remain dead even though beheaded, a buried trunk which some greedy people think contains a treasure but actually only contains this head, which is found to have mesmerizing, hypnotizing qualities and can make otherwise very nice folks do such nasty things to each other!

Fair damsel who is the heroine is such a goody two shoes! Robin Hughes (remember the bearded actor who played the Devil in one episode of Twilight Zone?) plays the evil, cursed pirate sans head. Or rather, head sans body.

Some silly romantic subplots, and plenty of crusty character actors thrown in to the mix. CHECK IT OUT!

Jonna D. Osborne, aac349@waldo.angelo.edu

[Editor's note: This was used on MST3K this season, episode 805, but probably for no reason having to do with this page.]

THE THIRSTY DEAD (1975)

John Considine (brother of the forgotten Douglas "son" who vanished with Bud and stuck audiences with Ernie and Uncle Charlie. Ever think about how weird it was that the "adopted" son looked EXACTLY like a "real" one?) as the high priest of an ancient lost tribe of blood-sucking zombies. Of course, when it's time for our remaining heroes to be rescued, the zombie colony turns out to be located half a mile from the highway. Interesting only because Considine's performance seems to be the model that inspired David Birney in Nightfall. Exactly the same poses and expressions. Eerie. Directed by "one-hit wonder" Terry Becker.

Curt Wiederhoeft, cjw9505@Jetson.uh.edu

13 GHOSTS (1960) William Castle Productions

This would also be a good one if you were stoned out of your mind, but I'd like to see them do an old one by the name of Thirteen Ghosts if they haven't already. It even has the same woman who played the wicked witch from The Wizard of Oz. Seriously!

Anonymized at submitter's request

THIS HOUSE POSSESSED (1981) (TV)

My experience with this movie can best be compared to witnessing a fatal, decapitating car wreck: I passed it while flipping through channels, and it was not only atrocious and horrible, but too atrocious and horrible to stop watching. A woman and her husband move into a house which apparently has a mind of its own and is also a voyeuristic pervert: it spies on people with security cameras, and so on. For absolutely no reason at all, the house manages to kill everyone who comes within a hundred-foot radius of the woman: some woman gets scalded to death in the pool, and a sweet, adorable old lady is burned to death in her car. Eventually, we find out that the house was built for the main character by her father and because of this it "loves" her. The whole thing ends with the woman and her husband getting into her car and driving off. For the pain the sheer badness of this movie caused me, no mocking, no riffing or slamming is too low. It deserves to be hurt.

Erica Drescher, ADresc9197@aol.com

THIS IS NOT A TEST

Starring Seemen Glass. This movie was probably made circa 1965 and smacks of late cold war sentiment. Glass plays a small town sherriff who receives word via his police radio that a nuclear warhead has been deployed by the Russians. For reasons known only to himself, he starts stopping traffic on a mountain pass with the intention of making the drivers and their passengers, if there are any, join him inside the steel trailer of a diesel truck he has commandeered. He believes it is the only way anyone can survive the blast and fallout but is unable to articulate his rationale to his unwilling prisoners/drivers. The majority of the action takes place inside the barren tractor trailer and the acting, script, editing, you name it, are all so awful you cannot stop yourself from watching - it is the equivalent of rubber-necking at the scene of a terrible accident. I saw this movie only once, and it was probably over 25 years ago, but I have never forgotten how truly bad it was. I would highly recommend it if you can find it.

PinkNapkin@aol.com

THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1993) Caravan Pictures/Walt Disney Productions

A swashbuckling roller-coaster starring Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen, Oliver Platt, and current sensation Chris O-Donnell. Did anyone spot the huge hole in the plot? Oh wait, there were about twenty! There is nothing more fun than watching three Hollywood "bad boys" smirking and grumbling their way through ludicrous dialogue. A period piece (!) directed by Steven Herek of The Mighty Ducks fame, the move includes a particularly painful scene in which the Musketeers show their medieval nature by teaching Chris O'Donnell the art of "Wenching." Oh, by the way, Tim Curry shows up to play yet another one-dimensional, wise-cracking villain with a toothy smile.

Ramon Esquivel, ramon.esquivel@yale.edu

TIMECOP (1994) Dark Horse Entertainment/Universal Pictures

This lovely piece of...work stars a perky Jean-Claude van Damme as a police officer who's sworn to uphold and protect the sanctity of the space-time continuum. Notable for its use of questionable science to justify second-rate action scenes; characters toss off lines like: "The same object can't be in two places at the same time" with almost religious conviction; (This is true, but it's used to explain why a person who _is_ in two places at the same time isn't allowed to touch himself - that is, his other self; it's not _that_ kind of movie.) An interesting 5-minute introduction includes references to international terrorism through time manipulation (you'd think it'd be a lot easier for them to build the machine in the _past_ and escape all those pesky military types) and carbon-dating gold (Really!) to determine its age, a concept which is impossible on at least three levels. Tech-heads will (or should) think this one's a hoot; others will have fun with the wooden dialogue and acting, as well as the somewhat cheesy (but expensive) computer-generated special effects - you haven't lived until you've seen a person transmuted into a column of pinkish stuff that's supposed to be imploding person juice. Also features JCVD doing a split to avoid an antitank missile (!). This one's just got too many opportunities to miss.

Shannon Joseph Marshall, gt0458d@prism.gatech.edu

TIME RUNNER (1993) Excalibur Pictures/North American Pictures

I can only recommend this one hesitantly, as it was so painful that, upon watching it a second time (having seen it a few years ago) and attempting a ribbing, my friend and I were simply not able to withstand the pain and ended up giving up about halfway through. But perhaps you are made of sturdier stuff than I. A mustachioed Mark Hamill travels from the year 2022 (where everything looks like a cheap Blade Runner rip-off) to the year 1992 (which looks like every direct-to-video loser action movie out right now) and gets into all sorts of incomprehensible trouble. There's lots of stuff involving the alien invasion of earth, but since the invasion seems to consist of Star Wars ships flying around firing bad optical effects at every floating model space station in sight for what seems like ten minutes, it's not very interesting. In fact, everything in this movie seems to go on forever, making one wish the title was more accurate. Not related to Time Walker (aka Being from Another Planet). With Rae Dawn Chong as a stupid scientist.

Brian Reubelt, reub6707@uwwvax.uww.edu

I saw it about a year ago on MonsterVision. I started watching it because I was bored and it looked reasonably interesting. By the end, I was only watching it for Joe Bob Briggs' comments. (Joe Bob's best comment: "You know, this movie was done by the same company that did Project: Shadowchaser, which also didn't make a lick of sense.")

This movie is a textbook example of how to completely ruin a decent idea with gratuitous violence. Basically, the movie is a sequence of increasingly uninteresting gun battles, with a helicopter chase and some cheesy "vision" sequences (you'll know 'em when you see 'em) thrown in for variety. There's a well-intentioned time-travel plot (which is wasted because it's just an excuse to string together gun battles), with Mark Hamill in the lead role (who's talent is wasted because he's just a guy running around shooting people), a thoroughly dispicable villian (who is wasted because he just stands around giving orders until the final scene, where, of course, the hero kills him), and a subplot set in the future (which is not only wasted, since history gets changed in the end, but stupid, since it revolves around the worst mock-up of a burning city and the least impressive starship-fired lasers I've ever seen.)

Other things to watch for:

• A guy who kills someone psychically for no apparent reason, other than to establish that he has this ability, which he never uses again in the movie.
• A almost good sequence near the end, where the villian "disintigrates" in the future after having been killed in the past.
• The hero's mother (don't ask) is played by the second worst actress I've ever seen. During a pivotal scene where she's supposed to be giving birth, she is obviously in absolutely no pain at all (unlike the audience). I have no idea what happened to her, but on a guess, I'd say she's now playing Captain Lockely on Babylon 5. (the FIRST worst actress I've ever seen.)
• A scene near the beginning where the hero flies through a time rift which he knows is there, although the audience doesn't know he knows until later, by which time they've stopped caring.
• The female lead, who's loyalties appear to change at odd points for no readily apparent reason.
• A FULL HOUR of the movie is completely unrelated to the rest of it! Basically, The hero meets all the other characters, then goes off to hunt down the flight recorder that was taken from his crashed ship. An hour and two or three gun battles later, after he retreives the thing, the plot does a complete about-face and never refers to the aforementioned hour again!
• The opening credits list six different screenwriters. Anyone who's ever tried collaberative writing knows what THAT means.
• I might be wrong here, but I seem to remember that the hero recognizes his mother in one scene, while he states in another that he never knew her.
• To top it all off, the hero dies in the end! At least, I think he dies. This point is somewhat ambiguous, and it seems like the writers were in a hurry to close the thing up after the last gun battle.

The deepest hurting of all was seeing Mark Hamill in it. Hamill was simply excellent in the Star Wars Trilogy, and it pains me to see him reduced to doing junk like this. Basically this movie is the worst excuse for a poor excuse for a movie that I've ever seen in my life. The only good thing I got from this movie is that it made me a MonsterVision addict, since Joe Bob Briggs had such a great time critiquing it. I can only imagine the fun Mike and the 'bots would have.

Craxton, sbellotti@loyola.edu

TIME TRACERS (1995) Chase Regency

My 2 children could dream up a better plot and and find some bums on the street to act better. My husband brought it home from the video store, it was labeled a hot new release/overnight rental. unbeleivable

OK, now for the name..TIME TRACERS - DON'T WATCH IT. It's a science fiction movie about an "investigative reporter who unearths a megalomaniac's dastardly scheme to catapult unwilling humans back and forth through time, but his attempts to stop this plan may not be enough to thwart the undoing of history." We haven't been able to follow this movie, the actors are horrible, and the effects look like they were done by a bunch of kindergartners.

Peggy Cray, pcray@ccomm.com

[Editor's note: It appears this is the original title of Time Chasers, used in episode 821 of MST3K.]

TOMMY (1975) Columbia

The best part of this movie is Tina Turner as the Acid Queen, giving a bravura performance, and Ann-Margaret rolling around in baked beans, chocolate, and soap suds. A great movie to watch when stoned.

Dennis Pauley, novabear@erols.com

TORA! TORA! TORA! (1970) 20th Century Fox

Not really a super-bad film, but this retelling of Pearl Harbor could have been a lot better. It probably cost more to do than the actual military operation.

durlinlunt@acadia.net

TORNADO (1996) (TV) Evergreen Entertainment

Some dumb pre-takeoff from the 1996 Blockbuster Twister. When it came out, I caught my parents riffing it. Doesn't tell a story or anything.

Russell Christiansen, russell@cyberoak.com

TOXIC AVENGER

It is soooooo bad its just plain hideous .this movie is so bad and cheap that to make it seem that the army is really ganging up and the hero the toxic avenger they roll the same film footage of a tank rolling down the street five times in a row . The acting is soooo awful it just makes you cringe in fear .The plot revolves around a nerdy person who's name escapes me at the moment who gets conned into wearing a pink toto for this voluptous silicon woman than gets caught and laughed at by all these body building jerks he works for .Embaressed he runs away ,jumps out a window falls into a barrel of toxic waste and transforms into a "Hideously deformed creature of superhuman size and strengh" after this happen he then went on to kill every on of the people who laughed at him . In the meantime he meets a blind woman who falls madly in love with him. This movie gave me an aneurism if thats how you spell it . The toxic avenger and all its sequels are awful.

Barbara Canning, bcanning@atcon.com

TOXIC ZOMBIES

ATF agents authorize a backwoods crop dusting of marajuana fields but unfortunately time it at harvest season so everyone's out harvesting and they all get dusted. They then become the "toxic pot zombies" and wreak havoc on the local No. Californians. Just watching this "baddie" will give you the munchies!

nanascha@aol.com

TRACK OF THE MOON BEAST (1986)

[Scheduled to be episode 1007 of MST3K!]

A man is hit on the head with a meteor one night, and a piece of it gets embedded in his head. This meteor chunk causes him to turn into a lizardman and go berserk, something which has apparently happened to people throughout history, according to his Native American friend.

The film alternates between being really boring and kind of funny (though *not* the intentional kind of funny), but the makeup actually isn't too bad for this kind of thing. This is the definitive werelizard film, mainly because it's the only werelizard film I can think of.

Demian Katz, katz@netaxs.com

TRANSYLVANIA 6-5000 (1985)

Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis (Mrs. Jeff Goldblum at the time), and Ed Begley Jr. starred in this attempt at a horror movie spoof. The sad part is that these guys are playing it like the film is Young Frankenstein quality.

Gregory S. Norton, gnorton@cftnet.com

TROLL (1986) Empire Pictures

It's an Empire Pictures release and it isn't directed by Stuart Gordon, so you're in trouble right there. Michael Moriarty and family move into an apartment building whose resident troll decides to go on a rampage, turning all the other apartments into little fairy worlds, and the people who live in the apartments into little fairy people. Sonny Bono turns into a forest. The only thing this movie has going for it is a cute little mushroom creature, but he only appears in all of one scene. With Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a tenant who turns into a fairy person.

Brian Reubelt, reub6707@uwwvax.uww.edu

TROLL 2 (1992)

IT HAS THE WORST ACTING WORST PLOT, AND JUST ABOUT WORST EVERYTHING OF ANY MOVIE THAT I HAVE EVER SEEN. IT IS PRETTY CLEAN SO YOU WOULDN'T HAVE TO DO MUCH EDITING. AND IT WOULD MAKE A PERFECT MOVIE FOR THE MST3K TEAM TO MAKE FUN OF.

troydog69@aol.com

Unbelievable, really. Don't be frightened that you hadn't seen "Troll" as this has nothing to do with the original. This one involves a family of really, really, really wretched actors who all speak in monotone going on vacation, where they meet, um, evil creatures or something that turn things into green muck. There's also this one lunatic woman who overacts so horribly that the rest of the cast looks like they're in a coma by comparison. A dreadful film, and I've only seen it three times.

Paul Freitag, vidgeek@execpc.com

This one was probably one of the most godawful movies ever made. A halfwit family and a psychic kid participate in some kind of weird house-swapping project with a family form a town called NILBOG (obviously goblin spelled backwards but it takes the family the whole damn movie to figure it out.) The town is ocupied by a group of goblins and a high preistess who gets her powers form a stonehenge stone. The entire plot revolves around a semi-psychic kid who sees visions of his dead grandfather who tells the kid that the town is inhabited by goblins. It ends up the goblins are trying to turn the family into this half-human half pudding junk that is the goblins favorite food, this is accomplished by making the family eat this bizzare green food. The kid tries to stop his family from eating the food by doing many interesting things (like urinating on it [off camera] ) eventually the kid figures out the goblins dont eat meat, so they wont eat them if they have meat in their systems. eventually (after what seems like way too long) the family escapes and goes home, but their fatal mistake is forgetting that they SWAPPED HOUSES with some residents form nilbog (which of course are goblins) and eventually in the final scene eat the mother of the family in front of the son. This would be an excellent MST ! It's not really dirty and would need minimal editing.

Dogcow, pinansky@cris.com

TWISTER (1996) Warner Bros./Universal Pictures/Constant c Productions/Amblin Entertainment

I was suprised to not find Twister already suggested on this page as a MSTable movie, given how undeservingly popular this movie was in the box office. The movie was carried entirely by it's decent special affects. The acting was terrible, and throughout it I was embarressed by the lame behavior of the hick tornado-chasers. It's been a while since I've seen the movie, so I can't quite remember all of the stupid things about it, probably since I've subconsciously blocked them from memory. One of the more annoying aspects of the film that I believe I remember is that any character who didn't act like a hick moron, was portrayed stuck-up, or "bad." Very few modern movies strike me as terrible without having SOME redeeming value... Twister is one of those very few movies.

Oh yeah, one last lame thing about Twister, that wasn't in the movie... the previews showed footage that never took place in the actual movie (a tractor tire flying through a truck winshield) which I find pretty low. I was hoping through the film that tire finally would smash through the winshield, killing the main characters, and end the movie.

Tukka, tukkay@aol.com

Oh, geez... from the fiancee who obviously should have never been dragged along for the ride, to the evil stormchaser portrayed by Cary Elwes... from Helen Hunt's seemingly endless supply of pristine white tank-tops (either that or it was one indestructible and easy to clean tank-top), to that annoying extreme-sports-type "DUDE! IT'S COMING!" guy who coulda woulda shoulda been killed off before the movie was over... you know which guy I mean, right? I mean... UGH. This whole movie... UGH. Words can barely begin to describe... the only good thing about this movie was probably that Van Halen song playing over the end credits...

And to think Jan De Bont turned down Godzilla for this... Probably a good thing, actually...

Duncan Shea, sarazawa@hotmail.com

Rebuttal

THE TWONKY (1953)

It's from 1953, and starred Hans Conried as a guy who's TV turned out to be, in fact, an ALIEN. I'm not joking! The bulk of the movie was the thing chasing him around. I'm serious, the damn thing actually walked around on it's little tv cabinet legs! You've got to see this one to believe it! I doubt that it's on video, for reasons easy to understand, it probably extremely obscure.

Tammy Conner, tconner@e-tex.com