#35 Los Nuevos Extraterrestres aka The Pod People (Wes)

Los Nuevos Extraterrestres aka The Pod People

Struggling to find the movies we need is becoming more common as we get further through our list. This is especially true of any non-American movies (I’ve been working for months to try and get some of our upcoming movies after learning our lessons and having to sub Danes Without a Clue and Yes Sir). Los Nuevos Extraterrestres, a French/Spanish movie was no exception to this. However Mystery Science Theatre 3000 featured a movie called The Pod People, which kept coming up in our searches and as luck would have it Los Nuevos Extraterrestres was a movie much like Ator 2 - L’invincible Orion (see here), a movie of many names (it's also known as El Retorno Del Extra Terrestre). So once again we had a slight reprieve and got to watch the MST3K version. Did we have a lucky escape? Read on to find out…

Three poachers see a meteorite crash in the woods and one of them decides to investigate. He soon finds a glowing cave which is filled with eggs. Not seeing the potential profit in a breakfast you can eat in the dark, he decides to go full Hulk and starts to smash them. Just before he finishes he gets killed by an unseen assailant, which then goes on a murderous rampage killing the other poachers and then attacks a nearby pop band who’re on a camping trip. Meanwhile local boy Tommy (Oscar Martin) finds the cave with its one remaining egg, which he takes home with him. The egg soon hatches, and the creature that comes from it rapidly grows to the same size as Tommy overnight. Tommy calls it Trumpy, as it has a long nose (and possibly because Tommy suspects that he’s a massively incompetent, racist fucktrumpet with shit hair). Trumpy makes Tommy’s toys fly about using telekinesis and they soon become firm friends. It isn’t long before the band end up at Tommy’s house seeking help after being attacked by Trumpy’s irate mother. When they decide to go to the sheriff’s office to radio for help they stumble across Trumpy’s mother again who is still looking for her revenge/egg/child. Will Trumpy be reunited with its mother? Do murderous rampages run in the family? Will Trumpy grow old and run for office by appealing to the most hate filled people of the world? Will this movie ever make any sense at any point?

There are actually reasons why this movie makes so little sense, and it looks like the director, Juan Piquer Simón, wasn’t to blame (although if he was so dissatisfied with the end result, why he didn’t just Alan Smithee (see here for an explanation on that if you don’t understand) the movie I don’t know. No, this time it was down to the films producers wanting the movie to be changed from a horror movie to a family friendly movie. I’m not quite sure why people think that trying to change a movie into something else is a great idea, why not just write another movie? But it seems that this is a practice that studio execs think will work out just right this time, even if all those other times this has been tried before have failed miserably.

So why did the producers want these changes? Because ET was a worldwide smash hit and clearly taking a script for a horror movie featuring an alien and shoehorning a young boy into it would produce similar success. Like the previous ET cash-in we had to watch, Mac and Me (see here), Los Nuevos Extraterrestres misses the mark completely and instead of a heart-warming tale of a boy and a lost alien, you get the tale of a murderous alien rampage interspersed with scenes of some stop motion toys flying about to some evil circus music, like they’re being controlled by The Evil Dead. Still at least it didn’t feature Ronald MacDonald dancing, so it is a slight improvement over Mac and Me.

To make matters worse, they didn’t even make a cute looking alien. Instead they seem to think that a meth addicted Clanger would be the ideal look for Trumpy. To make matters worse his eyes glow brightly when he’s using his telekinetic powers, which just adds to the creepyness of the whole look. Was this Simón’s way of rebelling against his producers wishes and trying to ensure anyone who watches this movie has nightmares of Wookies with anteater heads and torches for eyes, eating all of their peanuts?

I do have to congratulate the person who designed the movie poster seen at the top of this blog though. If there was ever an Oscar for an attempt to fool you into seeing the wrong movie, then this deserves it. Starting with the large ET initials to show yet another of this films aliases, Extra-Terrestrial Visitors, and then using the (mis-leadingly non-horrific) eyes and body shape combined to try to make it look like ET from a distance (if someone has particularly bad eyesight that is), this is a masterpiece of deception. It’s the poster equivalent of a badly forged note to your teacher that you hope they’re too busy to look at properly so you don’t have to do PE in the rain.

 

The dubbing in this movie is pretty bad too. But for anyone who is a fan of 70s/80s European horror this is quite a common thing. The voices always sound as though they come from the same emotionless actors, who were once probably locked in a room together and not let out until they’d dubbed every movie their captors saw fit to throw into the room at them. They sound bored and are clearly reading straight from a script without any attempt at acting the roles out. The boy doing the voice for Tommy certainly sounded similar, and I think I recognize him from Burial Ground: Nights of Terror and several Fulci movies (or possibly it’s just a very typical little boy voice that voiceover actors do).

I would strongly recommend watching the MST3K version of this movie if you’re curious, as it’s highly entertaining. But Los Nuevos Extraterrestres is definitely not a film I would recommend that you watch without Joel and the bots. It lacks any form of proper coherent narrative and is just a plain bad movie in every respect. So from me this is a definite NO vote for Trumpy in 2016.

#35 Los Nuevos Extraterrestres (The Pod People) (1983) (Colin)

Cast: Ian Sera, Nina Ferrer, Susanna Bequer, Sara Palmer 

Director: Juan Piquer Simón

Genre: Sci-Fi, Horror

The next movie on our list is a French-Spanish collaboration called Los Nuevos Extraterrestres, which I believe means The New Extra Terrestrial or The New Extra Testicle, (it’s one or other).

If it’s The New Extra Terrestrial, then I’m sure you’ll agree this sounds a little bit familiar.  When I then tell you that this movie is the story of a young boy and his small alien pal, then I think the penny may finally start to drop.  That’s right, it sounds exactly like that 80’s cult classic, Mac and Me, (1988), which has also appeared on our bad movies list, (see blog here).

It also sounds a little bit like ET – The Extra Terrestrial and that is no coincidence.  The story goes that this movie was in development but that the studio wanted to cash in on the success of ET.  This meant that some changes were made to the story, but more about that later.

The only copy of the movie we could find was in Spanish and the only English version was the MST3K version.  So I enrolled in a Spanish evening class hoping to get a sound foundation of the language so I could get the gist of the movie.

Only joking, we took the easy option.

Firstly, a brief review of the MST3K version; it’s a Joel episode, which normally I’m not so keen on because I preferred Mike episodes, but this one is actually incredibly funny.  In fact it’s one of the funniest MST3Ks I’ve seen in a while and I encourage you to check it out.

Anyway, onto the movie and as I previously said, the studio changed the original storyline to make it more family friendly.  So did this have an adverse effect?  It was time to find out…..

The movie begins with the worst hunters since Elmer Fudd trying to poach deer.  One of the hunters stumbles upon a cave which contains many glowing large red eggs.  He decides to make the world’s biggest omelette and starts smashing them to bits.  He is just about to add sliced mushrooms when something stops him and promptly kills him.

Nearby, a band that produce some of the blandest music possible are on a camping holiday.  They are led by Rick, (Ian Sera), his girlfriend Sharon, (Nina Ferrer), producer Brian, (Emilio Linder), Kathy, (Sarah Palmer), Tracy, (Maria Albert) and Roberta, (a little gag for you G’N’R’ fans ).  There is also hanger on, Lara, (Susanna Bequer), who Rick is secretly trying to cop of with.  Lara is so excited about sneaking around with Rick that she runs through the woods, encounters an alien and then throws herself off a cliff.

Meanwhile Tommy, (Oscar Martin), has also found the cave which now has one remaining glowing red egg.  Tommy fancies eggy soldiers and so steals the egg, unaware that Mummy alien is snoozing nearby.

Tommy takes the egg back to his mum’s, (Concha Cuetos) and Uncle Bill’s, (Manuel Pereiro), house nearby where it hatches, (the egg, not the house).  Tommy is amazed as the creature inside grows overnight and in the morning is as tall as Tommy!  The alien looks like ALF with a trumpet sellotaped to his face and so Tommy calls him Trumpy, (and also he farts like a good ‘un!).  Tommy and Trumpy become good friends and Trumpy keeps Tommy amused by moving objects around his bedroom using only the power of Telekinesis whilst some funny music plays at double speed in the background.

Meanwhile, Rick and the band turn up at Tommy’s house with Laura who is in a bad way. Laura is put into a spare room by Tommy’s mum who cares for her.  Laura returns the favour by promptly dying and developing black dots on her forehead.

Sensing something isn’t right, Rick, Brian, and Uncle Bill, set out to investigate the area and call for help.  They bump into mummy alien who is very cross and has killed another hunter also leaving a series of black dots on his head, (which shocked me.  I completely forgot these guys were still in the movie).  She then descends onto Tommy’s house to find Trumpy and to tell him off for not coming home for tea.

Tommy, peeping through this telescope, has seen most of the action and realises the others may also want to get to Trumpy before he turns into a big cuddly psychopathic killer…….

Can Tommy save Trumpy?  What do the black dots mean?  Is the 3^rd hunter still in the movie?

Watch The New Extra-Terrestrials to find out!

If I had to sum up this movie in one word, it is confused.  For example, let’s start with the actual title of the movie.  I know it was originally called Los Nuevos Extraterrestres, but in English I have seen it called The New Extra Terrestrial, Extra Terrestrial Visitors and in the case of MST3K, The Pod People.  No wonder we couldn’t find a copy of the blooming thing as no-one seems to know what it’s called!

Then there’s the opening sequence, which is very confusing.  It does involve a hunter finding an egg, but I must admit the alien does look very different…..  This is because the opening sequence is lifted directly from another movie called Galaxy Invader, (1985).  How the hell they got away with stealing scenes from another movie is beyond me.  More puzzling is how on earth Galaxy Invader did not make it into our top 100 bad movies!

The first 20 minutes of the movie are incredibly confusing as they seem to be 3 different movies.  A movie about some hunters going poaching, a movie about a crap music group camping and a movie about a young boy who lives in a cabin in the middle of some woods.  Eventually when Tommy visits the cave that the hunter had done previously it starts to connect, but until then I really thought 3 movies were spliced into one, each more crap than the last.

I would normally rate the acting but as Wes has alluded to already, going this far into the list you can just assume from here in that it’s bad.  Madonna bad!  This movie is not helped by the dubbing however, which leads to more confusion.  The actor is angry; the voice is flat and unemotional.  The actor is sad; the voice is flat and unemotional.  The actor is flat and unemotional, the voice starts shouting.  I sort of wished I had taken that Spanish class after all just to clear up the confusion!

But the biggest and single most confusing thing about the movie is, well, erm, the movie!  As I said, the studio changed the original storyline to make it more family friendly.  Did this have an adverse effect?  You bet it did!

Originally, The Pod People was supposed to be about some aliens that go on a killing spree.  As the hunter instigated the fight by smashing the eggs, this could have been interesting as the alien seeks revenge.  Do we side with the alien?  Do we side with the humans?  Do we cheer as the killing moves onto the ‘music’ group?

Either way, it would have been a low budget horror, job done.

Then they were forced to include a storyline in which the killer alien and a young boy become good friends.  That’s just a bit odd to say the least.  What are we supposed to do?  Cheer Trumpy as he performs his cute little stop animation tricks and then slaughters his best pal?  Cheer Tommy as he manages to keep Trumpy safe so he can kill again and again?   Hope killer and child are happy together forever?

What on earth were they thinking?  If the alien was a human and was Hannibal Lector, would we be expected to swallow this storyline?  What if Trumpy was Freddy Kruger or Jason?  You could dress Leatherface in all the cute attire you could find, but I would still not be hoping the new pals stay together at the end of the movie!

The end result is this confused mess of a movie shamelessly trying to cash in on the success of ET.  Avoid the original movie at all costs, but do check out the MST3K version which is definitely one of the best I have ever seen.

MacCloud!

#36 Hobgoblins (Wes)

Hobgoblins

It was bad movie time and for once I was actually looking forward to watching our movie. After Pumaman (see here), the Hobgoblins episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 is definitely one of my most watched, so it was an exciting prospect to watch the movie without the riffing. Was it as fun to watch without Mike and the bots? Or was I in for more pain and anguish than I expected?

The world’s oldest security guard, Mr. McCreedy (Jeffery Culver), works in an old film studio, that for some reason has a locked room which contains several hobgoblins. These hobgoblins can make a person’s fantasies come true, and then kill them using these fantasies, and after a trainee security guard is killed in the room whilst having the fantasy of being the universes worst rock star, Dennis is forced to find another recruit. He employs Kevin (Tom Bartlett) who seems to think that guarding a film lot will impress his girlfriend Amy (Paige Sullivan). She however seems embarrassed that he can’t beat her friend Daphne’s (Kelley Palmer) army cadet boyfriend Nick (Billy Frank) in a rake fight! (Seriously. A fight with rakes). Kevin doesn’t fare much better at work either, as on his second day on the job he accidentally releases the hobgoblins into the world. By some amazing co-incidence they go straight to Kevin’s house and start to make his friends fantasies come true. Amy becomes a stripper, Nick a commando and phone sex-line obsessed Kyle (Steven Boggs) gets a girlfriend. Will their fantasies consume them? Will Kyle at least get laid before he dies? Will Mr Mcready find out who the missed call was from at the beginning of the movie?

When you see that a films director is also its writer, producer, editor and cinematographer you can usually assume that unless that person is very talented then it’s usually a really bad idea. The sort of bad idea that if a similar situation was to occur with someone who had a much bigger budget, it could easily end up with the creation of cinema’s most hated character and the tarnishing of one of Hollywood’s most beloved trilogies. To be fair to Rick Sloane, he does seem to have realised how much of a mess he made of Hobgoblins (unlike some other directors) and actually submitted the movie to Mystery Science Theatre 3000 himself though.

Hobgoblins was released in a time when using small puppets in horror movies was kind of popular. Obviously Gremlins being the most well known and popular, but around the same time there was also Critters, Ghoulies, Munchies, Puppet Master and Zelda Rubinstein in Poltergeist. However the puppets in Hobgoblins are so badly done they even make Zelda look like a real person.

At one point in the movie, the Hobgoblins are perched (stuck down with gaffer tape at best) precariously on a golf buggy, wobbling so much that they just look like oversized dashboard ornaments that are in are a very real danger of falling over, and this is where you really get to see how bad they are as puppets. Rather than the beautifully crafted Gremlins or Crites, the hobgoblins are so bad they make Elmer from Brain Damage look as though he was made in the Jim Henson Workshop. I’ve seen more convincing puppets worn on the fingers of five year olds.

The humans in this movie are if anything even less convincing than the hobgoblins. At this point in the list, I expect the level of acting to be as bad as someone with a hangover calling in sick to work, but the acting in this is sticks out as being particularly bad. If you’ve watched Troll 2 (see here), with its strange idea of using people auditioning to be extras as actors, then this reminded me of that. The cast lack talent, but they do have the enthusiasm of those who can’t quite understand how they got there, but will do their best no matter how incompetent they are. They’re like the middle management of the acting world.

 

The least convincing moment in all of this though, is the pointless, and unbelievably lame rake fight scene between Kevin and Nick. It’s less of a fight, than a game of Pattycake, played with a couple of rakes (with added synth effects added just out of time to the actual clash of wood). It’s so overly long and pointless it brings to mind the fight between Roddy Piper and Keith David in They Live, but without either the fun or fight choreography that made that scene hugely enjoyable. In fact it’s so bad it actually makes the fight scene between Captain Kirk and the alien Gorn in the Star Trek episode "Arena" look exciting and well choreographed.

The story makes less sense than the Americans quarantine policy in 28 Weeks Later (a feat that seemed impossible). There are these supposedly extremely dangerous creatures in a warehouse, that’s guarded by a security guard so old and inept he was probably the person who didn’t put a grate over the thermal exhaust ports on the original Death Star (which would also explain how he ended in his dead end job). All he has to do is keep one door and one metal cage locked, and make sure that nobody else working alongside him has access to the keys, and then there would be no monster breakouts. Instead he seems to think that not letting his young co-workers know that the vault exists, let alone that they shouldn’t ever open the doors, is a good idea. Hasn’t this man ever heard of curiosity? Why not just tell them that there are barrels of toxic waste behind the door and that opening it could lead to them getting some form of erectile dysfunction? I’m pretty sure that would be an excellent way of not having them open the door.

Also the hobgoblins seem to be focused on killing a few horny teenagers, that they miss the opportunity to actually cause any real havoc. Why don’t they attempt to make the fantasies of the bikers, punks and other patrons of Club Scum (where Amy goes to strip) come true? Surely someone in that whole crowd wants to do something more than get laid, or be a Poundstore Rambo? I’m not saying that these are bad things to dream about, but the hobgoblins really seem to have been set loose in America’s least ambitious city.

So as I said, before watching this I very familiar with this movie, and even without the MST3K crew it’s definitely in the so bad it’s good category.  Like Troll 2 and Plan 9 From Outer Space (see here) this movie is much maligned, but like them, its faults make it a hugely entertaining and charming movie. Hobgoblins is definitely a movie that I would recommend to any bad movie lover. So stop being a snobgoblin, open your mind and give it a watch!

#36 Hobgoblins (1988) (Colin)

Cast: Tom Bartlett, Paige Sullivan, Steven Boggs, Kelley Palmer, Billy Frank

Director: Rick Sloane

Genre: Comedy, Horror

The next movie on our list is Hobgoblins (1988) which was featured on MST3K and in my opinion, is one of the funniest MST3K episodes ever made! 

Hobgoblins was written and directed by Rick Sloane, a man who has a habit for producing cheesy low-budget movies usually featuring big breasted ladies and not a lot of plot.  In fact it was another movie of Sloane’s, Vice Academy, (1989), which was going to be riffed by the MST3K guys but there was not enough material to work with.  It was actually Sloane himself which suggested they used Hobgoblins instead and the rest is comedy history!

I like the fact Sloane recognises that this is a bad movie and yes he may have just been looking to gain publicity from it, but I thank him for giving the MST3K guys the heads up.

It’s a refreshing change to go into a movie knowing full well what to expect; Hobgoblins is a bad movie which was a shameless attempt to cash in on the popular Gremlins franchise and is truly awful.  But at least it’s incredibly funny.

Or is it?

Actually, when I came to think of it, I realised that I had actually never seen the original movie.  This led me to the question ‘was it the MST3K guys who made this movie funny or, as I first thought, is it so ridiculously bad that it becomes good?’.

Dithering old security guard, Mr. McCreedy, (Jeffrey Culver), works in an old movie studio and is showing Dennis, (Kevin Kildow), the ropes.  When Mr. McCreedy is called by his boss, Dennis decides to take a wander around and finds the film vault.  Inside is an old stage and Dennis does what every mature, intelligent, sensible man would do and jumps on stage, grabs a microphone and proceeds to perform as the bastard son of Freddie Mercury and Michael Jackson.

Someone or something does not seem to like his act and proceeds to kill him, (a type of voting I would like to see in Britain’s Got Talent or X-Factor).  When Mr. McCreedy discovers the body, he does what every good law abiding citizen would do, closes the door, walks away and never mentions it again.

This leaves the door open for the next victim trainee security guard, Kevin, (Tom Bartlett).  Mr. McCreedy warns Kevin to never go into the film vault, which Kevin promptly ignores the next night whilst chasing a burglar!

We then discover what Mr. McCreedy’s little secret is; small aliens which in no way look like Gremlins, *coughs*, have been locked away in the film vault and Kevin has inadvertently set them free!  Mr McCreedy is none too pleased and explains that the alien’s spaceship landed in the studio 30 years ago and that they possess strange hypnotic powers which puts people into their dream fantasies.  This sounds quite pleasant until we then discover that the Hobgoblins then turn these fantasies against their victims, killing them in the process!

Now on the run, the Hobgoblins end up at Kevin’s house, (coincidence!), where  the rest of main cast are dancing really badly to some very poor synth music, (which, from what I can tell, is just the same 10 second tune on loop). These characters are: Steve’s girlfriend Amy, (Paige Sullivan), pal and phone sex addict Kyle, (Steven Boggs), sex addict Daphne, (Kelly Palmer), and willing to feed her addiction, army boy Nick, (Billy Frank).

Kevin is tasked with finding the Hobgoblins and is told he must find them before sunrise or else they will be unstoppable.  Kevin, who has some kind of sixth sense it would seem, goes to his house to track down the Hobgoblins, (seriously, is this the only house in a 100 mile radius of the studio?).

One by one the gang are picked off by the Hobgoblins using Kevin’s chum’s fantasies against them.

Kyle believes Fantazia, (Tami Bakke), the lady he speaks to on the phone sex line, has come for him and drives off in his car with her.  They go to a secluded spot, Fantazia gets out of the car and unbeknownst to Kyle, starts to push the car towards the cliff edge……

Amy’s deepest fantasy appears to be that of a stripper and promptly goes to seedy nightclub, Club Scum, (I’ve not made that up!), where she starts stripping and attracts the attention of Roadrash (Duane Whitaker).  Roadrash is the bouncer and a wrong ‘un, but Amy is flattered by the attention and soon finds herself alone with him……..

Nick’s fantasy involves being gunned up to the nines and launching a one man Rambo style assault, but things look bleak when he ‘heroically’ throws himself onto a grenade to save his friends…..  Daphne’s fantasy, meanwhile, seems to be the offer of a load of squaddies in a truck parked up outside!  Will she give in to temptation?

Will Kevin manage to stop Kyle going over the cliff edge?  Can he save Amy from Roadrash?  Will Mr McCreedy at least let Dennis’ next of kin know that he may not be back for dinner?

Watch Hobgoblins, (currently available on YouTube in original or MST3K format), to find out!

Hobgoblins is a bad movie, a very bad movie, a stupendously bad movie!

Made on a budget of $15,000 it is very hard to see where this money has gone.  It certainly didn’t go on the actors.

None of the 5 main young actors can act, which is a bit of an issue if acting is your profession.  There are many pregnant pauses as synapses desperately fire up to recollect the next cheesy line.  There are lots of looks towards each other, as if someone may have tattooed the script onto their forehead or has the slightest inkling as to what is going on.  Unfortunately it appears that no one has the foggiest and they are often met with glazed expressions from their hapless colleagues.

My personal favourite actor in the movie though is Culver who plays Mr McCreedy and who moves around the old studio as if he has shat himself and is looking for the nearest toilet.

The most famous actor has to be Duane Whitaker who is probably best known as Maynard, the owner of the shop Bruce Willis and Ving Rhames stumble into in Pulp Fiction (1994).  It is Whitaker who informed us that ‘the gimp’s sleeping’.   Admittedly in Hobgoblins he plays a similar character, but hey, having this movie and ‘Pulp Fiction’ on your CV is pretty darn cool, so no complaints from me!

So if the money was not spent on the acting, surely they spent it on a team of writers to deliver a decent script?  Well no, Sloane did this and the quality suggests he didn’t pay himself a living wage.  The dialogue is cheesy and usually revolves around Daphne wanting sex, Nick asking Daphne is she wants sex and Kyle having phone sex.

What we end up with is a 70’s British saucy seaside postcard script and the movie should have been called Carry On Hobgoblins.  This is not a bad thing and does lend itself to some humorous moments, none more so that Kyle’s question to Mr McCreedy at the very end, ‘Uh….excuse me sir, can I use your phone?’.

So they must have ended up spending all of their money on the Hobgoblins puppets?  Erm no…..  As previously mentioned, they do look incredibly similar to the Gremlins puppets, albeit fire damaged Far East rip-offs being sold down the local market Gremlin puppets.  The big difference is the lack of animatronics.   Less Gizmo, more Elmo.

This does lead to some incredibly funny but unintentional scenes.  For example, there is the mystery of the height of the Hobgoblins.  They seem to be around 3 feet tall when on the ground, but once next to a human, they appear to be the same height.  There is one scene when Daphne is in the garden which is just flat ground when all of sudden next to her, looking eye to eye, is a Hobgoblin.  Either he was on stilts or Daphne’s legs had been cut off!

Then there are the actual fight scenes with the furry sods in which it is very clear they actors are just wrestling with Teddy Ruxspin look-a-likes.  It’s very funny and looks like someone has fallen into the plush toy aisle in Toys R Us.

But the best scene for me, in fact my favourite scene from the whole movie is when the Hobgoblins escape and steal a golf cart.  There is no movement from the puppets whatsoever except for the wobble of the puppets as they go over small bumps.  It’s so obvious that they are just stuck on and you end up with is scene which is hilarious and could have been cobbled together by a Primary School with some PVC glue and a shopping trolley.

And that scene is a classic example of why I love this movie.  There are so many unintentionally funny moments that it is hard not to like it.

There’s the fight scene between Kevin and Nick in which they hit each other with sticks.  Upon each impact, rather than a traditional Hollywood thud or thwack noise, they play a synth sound instead!  The end result is rather than looking and sounding like a fight with sticks, it looks like they are playing a new kind of body keyboard and are bashing out a new tune.

In fact, the synth sound effects continue throughout the movie until around 70 minutes in, when the sound engineer appears to have a break down and just plays every sound sample he has in his library.  It brilliant and feels like a drunk has fallen into Jean Michel-Jarre.

So back to my original question ‘was it the MST3K guys who made this movie funny or, as I first thought, is it so ridiculously bad that it becomes good?’.

The MST3K guys made this movie funnier and brought it to many people’s attention, but this movie can definitely be enjoyed on its own merit with no riffing.  It is incredibly funny, although more often than not this was probably not Sloane’s aim.

At the end of the day, what we have here is a movie which has bad acting, a bad script and bad puppets.  Its parts individually are truly awful.  But the sum of its parts create the perfect recipe for a movie which becomes so stonkingly bad, it transcends into good.

I can not recommend this movie enough; it’s a joy to watch.  Check it out on YouTube.