THE WORST WE CAN FIND - Christmas Advent Calendar: Day 14 - MITCHELL

 

Day 14 of The Worst We Can Find Christmas Advent Calendar brings us a jolly fat man who breaks into houses and yes, Greta, there IS a Christmas Tree. Of course, we’re talking about Mitchell!

Mitchell (September 1975)

Program: Mystery Science Theater 3000

Air-Date: October 23, 1993

 

The original movie poster and the VHS cover for the MST3K version.

Plot: Yeah, we’ve got a plot for you. Right here, buddy.

Really, in the paragraphs below. Sorry if that sounded aggressive.

Walter Deaney (John Saxon) is a trade union lawyer who takes the opportunity of a burglary-in-progress at his home to shoot the perpetrator. The cops aren’t very interested in the case, but Detective Mitchell (Joe Don Baker) is, which has Deaney calling in favors to get Mitchell off his back. As the FBI is trailing Deany, they want Mitchell to back off as well.

To facilitate, the chief of police moves Mitchell to stakeout James Cummins (Martin Balsam), who is on the crest of seeing his empire of stolen imports and exports being stripped away from him because a cousin of the mob don is having a shipment of heroin brought in through Cummins’ company while the police are breathing down his neck. Mitchell is determined to bring both Cummins and Deany to justice (perhaps a final justice?).

Newspaper ad from June 21, 1975 for the Texas premiere.

Deany at first tries to buy Mitchell off with a high-priced Prostitute (Linda Evans), but she eventually falls for the big lug, even after he sends her to jail for having pot. (Edited from the MST3K version is an earlier discovering of a bag of mary-jane in her purse, which he ignores; it’s only after she taunts him to arrest her that he does so, making his character actually more forgivable in the original cut of the movie.) He believes Cummins is behind the prostitute scheme, but after Cummins jeers him for thinking so, Mitchell visits Deany (who has a Christmas Tree in his house, thus making this a Christmas movie), who offers Mitchell a money-scheme to pay him off. It’s no dice, and he becomes such a nuisance to the two criminals that they decide to eliminate him. Permanently.  Bwaaa-haa-haaa.

This leads to a scene cut from the MST3K version where Cummins forces Mitchell into a trap where he is defenseless against Deany and a henchman trying to kill him with dune buggies. Mitchell outfoxes them (and uses a rock as seen in the opening title sequence) and Deany gets killed when his vehicle flips over and explodes (as dune buggies rarely do).

Why would anyone do this with Mitchell? Because he's a giving, sensual lover. And has beer.

With Deany dead, Cummins decides to double-cross everyone by giving Mitchell information to shut down the heroin coming in, telling the mob don’s cousin about Mitchell arriving to confiscate the heroin, and secretly replacing the heroin with chalk. Mitchell, however, is way ahead of everyone and, no doubt having seen Key Largo, ends up killing Cummins and saving the day.

Then scenes from next week’s episode of Mitchell!

 

Favorite Riff: “Baby oil!” “Nooooo!” (vomiting sounds) “My, my, my, MY GOD!  No!”

Thoughts:  Honestly, if you were around in 1973-1975, you would have thought Joe Don Baker was the bee’s knees. He was everywhere and it was all thanks to Walking Tall, based on the career of sheriff Buford Pusser, which became a sleeper hit and led to two sequels (with Bo Svenson taking over the role). Later in 1973, when the Walter Matthau-starring Charley Varrick was released, the ad campaign quickly was revamped to highlight Baker’s minor role in the movie over Matthau, displaying how much star-power he had at the time. He wound that back a bit and would make a good solid career out of playing secondary character roles in many movies (including an effective run in three James Bond movies; once as the villain and twice as a good guy). There would be occasional attempts for bigger roles in the crime series Eischied (1979), where his character played against stereotypes by being well-educated AND southern, and movies like The Pack (1977), but co-starring roles in movies and television suited him just fine.

Director Andrew McLaglen had a career making movies with John Wayne and James Stewart throughout the 1960s before bouncing around a bit with action movies for both television and theaters in the 1970s and 1980s. Ian Kennedy Martin, meanwhile, created The Sweeney (a police series that Life on Mars pays tribute to), so even if it’s across the waters for him here, you would think he would know his stuff. The cast is rounded out with a lot of familiar faces from television; all competent. And, in all honesty, Joe Don Baker is fun to watch and good in anything. There I said it. Whadaya gonna do about it? Seriously, he’s in fine form here and there is a good connection between him and Merlin Olsen, with some comedic reactions between the pair through the movie that plays well.

And yet, everything all piles up into a mishmash of action pieces that, while not confusing, doesn’t really feel like it’s amounts to anything.  There’s little tension and certainly no build up over the course of 90 minutes. Shame, Mitchell as a character could have worked in a vague Columbo type of way, with a slob cop who actually is a relentless pursuer of criminals and unbribable. Heck, I could easily see it as a series from the 1970s. But the sloppiness on display isn’t very charming here and a story that really could have ramped up into something big (that FBI subplot just fizzled out the moment it was mentioned, for example), sits there in a bad Hawaii Five-0 way; ending with Mitchell killing off a kingpin’s relative and ruining his drug shipment, but with no ramifications. 

People get upset with the movie for not being good; I get frustrated with it for not attempting to be something more than the filler than it is.

The temp is causing problems early on in the episode. Bah!

The Riffing:  This, of course, ranks highly with MST3K fans not only because there’s plenty of good riffing in the theater, but also because it is the end of Joel’s run and the beginning of Mike’s in the series. Most of that is covered in my The Worst We Can Find book, but it all came down to Joel deciding the best thing for him and the series was to leave. This was of no surprise to everyone on the show, as they figured he would be leaving at some point anyway.

There were many people who were up to replace Joel in the program, but the cast quickly rallied behind Mike Nelson. This was understandable: he was head writer, he wrote most of the music used on the program, and he was already playing parts on the show, so they knew he could act. Best of all, he was already one of them, so it meant not having to bring someone they didn’t know in from the outside. Joel would go on to work on other outside projects, while MST3K continued strong for another four and a half seasons, but Joel’s departure was the writing on the wall for both Frank and Trace, who would see their way out the door over the next two seasons.

If nothing else, it gives everyone a good look at Joel's knees.

The times were definitely changing. One consequence of the switchover to Mike is that the show began to quickly evolve from being each episode as a stand-alone to a form of continuing storyline (in the first four and a half seasons, beyond the Turkey Day Marathon inserts that brought back certain characters, Torgo from Manos is one of the rare cases where a character from one week returned to pay off a gag in a subsequent week of show; and ironically enough, he was played by Mike Nelson). New characters began to return in subsequent episodes and callback became more frequent. For example, Pearl Forrester would be introduced and become a regular cast member in season seven, while The Umbilicus that attached Deep 13 and the SOL together in the first episode of season six and was referred to and seen many times after that. Such concepts would eventually make the multi-episode storyline of season eight not that far-fetch and you begin to see the acorn in it as early as midway through season five.

Come to think of it, Forrester never did sign that time-card.

While many movies used in the early days of the program needed no editing (at 60-75 minutes in length, there rarely was any reason to cut material from movies that were G-rated to begin with), those that did get trimmed rarely showed their rough edges. That was not the case with Mitchell, however, with the first bedroom encounter with Linda Evans edited out (perhaps thankfully), while John Saxon goes missing because his character’s death scene is completely gone. And while they acknowledge the missing John Saxon in the riffs (and there is a brief mention of his death on the car radio), it means the riff is based on a false premise, as the movie DID give us Deany’s demise, but we’re left to think they fouled that up and didn’t deliver.

And as for Joe Don Baker’s response to this? Again, check out The Worst We Can Find for further details, but namely there’s little evidence he really cared what they thought about him or his movies. Nevertheless, it makes for good gags by the MST3K guys, which is all that matters.