THE WORST WE CAN FIND - Christmas Advent Calendar: Day 19 - The Mads Are Back with NIGHT OF SHORTS 4

It’s Day 19 of The Worst We Can Find Christmas Advent Calendar, and it’s about time we returned to The Mads Are Back for a look at one of their great shorts collections, A Night of Shorts 4. It may not have Christmas stuff in it, but it has toys, cartoons, a party or two, and a Scrooge-like boss. Check it out!

A Night of Shorts 4  

Program: The Mads Are Back

Air-Date: July 13, 2021

Kay naturally has shorts on her mind, and A Night of Shorts 4 can be found in this collection from The Mads or by itself.

Plot: Trace and Frank riff four shorts between bits of Episode 81 of Space Angel. Here’s the line-up.

Cindy Goes to a Party (1955) Directed by Herk Harvey, who also directed two riffing favorites: Carnival of Souls and Shake Hands with Danger. This Centron short made for the classroom has Cindy thinking she hadn’t been invited to a party because … well, we’re not sure, but a fairy godmother eventually appears in her sleep to tell her she needs to get hip to good manners at a party or she’s screwed. Cindy goes to the party with her fairy godmother seen only by her and one other kid and they learn how to behave themselves with as little graffiti as possible. Cindy is so good at learning that she doesn’t need her fairy godmother, who leaves before the kegs and strippers arrive. Cindy then wakes up to find that the friend’s older sister – who looks remarkably like the fairy godmother, (although as pointed out by the Mads, that makes no sense) – arrives with an invitation and apology for not inviting Cindy earlier. Cindy will make her pay some day.  Oh, yes.

The fairy godmother has her agenda.

Space Angel (1962) This is episode 81, “Dragon Fire,” in the Syncho-Vox animated series. Most people remember Clutch Cargo done by the same studio, Cambria Productions (if you’ve seen Pulp Fiction, it’s the cartoon young Butch is watching right before being given his father’s watch; and was a frequent cartoon shown on The Higgins Boys and Gruber program in the early days of the Comedy Channel). Space Angel was an action series set in space, with Scott McCloud (no, not that Scott McCloud) fighting bad guys, and we see Scott investigating trouble in the portions of the episode peppered through the Night of Shorts here.  The animation was so limited that it really could not be called even limited animation. Movement was done by pulling things across the screen as the image stayed stationary, or a fast back and forth of two pieces of artwork to show in-frame movement. More startingly was the way mouth movement was done, which had human lips (typically heavily made-up to give everyone ruby-red lips) superimposed over the mouths of characters to allow natural movement of the lips instead of drawing the lips to synch with the voice actors.  It’s rather unnerving to watch and still is here.

Space Angel and his oh-so-kissable lips.

Coffee Break (1958) Calvin Company produced this short directed by Gene Carr. Owen Bush, an actor who has appeared in secondary roles in a good number of television shows over several decades, is a business manager who is tasked with figuring out how to resolve a made-up crisis by the boss – people taking too long on their coffee breaks. Cigarettes flow freely through the short, as well as coffee, and we get the traditional 1950s worries about WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE! The manager is left to resolve the issue of how to get people to not waste time on break as the short comes to the close, no doubt to then have managers watching the film break up into groups and waste more time trying to find answers to a phony problem when they could be in their offices doing their jobs.

The manager is surprised by the gift given to him.

Space Angel (1962) Even more of Episode 81.

Gilbert Toys 1963 (1962) Preview of new toys from the educational toy company that may have died in the late 1960s, but it was easy to find remnants of their toys at hobby shops for years to come. They introduced everyone to the Erector Set (and bad jokes as kids about the very name) and had plenty of scientific chemistry sets that you could build cool things out of that were very hazardous, including one that included radioactive samples. Coooooool.  They also made trains, racetracks, and other toys generally based around some type of mechanical aspect that demonstrated to children as to how things worked (even the mixer for girls seen in the short at least tries to teach how mixtures work together to create other things). The short here was shown to businessmen at toy conventions looking to supply their department stores for the coming year, so it’s all serious and somewhat dreary, making it perfect for the Mads.

"Just set it on the ground and go home. It's loads of fun!"

Space Angel (1962) One final bit of Episode 81 for those playing at home.

How to Say No (Moral Maturity) (1951) – This Coronet short focuses on peer pressure and how to say no if you’re not comfortable with what others want to do. Marty goes to a diner where all his friends order beers but he doesn’t want to; Nora won’t smoke with her friends at a pajama party; Lucy can’t get the boys to stop trying to pressure her into some serious necking (with Nora suggesting that maybe the girls are to blame); and then there’s Howie, who’s an ass. All offer up suggestions to avoid awkward instances of having to say “no,” which aren’t really that bad, but then again avoid conflict in such a way that they don’t really resolve anything either. The lean into “girls can come off as easy” is a bit hard to stomach these days either, but it was the 1950s. Honestly, any talk suggesting that girls may not be wanting to mess about on a date and guys are jerks for not taking no as an answer is quite radical for the time.

But what's behind the curtain?

Favorite Riff:

Business manager breaking the fourth wall to explain his predicament in Coffee Break: “I like coffee. In fact, I’d be out on a break right now if …”

The Mads: “… it wasn’t because of you assholes.”

The Riffing: We’ve already featured The Mads Are Back in Day 4 of the Advent Calendar with The Mads’ riffing of Glen or Glenda (check it out right here), and they certainly deserve a return visit here. While the pair have done at least one Christmas show (the Mexican Santa Claus movie), I wanted to cover one of their frequent subjects – um … short subjects. The pair; who do all of their own writing for the show, making them unique amongst the riffers we’ve been discussing (RiffTrax comes close, but they do usually bring in a couple of contributors to help); have alternated with an evening of shorts in their monthly shows between full-length films, of which this is an early entry.

As mentioned before here in the blog, some of the best riffing done by any of the riffing groups is when a short is used, and both Trace and Frank use it quite well to their advantage here, playing off some older educational shorts and the obscure Space Angel to make for an excellent hour. As mentioned before, being more independent than the other groups also make The Mads more willing to push the envelope at times, so older fans who only remembers the days of Forrester and TV’s Frank should be prepared for some naughty words popping up here and there and occasional political jokes that probably would not fly on the other shows (case in point, when The Mads appeared live with the RiffTrax gang, there are some humorous comments as to them asking Frank to “tone down” some of his material for the show to keep it “friendly”).

There’s a good mix of shorts here as well, with the Gilbert Toys advertisement being fascinating just for the toys being introduced of the slowly fading company in the emerging changes of the 1960s, with the riffs being a cherry on top. Cathy Goes to a Party and Coffee Break are both more traditional shorts and The Mads handle them effortlessly as should be expected, while How To Say No is an interesting short just by itself and even reviewed on IMDB as being one of the better shorts done by Centron. Last, and certainly least, is that of Space Angel, which needs the support of people like Trace and Frank to make it watchable.

The Mads Are Back may not get quite the coverage as RiffTrax or MST3K, but it’s certainly worth checking out. The Gilbert Toys 1963 short is available to see for free on The Mads’ YouTube site, but you can currently order many of the short collections at half-price on their website up through December 25. Give them a shot with this one or any of their other offerings, as they are well worth the time to see!