THE WORST WE CAN FIND - Christmas Advent Calendar: Day 7 - SPACE MUTINY

 

We’re at Day 7 of The Worst We Can Find Christmas Advent Calendar and taking a look at Cameron Mitchell, Reb Brown, John Phillip Law, and Cisse Cameron in the movie Space Mutiny. It features some good special effects from Battlestar Galactica, some iffy staging in what appears to be a factory substituting for the inners of the main ship, plenty of rail-kills, speeds of three, and Commander Santa!

Space Mutiny (1988)

Program: Mystery Science Theater 3000

Air-Date: November 7, 1997

  

Artwork for the original movie, the MSTK release and the RiffTrax Live! version

Plot: It’s a Battlestar Galactica rip-off, only with all the fun of the original gutted out of it.

Okay, okay, the Southern Sun is a ship sent from an overpopulated world in hopes of finding a new world thirteen generations before. This would suggest that they are alone in space, since they are many years into their travel, but somehow there’s pirates out there causing trouble. Are they so slow that people from their planet have passed them by in space-travel? Did some people branch out years ago in their space dune-buggies and become roving gangs of space delinquents, following them around for fun? Are these aliens hooligans? And, if so, why hasn’t anyone asked them where a nice planet to go to would be?

It's True - Love Your Work and You'll Never Work a Day in Your Life!

But no matter, there are pirates nearby and a conspiracy within the ship headed by Elijah Kalgan (John Phillip Law, Diabolik himself) to lead the ship to the pirates and find a little planet they can stretch their legs on after being cooped up in the ship for so long. To help in his endeavor, Kalgan begin sabotaging this ship, with the assistance of the engineer, MacPhearson (James Ryan of Kill or Be Killed and Kill and Kill Again, both of which have been covered by RiffTrax). This leads to the destruction of an incoming shuttle carrying a professor friendly with Commander Jansen (Cameron Mitchell, The Stranger from MST3K and Supersonic Man from RiffTrax) and his daughter, Dr. Lea Jansen (Cisse Cameron).

The pilot of the shuttle is teleported from the crashing ship, but the professor dies and Dr. Jansen blames the pilot, Slab Bulkhead, okay, actually Dave Ryder (Reb Brown of the 1970s Captain America movies). Their angry meet-cute leads to them discovering the conspiracy and stopping Kalgan and regaining control of the ship while slowly whizzing around the factory, I mean, ship in scooters. Very slow scooters.

Oh, and there’s a subplot about a group of women called Bellerians, who dance around in Stevie Nick scarves and Jane Fonda workout-swimsuits. Are they aliens? Where did they come from if it appears the Southern Sun is the only ship around? None of that matters, for they are there namely to eat up the running time when the production realized the movie was too short, and are of no consequence to the main plot beyond giving Commander Santa some jollies.

Thoughts:  Filmed in what was Transkei (now part of the Eastern Cape province in South Africa) in 1988, the film production and others, including David Winter’s film Rage to Kill, was under a microscope for making movies in Apartheid-era South Africa. Producer Hope Holiday recognized in an article with The San Francisco Examiner in October 1988, “We know there are a few problems politically,” which was quite the understatement. Her take to the press was that making the film there would help the local community, but producer/director David Winters admitted in his autobiography that the tax-breaks offered made financing attractive.

Commander Santa and Sting interrogate Blast Hardcheese early in the movie. 

David Winters will forever be remembered as A-rab in West Side Story, but he was also a well-known choreographer, director, and producer who would make a number of movies and choreograph both Kitten with a Whip (featured on MST3K) and the infamous The Star Wars Holiday Special. In his autobiography he mentions that he had prepared the production but had to step away on Day One of shooting due to the death of his father. Instead, the movie was completed by his assistant Neal Sundstrom. Winters would explain that he never set foot on the set during filming, but due to issues with the financiers, they had to keep his name attached to the film. This led to the bad reviews sent his way over the years when he felt he had no control over the movie.

Reb Brown has had a fairly successful acting career, appearing in such movies as Uncommon Valor and Hardcore (a popular reference on MST3K) as well as starting in another RiffTrax favorite, Yor, the Hunter from the Future. He is remembered by some Marvel fans as starting as Steve Rogers in two Captain America movies form the late 1970s, and he received critical acclaim playing Eddie Leonski, a real-life serial killer, in Philippe Mora’s 1986 movie, Death of a Soldier (it was this movie that Winters saw when looking for an actor to play Dave Ryder in Space Mutiny).

Once Reb was picked to be in Space Mutiny, it was an easy casting chore to locate the lead female role, as Cisse Cameron was (and remains) Brown’s spouse and had done a good deal of television and films beforehand. Several other cast members, including Ryan and Mtichell, had just worked with Winters on another film, so they were already in South Africa anyway, while John Phillip Law was added to the cast to play the main villain. Law had been in several movies by that point, including Barbarella, Von Richthofen and Brown (a great Roger Corman movie), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, and of course, Danger: Diabolik.

The movie is notorious for killing off a major character early in the film, Lt. Lamont, only for her to reappear in the very next scene at her desk on the bridge of the ship as if nothing happened. This leads to one of the few times where Mike and the bots fall straight out of riffing to point out the obvious (a statement that the show usually avoided because it conveyed a fact everyone can see on-screen and not a really a joke). Bad continuity also appears with the Bellerians, who really serve no purpose in the plot and are there to simply dance around for the boys watching at home. It’s clearly an afterthought with them, as none of their scenes require cast members from any other part of the movie appear with the dancers, with the exception of Mitchell.

Ironically, for a film that blatantly incorporates Battlestar Galactica footage in the most awkward and blatant ways, the movie has become a somewhat fond step-child for fans of the series, including a later audio recreation of the story with several members of the original cast many years later.

Favorite Riff: (Devers as he passes by a living Lt. Lamont, even though she died in the previous scene) “'Okay, look alive, everybod— oh ... sorry, Susan.”

Father and "daughter" of the Southern Sun.

The Riffing: The episode occurred in the first season of the series after the move to the Sci-Fi Channel. As mentioned in my book, The Worst We Can Find, executives at the channel suggested that the series begin an on-going storyline for the characters of MST3K. This concept was not greeted with praise by the MST3K crew, but they reluctantly went along, only for the Sci-Fi Channel to then show the episodes out of order, making the concept a waste of time. Saying that, it did give us a chance to see the characters participating in stories that have them interacting with other characters, not to mention giving us strong introductions to Pearl’s two new henchmen, Dr. Bobo (Kevin Murphy) and Brain-Guy (Bill Corbett).  As seen in the episode, it also allows Mike to physically interact with Pearl and the others, albeit briefly near the end of the episode (and once again team up Mike with his real-life wife Bridget in the show).

With the mess that was Space Mutiny, it has been remembered by the writers as being a fun one to riff, especially considering Lt. Lamont’s death and resurrection, the overacting of several members of the cast, and the oddball nature of the action sequences. Mitchell doesn’t really have much to do in the film besides wear a bad beard and lend his name to the production, but it did give us Commander Santa, for which there are plenty of jokes (and eventually led to Kevin Murphy appearing in-character when RiffTrax later did a live riffing of the film for RiffTrax). It also gave birth to the fan-favorite of the many, many names for Reb Brown’s character that Mike and the bots come up with during the movie (Blast Hardcheese, Brick Hardmeat, Slab Squatthrust, etc.), which had occurred in smaller dosages during earlier movies for certain characters, but never for the length of time and number of names as seen here. The riffters also lay it on thick when covering all the “rail-kills” (on-screen deaths where people fall over railings) seen in the film, which would be another favorite of fans to discuss over the years.

A rare opportunity to see all of the main cast together in one spot.

While Reb Brown has been very accepting of the riffing about him, an running-gag about the age of Dr. Jansen did upset Cisse Cameron. Although many years younger than Reb Brown and only in her early thirties at the time of filming, Cameron’s makeup and the lighting make her look older and it led to merciless riffing on that fact within the MST3K episode itself. When the live RiffTrax event happened many years later, Mike, Bill, and Kevin made clear that they avoid such comments in their riffing , since it was deemed a cheap shot (and briefly censored one shot in the movie where accidental nudity occurred).

Typically considered one of the best episodes of the Mike-era, Space Mutiny not only has solid riffs, but a great storyline for the MST3K characters on the side as well.  It’s also one of the easiest MST3K episodes to locate online, via Amazon, Tubi, YouTube, and of course the Gizmoplex. And if you have the time, check out the updated riffing of the RiffTrax version available on disc and on the RiffTrax site and app.  And maybe someone can finally tell me the background on the hissing sounds whenever Lt. Lamont appears. (Is it a V reference?  I have to admit I never quite got that one.)