WORST WE CAN FIND - Christmas Advent Calendar - Day 3: Avalanche

 

We’re at Day Three into the Advent Calendar, and as we started off with early works in Day 1 and 2, let’s continue that theme with one from the return of the series in 2017. It’s not really about the holidays, but it does have snow, one Santa joke, and an elf … okay, Mia Farrow, actually.

Avalanche (July 28, 1978)

Program: Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return

Air-Date: April 14, 2017

Plot:  Rock Hudson plays David Shelby.  No, not David Selby, who was Quentin on Dark Shadows. Shelby is a businessman who has developed a ski resort on a mountain in a location that has a history of avalanches. Surprisingly, no one will go in on the financing of the resort for this reason, leaving David at great risk. Not surprisingly, since it is a movie, everyone wants to be there for the grand opening. Among the activities are two rather vague tournaments – a skiing one featuring an obnoxious creep, Bruce Scott (Rick Moses), and a skating one that appears to have only two competitors. There are also other competitions seen in the full cut of the film, but many portions were edited out to streamline the movie for MST3K.

At the ski resort is David’s mother, played by Jeanette Nolan (Roger Corman was hoping to get Ann Southern), a bookkeeper named McDade (played by Steve Franken, who had appeared in the previous MST3K experiment The Time Travelers), and associated others whose storylines are also trimmed for the MST3K version of the film. David’s ex-wife, Caroline (Mia Farrow) also comes to visit, while Nick (Robert Forster) is hanging around as a photographer/busybody who thinks David is setting up the resort to get hit with an avalanche.

And, boy, is Rock’s face red when it happens.  Actually, both he and Mia both seem to be suffering from sunburns (early reports from the set mentioned wanting Rock at least to have a “snow tan” and it seems it didn’t quite work out). Worse, it is due to David’s actions that the disaster occurs, although he faces little consequence due to it (probably the most realistic thing in the entire more). By the end of the movie, nothing is really resolved beyond a bunch of minor characters dying. But feast your eyes on those Baked Alaskas!

The original movie poster and the MST3K artwork for the streaming release. 

Favorite Riff: “Okay, hot chocolate beer, work your magic!”

Thought: The movie was producer Roger Corman (yes, the Cor-Man) and his New World Pictures at a point where he was trying to expand the studio’s output by getting bigger stars and hitting genres that were outside of the norm of the drive-ins he usually catered. Rock Hudson was just finishing up his time on his television series McMillan & Wife, only to find his career starting to stall (and word around the set was that he hardly saw Avalanche as a step in the right direction). Mia Farrow had been drifting a bit in her career as well, with her television outing as Peter Pan in 1976 being the last thing many remembered of her at the time (it would really be her teaming with Woody Allen that helped turn her career around in the 1980s … and that’s not said as a joke). Robert Forster was a workhorse actor who appeared in just about anything that came his way and always a welcomed sight in many offbeat movies of the period (and before; this was the guy who started in things like Reflection in a Golden Eye and Medium Cool, after all).

Lobby Card for the film, showing Hudson in nothing that resembles anything he does in the actual film.

 
As pointed out in the MST3K version, Farrow has a remarkable ability to show absolutely no chemistry with anyone in the cast. What makes that somewhat interesting is Hudson balances this by over-acting whenever he is around Farrow, while Forster under-acts. Neither approach really works, however, and any attempt to create the expected love-triangle drifts out the door once the avalanche takes over. There’s more emotional depth between David and Nick than with Caroline.

The script was heavily rewritten as filming began due to restraints Corman made on the production to get it done under budget and ahead of schedule. Doing so eliminated some elements from the film, such as a back-story dealing with rain ruining the early parts of the snow season for David (you can see an element of this in one early scene with Caroline in David’s office, where it is clearly raining outside), and a secondary story dealing with the television announcer and his wife eventually cast aside when their characters were killed by circumstances pertaining to the avalanche. (On the upside, everyone was happy to see the skier get his just-deserts. Even more so if you had seen the full version of the movie and not just the MST3K edit.) The effects were pretty iffy as well, with obvious fake snow appearing throughout much of the last third of the picture, and cartoon sparks flying from electrical equipment at another point. We do get the obligatory pot of boiling liquid being spilled on a cook that was expected by audiences (see Earthquake for another example).  And what the heck was wrong with all the police, EMTs, and firemen in the last quarter of the movie?  The roads are clearly dry, but if they were hazardous, you would think they’d know not to drive in a manner that causes more destruction. It looks like demented Keystone Cops.

Oh, and yeah, the kitchen cheerleader is clearly part of the wait-staff. But her appearance out of the blue in the kitchen does make one wonder why she is there in that specific outfit.

And let's not forget the Baked Alaska, which is enough to feed ten people, but David has two delivered to his table.

Corman had gotten this film done and another called Piranha in the same year and had put his resources in what he saw as his “A-picture.” As it turns out, Joe Dante’s Piranha was the one that performed (Corman would say it had much to do with Dante making a better movie of the two). Avalanche was released in a major spread of cities around the country and bombed. To be fair, by this point, the disaster genre was reaching the end of the road, with only a handful left to come in the years ahead. Corman had for once misjudged what genres were hot.  Not that he didn’t have enough other work ready to do to make up for it.

The Riffing:  This was the return of MST3K after several years on Netflix. The ins and outs of that season and the next (aka The Gauntlet) are covered in The Worst We Can Find book, but Avalanche was early in the first season, with the premise of new host, Jonah Heston (Jonah Ray) being stuck on a new Satellite of Love with Crow, Servo, and Gypsy, while under the eye of Kinga Forrester (Felicia Day) and Max (Patton Oswalt).  Earlier episodes seemed at times to try too hard, with the riffers talking so quickly in empty spaces that it was hard to follow the gags, but by this fourth episode (and even the one before, The Time Travelers) things were settling into place.

More importantly, the sketches were on-target, starting with a quickie based on the series Mad Men, the movie-titles sketch that played off the popular “dangerous animal”/”dangerous natural event” movies that became very popular in the 2000s, and especially the musical number by Day and special guest Neil Patrick Harris (both from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog). Even the “Imitate Hudson” sketch, which could have gone off the rail, works. The new version of the show was working well even early on, as could be seen here.

Don't forget to pick up the novelization at your local newstand!

The movie runs roughly 93 minutes and was heavily edited for use on MST3K. Most of these cuts were little snippets here and there, such as missing opening and ending credits, and additional footage of snowmobile racing and skiing competitors other than Bruce in early parts of the film. The biggest edit is the storyline involving Mark, the announcer, and his wife, Tina (she’s the woman at the bar that David warns to take it easy on the booze). Perhaps this is just as well, as the storyline is rather depressing: Tina has left Mark to shack up with Bruce, the skier, and is mentally unstable. Mark tries to win her back, but she instead walks in on Bruce in bed with one of the skaters (there’s a reason you hear both saying they’re going to bed early during the “Baked Alaska” party) and loses it. She confronts Bruce, only to have him become physically abusive, so she is about to commit suicide in her room when the avalanche comes along and kills her instead.

And that’s entertainment, folks! 

As you can see, there’s a good reason to excise that bit from a comedy show. The lesson of The Sidehackers from decades before comes back to haunt the program once again.