Sunday, February 3
MST3K, Catholic-Style
The highlight (well, one of them, along with the Buttercup Bake Shop cupcakes) of last night's Candlemas party at Fallen Sparrow's place in Queens was a screening of Mystery Science Theater's hilarious grilling of The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (a title only surpassed in length by the later film The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, an adaptation of Weiss's Die Verfolgung und Ermordung Jean Paul Marats dargestellt durch die Schauspielgruppe des Hospizes zu Charenton unter Anleitung des Herrn de Sade), which shows just how much a movie can be improved by the intrusion a wisecracking robot shaped like a gumball machine. I'm not entirely sure if the movie actually has any zombies in it, or any plot, considering most of the humor value came from Crow, Servo and Mike having a grand old time trashing the interminable song-and-dance sequences tossed in as filler. ("This is not the precision dancing I am accustomed to!" "Tonight, ze führer is in the audience!" "Rent-a-Balky!" "Cinematography by Zapruder," &c.)
Anyway, at one point, a fortune-teller is shown surrounded by billowing clouds of cheap special-effects smoke. Tom Servo pipes up from the peanut gallery, in a high-pitched voice, "My incense is getting out of control!!" To which I deadpanned--and bear in mind, the folks present all remember the famous time I nearly (inadvertently) burned down the Church of Our Saviour with a gunked-up thurible--"I know the feeling."
It brought the house down.
Actually, it was a lot funnier the first time.
Anyway, at one point, a fortune-teller is shown surrounded by billowing clouds of cheap special-effects smoke. Tom Servo pipes up from the peanut gallery, in a high-pitched voice, "My incense is getting out of control!!" To which I deadpanned--and bear in mind, the folks present all remember the famous time I nearly (inadvertently) burned down the Church of Our Saviour with a gunked-up thurible--"I know the feeling."
It brought the house down.
Actually, it was a lot funnier the first time.
![[SMMMHDH]](http://www.mgilleland.com/music/smmmhdh.png){kind=small}
