MST3K 622 - Angels Revenge

622 - Angels Revenge
Air/Release Date	March 11, 1995
AKA	Angels' Brigade; Seven from Heaven
Movie Director	Greydon Clark
Year	1979
Cast	Sylvia Anderson, Lieu Chinh, Jacqueline Cole, Robin Greer, Arthur Godfrey, Pat Buttram, Alan Hale Jr., Jim Backus, and Jack Palance.
Preceded by	621 - The Beast of Yucca Flats
Followed by	623 - The Amazing Transparent Man

“	Finally, someone Jim Varney can feel superior to!	”
	- Mike

The Movie

Synopsis

It's the ladies to the rescue in the low-budget actioner. Wearing form-fitting fatigues, the female stars play a team of highly trained avengers. Their mission: To wipe every drug dealer off the face of the earth. To accomplish this, they drive around in a custom-built van, decked out with the latest in high-tech weaponry. You've never heard of any of the leading ladies in Angels Revenge, but the supporting cast is overloaded with such pop-culture celebs as Jack Palance, Peter Lawford, Jim Backus, Neville Brand, Pat Buttram, Alan Hale Jr., and Arthur Godfrey.

This film is not meant in any way to resemble Charlie's Angels.  Really.  Not at all.

Information

The "I know I have it here somewhere" teacher/group ringleader is the late Jacqueline Cole, wife of writer/director Greydon Clark.

Susan Kiger, who plays singer Michelle Wilson was a Playboy Playmate of the month in 1977.

Ironically, despite the film's supposed anti-drug message, actresses Robin Greer and Liza Greer, who played Elaine and Trish respectively, would write a tell-all book in the 1990s about their experiences with drugs and prostitution in Hollywood at the time this film was made.

In his autobiography "On the Cheap: My Life in Low Budget Film Making" Greydon Clark says that he's often asked about MST3K's take on his film. "Some of the stuff those guys did was very funny, some not so much. The same could be said for my film itself." He objected to editing out Neville Brand and he was most bothered that the movie had been sold by the distributor so he didn't receive any money for it. "If your film is insulted on national television, it would've been nice to at least see a few bucks from it."

The Episode

Host Segments

Prologue: Crow proclaims that he has amnesia, yet evidence and his near perfect recall points to the contrary. Turns out it was Ambrosia.

Segment One: The Mads are dressed as their favorite 70's relief pitchers Tug McGraw and Rollie Fingers in an effort to boost ratings, but their plan to change the crew of the SOL into the cast of TV's Renegade (starring Lorenzo Lamas) has more legs. Initially skeptical, Mike and the Bots are indeed transformed, but the effect and the ratings spike last only a short while.

Segment Two: In the spirit of the 70's, Crow's latest movie script is for Chocolate Jones and the Temple of Funk, a blaxploitation film. Even ignoring the fact it's just a reworked version of his earlier script Earth vs. Soup with jivey character names; the others are reluctant to take part.

Segment Three: Mike imitates the Fonz from Happy Days. The penalty is death by cannon. Mike is surprisingly understanding of having to be destroyed afterward.

Segment Four: The SOL begins to shake as Aaron Spelling’s enormous house floats past, everybody staying quiet to avoid drawing it's terrible vengeance.

Closing (Segment Five): Tom has developed the Shame-O-Meter, which has more than enough test subjects in the film, but the Mads dressed as Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King outdoes them all.

Stinger: Shine-shine, Shine your love...

Obscure References

• "Oh no, this is gonna have Johnny Wadd in it!"

Johnny "Wadd" Holmes was a porn star during the 1970s and '80s.

• "Robert Urich is Dan Tanna!"

Reference to the 1970s ABC detective drama series "Vega$".

• "Dear Ranger Rick Forum, I'm a forest ranger in a small Midwestern town..."

A reference to both the children's nature magazine Ranger Rick and to Penthouse Forum, a spin-off of Penthouse magazine whose readers write in with stories of outrageous sexual encounters that are supposedly drawn from personal experience.

• "David Mamet's Oleanna!"

A two-character play by David Mamet, in which a male professor and a female student have a prolonged confrontation about her allegations that he has sexaully harassed her.

• "This isn't as cool as Electra Woman and Dyna Girl."

​A Sid and Marty Krofft-produced live-action children's show lasting one season (sixteen episodes), Electra Woman and Dyna Girl was a purposeful lampoon of the Batman & Robin TV series, especially the tech-y gizmos called 'Electracoms.' Feel free to make your own jokes about the Electra-Vibe.

• "I'll be very disappointed if Grant Goodeve isn't in this."

​Grant Goodeve played eldest son David on the ABC series "Eight is Enough" (1977-81). Goodeve took over the role played by Mark Hamill in the series pilot.

• "James at 15...miles per hour!"

James at 15 was a short-lived TV series from the late 1970s.

• "The Bad News Bears are gonna lose that game!"

The Bad News Bears was a 1976 comedy film about an inept youth baseball team.

• "You're all fired, you've all lost your humility!"

A reference to Arthur Godfrey's 1953 firing of Julius LaRosa, claiming LaRosa had lost his humility, and the subsequent dismissal of many regulars from the Arthur Godfrey show.

• "The mean streets of Ojai!"

Ojai is an affluent city in Ventura County, California.

• "You're ad-dicted kid, ten million strong and growing!"

A spoof on an oft-aired TV spot for Flintstones Vitamins.

• "I've got Gambino ties!"

A reference to the Gambino crime family.

• "This isn't Flip Wilson!" "Yes it is! It's that Geraldine character!"

Comedian Flip Wilson had a popular TV show during the early 1970s, and its most famous character was Geraldine, a role Wilson played in drag.

• "Next on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, one of the greatest influences on the disco scene of the late '70s."

Don Kirshner hosted and produced a syndicated program featuring live performances from rock and pop bands. Kirshner's drab, nasal delivery, combined with his habit of thanking label executives more effusively than the acts themselves, made the show into a running joke.

• "Tonight, on a very special 'All-American Girl'."

All-American Girl was a short-lived sitcom starring Margaret Cho. 

• "Fox Force Five!"

In Pulp Fiction, Uma Thurman's character is said to have appeared in a failed TV pilot called "Fox Force Five". The concept for the show was much like the one for this movie.

• (Trish appears in the van's monitor) "It's the Charlene Tilton channel!"

Charlene Tilton is a petite blonde actress best known for her role in the hit TV series Dallas

• (While Maria is stroking the van-mounted bazooka) "Sometimes a bazooka is just a bazooka."

​A riff on a quote attributed to Sigmund Freud ("Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"). Freud introduced the concept of oral fixation, and was questioned about his own smoking habit.

• "It's Dworkinfest '78!"

Andrea Dworkin was a radical feminist writer whose critics frequently accused her of demonizing the entire male gender and claiming that all heterosexual intercourse was tantamount to rape.

• (shots of Jack Palance's character driving his car) "How will I make it on my own? Heheh..." etc.

Reference to the opening theme song of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show", during which the protagonist Mary Richards is shown driving her car.

• "These two make you long for the quiet dignity of the Hudson Brothers."

The Hudson Brothers were a musical trio who had their own comedy/variety TV show during the 1970s.

• "The commode that fell from grace with the sea."

A reference to the Japanese novel The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima.

• Ride like the demon that drives your dream

Lyrics from the "Hardcastle and McCormick" theme, and a recurring gag.

• "My Charlie Daniels T-shirt is in there!"

Country singer Charlie Daniels is best known for his 1976 hit "The Devil Went Down to Georgia".

• "Damn it!" "...Janet!"

A reference to the song "Dammit Janet" from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

• "I'm gonna put on the suit the aliens gave me!"

A reference to the 1980s TV series The Greatest American Hero, starring William Katt as a bumbling superhero who derived his powers from a costume given to him by extraterrestrials.

• "Meanwhile, Richard Nixon is wasting millions on the Glomar Explorer..."

​A reference to the Hughes-built GFS Glomar , a deep-sea drilling ship that was used to recover the K-129, a Soviet submarine sunk in 1968.

• "Jane Campion's 'The Piano Stool'"

A reference to the New Zealand film The Piano, which features a grand piano deposited on a beach (the drug container looks like it could be used as a piano stool).

• "This doesn't do it for me like that similar scene in The Violent Years."

A callback to episode #610 which featured the Ed Wood, Jr. film The Violent Years, in which a group of delinquent teenage girls sexually assault (off-screen) a young man at gunpoint.

• "It's not MY fault J.F.K. stayed at Crosby's house!"

The crew makes a few references to Peter Lawford's former days with the Rat Pack which included Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., etc.

• "The Kronos Quartet lives on this block, with Bartok. apparently"

The Kronos Quartet is a renowned string quartet based in San Francisco; Bela Bartok was a Hungarian composer who wrote, among other works, several pieces for string quartets.

• "Without our tradition, our lives would be like a drug dealer on the roof!"

Paraphrased from "Tradition", the opening song of the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof.

• "We continue now with international hide and seek!"

​Another "Monty Python's Flying Circus" reference: specifically, to this episode .

• "Teacher's pet... I want to be... teacher's pet..."

​Both the title and song to a 1958 rom-com starring Doris Day and a semi-fossilized Clark Gable. (It also featured Mamie Van Doren and Gig Young, making it prime MST fodder.)

• "I'm on a cycling tour of North Cornwall!"

A reference to an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, "The Cycling Tour".

• "You think that's a stunt-person?" "No, that's Marnie Nixon."

​Marnie Nixon is an opera singer and voice-double for musical movies.

• "Hi, I'm Lyle Waggoner, may I help you?"

Lyle Waggoner is an actor who was a regular on the Carol Burnett Show and also posed as Playgirl magazine's first centerfold. He also appeared in the film Catalina Caper which was lampooned in an earlier episode (#204).

• ("Baby!") "... I'm a-want you!"

​Baby I'm-a Want You is the title of a song and the fourth album by the soft-rock band Bread .

• "Greg Louganis goes motorcycling."

American diver Greg Louganis won multiple gold medals at the 1984 and 1988 Summer Olympics.

• "Jim Henson!" "HI HO!"

Jim Henson was the talent behind The Muppets. "Hi Ho!" is the catch phrase of perhaps his most famous creation: Kermit the Frog.

• "Kelsey Grammer was supposed to meet me here!"

A possible reference to Kelsey Grammer's second wife, Leigh-Anne Csuhany , who was fifteen years his junior: he was 37, she was 22. The marriage lasted one year.

• "Right on, Willona!"

Willona was a character from the African-American sitcom "Good Times".

• "It's Fran Lebowitz!... Still not writing..."

Fran Lebowitz is a New York 'personality' who is (in)famous for not completing a book called 'Exterior Signs of Wealth'.

Unusual Credits

Patrick Brantseg is credited as "Utility Infielder".

Video Release

• Commercially released on VHS by Rhino Entertainment in July 1998, the episode was also released at the same time as a part of a 2-VHS set with Shorts Vol 1 and a pair of MST3K boxer shorts. You read that right.
• Commercially released on DVD by Rhino in Feburary 2003 as part of The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection: Volume 2, a 4-DVD set with Cave Dwellers, Pod People and Shorts Volume 1.

preceded by: Season 5		MST3K Season 6					followed by: Season 7
		1994 - 1995
601	Girls Town	1994-07-16	609	The Skydivers	1994-08-27	617	The Sword and the Dragon	1994-12-03
602	Invasion USA	1994-07-23	610	The Violent Years	1994-10-08	618	High School Big Shot	1994-12-10
603	The Dead Talk Back	1994-07-30	611	Last of the Wild Horses	1994-10-15	619	Red Zone Cuba	1994-12-17
604	Zombie Nightmare	1994-11-24	612	The Starfighters	1994-10-29	620	Danger!! Death Ray	1995-01-07
605	Colossus and the Headhunters	1994-08-20	613	The Sinister Urge	1994-11-05	621	The Beast of Yucca Flats	1995-01-21
606	The Creeping Terror	1994-09-17	614	San Francisco International	1994-11-19	622	Angels Revenge	1995-03-11
607	Bloodlust	1994-09-03	615	Kitten with a Whip	1994-11-23	623	The Amazing Transparent Man	1995-03-18
608	Code Name: Diamond Head	1994-10-01	616	Racket Girls	1994-11-26	624	Samson vs. the Vampire Women	1995-03-25