When the son of a pushy Texas tycoon disappears while on a date, he makes it abundantly clear to the well-meaning sheriff that the lad must be found immediately or the lawman's job will be forfeit. Soon others are reported missing, one leaving a valise and some cigarettes behind. Chase Winstead, a young local tow truck driver, and his French girlfriend are drawn into the fray. There are teens with bathtub-shaped hot rods, famous DJ's found stone drunk in their cars, comedy-relief oldsters who race trains, and a giant gila monster. And the Lord said "laugh".
Information
This was one of two features produced by an independent company in Texas and meant for release as a double feature. The other feature was The Killer Shrews (1959). Unlike many such features produced in the South, these films received national distribution.
Ken Knox, who plays disc jockey Horatio Alger "Steamroller" Smith, was a real disc jockey working at radio stations in Texas owned by Gordon McLendon, the uncredited executive producer of this film.[1]
The Episode
Host Segments
Joel as a "funny" drunk.
Prologue:Crow and Tom Servo are 'The Thing with Two Heads.' At first they hate it, but then they realize they’re "The Odd Couple 1999." But just when they begin to get into it, Joel nips it in the bud.
Segment One (Invention Exchange):Frank announces Dr. Clayton Forrester's death! It turns out Dr. F isn’t really dead, but very mad at Frank. Joel has a radio with a tuner that only picks up channels from old sitcoms and movies. The Mads demonstrate their Renaissance Festival punching bags.
Segment Two: Joel has turned a spare closet into a teen pavilion/barbershop as seen in the film. Crow and Tom keep calling Joel a "stupid jerk" instead of a "soda jerk" and being generally insulting. After they order a "Blue Floyd" (a drink made with ice cream, malted milk, and Barbicide) Joel becomes fed up with them and their antics. Then Gypsy shows up and the whole set falls down.
Segment Three: The crew celebrates the classic drunks, and Crow asks, "When did public intoxication stop being funny?", discussing drunks such as Crazy Guggenheim and Dean Martin. Then Joel and the bots act out vignettes of different types of drunks, which ends up turning into an after-school special.
Segment Four: "Servo on Cinema" looks at Ray Kellogg’s "Leg Up" blocking technique. Joel and Crow cannot resist butting in.
Fan Drawing of "Art"
Segment Five: The rock group Hee-La rehearses until Crow asks, "Aren’t we just doing the same stuff we did when we were SpiDorr?" The first letter is from a little girl who thinks Crow’s name is 'Art.' The second letter says, "'Dear Joe and Bots: I just like the way Tom Serbo sings, my favorite robot is Crow, but Joe is funny too.' And it’s signed...TV’s Frank?!" Frank celebrates his short-lived victory in Deep 13 as Dr. F looks on in disgust.
Stinger: Drunken old Harris gags on sody pop at the soda shop
Other Notes
Miscellanea
The letter calling Crow "Art" references back to Jungle Goddess, specifically the "My White Goddess" sketch that referred to Crow as "Art Crow" at the end. That sketch and this letter later became the source of the running gag of Pearl Forrester constantly referring to Crow as "Art".
This episode became infamous in the 1995-1996 period on Comedy Central, as a number of other episodes dropped out of the rotation due to movie rights issues. The movie in this episode is in public domain, which meant that CC could play it often without any kind of licensing costs.
Refers to a series of Palmolive dish detergent commercials featuring Madge the manicurist in which she reveals to her client that her (the client's) fingers have been inserted in said Palmolive. [2]
Whenever Mr. Harris pulls up in his car Joel and the bots start humming the theme to The Munsters, because Harris' car resembles the Munsters' family car (which was custom built from 3 Model Ts).
"My little deuce coupe? You don't know what I got!"
A line spoken by Mr. Potter in It's A Wonderful Life, who Mr. Wheeler resembles, both in appearance and attitude.
"What is this, The Misfits all of a sudden?
The Misfits was a 1961 film starring Clark Gable, Eli Wallach, Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift. In the film, Wallach is a mechanic who is friends with a cowboy.
"Hello, I'm Larry Miller." and later "Did I ever tell you about the six levels of drinking?"
Larry Miller is a successful comedian and actor. At the time, he resembled Don Flournoy (the young actor playing Gordy), though Miller has since lost a great deal of his hair. One of his most well-known routines described the Six Stages of a night of drinking. It can be seen here.
(from left) Don Florunoy as Gordy, Larry Miller, Tige Andrews
"Tige Andrews!" "No, we've already decided he's Larry Miller."
Calling back to the previous joke, Flournoy also resembles actor Tige Andrews, who had starred on the TV series "The Detectives" and "The Mod Squad", among other roles.
"That's not right, picking up your mom and playing football with her! That's wrong! Crazy people!"
Joel is imitating comedian Kevin Meany, whose act often consisted of mimicking his mother over-reacting to some perceived danger.
"Bobby Goldsboro?"
Bobby Goldsboro is a singer-songwriter who had an easy listening hit song in 1968 - "Honey".
A special feature on the DVD was a new sketch instructing viewers on how to dispose of their Godzilla vs. Megalon DVD (Referred to as "blah blah vs blah blah" by TV's Frank) in the box set and replace it with The Giant Gila Monster. The segment featured Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, and Frank Conniff reprising their roles from the series (in front of a green screen effect of the SOL Bridge and Deep 13). Frank provided the voice of Tom Servo. It is, to date, the last time Joel has appeared as his TV character.
