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in: MST3K Episodes, Season 5, Episodes with shorts,
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MST3K 510 - The Painted Hills

Revision as of 14:20, 5 April 2017 by Darth Prefect (Message Wall | contribs) (clean up, replaced: Jungle Goddess → Jungle Goddess)
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“ "Now, is this the real Old West, or the Roy Rogers Old West where they had electricity and cars?" ”
- Crow


The Short

Body Care and Grooming

Synopsis

510s

A short aimed at older teens/college students explaining why bathing and good personal hygiene are things to consider.

Information

The Movie

Synopsis

Painted hills

The Painted Hills

A Lassie movie. After years of prospecting, Jonathan (Kelly) finally strikes gold. He returns to town only to discover that his partner has since died, leaving his son Tommy (Gray) fatherless. Jonathan decides to leave his faithful dog Shep (Lassie) with Tommy to cheer him up. Meanwhile, Jonathan's new partner, Lin (Cowling), isn't interested in sharing the gold and lures Jonathan to his death. Shep immediately deduces what's happened, so Lin poisons the dog. Shep barely pulls through and pursues Lin to a climactic confrontation.[1]

Information

  • This was the seventh and final Lassie feature produced by MGM.
  • “The Painted Hills” was the only Lassie movie in which the dog played a character whose name was not ‘Lassie.’
  • According to MGM records, the film earned $783,000 in the US and Canada and $302,000 elsewhere, leading to a loss of $122,000.
  • Along with seven other MGM films released the first half of 1951, the copyright on The Painted Hills lapsed after MGM neglected to file the necessary renewal applications in 1979. As such, the film is now part of the public domain and has been released to VHS and DVD by a variety of companies.

The Episode

Host Segments

Paintedhills3

The Bots challenge the message of the movie.

Prologue: Crow is Jay Leno, complete with oversized chin, Tom Servo is his musical director, and Gypsy and Joel are the audience. Crow has lots of punchlines about Congress and sex.

Segment One (Invention Exchange:) Dr. F presents the Cholester-Do All, a device that harnesses the power of Frank's heart to power various electric appliances. Joel and the Bots demonstrate Back-talk, a device that records regular old memos backwards, inspired by backwards masking. Alas, the combination of fatty foods and appliance power drain finally sends Frank into cardiac arrest as Dr. F sends the movie.

Segment Two: Moderated by Gypsy, Crow and Tom have a formal debate about the attractiveness of the slovenly young woman in the short. Crow represents sloppy, seeing her as a rebel against conformity, while Servo prefers her cleanliness as a sign that she hides her true identity. Joel decides Crow is right, and so the only resolution is a spitting contest.

Paintedhills

Cholester-Do All

Segment Three: Joel and the Bots present term papers on bearded guys who resemble the prospector in the movie. The highlight is Crow’s strange and poorly-researched paper on Rutherford B. Hayes. Crow is probably going to be held back a year.

Segment Four: Tom has crushed and melted Crow into an ingot, thinking he is made of gold, but it turns out he's essentially worthless when broken down into his base components. Joel points out snack items are probably more valuable than Crow and extrudes him.

Segment Five: The gang judges Lassie's vigilante actions in the movie. Joel defends her, while the Bots attempt to bring her to justice for her crimes. Joel finally points out human laws don't apply to animals. Back in Deep 13, Dr. F tries and fails to revive Frank.

Stinger: The Body Care and Grooming girl flirtatiously hangs up her towel as she gets into the shower.

Trivia

  • Joel and the Bots mis-hear the character Pilot Pete's name as "Pile-On Pete", and thus not only refer to him as such, but make several riffs about Pete "piling on" other characters. It's only when Joel sees the correct name in the end credits that he realizes they've been getting the name wrong.
  • A rarity: the stinger is from the short, rather than the movie.

Callbacks

Obscure References

  • "Thus ends a day in the life of Ivan Denisovich!"

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is an Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn novel about political prisoners in Stalinist Russia.

  • "Keep watching the medicine cabinet! KEEP WATCHING THE MEDICINE CABINET!" "You're next! YOU'RE NEXT!"

Joel and Crow are imitating Kevin McCarthy in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

  • "Please sir, can I have some more?"

A line from Oliver Twist when he asks for more food in the orphanage.

  • (Tommy!) Can you hear me?

A lyric from The Who rock opera Tommy.

  • "Two things I love above all else" "-Larry and Balki"

Larry and Balki are the main characters from the long-running TV sitcom "Perfect Strangers".

  • "Uhh, Mr. Weatherwax, what's the matter with me here?"

The dog glances offscreen, as though looking to its handler for advice. Rudd Weatherwax was one of the original handlers of Pal, the dog who played Lassie in seven MGM films until 1951. Several of Pal's descendants continued to play Lassie in subsequent films until the 1990s, and these were also handled by later generations of the Weatherwax family.

  • "Oh Lassie, come out and PLAY-AY!!!"

This paraphrases a line from the 1979 movie The Warriors.

  • "Probably having hallucinations about a little wagon coming out of the kitchen cabinets!"

A reference to a series of commercials for Chuck Wagon dog food that aired during the early 1980s.

  • "I love my dead gay son!"

A quote from the movie Heathers.

  • "Hey, what are ya, Claudine Longet?"

Singer Claudine Longet (former wife of pop star Andy Williams) was convicted of misdemeanor negligent homicide when she fatally shot her Olympic skier boyfriend.

  • "This is where Holmes met his end at Reichenbach Falls."

The Reichenbach Falls are a series of waterfalls in central Switzerland. Fictional consulting detective Sherlock Holmes famously battled his arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty at the cliffs there in Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Final Problem," and plummeted into the falls to his death. (In spite of this attempt to kill off Holmes and send him down in a blaze of glory, he was "resurrected" ten years later due to immense pressure from Doyle's fans.)

  • "Muh mouf's bleedin, Bert!"

Crow is impersonating Jimmy Stewart, paraphrasing a line from the end of It's A Wonderful Life.

Video Release

Paintedhillsdvd

MST3K DVD Cover

Commercially released on DVD by Shout Factory in November 2014. It was released as part the Turkey Day Collection (aka Volume 31) along with the episodes Jungle Goddess, Squirm, and The Screaming Skull.

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