Entertainment
 

Parts: The Clonus Horror

From MST3K

811 - Parts: The Clonus Horror
Air Date June 7, 1997
AKA Clonus
The Clonus Horror
Movie Director Robert S. Fiveson
Year 1979
Cast Keenan Wynn
Peter Graves
Dick Sargent
Timothy Donnelly
Preceded by 810 - The Giant Spider Invasion
Followed by 812 - The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?


Contents

The Movie

Synopsis

A small cadre of Olympic-caliber athletes is raised in an isolated compound that looks like a cross between a holiday resort fortress and a modern-day sports camp for Aryan youth. Drilled, trained, fed, and intellectually numbed into a state of blissful ignorance and eager obedience, they are adult orphans under paternal care and bred for one purpose only: parts for organ harvest. [1]

Information

The Island Controversy

The film's director, Robert S. Fiveson, has accused the 2005 Michael Bay movie The Island of being a Clonus ripoff, and along with producer Myrl Schreibman, eventually sued for plagiarism. He ended up settling out of court for an undisclosed amount. [2] [3].

The Episode

Host Segments

The Crew puts on a show

Prologue: Mike has decided to grow a mustache. The Bots are supportive. Initially.

Segment One: True to form, the Bots are less supportive of Mike's choice to shave off his mustache. Meanwhile down on the planet, the camping Mads are awoken by the arrival of a trio of young Space Children who've run away from their parents.

Segment Two: The Mads are forced to play with the space children, causing various degrees of mental and physical pain for all involved.

Segment Three: At the end of her rope, Pearl convinces Mike and the Bots to put on a public TV style kids program to distract the kids. Aiming nice and low at first, but as they get fancy, they lose their audience.

Segment Four: Drawing from their own lives, Pearl, Bobo and Observer each give the space children "that" talk.

Closing (Segment Five): Crow has gotten a nose job and Mike can't look away, while down on the planet the Mads have just gotten the space children to the sleep. The soothing poem Tom has written is perfect to keep them that way, but it's musical accompaniment is not.

Stinger: "Sure!"

Quotes & References

Running Jokes

  • References to Biography

Featured actor Peter Graves was the host of the A&E television series Biography, which is exactly what it sounds like. At the time the episode was made, this reference was contemporary, but as of this writing (2007), Biography-as-it-was is being rapidly forgotten.

  • "TODAY!"

Taken from the chorus of the Neil Diamond song "America".

=

  • The kids in the host segments are a reference to the Star Trek episode "And the Children Shall Lead".
  • "Parts: The Village People Horror!"
    "The Longtime Companion Olympics!"
    "Winner of the International Jeffrey Games!"
    "Terrance McNally holds weird auditions!"
    "Clonus: The Boys in the Band Horror!"

All are references to gay icons: the disco group The Village People, the film Longtime Companion, the film Jeffrey, noted gay author Terrence McNally, and the play/film The Boys in the Band.

  • "I got into Hamburger U.!"

Hamburger U. is fast food giant McDonald's training school.

  • "Oh, I have the vapors!"

A reference to Scarlett O'Hara.

  • "Oh, that was a good loose meat sandwich!"

A type of Sloppy Joe sandwich originated in Iowa made famous by Roseanne Barr who started a specialty restaurant based on the sandwich, and even promoted it on her TV show Roseanne.

  • "His feet are making a Don Martin noise."
    "Splot, splot!"

Don Martin was a MAD magazine cartoonist known for creating characters with over sized feet that made strange noises when walking.

  • "So, he's running through fields of wheat." "Wheat."

A reference to Woody Allen's Love and Death.

  • "Watch, he'll run into Chauncey Gardiner coming the other way."

Chauncey Gardiner was an idiot played by Peter Sellers in Being There.

  • "So we aren't at war with Eurasia?"

An allusion to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

  • "It's the James Galway porn theater!"

James Galway is an Irish classical musician.

  • "Soundtrack by Yngwie Malmsteen."

Yngwie Malmsteen is a guitarist known for his extremely fast guitar riffs.

  • "Monty will take Messina, while I sweep in from the North!"

A loosely paraphrased line inspired by Patton.

  • "No one's guarding my father!"

Said by Al Pacino in The Godfather.

  • "Are you one of them preverts?"

Keenan Wynn, who plays the reporter in this film, said this line as Colonel Bat Guano in Doctor Strangelove.

  • "Parts is parts!"

A short-lived advertising slogan used by the Wendy's fast-food chain in the early '80s.

  • Mike's speech to Pearl in the third host segment ("There is nothing you can possess which I cannot take away") is taken verbatim from Raiders of the Lost Ark, spoken by Belloq (Paul Freeman).

Video Release

  • Commerically released on DVD by Rhino in October 2007 as part of The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection: Volume 12, a 4-DVD set with The Rebel Set, Secret Agent Super Dragon, and The Starfighters.
  • The DVD features a trailer for the original film as well as an interview with director Robert Fiveson specifically taped for the release, discussing the making and genesis of the film as well as The Island controversy and the MST3K take on his film. He even credits the MST3K fans interest and knowledge of Clonus with helping his case.


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