Entertainment
 

The Giant Gila Monster

From MST3K

402 - The Giant Gila Monster
Air Date June 13, 1992
Movie Director Ray Kellogg
Year 1959
Cast Don Sullivan, Fred Graham, Lisa Simone, Shug Fisher
Preceded by 401 - Space Travelers
Followed by 403 - City Limits

Contents

The Movie

Synopsis

A small town in Texas finds itself under attack from a hungry, 50-foot-long gila monster. No longer content to forage in the desert, the giant lizard begins chomping on motorists and train passengers before descending upon the town itself. Only Chase Winstead (Sullivan), a quick-thinking mechanic, can save the town from being wiped out. [1]

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.[2]

The Episode

Host Segments

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 naughty. 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, or should we say, legging in.

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".

Obscure References

  • “Hava la gila! Hava la gila!” - refers to the song Hava Nagila
  • “Bad movie? You’re soaking in it!” - refers to a series of Palmolive dish detergent commercials featuring Madge the manicurist [3]
  • "NEW YORK CITY?!?" Servo: "Get the rope."

Refers to the Pace salsa commercials popular at the time, where the cowboy cook was using salsa from New York City and not "authentic" salsa.


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