MST3K: 111 - Moon Zero Two

Joel Robinson is trapped in space and forced to watch bad movies by a pair of mad scientists.  His only companions are the robots he made from some of the spare parts.  A cult classic of the 90's, this is Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Original air date: January 20, 1990

But they hadn't watched Moon Zero One yet!

The episode opens with Joel explaining the premise once again.  He encourages the viewer to get a healthy snack during the commercial.  Magic Voice's audio stinks.

Joel's invention exchange is food teleportation.  It's a cute effect, but it's not very fun.  Look, I'm a bit of a big guy.  I like my food.  I like eating my food.  Food teleportation wouldn't get it done for me.  Still, it's a funny effect.  The Mads mouth-to-mouth celebrity toothpaste is just strange.

The experiment this week is Moon Zero Two, a 1969 Hammer Films science fiction movie.  It's got a former astronaut turn salvager, asteroids made of pure sapphire, dead miners, and claim jumping.  The movie is advertised as a "western in space."   I can think of two other examples, both of which are much better sci-fi stories.  On the bright side, it's the second color film in a row!

The movie begins with an atrocious earworm of a theme song.  Joel likes it enough to dance to, even while standing on row of theater seats.  The opening credits is a rather standard late 60's animated sequence which give us the general set up of the movie:  The US and Russia land on the moon and fight over control.  Meanwhile private companies take over the space industry, and even build a resort on the moon.

We meet Bill Kemp (James Olsen) and partner Korminski (Ori Levy):  satellite scavengers.  Their salvage ship is 10 year old space ferry (although it looks like a lunar lander) named "Moon 02".  They complete a salvage operation and land back on the moon, pissing of a commercial flight from the Earth while doing so.

On a monorail from the spaceport to Moon City, Kemp meets Clementine Taplin (Bond girl Catherine Schell).  Ms. Taplin was supposed to meet her brother Wallace, a miner on the far side of the moon, at the spaceport, but he never arrives.  Oh, the stewardess on the shuttle?  Carol Freaking Cleveland.  Clementine starts getting concerned when Wallace is not at Moon City, either.  Unfortunately, they can't communicate with the far side of the moon right now because a communications satellite was recently damaged.

We also learn that Kemp is constantly in trouble.  Security Chief Elizabeth Murphy (Adrienne Corri, from A Clockwork Orange, among other things) is constantly suspicious of his activities.  Kemp has been fined multiple times for safety violations in his ship.

The first host segment of the show is a moon landing pageant.  Tom gets the date of the moon landing wrong - July 22nd instead of July 20th.  Crow gets the good part - he plays Neil Armstrong.  Joel gets to play both JFK (with Marilyn Monroe headshot) and Buzz Aldrin.  Tom gets shafted by playing Houston. & Michael Collins.  Not the funniest one ever.

The movie returns with a group of women dancing at a bar in Moon City where Kemp and another pilot are having a drink in the memory of Otto Van Beck, another pilot who recently died in an accident.  We get a call back to a riff from last week when Joel says "I kinda miss the moon, you guys."   Harry, a valet for local big-wig business man J. J. Hubbard (Warren Mitchell) forces Kemp by gunpoint to visit Hubbard.  Hubbard had hired Beck's ship for a job, but now that Beck's dead, Hubbard wants Kemp to do it.  He asks Kemp to help crash an asteroid made of sapphire on the moon.  This is highly illegal, so Hubbard bribes Kemp with a brand new space ferry.  Kemp, Korminski, and Hubbards two goons (Harry and Whitsun) take off to intercept the asteroid.

The second host segment is a discussion of games in the future, prompted by the use of "Moonopoly" in the movie.  Now I know Moonopoloy looked dumb to the gang, but in reality Monopoly was originally based on Atlantic City, and in recent years there have been many different versions (Star Wars, Doctor Who, Garfield...) including versions for different cities or metropolitan areas.  But I digress.  The host segment is witty, but not all that funny.

The gang reach the asteroid, place three rockets on it, and fire the rockets to change its trajectory.  They will return in three days for the final stage of the plan, causing the asteroid to hit the far side of the moon.

Insert "hot chick" joke here.

Clementine meets a group of miners that just returned from the far side.  None of them had seen her brother in months.  We find out that a claim has a two year limit - if a miner doesn't find anything, he gives up the claim to someone else.  Wallace's two years is up in three days.  Kemp says he will fly Clementine to the far side so they can find her brother so to the claim does not become void.  A fight breaks out when Harry tries to convince Kemp not to look for Clementine's brother.  Kemp turns off the extra gravity, and we are subjected to a "low gravity" (aka slow mo) bar fight.

Kemp and Korminski take Clementine to a base on the far side of the moon.  Kemp and Clementine rent a two-person "moonbug" ground vehicle to drive out to Wallace's claim.  After 24 hours, they reach the claim.  Clementine finds nickel, which is a mineable rock -- so Wallace can keep his claim.  Then they find Wallace, or what's left of him.  It appears he died when he accidently ran out of oxygen in his suit.  The two of them return to the moonbug, but soon find three other men at the claim.  A firefight ensues.

Who turned off the lights?

OK, so, I know this is a movie and all, but guns wouldn't work on the moon.  A gun works by igniting gunpowder inside the casing of a bullet.  There is no oxygen on the moon, so there is not enough fuel to ignite and cause the bullet to be fired. Anyway, Kemp is able to kill all three of the men with his gun-that-shouldn't-work, but their moonbug is out of commision.  They take another bug that was at the claim and drive it back to the fireside base.

In the third host segment, Crow and Tom have an argument over who is the better looking girl in the movie (Schell vs Corri).  The argument escalates into fisticuffs, and Joel presses the "Zero-G Switch" to reenact the lame fight scene from the movie.

Kemp and Clementine drive Wallace's heavy-duty bug, but it's heavily damaged.  The bug is low on power and can't use the climate controls system.  As the sun comes up, the temperature increases rapidly.  The cabin pressure drops and the two escape before the bug overheats and explodes.  However, the base is within their sight.   They are able to walk the rest of the way back to the farside base, where Murphy is waiting to arrest Kemp.  He reveals that Wallace was murdered (by replacing the air in one of his bottles with cyanide), so that Hubbard can use the claim to land the sapphire asteroid.  Hubbard, Harry, and Whitsun arrive, and Harry kills Murphy when she tries to arrest them.

Hello....Hello....Hello.  Hello!

Hubbard forces Kemp by gunpoint to intercept the asteroid and crash it on the moon.  Karminski and Clementine are able to kill Harry and another of Hubbard's henchman and take control of the ship.  Kemp starts the engines on the asteroid with Hubbard and Whitsun still  attached.  The asteroid crashes, Hubbard and Whitsun die, and it is revealed that because Wallace had found nickel, Clementine has rights to the claim, including the crashed sapphire.

At the end of the movie, Joel and the Bots play good thing/bad thing.  We see Gypsy for the first time in a few weeks, and her light is finally on!  She answers "Richard Basehardt" again, and gets a ram chip.  Joel reads a letter.

Some observations about the movie:  Why is it that sci-fi movies from the 60's think the future will look like the 60's? And what was with everything using the word "moon"?  "Moon Flower" drink, "Moon City", "Moon Dollars", "Moon Fargo".  This isn't an episode of Batman!  The different outsides the dancers in the bar had to wear were just ridiculous.

The riffs come fast and furious in this episode, which is something we hadn't really seen earlier in the show.  Joel and the Bots are at the top of their game.    The host segments are decent but not great.  The movie was silly enough to be entertaining.  In the end, it was a very good episode for the first season of the show.

Favorite Riffs: "Hey, great club.  No atmosphere.", "Uh, Houston, are central air is here, but they didn't send the duct work.  Over.", "Hey, he flipped them off.", "Look at my stripes, of course I'm captain Kemp!", "In the future, bras will grow on the moon.  Cross my heart.", "How's the egg coming?", "In space, no one can art direct.", "And so, they set out in the wiener car in search of the giant kielbasa.", "Bury my turtle hat at Wounded Knee."

This episode is available on Amazon Instant Video, YouTube, and the Digital Archive Project.