Starring: Wendell Corey, Keith Larsen, John Agar, Paul Gilbert, Irene Tsu, Robert Ito, Merry Anders, Stuart Margolin. Writer: Arthur C. Pierce. Producer: Jack Broder and George Edwards. Director: Arthur C. Pierce. Released in 1966.
Original air date: February 20, 1990
And so we come to the end of the first season. Despite the fact this episode’s production number is listed as #104, *this was the last filmed and aired for the Comedy Channel in 1990. The “Robot Holocaust” Avocado Man contest winner is announced, and there is reference to “The Corpse Vanishes.” So when viewed in the context of the entire season, it’s easy to see this was filmed later than “The Mad Monster.”
In keeping in the mold of a “Star Trek” episode, “Women of the Prehistoric Planet” is good, cheesy fun. Starships exploring space, the discovery of a new world, peril on said world, and bad romance. It’s surpisingly light on any women on the prehistoric planet; the only ones come from spaceships. But then again, you can never judge a bad movie by its bad title.
“Women of the Prehistoric Planet” is also notably Josh Weinstein’s last appearance as Dr. Erhardt and Tom Servo. But I’ll focus more on that later, as well as my reflections on the first season in general.
When the film begins, a fleet of spaceships is traveling back to their destination ferrying a group of Centaurians who are experiencing the end of their civilization. Some crew members exhibit feelings of blatant racism and ethnocentrism regarding the Centaurians (who, as far as I can tell, are a company of Hawaiian actors), but thank God there are others onboard to pontificate tolerance in true “after-school special” dialogue. But that doesn’t stop one rogue Centaurian from crashing a spaceship on an uncharted planet. There are few survivors, but a romance blooms between one uninjured crewmember and a Centaurian woman. This happens almost immediately after the woman shoots and kills her crazy brother. I guess if you’re stranded on a hostile planet, love cannot wait! “Kill your brother! It’s the only way to reinforce the director’s white male reality!” Crow says.
Another spaceship, commanded by Admiral King (Wendell Corey), learns of the crash and sends his crew on a rescue mission. Thanks to some poorly explained theories on time travel and math, it takes three months for King’s ship to arrive at the planet, yet 18 years pass on the planet below. I guess the writer came up with this so they could feature the offspring of the stranded crew members, Tang (Robert Ito), as a lead character.
Landing on the planet, Commander Scott (Keith Larsen, not Jimmy Doohan) leads a group of crewmembers into the jungle, taking along John Agar, Stuart Margolin and Paul Gilbert. Ladies and Gentlemen, your rescue party! Predictably, all does not go well, especially for Margolin who gets killed by a plush toy spider from the Disney store, I think. “I guess he’s really an Angel now,” Joel says – “Rockford Files” fans will get this.
Also, a Centaurian woman named Linda (Irene Tsu) leaves the ship for a bit and is discovered by Tang. Together they get naked, try on different fabrics, slap each other, make out and frolic in a swimming pool. “Wang, bang, thank you Tang!” Crow jokes. Or, as Crow later says impersonating a monkey watching the lovebirds in the pool, “Ooh, I’m going to go home and spank myself!”
Eventually, the rescue party stumbles across Linda, shooting and wounding Tang in the process, just because (“Typical response. I don’t understand it so I’ll shoot it,” Crow says). All hell breaks loose when a volcano begins erupting and it’s revealed in a plot twist that everyone sees coming that Linda is actually Admiral King’s illegitimate daughter. A bigger plot twist comes at the end (spoiler alert!): the uncharted planet is Earth, with Linda and Tang presumably acting as the Adam and Eve characters. “That means my great, great grandmother was really, really hot!” Joel surmises. Tom Servo adds, “Man evolved from Tang.”
I have to point out a few aspect of this film that are absolutely hilarious. In no particular order.
Bad direction: During the rescue search, the crew comes across a pool of bubbling and deadly liquid, with a log stretching precariously across. The crew decides to cross this log, despite one nervous crewmember, even though it’s painfully obvious they could walk completetly around the pool! You can guess what happens.
Paul Gilbert: In these space movies of the 1950s and 1960s, scripts often included a bumbling, overweight comic relief character amongst the crew. You’d think Stuart Margolin would get the honors in the film, but he’s actually too young. Instead we get Paul Gilbert, who’s funny along the lines of Don Rickles (not funny). At one point, Gilbert’s engineer character goes into a long soliloquy about space training, going as far as to reenact his karate schooling. He does a karate chop, yells “Hi Keeba!” and promptly does a prat fall. Thus enters one of the most prominent catch phrases in MST3K lexicon. Gilbert: Not funny. “Hi Keeba!:” Funny.
Wendell Corey: The former president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (and WW2 vet), gets the lead here, but it’s apparent that he’s pretty wasted the whole time. Corey’s eyes droop and he slurs his entire dialogue. I’d bet he was blowing a .20 on the old Breathalyzer each day of shooting. At least Joel and the bots have fun with this: “I’ll just stay here and take more lithium,” Crow jokes. Later he says, “Hey, did you just get back from the dentist or something?” Unfortunately, Corey later died from alcoholism, so maybe this isn’t all that funny. But I’m still laughing, so…
The title: Rumor has it the studio made the director change the film’s title and add scantily clad women to the film. These scenes didn’t make it into the MST3K episode, so the title makes no sense. What never changes is studio interference. But maybe they were right this time?
As far as the episode goes, there are some great laughs to be had, but long pauses and missed opportunities are still common. Still, “Women of the Prehistoric Planet” ends Season 1 on a high note. Most of the skits revolve around an Isaac Asimov doomsday machine coming aboard the Satellite of Love. The machine’s mechanical voice is supplied by Mike Nelson in his first “appearance” on the show. There are many, many more to come for Nelson. Thankfully, the doomsday story has a funny payoff in the end.
This being Weinstein’s last show, it’s fitting he gets featured prominently during the invention exchange. The Mads come up with a fast food chain that offers diners meat ripped from the hides of live animals directly and immediately delivered to the plate – Clay and Lar’s Fleshbarn. Erhardt grabs his guitar and sings a little country ditty to advertise the new venture. It’s very funny, and shows even more of Weinstein’s talent. When I checked out a Cinematic Titanic show in Boston last year, he played a mean bass guitar behind Frank Coniff’s songs.
Weinstein’s time on MST3K is short lived, but he makes an imprint. While Dr. Erhardt can sometimes be grating, I liked his laid back Tom Servo. Associate Producer Kevin Murphy takes over Servo in the next season and alters his personality to a high-stress, manic robot. In the end, Murphy’s take is definitive, but I liked Weinstein’s Servo nonetheless. At only 18, Weinstein had his whole career ahead of him when these shows aired. Feeling underappreciated and underpaid, he left. Valid reasons in my book. He now has a successful writing career and tours around the country with his MST3K brethren as “Cinematic Titanic.” He’s even funnier now and easily stole the show when I saw them.
Looking back on the first season, it’s easy to see how well the show improved over 13 episodes. At first, the writers were unsure of the medium, and episodes like “The Crawling Eye” and “The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy” suffered because of it. Yet halfway through they almost get it, especially with “Untamed Youth” and “Women of the Prehistoric Planet.” The greatness is apparent and only gets better in the second season before coming to full bloom in the third. And on a personal note, it’s a lot of fun to review these early episodes, many of which I’d never seen or hadn’t seen in more than 15 years.
Rating: ***
Sidenote: “Women of the Prehistoric Planet” was available of Rhino’s Volume 9 box set. It went out-of-print fairly quickly because the rights to this film were never set in stone. Kudos to those who own it as it sells online for A LOT. I was one of the lucky ones to get it when it came out, if I may brag for a second.
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