Starring: George Reeves, Wanda McKay, Ralph Byrd, Armida. Writer: Joseph Pagano. Producers: Robert Lippert and William Stephens. Director: Lewis D. Collins. Released in 1948.
Phantom Creeps – starring: Bela Lugosi, Robert Kent, Dorothy Arnold, Edwin Stanley, Dora Clement. Writers: George Plympton, Basil Dickey, Mildred Barish. Producer: Henry MacRae. Directors: Ford Beebe and Saul A. Goodkind. Released in 1939.
Original air date: October 6, 1990
How do filmmakers know how to stretch out a short film into something much longer? Just add tons of stock footage and a little racism and, Pow! You got yourselves a movie! “Jungle Goddess” is remarkable in the fact that nothing really happens. Oh sure, two guys land in the jungle, find a woman, then leave, but somehow the filmmakers drained the possible excitement right out of the concept. No surprise this film is presented by noted “padder” Robert Lippert. Wait until another Lippert film, “Lost Continent,” is you want to see a movie stretched to its boring point.
Unfortunately, the dull movie makes for a limp episode. The Mystery Science Theater 3000 writers try and do succeed at times (especially by pointing out the blatant racism throughout), but mostly this feels like a middle-of-the-road first season show.
Like the first season, the episode starts with a serial that isn’t that bad. I liked it a lot better than “Commando Cody and the Radar Men from the Moon,” of which we had to watch nearly nine chapters worth in Season 1. “The Phantom Creeps” stars Bela Lugosi as (what else?) a mad scientist who discovers how to make exploding spiders and people disappear – two unrelated talents he somehow meshes together. Anything with Bela is funny on MST3K. Joel and the robots really get into it with their Lugosi impersonations and since they’re so over the top, it’s almost always funny.
A lot happens in the first chapter of the serial, “The Menacing Power,” which sets up the rest of the serial. Bela plays Dr. Alex Zorka, a scientist with a knack for bizarre and dangerous inventions. When the Feds try to stop his experiments, or buy them for the military, Dr. Zorka snaps. A lot of important people say important things, tons of exposition is rained down upon the audience, and the serial ends with a plane crashing and people supposedly not escaping (but we know they will at the start of the second chapter).
So much is packed into 18 minutes of the first chapter that it’s tough to know who any of the characters are, save for Bela. All I know is that, at the very end, a spider explodes in the cockpit of a plane that carries the doctor’s wife, although the doctor says she’ll be OK because he’ll put her in suspended animation. How he’ll accomplish this by pulling her body from the smoking wreckage is beyond me.
The Bela jokes come fast and furious in this serial. When the doctor excitedly pulls a piece of paper from his desk, Servo says in his best Lugosi, “Hey! I just invented the post-it note.” When the doctor first tries his disappearing concoction and makes a funny face, Joel does his Bela: “I never should have filled up on that four-alarm chili!”
The most notable aspect of the serial, aside from Lugosi, is the mad doctor’s giant robot with the mean looking face. It’s big, clunky and hilarious, and bears a strong resemblance to Richard Kiel, as Crow points out. That thing must have terrified audiences in 1939. Or not.
While tons of stuff happens in “The Phantom Creeps,” not much happens in “Jungle Goddess.” The daughter (Wanda McKay) of a rich, Dutch South African disappears in the jungles of Africa and two unappealing white guys (“Superman’s” George Reeves and Ralph Byrd) go find her. Turns out she’s been living for six years amongst a tribe who sees her as the White Goddess. While she’s enjoyed her exalted status, she can’t wait to get back to civilization so she can eat a “hamburger sammich with French-fried potatoes.” And that’s about it.
Actually a few things do happen, notably shots of African animals walking around, probably lifted from a nature film. Also, Byrd’s character enjoys shooting things and he doesn’t discriminate: lions, monkeys, people, coconuts… the list continues. When the two explorers discover the jungle tribe, Byrd shoots the first person he sees (“I hope that’s an acceptable greeting,” Joel says). He earns the moniker White Devil and goes from unappealing to downright distasteful as the film continues.
In true Hollywood racist fashion, the black tribesmen jump up and down saying incomprehensible things while dressed in what looks like bathroom towels (“Hey, it looks like they all just got out of the shower,” Servo says upon first seeing them). The white main characters just look on and laugh. Silly natives!
Throughout the episode, the riffs are frequent but not always that funny. Mostly just observational stuff. But there are some highlights. When the Jungle Goddess learns that the White Devil killed a tribesman, she says the punishment for murder is the same in the jungle as it is in the rest of the world, to which Servo says “Plea bargain!” Later, the good white explorer tells the Jungle Goddess he’s so hungry he could eat a horse; “You’re in luck!” Crow says. Actually, it turns out that zebra is the main course, to which Joel says, “Great! Dark and white meat!”
My favorite comes after this, when the White Devil is talking to a native girl about learning English. She says the Jungle Goddess called her smart, but she doesn’t know what that means. “It means you’re stacked,” Crow says, which is a hilarious call-back to a joke from #106, “The Crawling Hand” (“What does stacked mean?” the Swedish girlfriend asks. “It means you’re smart,” Crow said at the time). True MST3K geeks will get a kick out this.
Like most episodes, the skits have their good and not-so-good moments. Dr. Forrester does a visual trick by putting his head in a saxophone for the invention exchange. Joel creates a radio-controlled circular saw, which leads to some funny scenes. During a break in the film, Joel explains to the robots the filmmaking trick of seeing through binoculars, showing them how it’s done with lens cutouts. Of course, Joel goes through a ton of different cutouts, including “intestine vision” and “glaucoma vision.”
The sketch where Joel and the bots poke fun at “The Phantom Creeps” inventions by way of an infomercial drags a bit, and the skit where Mike Nelson and Jim Mallon play trigger happy White Devils visiting the Satellite of Love doesn’t really go anywhere, although Mike does play both noble and condescending quite well.
But the last sketch, where Joel and the bots film a sitcom scene based on “My White Goddess” is really funny. They perfectly mock both the film and unfunny sitcoms of the 1950s with bad jokes, then take a curtain call for the Mads. It’s here Joel jokingly refers to Crow as “Art Crow,” like Art Carney from “The Honeymooners.” This will famously confuse a fan who writes into the show in a later episode.
All in all, “The Jungle Goddess” is a sometimes funny, if forgettable, episode. Better episodes are on the way, however.
Rating: **1/2
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