"You may come from beyond the moon,
But to me, you're just a goon!" "There, your announcer feels vindicated! This is extremely horrible!"—Tom Servo
Director Herschell Gordon Lewis needed another movie to round out a double-feature with
Moonshine Mountain. So he bought Bill "
The Giant Spider Invasion" Rebane's unfinished "Terror at Halfday," added a couple of extra scenes, some new dialogue, some narration,
nothing else, and
voila: Monster A Go-Go!, a half finished stinker!
The plot, such as it is, is that an astronaut has gone missing after crash-landing in suburban Illinois. At the same time, a monster that looks suspiciously like the lost spaceman (and is highly radioactive) has been terrorizing teenagers and scaring the pants off of the locals. Scientists work to study the monster, but he escapes into the Chicago sewers, only to disappear suddenly. The narrator then explains that
there was no monster, and that the astronaut was found "alive, well and of normal size" in the North Atlantic — something that itself is never explained!
The movie was featured on
Mystery Science Theater 3000 in 1993, and at the time was regarded as one of the worst movies they'd ever riffed on. It even gets an aside reference in their treatment of
"Manos" The Hands of Fate, implying that as bad as that movie was, this one may still be
worse. Lewis knew about the issues with the movie, and at one point even (perhaps prophetically) tried to market it as a parody of sci-fi movies.
This film provides examples of:
- Blatant Lies - Anything the narrator says.
- Contemplate Our Navels
- Cosmic Horror - Maybe? As with so many things in this movie, this is never elaborated on.
- Dull Surprise
- Dreadful Musician - The composer of the actual score. To elaborate, the score consisted mainly of sparse, jangly Scare Chords played on a Fender Rhodes and amplified to distortion; it's atonal, harsh, and probably meant to be creepy, but just gets annoying after a while.
- Did Not Do the Research - Nothing works anything like this movie portrays it. Weirdly averted in that this is one of the few films where an oscilloscope gets used in a remotely realistic manner.
- Fainting
- Gainax Ending - There was no monster. This chain of events is also never explained properly, making what was supposed to be a Shocking Swerve turn into a huge Plot Hole.
- The Immodest Orgasm. One of the female scientists moans offscreen as if she's having an orgasm. Crow reacts: "Why, General!"
- Info Dump
- Jerk Ass - Dr. Carl. Talks to the wife of the mission's pilot about how well a mission went when the pilot didn't come back alive, instructs a mother not to tell her son that his step-father is dead, and inexplicably disappears before doing anything useful.
- Last Name Basis - The Logan brothers.
- Leitmotif
- Mind Screw - How the climax happened is not only never explained, but handwaved by the narrator at the very end.
- Notable Original Music
- Obvious Beta
- Padding: About half an hour's worth, as aimless shots of the military are used in long, silent stretches.
- Parody Retcon: H.G. Lewis claimed this movie was a parody instead of an Obvious Beta, as does the trailer. He's also claimed it to be a "satire" later on.
- Plot Hole - Plenty of them, due to the incomplete nature of the film. Very little of what's going on is explained properly, and attempts to explain it just end up posing more questions than they answer.
- The Scream
- Space Clothes - On the monster. Inexplicably.
- Stock Footage
- Title Theme Tune
- The Treachery of Images - the ending.
- Unreliable Narrator
- The Unintelligible
- What Happened to the Mouse? - About half the characters disappear about halfway into the movie.
- One of them, Dr. Logan, is replaced by his brother, Dr. Logan, who is the same actor with a different haircut.
- Blatant Lies - At one point Joel denies having brought a soda into the theater, despite the fact that we heard him open the can and saw him drink from it.
- Call Back: Joel declares Servo "a happy king" while pretending to play a trumpet, a Shout Out to Mr. B Natural.
- Fridge Logic: Invoked by Crow and Servo when they try to have Joel explain the lyrics of Rupert Holmes' song "Escape" (aka The Pina Colada Song).
- Gag Boobs: "Oh, they decided to go to Shakey's."
- Getting Crap Past the Radar: TV's Frank enthuses about Johnny Longtorso's "action batch".
- Heroic BSOD: Both Crow and Tom Servo at the end, despite Joel's best efforts.
- Pollyanna: Crow fails to become this at the start.
- Ride of the Valkyries
- Running Gags
B.O!
- Take That
Joel: Hey, wait; I think you have page 29 of the script on your shoe!
- The infamous ending prompted one of the few instances in the entirety of the show of one of the bots flat out booing the film. It only comes second to Debbie becoming one of the Master's wives, where the entire crew booed.
- One of the host segments is entirely devoted to bashing the kitsch '70s song "Escape." It's clearly the result of one of the writers having thought these things for a while.
- This Is Gonna Suck: Everyone. During the opening credits, no less.
Crow: Now, it might not be too bad!
Tom: No, I think Joel's right; this one has
'stinkburger' written all over it.
Joel: No, no, it's a feeling I have; my gut instinct's telling me this is gonna hurt real bad.
Crow: Joel, it's not healthy to have such a negative attitude right out of the gate.
Tom: It's just common sense, Crow; there's a feeling of incompetence already in the air here.
Joel: Yeah, we might as well face up to it.
- It doesn't even take a minute to change Crow's mind.
- What Could Have Been: Servo sighs at seeing the title: "Aw, I thought this was going to be Munsters, Go Home!".
- What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: Servo is fascinated by WoodScrew TapeWorm, who is basically cassette recorder tape being pulled through a dolls mouth.
2 reviews