I've lost my keys once, but that's ridiculous!
Film watched: Lost Continent
Robert Lippert also served as a producer on several other films featured on the show including Rocketship X-M, Radar Secret Service, and Jungle Goddess (sometimes credited as a "presenter").
The episode is available in the Gizmoplex here
, and on the MST3k YouTube channel here.
The Segments:
Prologue- Joel gives a pep talk to the Bots in the manner of a football coach to his team, building up their anticipation for this week's experiment.
Segment 1
- Frank shows off a series of rather-redundant exercise machines: a moving treadmill, a stationary stairmaster, and a floating rowing machine. Dr. Forrester sends Joel to the theater before he even has a chance to present his invention, as Frank's demonstration runs too long and he's excited for something that he only describes as "Rock Climbing".
Segment 2
- Hugh Beaumont, in a spacefaring version of the Cleaver household, tells Joel and the Bots that he's one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and plans to bring about death and destruction. And he also tells them to cut the movie some slack.
Segment 3
- Joel, Crow, and Servo present The Explorers, a "Quinn Martin" production about a white explorer in a strange land with surprisingly-cultured natives. Things go awry as Joel goes out-of-character to exposit the message of the sketch.
Segment 4
- The crew spot a "cool thing" outside the SOL and pause to watch it until they decide it's no longer cool.
Segment 5
- Joel, Servo, and Crow, channeling their inner cinema geeks, give tidbits about the cast and crew of Lost Continent. The Mads are distraught over the failure of Rock Climbing, especially Dr. Forrester.
The Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment of Lost Continent provides examples of:
- Achievements in Ignorance: In his quest to create self-powered, mobile versions of common step and rowing exercise machines, Frank manages to... reverse-engineer the staircase and the rowboat. He's quite proud of this.
- Actually Pretty Funny: Joel takes a moment to point out that one of the characters' bon mot was actually pretty good.
- An Aesop: A lot of people worked quite hard on the movie, and you shouldn't be so quick to judge it.Hugh Beaumont: Well, I'm glad we learned a little lesson, then. Well. It's time to die. [lights pipe, three-foot flames shoot out]
- Aesop Amnesia: Joel and the 'bots manage to get through to Hugh Beaumont by asking him why he wants to destroy the world, making him realize he's forgotten a lesson of his own.Hugh Beaumont: Boys, I — I think I owe you an apology. I guess your mother and I got so wrapped up in this apocalypse thing I didn't have time to think how you felt. [...] Well, I've got to get going. I've got to catch up to Fred MacMurray and the boys, they're about to destroy Earth. Drink your milk.
- Affably Evil: Horseman of the Apocalypse or not, Hugh Beaumont is still America's Dad.
- Boredom Montage: Or rather, EXCRUCIATING PAIN montage.
- Call-Back:
- Jungle Goddess had a similar "tropical rain forest" setting, and this becomes a running gag.
- There's also a reference to Bela Lugosi in The Phantom Creeps short which aired with Ring of Terror.
- Joel and the bots start complaining of deja vu at the movie's very first shot. They saw the same bit of stock footage - a "US government" security gate - in Rocketship X-M (also a Robert Lippert production).
- Cool Starship: Horseman of the Apocalypse Hugh Beaumont's steed/starship is the house from Leave It to Beaver mounted on thrusters. Everything inside other than Hugh's skin is in black and white.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The interior of Hugh Beaumont's ship, until he lights his pipe and it bursts into a column of flame. In the Amazing Colossal Episode Guide The Brains note that many people were fooled by this, despite the flames.
- Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Standard '50s Father Hugh Beaumont is going to usher in the Apocalypse, starting with the Satellite of Love — but first, a stern talking-to. He also implies that Fred MacMurray's boys are the other three.
- Hypocritical Humor: As the bots are freaking out over more Rock Climbing.Joel: C'mon. Hey you guys, calm down. Hey, it's only a movie, we can handle it, okay?
Servo: Okay, I guess you're right.
[Beat]
Joel: WHO ARE YOU, WHERE ARE WE?! CAN WE GET A FRAME OF REFERENCE OR SOMETHING?! PLEASE! - Invisible Celebrity Guest: Michael Sarrazin in The Explorers, who ends up being the off-camera murder victim during Joel's attempt at a last-act twist.
- Mattress-Tag Gag: When the opening credits get to legal disclaimer, Crow pretends to read aloud from it, "Do not remove this tag under penalty of law."
- Mighty Whitey: Subverted in The Explorers. Joel tries to do another skit about the "Superior White Man In Africa" (similar to "My White Goddess" from Jungle Goddess), while the bots ppl play well-educated natives who are wondering why Joel is speaking so weird to them. The sketch degenerates into Joel's character explaining the unfortunate implications of You No Take Candle before swerving into the last act of a murder mystery on a flimsy pretext, as Quinn Martin never made a jungle flick.
- Not So Stoic: 51 minutes in, during one of the Rock Climbing sequences, the usually-composed Joel starts shouting at the screen right after getting Tom and Crow to stop doing the same thing.
- Padding:Crow: This film makes Shoah look like a two-reeler.note
- Patrick Stewart Speech: What stops Hugh Beaumont. Sort of. It's set up like a cross between Humanity on Trial and the shared Aesop between Ward and the Beaver at the end of every episode.Joel: Gee, sir — I mean dad — why must you kill all life and matter?
Tom: Yeah, can't you give us another chance?
Crow: Oh please, dad — don't kill us and take our souls to the afterworld and stuff. [Laugh Track] - Running Gag
- "Did you ever fly/crash/die in one of these things?"
- "I always said I was never going to die in a plane, but now I'm very excited about it."
- "I can see my house from here!"
- When the rocket is flying through the sky in the beginning: "Jane, stop this crazy thing!"
- (matter-of-factly) "Rock Climbing."
- "15 minute break, everyone." (after anything even remotely exciting happens)
- Standard '50s Father: Michael J. Nelson as the grandaddy of all '50s fathers, Hugh Beaumont, AKA former Trope Namer Ward Cleaver of Leave It to Beaver, comes bearing "a message of unholy death" as one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
- Take Our Word for It: Inverted; we never see the "cool thing" and they never describe it more elaborately than "cool!", but it became the subject of a write-in contest where viewers could come up with their own ideas.
- Finally revealed by the cast at the end of the episode with Fugitive Alien: it's Mexican stoplight candy.
- The Unseen: The "Cool Thing".
