I Was a Teenage Werewolf

(a dorky kid stupidly walks through the woods at night, and is ultimately killed by a werewolf. At one point he stops and looks over his shoulder…)
Tom: Ralph Fiennes is Li’l Abner.
(later on, as the kid’s getting attacked)
Crow: Okay, I apologize for Strange Days but I was really good in The English Patient!

That shot of the kid looking over his shoulder looks a hell of a lot like the movie poster for The English Patient, the Oscar-winning 1996 film with Ralph Fiennes. I don’t think the kid looked a lot like Ralph Fiennes, however, but Crow’s line is just an addition to Servo’s earlier line. Strange Days was a laughable science fiction movie with (ugh) Juliette Lewis and Tom Sizemore (ugh again). But, on the bright side, Angela Bassett was also in the movie, and one of her lines is used in Fatboy Slim's song, "Right Here Right Now", which is a good song. Also, Juliette Lewis sings in the movie. Um...yay...


(Michael Landon walks forlornly down the streets of his town)
Crow (singing): Everybody’s barking at me/ I can’t hear a command they’re saying…

Crow’s doing a parody of a scene in Midnight Cowboy. The scene is pretty famous—Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight (the latter being in a cowboy suit, and about a foot taller than everyone else) walk down a crowded city street. Also the source of the famous line, "Hey, I'm walking here!" (yelled by Hoffman when a car almost hits him as he's walking through traffic.)


(after a cop says that the dorky kid’s throat was ripped out)
Tom Servo: Well, I guess they do those things.

The bank examiner in It’s a Wonderful Life says this to Uncle Billy after Uncle Billy explains to him that Harry Bailey is being awarded a medal for shooting down Japanese planes in World War II. This line is actually said in a lot of “MST3K” shows, along with the “Sam Wainwright is on the phone” line.


(Michael Landon sneaks behind a bush in silence)
Tom: You know, the Bernard Herrmann score really heightens the tension.

Bernard Herrmann, as previously stated, composed the scores for most of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies, including North by Northwest, Psycho, Vertigo, and Notorious (he also did the score for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, which might seem like a weird match, but it works, because Herrmann is that awesome). He’s known for having really gripping scores. And they really do heighten the tension, as is obvious with the shower scene in Psycho.


(Michael Landon jumps out of his hypnosis all sweaty and his doctor is staring at him real creepy-like)
Mike: The lambs, Clarice, what about the lambs?

Although this was never uttered by Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs, it’s obvious that this is what Mike is referring to. The movie was about a female detective (Clarice, nee Jodie Foster) who works with a super-intelligent cannibal (Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins) to find a serial killer. Anthony Hopkins only had about three or four scenes in the entire movie but was so creepy that he won an Academy award for best actor. He also starred in the sequel, Hannibal (sounds like a musical to me, and should have an exclamation mark—Hannibal!), which was a box-office smash and probably the grossest movie I’ve ever seen. Anthony Hopkins is coincidentally one of my favorite living actors—great British actor who apparently studied at the R.B.S. of A. (one day I’ll explain what this is). Hannibal was followed by the third and fourth Hannibal Lecter installments (or fourth and fifth, if you count Manhunter [isn’t that a Hall and Oates song?]): Red Dragon, starring Anthony Hopkins, Ralph Fiennes, Edward Norton, Emily Watson, and Philip Seymour Hoffman; and Hannibal Rising, which is just a terrible movie and shouldn't be mentioned further.


(scene with a sickeningly cute tow-headed girl)
Crow: She makes Sandy Duncan look like Bette Davis.

Sandy Duncan was a squeaky-clean actress in the ‘60’s who I think had her own television show for a while, which was probably in the same vein as “Gidget” and “The Brady Bunch”. Bette Davis was Sandy Duncan’s direct opposite, a movie legend from the 1930’s and 40’s who was in such movies as All About Eve, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Jezebel. She was forceful, intense, and usually played bitchy characters. She had legendary battles with Warner Brothers Studio about her contract. She was the one who said the legendary lines “Fasten your seatbelts; it’s going to be a bumpy ride” and “Ah’d kiss ya but Ah just warshed mah hair” and “Every time you’d kiss me I wanted to wash my mouth! Wash my mouth!” She was in a lot of movies with Humphrey Bogart. The last line was from Of Human Bondage, also starring Leslie Howard, who played Ashley in Gone with the Wind. Coincidentally, she was considered for the role of Scarlett in Gone with the Wind, but either didn’t take it or didn’t get it, and instead made Jezebel, which Selznick was furious about.


(a shot of a dead dog)
Tom (through tears): One member of The Incredible Journey down.

The Incredible Journey was a young adult’s book and a children’s movie. It was about a two dogs and a cat who travel through the wilderness looking for their family. In the movie, the older dog was voiced by Jack Palance, the younger voiced by Michael J. Fox, and the cat voiced by Sally Field. There was also a sequel, about the pets in San Francisco, but it was unseen by me.


(the Bad Guy’s Assistant is talking to the Bad Guy)
Tom: Reeekk…

I’m guessing (and this is only a guess) that he is saying either “Reeck” or “Weeck”. It would make a lot more sense for him to say “Reeck”, at least to me, because then he’d be referencing Peter Lorre’s character Ugarte in Casablanca. In the beginning of the movie, Ugarte is trying to get away from the SS and he goes to Humphrey Bogart’s Rick (Reeck) for help. He shoots at the SS and runs to Rick and yells “Reeck! You must help me Reeek!” Rick of course doesn’t help him because “I stick my neck out for nobody”. Peter Lorre is one of the great character actors—he began films in Germany (most notably in M) and went to Hollywood to make a lot of famous film noir movies, like The Maltese Falcon and Beat the Devil (both of which also starred Humphrey Bogart).


(the Girlfriend’s dad)

You might not remember his face, but you should pick up on the girlfriend’s dad’s voice—he had a bit part in Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie. He played Sam Ward, Mark’s assistant. He can never remember the combination of the safe so he keeps it written on an index card, and Marnie uses the card to open the safe to steal all of Sean Connery’s money. Michael Landon’s dad from this movie, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, was the guy at the bus stop in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. I wonder if the two actors sat around the set and talked about the time they actually made good movies. Actually I guess not—I Was a Teenage Werewolf was made before Marnie and North by Northwest. Actually, there’s a strange correlation between Alfred Hitchcock movies and movies featured on MST3K. There’s this one, then there is the dad from Space Children, who was also one of the hit men in North by Northwest. And you’ve got Wendell Corey, who was in Agent from H.A.R.M. and Hitchcock’s Rear Window. Was this intentional? Or was it a freak coincidence? Hmm…


The Bad Guy (whilst hypnotizing Michael Landon): Go on…
Mike: Go on, play!

Yet another It’s a Wonderful Life reference. Wow, two references in one. This is from the scene where George Bailey’s family is having quite a time to themselves, decorating the Christmas tree and all, while poor George is one step closer to killing himself. And his little daughter just won’t stop playing the piano. So he yells at her and breaks the model he made of a bridge, and creeps his family out. Then he tells his daughter to start playing, and she starts crying, and Mary starts yelling at him, and then the other kids start crying, and then he storms out. Which is pretty much what everyone’s Christmas is like, really.


(The dorky kid is running through the woods)
Crow: Counselor? Come out, come out, wherever you are…

Man, that was too funny. It’s from the remake of Cape Fear, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Robert de Niro, Nick Nolte, and Juliette Lewis. De Niro plays a murderer/rapist who goes after the man who put him in jail. It was based on the 1950’s film Cape Fear with Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum (I don't recall Mitchum ever uttering the same line, as I haven't seen the original in a while, but I don't think he did). Both Peck and Mitchum make cameos in the remake. I'm about 60% sure that the line in question was just one of those things that De Niro came up with ("counselor" meaning "lawyer" and not "camp counselor", which I'd always assumed before seeing the movie).


(Michael Landon walks into the psychiatrist’s office)
Crow: It’s the back door of the Vertigo church!

Vertigo is considered one of Alfred Hitchcock’s signature suspense films—up there with Psycho and North by Northwest. It stars Jimmy Stewart as a detective with vertigo, who falls in love with the woman he’s been hired to watch (played by Kim Novak). Then she falls off the roof of a church and Stewart finds a girl who looks exactly like her, and all in all it’s a big old mess. If you see the restored version of this film, you’ll notice that a lot of the background noises—like footsteps, most notably—are much louder than usual. Apparently Hitch meant for that to happen (though why he wanted it as such has escaped me at the moment); the first time I saw it (on the AMC marathon of Hitchcock’s movies) I found it jarring. But whatever—incidentally, I liked Rear Window (another Hitchcock film starring Stewart) a bit more than Vertigo, maybe because I consider it one of the great, fun thrillers (like Raiders of the Lost Ark and North by Northwest). But to each his own: Roger Ebert considers it—along with Hitch’s Psycho, Notorious, and North by Northwest—to be one of the greatest films ever.


(As Michael Landon is sneaking through the woods, Mike and the ‘bots bark a tune [rather well, actually])

The tune they were, uh, barking, was actually the theme to The Great Escape, starring—among others—James Garner, James Coburn, Donald Pleasance, Charles Bronson, Richard Attenborough, and (the King of Cool) Steve McQueen. This is actually a really good film, and I say “actually” because I don’t usually like war movies. It’s pretty smart, as it shows how the real POW’s the movie is based on went about escaping. There are differences between the movie and reality: in reality they were all British soldiers, for example (American POWs were involved early on, but unfortunately they were moved to a different camp before the operation could be carried out). Of the 76 men who escaped, only three were never caught. Fifty men were executed and twenty-three were returned to several POW camps. An interesting note about the real life escape: the news of the escape so enraged Adolph Hitler that Goebbels had to calm him down and talk him out of ordering the executions of all the captured men.


(two men—one in a fedora and another in a baseball cap—are searching for Michael Landon in the forest)
Crow: Indiana Jones and his sidekick Merle!

Indiana Jones is, of course, the adventure film icon played by Harrison Ford. Three movies were made—Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, with a fourth released just yesterday, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Now, he never had a sidekick named Merle, but he did have several sidekicks in the films—along with Sallah (John Rhys-Davies) and Marcus (Denholm Elliott), who appeared in Raiders and The Last Crusade, Indiana Jones had Short Round (Ke Huy Quan) and the waiter who gets offed in the very first scene in The Temple of Doom; and he sort of has a sidekick in his father, played by Sean Connery, in The Last Crusade. And you can never rule out the Jones girls (Karen Allen, Kate Capshaw, and Allison Doody in RotLA, ToD, and TLC, respectively), who are really just sidekicks that Indiana gets to make out with (don’t linger too long on the idea of that). This new fourth film gives us four quasi-sidekicks--Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood (hooray!), Shia LaBeouf as greaser Mutt, Ray Winstone as the mercenary Mac, and John Hurt as a bat-shit insane archaeologist. Fun stuff.