Terror from the Year 5000

(the wormy boyfriend walks down the hall)
Crow: I’m going to the city to be a stud.

A reference to Midnight Cowboy, starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight. The only X-rated film to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. It’s about gigolos (the thought of Dustin Hoffman as a male prostitute frightens me even more than the thought of him in a dress).


(Angelo looks at sparkly things)
Crow: It’s Lee Marvin!

Lee Marvin was one of those big-drinkers of the ‘60’s—he had many off screen escapades but, unlike many of today’s “stars”, his talent made up for any indiscretions. He was a marine who went into acting as therapy, and ended up making a lot of classic westerns and war films. However, my favorite of his has to be the comedy-western Cat Ballou, also starring Jane Fonda. It garnered his only Oscar. He plays a washed-up drunk cowboy who takes Fonda under his wing. He pretty much makes the whole movie—the scene where he and the horse he’s riding on lean drunkenly against a wall is worth the price of admission. The horse’s legs are crossed! Horses can’t do that!


(the Wormy Bad Guy walks out of the house and to the boat)
Mike and the ‘Bots (singing): Heeee…He was a small oily man…

While this isn’t a movie reference, I like it so much I have to note it. It’s a takeoff of the song “She’s Leaving Home” by my favorite band, The Beatles. Mike and the ‘Bots sing it really well. “She’s Leaving Home” is on the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, and is about a girl who uh leaves home.


(after a “big” car chase scene)
Servo: Grace Kelly and Frank Sumpin in To Catch a Pyle.

Servo is referencing Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief, starring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. In the movie, Grant and Kelly are trying to get away from the French police and they go speeding around a dangerous cliff road to lose them. It’s a really famous scene, and kind of eerie too because about ten or twenty years later Grace Kelly died in a car accident on that same road. The guy in this movie has a crew cut and looks like he’s in the army, which explains Servo’s reference to Frank Sumpin (of "Gomer Pyle, USMD" fame) and the show where “Pyle!” is yelled a lot.


(Bob opens a box marked “fragile”)
Mike: Fragilee!

From A Christmas Story, when the dad won the radio contest and, as a prize, got…a plastic leg lamp! Wow! Mom, however, didn’t like it too much and “accidentally” broke it (I’m in the small camp of people who believe that she did it on purpose; sure she looks all nice and innocent) and Dad buried it in the back yard (whilst playing “Taps”, or so Ralphie thinks). To me, it was hilarious. So was Ralphie’s trip to see Santa Claus (“I like The Wizard of Oz…”) and, of course, when his friend is triple-dog-dared to stick his tongue on the flagpole.


(a shot of the house)
Tom: Tara awaits patiently.

Wow! A Gone with the Wind reference and I didn’t even have to stretch for it! Yep, as I’ve said millions of times before (well, twice), Tara was the plantation owned by the O’Hara’s. And the house in Terror from the Year 5000 does look a little like the one in Gone with the Wind. But I’m beginning to think that all Southern plantation houses do.


(the bartender is cleaning a glass)
Mike: Bartender’s a clean old man.
Servo: Clean.

Although I don’t believe there was a clean bartender in the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night, Paul’s Grandpa is definitely a clean old man, or physically clean, at least. His character is uh suspicious to say the least. He gambles, he lies, he forges the Beatles’ autographs, he gets put in jail a couple of times. All the while, the Beatles are running and jumping (and sometimes standing still, one supposes) while singing their classic songs. A Hard Day’s Night was the first of five films they made, and definitely their best (with Yellow Submarine coming in a close second, since they’re not actually in the movie per se). A Hard Day’s Night is always in some film organization’s greatest films list (including critic Roger Ebert, whom I consider the best critic of all time). The man who played Paul’s grandpa wasn’t actually Paul’s real grandpa; he was an actor. Movies have them from time to time. During the filming, he discovered that the Beatles weren’t members of SAG (Screen Actors Guild) and got them inducted, right there on the set. The Beatles are certainly my favorite band; and the soundtrack to this movie is one of the few CD’s that I can actually listen to the whole way through. Vive les Beatles.


(the Nurse walks around the forest like a chump, just waiting to be killed by the Terror from the Year 5000)
Mike: Never get off the gosh-darn boat, absolutely golly-darn right.

This is a reference to the scene in Apocalypse Now, wherein a guy got off the boat when he really shouldn’t have, because they’re in freakin’ Vietnam. Personally, I liked the first half of the film, before Marlon Brando enters into it and it becomes even more of a metaphor of Heart of Darkness. I like the surfing-obsessed Robert Duvall with the Civil War hat, commanding his men to surf while they’re being shot at and bombed. I also like when Harrison Ford shows up. Because that guy is cool.


(the Terror is sparkling in a bush)
Crow: Are you a good witch or a bad witch?
(Bob opens the suitcase with the cat mutant)
Servo: Oh, it’s one of those Fly Monkeys Fly Monkeys!

I can’t believe I spelled monkeys “monkies”. It just seems right, doesn’t it? And then I spelled the singular as “monky”. Ugh. Well, these are both references from the classic 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz. Crow references Dorothy’s question to the Good Witch of the North—she really should have figured that the Good Witch was in fact a good witch, because come on, she was attractive. The Wicked Witch of the West, however, was one sumbitch (a distaff one, at least) who tried in vain to kill Dorothy because she (Dorothy) had killed the Wicked Witch of the West’s sister, the Wicked Witch of the East. Now, the next logical question is, “Is there a Good Witch of the South then?” I’m guessing so, but I imagine the Good Witch of the South to be boozed up on mint juleps, with blonde hair and that half-out-of-the-bag look on her face, like Vivien Leigh in Streetcar Named Desire. Doesn’t do a lot of good deeds, admittedly, but boy can she tell you stories about the good ol’ days when they used to have the biggest plantation in Oz, and a hundred Munchkin “servants”, but then the government took the house and yadda yadda yadda. The flying monkeys, on the other hand, are the servants of the Wicked Witch of the West, and one can assume that—after she dies and all her evil minions are freed—they live out the rest of their days walking around Oz and acting like nothing ever happened. Heigh ho.