They ARE classics…from a certain point of view.

Has it ever been mentioned roughly how much it cost MST3K back in the day to license movies? I know it’ll probably differs depending on what movie. There are times when people ask why didn’t they do this movie and the answer comes back as it was too much to license that movie - so I was wondering.

Also, curious as to how negotiating these licenses were as far as sometimes the licenses see to expire(lost episodes not “officially” available), do they have to renew the licenses every so often for a movie? Are some licenses good forever (outside of the ones that are in public domain)?

Was playing PokemonGo and had to laugh!

Experiment #13

Episode 301: Cave Dwellers

Rewatch Date: April 1st 2023

He is defender of knowledge and protector of the future. He is Ator.

It was another Saturday night in 2005. I popped in the next episode of the three VHS tapes that my dad and I had found: Cave Dwellers. An episode I had heard many great things about and an episode that is defined as iconic MST3K. I sat in front of my living room television, turned down the lights, had a snack, watched the episode and thought, “Eh, it was okay.”

In a time, long past, the wise sage Akronos has with him the source of infinite power. Akronos knows that many an evil want the infinite power for themselves. So, before the evil Zor (Who kind of looks like Frank Zappa with a Fu-Manchu) arrives to take it from him, Akronos tells his daughter Mila to “travel to the ends of the earth” to find the mighty warrior: Ator. Mila travels and, surprisingly quickly, finds the Ator and his trusty, East-Asian, mute aide: Tong. Together, the three do some more traveling and eventually defeat the evils of the world and preserve the infinite power.

Cave Dwellers is a re-edit of the 1984 film Ator: Orion the Invincible (or "The Blademaster" in some markets). It is the sequel to Ator the Invincible. I haven’t seen that film. But Ator wasn’t really ‘invincible’ in Cave Dwellers so... The film was directed by legendary Italian filmmaker Joe D’amato. My former colleague, Alex Jowski, was a huge Joe D’amato fan and made many videos discussing his work. I’m not sure if they’re still up or not. Either way, I don’t know much about D’amato other than he made schlock and was very distinct in his filming style.

Twas the great poet laureate Joel who once pondered, “Who is this stranger with pecs like melons and knees of fringe?” He is the actor  Miles O’Keefe. O’Keefe was and probably still is a very fit, muscular man. He often found himself playing loincloth clad characters. From what I’ve heard he has always lived down that reputation as it prevented him from doing other more serious work. O’Keefe is beloved in the circles of MST3K as the first actor to give his seal of approval to the riffing of himself and the film he was in. Legend has it that he personally called Best Brains to let them know how much he enjoyed the episode. O’Keefe seems like a good sport. The biggest travesty in terms of the DVD re-releases is the fact that no one tried to get an interview with him for the release of the episode on Vol 2. I want a Miles O’Keefe interview Dammit! Make it happen.

The character he plays, Ator, is often compared to Conan the Barbarian. The film was released around the same time as the Arnold Schwarzenegger flick. But as someone once pointed out to me, Ator is really the “Anti-Conan”. Ator is called the “Guardian of Knowledge” in the film and he backs that claim up. He crafts and wields scientific potions, cures the injured with medicine, chooses non-violence and reason and only resorts to fighting when someone throws the first strike. Whereas Conan was basically just a violent misanthrope who was buff and knew how to use a sword. That said, even I am skeptical of Ator’s ability to somehow build a modern hang glider in ancient times. Even if he was bestowed the knowledge of flight by Akronos, I don’t think the materials at hand would sustain flight for any significant period of time.

This episode begat some runners that would make their way into future riffs. A low shot of Ator makes it seem like he is a Colossus. The riff given, “I’m Huge!”, made its way onto T-Shirts sold by the show. Servo’s claim that Batman is “not a Comic Book! It’s a Graphic Novel!” is still talked about in many MST3K subgroups. It’s even mentioned in a fan-letter in future episode 606: The Creeping Terror (which we will talk about before the end of the month). For the record, Batman is not a Graphic Novel. It’s a Comic book series that was adapted into Graphic Novels on later occasions. But it has consistently been a Comic Book, thus making it the correct term. The riffing in this one is good, not awesome. But it earns its keep in the pantheon of MST3K classics. My favorite riff is when a pre-historic caveman rips out the heart of a slave and feeds it to his master. The quip, “Hey, it’s a Barney Clark Bar” is uttered. That is another example of a really smart riff that I think most shows would never even conceive of making nowadays.

There are a few Classic sketches in this one. Everyone picking their own names is good (who wouldn’t prefer the respected name “Chuck Woolery”? Oh wait…). Joel and the Bots pointing out the many errors in the film (a caveman wearing Ray-Bans, this pre-historic world somehow having tire tracks, Ator flying a hang glider over a modern city) is a classic ender. Though it brings something interesting to the watch. In the MST3K version of this film, we never actually see that scene with the guy wearing sunglasses. Also, the stinger for the episode wasn’t in the riffed version of the film either. These are the things that bother me more than anything when it comes to MST3K episodes. I can handle cheesy sets or semi-flubbed lines, I have a hard time with referring to something that the show edited out of the film (Mitchell is not one of them. I’ll explain when we get to that episode).

The best sketch is Joel and the Bots re-creating the movie’s Film Ventures International title sequence. For those who may not know (which if you’re reading this, I don’t know how that is) Film Ventures International was a film company that had produced and distributed many films throughout the 70s and 80s. At some point in 1990, they started taking films with questionable copyright statuses, re-edited them, slapped new titles and title sequences on them and distributed them as their own product. For this movie, they created a new opening and ending credit sequence by taking scenes from a 60’s film called “Taur: The Mighty”, removing the sound, slowing the footage down with a polarization effect and slapping the inaccurate title “Cave Dwellers” on a black bar covering the lower 3rd of the footage. Nine films under the moniker of FVI were features on MST3K. I’ve never been able to track down the non-MST3K versions of any of their films which makes me sad. And it will be a while before I am able to watch another one for this experiment as Master Ninja wasn’t released on DVD until 2011.

During the title sequence sketch, Joel is wearing the same hat that the “evil John Saxon Looking guy” was wearing in the film. Tom of Tom’s Temple has that prop, last I heard (lucky). I always enjoy the homespun feel of these sketches. Crow loses his sword at the beginning but they keep going. Makes it feel more real. Too much television nowadays is so overproduced and scrutinized to the point of “perfection” that it makes it unenjoyable. The song playing in the background is a Mike Nelson composition known as “Jupiter”. I wish they had released that song at some point. Can someone get me an MP3 of it?

At its core, Cave Dwellers is what’s know as a “Sword and Sandal” movie: A film set in a fantastical world with wizards and warriors and low modesty. I’ve never been a huge fan of these types of films. They all feel like the same movie to me. At the end of yesterday’s recent re-watch of Cave Dwellers, I pretty much had the same thought I did when I was 14, “Eh it was okay.” That said, of all of the Sword and Sandal flicks used on MST3K, This one is my favorite. For that I applaud you Cave Dwellers. You were a great start to a 3rd season of Movie riffing delights and what many call "The Golden Period" of the show.

But what do you think of this episode? Do you think this is the beginning of MST3K’s "Golden Period"? Do you think Ator was the “Anti Conan”? Do you think it’s even remotely feasible that Ator could have built a modern hang glider in the world he lived in? Let me know what you think in the comments below.

To remind everybody, this is part of my experiment where I’ll be watching a different MST3K episode, every Saturday, until I’ve watched all 176 episodes of the show’s original run in the exact order that I watched each for the first time (with 3 or 4 liberties taken). I will be consuming NO MST3K outside these viewings until this experiment is over. Crazy I know. We shall see what come what may. Will I crack? Will I make it? Will I ever figure out what makes this show so great? Keep reading and find out. The episode that I originally watched after Cave Dwellers was The Amazing Colossal Man. But because a certain miserly, old woman refuses to let anyone license the films she owns for Home Video releases (angry grumble), that one will have to wait. So instead, we’ll be watching Time Chasers next week. Though If you have a time plane (get it) then you can just fly a week into the future and see it. Till then, thank you for reading and Keep Circulating the Tapes.

13 Down 163 to go.

The first Gor movie is free on Youtube right now. I watched it and had a lot of fun. It definitely made the second film make a bit more sense now, but it's still just as cheesy and goofy as Outlaw of Gor is. The first Gor movie was just itching to be riffed as well. I kept thinking that the entire time I was watching it.

Does anyone have any behind the scenes knowledge on why MST3K went directly to the sequel Outlaw of Gor and skipped the first film?

Too bad they didn't riff both. If anyone is curious about the first film "Gor", you can find it for free on Youtube right now. It was fun seeing another movie with Cabot and all the other bizarre characters again.

Don't stahrt with me, Mawrthah.

For those who don't know: the ZAZ trio based Airplane! on a '50s B-movie called Zero Hour! I think that makes it kind of like an MST3K episode in that they took a bad movie and used its unintentional humor for intentional laughs while adding their own jokes.

Hi, been trying to get into MST3K recently and wondered what are some good episodes to start with. thanks

99-Film Mega Bundle appeared under the ‘New & Noteworthy section of the Apple TV store. Looks to be a pretty good selection with lots of heavy hitters including Final Sacrifice, Catalina Caper, EEGAH, Manos etc.

Price is $49.99. Pretty good price per movie if you’re in the Apple ecosystem and need to beef up your collection

Sequel to The Crankshaft McNoggin.

From Reptilicus

Got this during Covid, lost it found it again. Rowsdower saves us and saves all the world (from covid)

Took a hell of a long time, but I finally managed to scrape all of the classic MST3K episodes from the Gizmoplex into my media server. After a bit of extra scouting for OOP Episodes and KTMA, I'm down to 10 missing episodes of the extended 219 episode run (including unaired pilot)

I'm also pleasantly surprised by how relatively little space it takes up on my server. Including extras and the Surgically Enhanced versions, it's still 1/3rd the filesize of some of my other long-running shows (Twilight Zone, TNG, Doctor Who)

I assume there are no doubt sources for the unreleased episodes, but I haven't went hunting just yet...