Cinematic Titanic: The Oozing Skull

I got my copy of the first episode of The Oozing Skull on Tuesday, and I finally watched it yesterday. Let me share my jumbled thoughts.

In case we have to recap: Cinematic Titanic is like MST3k but instead of three guys on the bottom, we have four guys and a gal on either side of the screen. All are former MST3k writers. There are skits, but we never leave the movie. Instead the movie is paused and we watch one of the performers do something.



From top left to top right we have J. Elvis Weinstein, Joel Hodgson, Mary Jo Pehl, Frank Conniff, and Trace Beaulieu. They're all in silhouette like the good old days. From time to time we see special guests appear and there are a couple of lifts so Trace or Josh can interact with the movie a little. There are no special features on the DVD.

Got that? Probably not because I rushed the explanation, but if you're here you most likely already know what CT is. Now onto our feature presentation.


Cinematic Titanic's first outing is about a 1972 film called Brain of Blood. It was directed by Al Adamson who somehow escaped the MST3k treatment. Al is responisible for other fine movies like Frankenstein vs Dracula. Many of his movies involved the word blood. However, when it came time for the CT folks to license this movie, the name was changed to The Oozing Brain so people won't confuse the uncut DVD with this one. Not that CT is sold in stores.

The movie is about some weirdos who want to transpant the brain of the dictator of some Middle Eastern country into a new body. The inject a serum into his dying body and wrap him up in tin foil before shipping him to America. Just watching the actors move the dictator's body around is enough to tell you why this movie was chosen as an experiment...I mean, subject. Sorry, gotta watch that.

The cast of characters include a mad scientist, a midget, a blonde who is apparently an Al Adamson bit character (and how sad is that?) and what appears to be the cousin of that monster from The Brain That Wouldn't Die. The latter character, Gor, is given a poinless backstory during a scene that I might suggest was only cooked up to pad time. Just saying. In case you're interested, some hillbilly was playing with a lame looking toy. After getting violent during a game of keep-away, two other hillbillies pour car battery acid on him. Yuck. Definitely an unpleasant scene.

So these people sit around in a lab keeping the dictator alive. Of course, the lab has a dungeon for a basement. Naturally, Gor is sent to kidnap bodies for a replacement. For some reason he kidnaps a brunette for no reason I can remember other than they needed a love scene later in the movie. Said brunette has the slowest reactions in the world, because she gets bitten by a big spider on her arm long before she does anything. Even if this spider lowered itself from somewhere she couldn't see, would spiders really be so daring? I'm arachnophobic as you can get, but I don't buy that.

There's some hero in this movie, but maybe not. I didn't quite catch if he was originally a part of the goons or was some guy who somehow knew about the whole oooooozing skull thing. His job is to get into boring chases (by foot or by car) and to start an unnecessary love scene with the brunette. If you watched the post-Night of the Living Dead movies of the seventies, you already know their fate.

There's a twenty minute scene where Gor, our sorta heroes, the mad scientist, the blonde, and some kid all run around in a giant field. At least it felt like twenty minutes. The blonde gets so bored that she tosses a blonde manikin off a cliff while she plays tag with Gor. Oh, and the dictator is inside Gor, I think. I didn't quite catch who was in Gor but I'm sure it was the dictator, even if he couldn't control himself.

What else I could tell you about the plot wouldn't be worth it. Seriously, not much happens in the movie. (I wonder if CT was unkind to it by editing out key scenes, but from what I read about Dracula vs Frankenstein, maybe not. And Imdb does say that it was only 87 minutes long, so maybe we got the movie uncut. EDIT: Except The OOOOOOOOzing Skull is 80 minutes, so never mind that.)


The movie was made when movies were starting to get more bloody and gory, and it does provide us a bloody operation scene. Luckily for me, it's more goofy than gross. The blood doesn't look like blood at all, and the brain can't be taken seriously after it's plopped into a bowl and connected to electrodes. (How many times have they done that in movies?) I was worried there would be a lot more gore after watching the CT trailor, but I was more icked out by the midget than the operation.

So The Oozing Skull is a passably bad movie, even though it's not my preferred brand of cheese.


Now, how about our second direct "spin off" of MST3k?

It was good. Real good. I would give it a C+, I think. That may not sound like much, but I would take a C MST3k project over most things. I think if they hammer out a few things the grade would easily be in the B range. I liked this effort, but I expect them to improve future CTs.

When you start the dvd, we get the theme song playing with various scenes of the film shown. We get a quick countdown before our performers enter and take their places. This is a bit jarring because I was waiting for a brief back story before the exper...movie started. Instead we jump right into the riffs. I know, it's just a direct-to-dvd show, I should just relax, but I think it would help if they made up some reason why these five come together. Even rifftrax has an intro where Mike and all talk to Disembaudio. The original CT website led me to believe that this was going to have a scifi feel to it, given the time tube or whatever it is. Heck, look at the home page and tell me that this effort isn't begging for a poinless back story for nerds to debate. I'm crossing my fingers that a future episode or a post by one of the cast members will enlighten us.

While the big attraction of this effort is that it has silhouettes (and rifftrax doesn't! nyeh nyeh), it doesn't just end with five people at the sides. I mentioned the lifts from earlier, but we also see a couple people popping up to add to the jokes. This idea wasn't ignored by MST3k but it may give the writers a chance to play with the fans expectations of what may pop up next. We'll see how that goes.

Our five performers are all veterans, even if Frank and Mary Jo only riffed during a fifth of an MST3k episode. The big worry here, I think, is about chemistry. With three people, it's much easier for jokes to bounce off each other. Unfortunately I can't say much about this because I was just listening to the jokes individually. Still, I don't think this will be too much of a problem. Mike, Kevin, and Bill are superior, but I never felt that there were too many people in the theater and they seemed ok with each other. There weren't any laugh out loud moments, but there were plenty of good riffs and I never felt like there were any dead spots. My only problem is that Trace doesn't stand out. I'm so use to his several versions of Crow that his normal voice either blends in with Joel or Josh. I might end up staring at his side of the screen to see if he's moving.



Here's some of my favorite moments:

Joel: The Mod Squad IN COLOR! (standard MST3k joke, but) Oh, I'm old. (puts his head on his shoulders)

????: Is that a really small desk, or is he wearing wooden pants?

Josh??: Hemisphere Pictures! We’ve got half a mind to make a movie!

The part where the heroine tries to escape and they sing These Boots are Made for Walkin'. I couldn't do that justice by describing it. It just worked.

The end where they make fun of the flashback by redoing the earlier skits.

("Nothing but ashes.") Frank: Nothing But Asses? That was on Cinemax last night.




This was a good first effort and I hope that the next eleven (they licensed 12 films) are even better. Unlike a certain cartoon, Rifftrax and CT are great for MST3k fans.