MST3K The Beast of Hollow Mountain Review: Season 11, Episode 5

MST3K The Beast of Hollow Mountain review: the episode in context

Season 11 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 is the show's Netflix revival, and all 14 episodes became available on April 14, 2017. Joel Hodgson, who created the original series, returned as executive producer, and the season was paid for by a Kickstarter campaign that closed on December 11, 2015 with $5,764,229 pledged by 48,270 backers. The money covered the planned three episodes, and add-ons funded two more, including a Christmas special, for a total of 14.

The cast for the revival is Jonah Ray as the new host, Jonah Heston, with Hampton Yount voicing Crow T. Robot, Baron Vaughn voicing Tom Servo and Rebecca Hanson voicing Gypsy. On the villain side, Felicia Day plays Kinga Forrester, the daughter of original series villain Clayton Forrester, and Patton Oswalt plays her henchman Max. Anyone who has watched older episodes will recognize the setup: a man trapped in space, forced to watch bad movies, who builds robot friends to get through them.

“The Beast of Hollow Mountain” is episode five of that season, and the 202nd episode of the series overall. It follows “Avalanche” and precedes “Starcrash,” so it arrives early enough that fans were still judging whether the revival had found its footing. In that company, this is the episode where it starts to feel settled.

A short word on the movie that gets riffed, since it is stranger than the premise sounds. The film is a 1956 United States and Mexico co-production in English, released by United Artists in August of that year, and it runs for 79 minutes. Edward Nassour directed it with Ismael Rodríguez, and Edward and William Nassour produced. It was shot in color and CinemaScope at Churubusco Studios in Mexico City, and a Spanish-language version was filmed at the same time. Its main historical claim is that it was the first film to show cowboys battling dinosaurs.

What happens in The Beast of Hollow Mountain

The setting is southern Mexico around 1900. Jimmy Ryan, an American rancher played by Guy Madison, goes looking for cattle that have gone missing near Hollow Mountain. Locals say the mountain is cursed, but nobody can explain what the curse is beyond a pattern of people wandering into quicksand. Patricia Medina plays Sarita, the town's most beautiful woman and the love interest, who is engaged to another man, and Jimmy gets into a fight with her fiance. The supporting cast includes Carlos Rivas as Felipe Sanchez, Mario Navarro as Panchito, Eduardo Noriega as Enrique Rios and Julio Villarreal as Don Pedro.

Most of the running time goes to ranch business, cattle talk, and the local feud. The beast is an Allosaurus, and it only appears near the end of the film, during a festival in the village. Enrique, a rival who has been sabotaging Jimmy, is killed by the creature. Jimmy lures the dinosaur into a tar pit, where it sinks and drowns. The film's special effects were handled by Jack Rabin, Henry Sharp and Louis de Witt, after Willis O'Brien, who is credited as a writer, had been in talks to handle them.

How the riffing plays

In an MST3K review of The Beast of Hollow Mountain, the first thing to say is that a movie which waits for its monster is a mixed gift for a riffing show. There is plenty of dead air, but there is also a lot of dull ranch dialogue, and the cast gets room to play. In this episode, Jonah and the Bots do not coast through the setup. They go after the film's macho posturing, the leading man's deep voice, the cardboard romance, and the stereotyped Mexican characters, which the film plays straight and the riffs call out.

The film also looks better than most MST3K fare. It is colorful, wide, and well photographed, and the two leads are convincing enough that the riffs can poke at the overacting. When the dinosaur finally shows up, the long tongue gets a laugh of its own, and the final fight, with a horse sliding down a dirt hill and the cowboy flailing at a stop-motion creature, gives the riffers plenty to work with.

The host segments

Season 11 usually lives or dies on its sketches, and this episode has more hits than misses. The cold open, an art festival put on by Jonah and the Bots, is the weakest part. The Invention Exchange is the opposite. Jonah's Disco Cannon, which fires disco balls and creates an instant dance floor in any room, is short and silly. Kinga's idea for preventing the Titanic disaster, a hose firing hot water at the iceberg, is delivered with total confidence, and Max drinking from the hose after his workout, and burning his mouth on it twice, is the best gag of the segment.

In the next break Jonah asks the Bots to pitch their own monster movies. Crow goes for a corporate, formula picture, and Servo pitches a thoughtful film where the monster is depressed about the condition it was made into. A fashion show sketch in which the Bots dress as characters from the film comes next and is the weakest in the episode. Then comes the big one: Crow and Servo put on festival costumes from the movie and dance to creepy music while Jonah, Kinga and Max panic and demand to know what is happening. The closing sketch, about ordinary films made better by dinosaurs, is cute but feels rushed.

Season 11 episode 5 verdict: how The Beast of Hollow Mountain ranks

The Beast of Hollow Mountain is the revival's confidence-builder. After a couple of episodes that were good without being great, the riffing here is quicker, the sketches are sharper, and Kinga and Max have more to do. That last point matters: the villain duo works best when they are in the same scene, and this episode finally gives them one with real bite.

The film does its share. It is not a bad movie in the sense of being incompetent. It is slow, earnest, and charmingly odd, with a first-of-its-kind pitch that it can only deliver at the very end. That gap between promise and payoff is what the riffs feed on. The movie spends most of its length on cattle prices, rivalries and a curse nobody can describe, and then hands the audience a dinosaur with a tongue like a whip.

Compared with the rest of season 11, it sits near the top. Only “Cry Wilderness” competes for the title of the revival's best episode in this reviewer's view. The episode is not perfect, and the fashion show drags, but it has a stronger average than most of what surrounds it.

The sketches deserve a second look for what they say about the revival's comic range. The Disco Cannon is a one-note joke that earns its laugh through speed. The festival-costume bit is a long, strange dance that works because Crow and Servo commit to it and the three humans in the room have no idea what to do. Both are the kind of host segment that older fans remember from the original run, with a small invention, a silly premise, and a capable cast playing it straight.

A first-time viewer should know the format, since the show hides it from no one. A movie plays, the host and two robots sit in silhouette at the bottom of the screen and talk over it, and between the reels the cast acts out short sketches. The jokes are tied to what is on screen, so the more sluggish the film is, the more room the riffs get. The Beast of Hollow Mountain is a near-perfect match: its gaps are long enough for the cast to land a joke, and its dialogue is plain enough to be fun to talk over.

If you want a place to start with the revival, this is a good one: the movie is easy to follow, the sketches do not depend on earlier lore, and the final dinosaur fight is as silly as anything on Netflix.

Sources

• Mystery Science Theater 3000, Wikipedia — revival season, cast and crew
• The Beast of Hollow Mountain, Wikipedia — film's production details and release