K09 - Phase IV
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Comments (44) Best Riffs (88)
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Crow: Whoa, a baseball diamond.
Joel: The ants just want to play baseball. That's it.
"That happened to a Ho Hoâ„¢ I had in a lunchbox once."
"All the dogs in the neighborhood are gonna' be really upset."
Servo: Come on, Joel! We're joshing you!
(Does it count as a riff if it's in a host segment? What if it's meta?)
"Caramel Knowledge."
"It's the Laurence Erhardt Fanclub!"
"Somebody threw some doobs down there."
I bet they don't even know what all this stuff does."
"He's won the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes!"
"They're looking for Sandy Duncan."
"We're feeling the harmonic commercial!"
There's Ant A, and look, Aunt Bee!
*Shot of the moon* There's Jackie Gleeson!
*horse goes crazy* And Frau Bluecher!
Crow: Those switches look very clean.
Joel: Maybe they'll get shot into space.
Servo: No one is THAT stupid. ... Oh! Sorry, Joel.
(Which only works in the KTMA season, where Joel's job was cleaning the switches in the loading bay.)
TOM SERVO: "You know...This ant problem seems kinda' minor in the midst of the flying turtle problems the people of Japan experienced. I think we're being insensitive."
The problem with the ant language isn't the words -- it's the semANTics.
Do humans squirt like that when they have something thrown on them, Joel?
You know, they say the camera puts ten pounds on an ant.
"They're spelling something. 'Surrender Dorothy.'" "Anty Em! Anty Em!"
The battle of antmageddon.
"Ant carnage." "That related to Art Carnage?"
Pull my finger.
That's a ferris wheel to those ants. This must be their amusement park.
They're just working their way up to the RUBBER TREE PLANT !!!
Ants hate green goop...... It just goes against their grain.
This guy's INTO it. ...... TELL ME MORE.
"Phase II... What's the name of this movie?"
"Phase IV."
"Oh, good, we're halfway through."
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Ahh yes, a wonderful example. que at 12:50; the screen shows a billboard with the words Country Club. Complete silence... By 12:53 the ever so *NOT* funny J Elvis steps up to plate (a lil Late) with... "Country Club." A'Swing and a miss. A swing and a miss so powerful it was worth striking out 3 times at bat.
This is ONE of my favorite examples of how (IMO) J. Elvis is not funny. Favorite! But all stepping stones to supreme greatness.
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The professor makes a big deal about how all the colony is the true creature and the ants are merely its cells.
Then goes on about how the queen ant is the leader and the ant in charge. The heart and soul of the colony, and the brains too, by the sound of it.
Rubbish: If the queen represents any analogous organ in the colony superorganism, it's the ovaries. Men might think with their gonads, but that's no reason to assume the same applies to ant colonies.
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I don't have enough gin to appreciate the lugubrious nature of this film.
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Taking suggestions on what "the events in space" were that got everyone so excited and the ants so smart. From the imagery I'm thinking it was a failed pitch for a Doctor Who title sequence.
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Dead. Crow and Servo's subtle "skinny" and "ant-orexic" jokes about Karen Carpenter were savage af. Even by today's standards.
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This is what happens when you allow entomology students on a cough syrup bender to make a movie during spring break...
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The commercials just past the one hour mark are GOLD! Joel doing stand up, I wish I could have seen it!
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The ants move to the city, and get their butts kicked by intelligent cockroaches.
No, seriously: chalk it up to my age, but this film seems like a particularly vintage 70s blend of pretentiousness, excessive ambition, condescension, and determinedly solemn goofiness.
I hate to admit it, but I miss Peter Graves.
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Whoa. The original ending (filmed by the director but cut by the distributor, found and restored in 2012) is really trippy. (And kind of icky in parts.) I wonder what J&tB would have made of it.
https://youtu.be/beLpsWaUDNk
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Argh. Come on, guys. Your geek cred has got to be better than that. "A robot must not harm a human being, nor, through inaction, allow a human to come to harm" is the First Law, not the first and second.
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I can't believe they let that giant Paradise City billboard stay up there without a comment about green grass and pretty girls. The song was 1987 and the episode was 1989.
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18:29 -- Looks like the revenuers found the still.
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Pizza, pasta, pizza, pizza and pasta, pizza and pasta.
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All the shots trying to show that the ants are intelligent...like...really are we supposed to believe that..
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Watching this movie is a lot like watching paint dry!
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Four comments down Showdax cites the Joel/Comedy Gallery spot w/Servo 2.0 Kevin Murphy doing the voice over.
BUT FOR MY MONEY that comes in a distant second to the " Club Travel Vacations" spot that precedes it, featuring the multitalented Kevin Murphy as the doughy, jealous, Stoli sipping neighbor of the chick with the great travel deal. Looking smooth in what appears to be a garish yellow Ralph Lauren short-sleeve shirt, Kevin displays his mastery of the single finger sunglasses tug down that all really cool people employ when a passing casual conversation takes a serious turn- and nothing says "serious turn" more than vacations up to 65% off!!!
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Damn it Joel! Now I'm itchy.
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Is this Crow's first misidentified "kitty"?
Also, why is his bowling pin so loud this time?
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This movie doesn't have a villain so much as an antagonist.
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I've seen this one a couple times before it got taken down and while I can say it is a strange film that plods along at a snail's pace, I feel like the concept of hyper-intelligent ants being the monster could have been implemented a little better.
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UPDATE: 11/4/2014
Sorry MSTies
Paramount Pictures decided to be dicks about this and the link I posted had to be pulled.
"After reviewing your dispute, Paramount Pictures has decided that their copyright claim is still valid.
Video title: MST3k - Phase IV - Season 0 - Episode 09
Includes: Audiovisual content
Claimed by: Paramount Pictures
The copyright owner might disagree with your dispute.
The reason you gave for disputing the claim may have been insufficient or invalid.
- The YouTube Team"
Good luck to anyone else getting this episode out there.
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Where's Ant-Man when you need him?
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At 46:30, after Joel shoves him in response to a bad pun, Servo calls Joel "Hodgson" rather than "Robinson," saying "You hurt me bad Joel Hodgson."
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The music around 13:00 sounds like this more recent band: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxuuXm1Wdvc
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The best part o this movie was the commercial approximately an hour in about seeing Joel live, narrated by Servo 2.0! ^_^
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Update: 1.31.2015
I found a pretty good copy and it's available through second link.
I just wish we could have higher quality rips of all the episodes someday.
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So strange seeing the early incarnation of MST3K. Really glad they hung in there and stayed with it.
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https://archive.org/details/mst3k_season_0
send him the ant movie!
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funniest line ever in an MST3k:
"They should just spray 'Off' on them. You can't beat off in the woods!"
I shot coffee out my nose!
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I never actually watched the full episode before, only the beginning. It's creeping me out. And I have to say, I wish I had already eaten. I'm hungry and I don't want to eat while watching ants consume things and people. Yeccchh.
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Uploaded a new copy of the full episode.
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All of Season 0, starting with episode 4, is available at archive.org. Here's the h.264 mpeg4 download link for Phase IV:
https://ia601702.us.archive.org/18/items/mst3k_season_0/MST3K%20-%20K09%20-%2020020819%20-%20Phase%20IV.mp4
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The second "best of" link is a collection of all the available KTMA host segments. The host segments for K09 - Phase IV start at 44:27 and end at 53:35. I tried to adjust the link so that it would begin and end at those specific times, but I was unsuccessful. If anyone would like to adjust the link accordingly, please do so.
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where has Phase IV gone... I actually liked this movie... which is hard with any of the MST3K movies that aren't Gamera or Godzilla
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https://archive.org/details/mst3k_season_0 has link to this episode
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Actually not a bad movie. Kind of slow and thoughtful. The ending was kind of abrupt, though.
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Well, it was boring, and the plot twist at the end was one of the laziest, stupidest, cop-out endings I've ever seen, but at least the acting was okay?
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Note at around 1:04 or so, something falls over with a loud bang. Joel looks around and says "What happened over there?" Josh tries to cover, saying Gypsy must have dropped something again.
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DAMMIT! Link's down.
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This flick manages a remarkable feat: it is both fascinating and dull.
I will be reading Malzberg's novelization, for sure. The story is right up his alley, and I think he can do more with the idea.
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Link is gone... Phase IV, I hardly knew you
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I love the commercials!
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The first non-Gamera MST that has been "recovered" by fans... The original pilot and episodes k01-03 has some footage available, buy only k04 (the first of five Gamera films watched in a row) and onward have full tapes floating around.
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It's so cute, all the sort of preproduction bots and whatnot.