Jack Frost (1964) – MST3K Review

Summary

Amazingly adorable Nastenka (Natalya Sedykh) lives with an evil stepmother and wicked stepsister. Her life is one of toil and ridicule. Her father is a pathetic wimp who always agrees with the evil stepmother. One day Nastenka meets handsome braggart Ivan (Eduard izoltov) who tries to impress her but ends up turning into a half man half bear. All because he was a jerk to Grandfather Mushroom after an extended game of hide and seek (don’t ask). 

Ivan runs off to do a good deed and turn back into a handsome man. Meanwhile after a matchmaking meeting goes poorly for the wicked stepsister, Nastenka is blamed for the debacle. The poor girl is taken out to the middle of the forest to freeze to death. Told you the stepmother was wicked! She is found by Jack Frost (Aleksandr Khvylya) the spirit of winter who takes her into his home. At the same time Ivan, attempts to find Nastenka and runs into the wicked witch, Baba Yaga (Georgi Milyar). She claims to want to help, but she is determined to eat Ivan and turn Nastenka into a frozen statue. Will our fairy tale heroes end up dead, or will they be saved by the magical powers of Jack Frost?

Movie Review

Like nearly all the Russian fairy and folktale movies tackled by Mystery Science Theater 3000, you can view these films in two ways. You can see them as colorful, entertaining films filled with magic, and child-like wonder. Or you can view them as insane, nonsensical bits of film containing some of the funniest dub lines uttered and strangest situations ever put on the screen.

As a lover of fantasy films, I fall into the first camp. Jack Frost or Morozko as it is known in Russian is first and foremost a fairy tale targeted toward children. The characters are simple. The situations are outlandish. There are moments that are supposed to thrill the single digit age crowd and put a smile on the face of adults who remember those folk tales fondly.

Jack Frost is really a compilation of several fables and story tropes combined together to make a single narrative. That explains why it jumps around quite a bit doing its best to work the Santa Claus-like figure of Morozko into the same tale as infamous witch Baba Yaga. To be honest, it takes some serious stretching to get there. Still we root for Nastenka, because she has a good heart and is pretty. At first we don’t like Ivan because he’s a braggart and rude to his elders. But after he turns into a silly bear headed man, he learns his lesson and becomes the hero of our story. He tricks Baba Yaga and does his best to save Nastenka after she is frozen. He has a good heart, he just needed to be shown how to treat others with respect. With simple lessons to learn, the movie isn’t a masterpiece of plotting, but an interesting grab bag of your favorite European and Russian stories.

Where the movie really shines is the amazing visuals and fun situations. For a Russian film made in 1964, this is an elaborate production, with colors popping off the screen and crazy costumes and special effects. Sure it’s all a bit dated looking now, but the magic is still there. Everything from animation to reversing the film is used to create the magical world. One of my favorite special effects is the silly wooden pig sled that goes racing over the snow. Its such a random sequence executed with a bit of string and sped up camera that you can’t help but laugh and shake your head. Every effort was made to make this fairy tale land come to life and I think it was handled very well.

The acting is all over the top and silly. Not a single character plays a normal person. Nastenka Is so cute your teeth hurt. The witch is so wicked that you can’t help but boo her, and yet she’s silly enough that little children won’t be too frightened. My favorites are the nasty stepmother and stepsister. These two are so repulsive and horrid that you can’t wait for them to get their just desserts. Even Jack Frost appears as a mysterious force at first. You don’t know if you can trust him, but when Nastenka melts his heart, he’s like the magical grandfather your never had. Unfortunately the dubbing is uniformly bad, with lines coming out in a jumble or just not making a lick of sense. My knowledge of Russian myths and legends helped me follow the film, but if you’re not familiar with these stories you could get lost very easily.

As much as I appreciate Jack Frost, I can say that it is one of the goofiest things I’ve seen. The pig sled is only one example of random hilarity to be found here. Another is Grandfather Mushroom, a disappearing old coot who toys with Ivan. The witch’s cottage with legs and thuggish tree henchmen has to be seen to be believed. The robbers look like a mix of Michael Palin and schnauzers. Then there’s the entire matchmaker sequence where the stepsister gets gussied up for an interview with the eligible bachelor. Wow! It’s all done in the name of fun and magic, but its so over the top, and foreign at times your American mind can’t help but laugh. It was a perfect fit for Mike and the bots. Let's see what they do with it.

Episode Review

This is the fourth Russian fairytale film the crew tackled and in my book it’s the best one. The Sword and the Dragon was on the slow side. The Day the Earth Froze seemed to stun Joel and the bots with its strangeness. The Magic Voyage of Sinbad has the best riffing of the Comedy Central episodes, but really Jack Frost fires on all cylinders.

Part of the reason has to be that Sci-fi channel finally relaxed enough to let the crew to do something other than sci-fi or horror, and something that wasn’t in the Universal catalogue. After the endless parade of black and white John Agar-fests, I think the crew was exciting to tackle something in a bit more outlandish. What better way to celebrate than with an amazingly colorful and insane film like Jack Frost?

The boys get right to work commenting that the stepsister looks like Tom Petty in a baby’s crib. When they comment that the candy she’s sucking on looks like liver on a stick, you know you’re in for a good one. Grandfather Mushroom opens the door for drug related humor (“Isn’t that what they called Jerry Garcia?”) When Ivan turns into a bear, they can’t believe their eyes and just roll with it. The pig sled, the witch, the robbers - its as if the movie is just gift-wrapping the situations and characters for riffing. 

The boys have some fun with how darn cute Nastenka is, and how often her little face fills up the screen with her huge eyes. They get a kick out of the over the top acting provided by Jack Frost himself, as he rants, raves, and flails about. He bears more than a passing resemblance to the nutty Santa in Santa Claus. All the animals in the film are given their own lines thanks to Mike and bots, with the family dog and the evil cat getting the best ADR riffing. The boys are non-stop with the laughs. After another impossible and over the top occurrence concludes Crow says, “Well I guess this is just a magical land, Mike.” He pauses and then says, “I hate magical lands!”

But the hatred it feigned. The movie is too good to hate and so silly that you can’t help but laugh with it. The jokes are varied and plentiful, really making this a can’t miss episode for anyone who loves fantasy films and anything with a bad dub.

Sadly the host segments are really hit and miss. Pearl takes off and leaves Observer and Bobo behind on the “camping planet”. The two argue for a while before Mike steps in and nearly gets them to forget about the movie. After the first break Crow brings in Yakov Smirnoff (if you don’t remember him, good!) to comment on the film. He fails. At the next break, Crow has turned into a bear, just like Ivan in the movie! Mike and Tom don’t believe him. For the next break, Crow brings in another expert in Russian fables – Earl Torgeson. Yeah no one knows who he is either. When the movie concludes Servo tries to be as cute at Nastenka and fails. Pearl comes back in time to determine what the best ape movie ever made is.

This is one of the gems of the second half of season eight and maybe of the entire show. The episode provides lots of laughs. It’s also fun movie to watch during winter and makes for an excellent final part of a trilogy including Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and Santa Claus. I can hardly wait to inflict it on other family members this next holiday.

I give it five wooden pig sleds out of five.

This episode is available on the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection Volume XVIII.

Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965)

Introduction:

Time again to delve into the 100 Sci-fi Classics movie pack. This movie has the words “prehistoric” and “planet” in the title. The last time I saw that combination of words in a title it was for a MST3K episode that included dorky cave men and provided the catchphrase “Hi-keeba”. Would this film be an improvement, and would it provide us with a better catchphrase? Grab your clay-mation dinosaur and get ready to find out.

Summary:

Earth has sent a three rocket expedition to Venus. Along the way a meteor destroys one of the rockets. The remaining crew decides to land on Venus in a smaller force. The first is comprised of Dr. Kern (Georgi Tejkh) the creator of John (John Bix) the robot, and Allen Sherman (Yuri Sarantsev). In the dense cloud layer the landing party is lost. So the remaining explorers descend leaving poor Dr. Marsha Evans (Faith Domergue) in the orbiting rocket and in touch with the lunar base and Professor Harman (Basil Rathbone). The rescue party of Andre (Gennadi Vernov), Hans (Georgi Zhzhyonov) and Commander Lockhart (Vladimir Yemelyanov) must face all kinds of dangers on Venus, including lizard men, exploding volcanoes, dinosaurs and a mysterious voice that may be a siren song to doom. Can the expedition survive their Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet ?

Good Points:

• Once the astronauts get to the planet things move pretty quickly
• Is filled with all kinds of adventures
• The special effects range from “not bad” to mind-bendingly goofy

Bad Points:

• Obviously a dubbed film with padding in English
• Some of the characters are aggressively annoying
• A confusing dub script renders logic useless at times

Overall:

You’ve got another rocket movie that will probably remind you of a host of other films. In most cases it’s a fun little movie, but there are moments where things get too tedious or confusing. I stopped trying to keep up with the plot and just enjoyed the ride of silly antics on Venus. You’ve got a robot, hopping lizard men, a couple dinosaurs, a hover car and rockets galore. If only the dubbing scriptwriter and dubbing actors had put in a little more effort (and the print was in better shape) this would have been a solid space exploration adventure. Adjust your expectations and you should get a kick out of this.

Scores (out of 5)

Visuals: 4

Sound: 3

Acting: 2

Music: 2

Script: 2

Direction: 2

Entertainment: 3

Total: 3

In Depth

Venus has fascinated filmmakers for many years, and while it might not eclipse the allure of the red planet, Venus was often the target for early space adventures. This was because for the longest time, Venus was known to have an atmosphere and was assumed to have many similar qualities to earth. The cloud layer hiding the surface was intriguing, and heck – it’s name after the Roman goddess of love. How could it not be hospitable?

Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet gives us a glimpse of a movie called Planet of Storms, a Russian film made a few years earlier. According to IMDB, Roger Corman and company grabbed the rights to this film and packaged it for release in the U.S. They hired Mr. Rathbone and Miss Domerque to provide some actual acting and then dubbed the hell out of it. This same type of process was used in the film The Magic Voyage of Sinbad which was actually a Russian fairytale adventure called Sadko. Just like it’s fantasy brother, this dubbed film suffers a bit in the translation.

What doesn’t suffer is the imagination and excitement of space travel. Much like the similar First Spaceship on Venus another Russian coproduction, this movie throws in as much technical and visual effects as it can manage. Much of it looks primitive to us now, but it’s got a spirit of adventure and fun that rings through the rough script and poor dub acting.

The movie opens with a blast of rockets as they hurtle through space. One is struck by a meteor and destroyed – all in the first few minutes, Michael Bay would be proud. From there you get a tentacled flower of death a strange siren song a hover car, a stop motion dinosaur, a flying dinosaur a submerged ancient city, hopping lizard men (some of the funniest sequences in the movie), a waterfall that almost overwhelms John the Robot, and an volcano.

So you can see, this movie is jam packed with crazy adventures and otherworldly goodness. Visually the look of the space suits and rockets is pretty well executed. A lot of location shooting went into the filming and the sequence with the waterfall is pretty impressive. Most of the work with sets is limited to the interior of the rockets. It is certainly more convincing than a lot of low budget rocket adventures I’ve seen, but it lacks some of the panache of the ship from First Spaceship on Venus. Then there’s John the Robot. He’s definitely influenced by the robot from Forbidden Planet, with his cumbersome body and whirling antenna. He moves very slowly and while he’s dubbed with a very annoying voice, he actually serves a valuable member of the landing crew. Just don’t expect R2-D2 or even the android from Metropolis.

In stark contrast are the padded scenes with Rathbone and Domerque. The sets are obviously thrown together, lacking the detail of the Russian counterparts. The costumes look more futuristic as opposed to the more conventional outfits of the astronauts. The scenes with Dr. Evans work a little better. She seems to be in a different part of the rocket, maybe a more streamlined and less cluttered part. Even if the dubbing was a lot better, you’d still know she was filmed at a different time. The whole print I saw was very faded with drab colors that made everything look brownish. This is a shame I suspect there was a lot of color in this movie. It probably looked much cooler when it was first released in Russia.

The sound isn’t too bad. The music is another beast all together. The score takes away from the film, distracting at times and not seeming to be married to the actual scenes in many cases. I’m not sure if this was an addition made by Corman’s crew or this was original to the film, but it’s not effective.

Rathbone is given top billing but he’s really nothing more than a glorified cameo. Dr. Evans falls into the same boat. I think she was added so a woman could actually appear in the film. Marsha is left on the rocket, so she can fret, make log entries, communicate with Rathbone and fret some more. I feel bad for saying it but Domerque’s performance is so vague and spacey I wonder if she was bored or a little high (or both).

The rest of the cast is hard to judge, because the Russian actors do a decent enough job as far as I can tell. They seem to be into the parts as the brave and adventurous heroes. But the dubbing is horrible. At its best the actors inject a little emotion into the parts, but most of the time you get bored sounding voices droning on and on (reminding me of the MST3K episode of Hamlet). The worst is the robot, John, who does the typical …I… AM… A… ROBOT… voice. He gets really annoying really fast.

I’m not sure what director Curtis Harrington actually did, other than shoot the footage with Domergue and Rathbone. He certainly didn’t film the bulk of the movie, but maybe he helped edit the film together. I do know he worked on the script and to be honest it stinks. Some of the dialogue makes no sense and only confuses the plot. The injection of Dr. Evans forces the story to warp not in the Russian version. It’s a real mess, one that increases the problems with the dub.

In the end, I can’t condemn the movie too much. I know what it was trying to do and the Russian elements are inventive and fun. At the time of its release this movie would not have been shown in the US. It was the middle of the Cold War and Russians are still the enemy. So this may be the only way a fun movie like this could have been released. But now, Corman’s take seems like a relic and makes me curious to see the original version. If you enjoyed First Spaceship on Venus then check this out. They would make a fun double feature. Just get ready for some riffing on the horrible dub.