Director: Kenneth J. Berton
Genre: Fantasy, Horror
After having to endure a 3hr Borellywood movie involving subtitles which were hideously out of sync, followed by a movie centred on an American Idol winner, we decided to treat ourselves and watch the MST3K version of our next film, Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders, (1996).
As always when we watch an MST3K version of a bad movie, I’ll start by giving a brief review of the MST3K episode.
This is a Mike episode and is from the last season of MST3K. Technically even though this is episode 3, it was the last ever new MST3K to be aired. This was due to a copyright issue which meant that the air date was delayed and it was shown 1 month after the MST3K finale episode. See, this blog is educational and not just a bunch of fart jokes bundled together!
If you’re a fan of MST3K, you know that the opening and in-between segments are generally hit and miss. Unfortunately in this episode the segments tend to steer towards miss. However, the riffing is on form. It’s on YouTube and is very funny; check it out!
But what did I learn about the actual movie itself, well, let’s have a look shall we?
During a power cut caused by a lightning storm, Grampa, (Ernest Borgnine), decides to scare the living crap out of his grandson, (Mark Hurtado), by telling him a couple of dark stories about a Mystical Shop owned by Merlin, (George Milan).
The first story concerns husband and wife, Johnathan, (John Terrace) and Madeline Cooper, (Patricia Sansone). Madeline is desperate for a baby by Johnathan, a writer for the local newspaper, appears to be firing blanks.
This fact has obviously given Johnathan a chip on his shoulder as when he and Madeline visit Merlin’s shop, he starts to shout abuse at Merlin. Believing Merlin is not who he says he is, he threatens to write a negative review about the shop in the misguided belief that anyone gives a tinker’s cuss what he thinks. Merlin, who should have said, ‘Sod off you Jaffa’, gives him a magic book instead to prove he really is the Merlin.
When Jonathan starts reciting spells from the book he realises quite quickly that Merlin was actually the real deal. He starts to breathe fire, turns his cat into a demon and manages to correctly guess his wife had picked the ace of clubs. What Jonathan does not realise is that every spell he recites uses life force and the consequence of this is that he ages quickly.
Desperate to regain his youth, Jonathan recites a spell to reverse the ageing and it works. Too well!
Jonathan turns himself into a baby, to the delight of Madeline who now has a baby to look after and can raise him as one of her own. (A nice end to the story, I am sure you agree and not at all creepy or in any way wrong on oh so many levels!).
Deciding he hasn’t freaked his grandson out enough and before anyone can stop him, Grandpa proceeds to tell a second story……
A thief steals Merlin’s toy monkey, (which he loved to spank) and sells it to an antique shop. David Andrews, (Bob Mendelsohn), buys this monkey as a present for his son Michael, (Struan Robertson), but unbeknownst to David, the monkey is evil! Every time it bashes its little toy cymbal, a living thing nearby dies.
When Michael unwraps his monkey present, things start to croak it. Houseplants wither and die, (which happens to houseplants anyway in my experience, so I’m surprised anyone actually noticed), a fly drops dead in mid-air and the Andrew’s pet mutt becomes a flame grilled hot dog.
After talking to psychic, Adrienne, (Madelon Phillips), David discovers that the toy monkey is possessed! He decides he must get rid of the toy and so puts it in the trash. This does not work as Michael finds the monkey and puts it back into the house. David takes the monkey to the desert and buries it. This monkey’s gone to heaven, he thinks and he goes home thinking a job has been well done.
Soon after, Michael’s grandmother, (J. Renee Gilbert), visits and gives Michael a present. Yes folks, you guessed it, the return of the toy monkey! All hell breaks loose and as the monkey gears up for one helluva cymbal crash that would surely wipe them all out, Merlin arrives and puts his hand between the cymbals, thus saving the day!
Hurrah!
Grampa finishes his story and his Grandson finishes wetting himself and mutters quietly to himself, eyes wide open. The End!
This movie is 2 actually 2 movies stuck together with chewing gum and is supposedly aimed at a family audience. As you can tell by these stories, Berton is way off track here and sure, if you want your kid to be a rocking gibbering wreck then by all means watch this movie and give them a toy monkey to play with.
The first story contains one of the worse pantomime baddies I have seen in a long time, Johnathan. Seriously I don’t know what is wrong with his face but he gurns and chews his way through his story as if he’s eating a tractor tyre. He looks like a cross between Richard Madeley and the Mask and I really do wish someone would stop him.
The storyline itself though, is not too bad and could easily have been told on Tales of the Unexpected, (a UK series similar to The Twilight Zone in which every story would have a twist at the end. The twists were usually painfully obvious and could be worked out during the opening titles).
The second story was actually made by Berton 10 years before this movie and was actually already released under the title, The Devil’s Gift. In the original movie there is no Merlin and the whole family dies at the end of the movie in a massive explosion.
This story is just plain stupid, partly because it would have been very easy to get rid of the toy if David had just kept hold of the receipt. OK, Merlin would only have issued a store credit, but at least David could have purchased something a little less evil and fucked up.
Some critics have claimed that Berton has just stolen the short story by Stephen King; The Monkey. I’m not so sure about this, I mean here’s a summary of the plot based on the Wikipedia entry for The Monkey:
The story starts with Petey and Dennis, finding a cymbal-banging monkey toy in an attic. The monkey is actually haunted, and every time it claps its mechanical cymbals together, someone close to Hal dies.
Here’s a summary of The Devil’s Gift:
The story starts with David, finding a cymbal-banging monkey toy in a shop. The monkey is actually haunted, and every time it claps its mechanical cymbals together, someone close to David dies.
See? Completely different!
Whether this idea is stolen or not, one thing I think we can all agree on is that both stories aren’t really suitable for a children’s fantasy movie, which was Berton’s intention.
I mean, for starters for this to work, Merlin should be a lovable old wizard, a little bit bumbling maybe, but a good egg. He actually comes across as a sadistic tosspot in both stories who exacts revenge on people who dare cross him, (and let’s remember, Jonathan was going to write a bad review, he was hardly threatening to kill Merlin’s first born!) and is happy to sell death causing toys to families with young children.
What a bastard!
At the end of the day, this movie has not really worked. Whilst the heavy editing from The Devil’s Gift gives us a happier ending, (although I would have been just as happy for the stupid family to be fired 60 feet into the air and scattered over a large area as originally planned), it’s certainly no fantasy children’s movie. Nor is a story about a local hack getting youthed for being a bit gobby.
What we really have here are 2 short stories poorly executed and tenuously linked by Borgnine who was firmly in the pension fund stage of his career. Had these been left as short stories and put into a Sci-Fi series, then maybe they could’ve worked.
Ironically, however, neither story about one of the most fabled wizards of all time, had any magic whatsoever.
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