Riding with Death

Certainly not. This, the Master Ninja stuff, and two Kolchak movies (Crackle of Death, and Demon & The Mummy) display the odd penchant for taking two bad episodes of a TV show and stitching them together into one crummy movie. The strategy behind this is the studio wants to save the good episodes for separate syndication, so whoever makes these movies takes the worst episodes and stitches them together. I'm old enough to have seen Gemini Man, and these _are_ the worst episodes of that series, which displayed a modicum of intelligence at the best of times. They deliberately pick out the worst episodes to save the best for syndication, and the result is this unwatchable crap.

This is actually two unrelated episodes of the 70's TV show "Gemini Man" strung together to form a movie. And a really bad one too. It's not hard to see why this show was so short lived. Stars Ben Murphy (of "Being From Another Planet" and "Parasite" fame) and the hideous Jim Stafford. A real awful, rotting chunk of 70's cheese.

Good MST3K episode, though.

Someone at Universal thought it would be a good idea to make a show about a guy who can turn himself invisible. But, they made him a government agent, and made him mellow. Dr. Heywood Floyd, transported from the year 2001, assigns the ever cool and mellow Sam Casey to transport Murray from the MTM Show, from point A to point B. Oh there's also something about an unstable liquid. Anyway, Captain Stubing intends to doublecross our mellow hero and take off with ten million dollars. Then there's some scenes with Jim Stafford singing and driving a truck, Sam turning invisible and then finally a truck blowing up. Then we go into the fast paced world of raceing! There's the elusive Robert Denby and why he's elusive, we never find out. Dr. Floyd is harassed by his dentist and a woman named Cupcake plots and schemes. Sam and Buffalo Bill, as Stafford is known in this mishmash, throw some punches, drive some cars and thwart the machinations of the ever elusvie Robert Denby. Oh, and Abby is quite a gal. She's such a gal that she can view things in her lab and project her thoughts over space and time. Based on a story by H.G. Wells, and I think he's suing.

Two episodes of a really bad 70's T.V. show crammed together. It's worth watching for laughs. Observe all the bell bottoms, cheap dialogue, and unquestionably the worst actor I ever saw (the guy who plays Dr. Hale). Expensive and hard to find, so stick to the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version, which appears on the Sci-Fi channel. "Riding With Death" occasionally runs.

Like most folks, I suspect, I saw Riding with Death on MST3K. There's no question that it's a totally hackneyed, badly acted, horribly edited movie. But there's something about their attempt to splice together two separate episodes into a movie that moves me. They're incredibly clumsy in their attempt; mainly it consists of totally obvious voiceovers while the camera shows a shot of a truck or a landscape. Gene Roddenberry, whatever his flaws, was able to do this brilliantly in "The Menagerie." But watching the attempt in Riding with Death can be fun, and all the 70's stuff (e.g., fadeaway jerk handshake) is a blast. So I give it a 2, perhaps my first-ever non-1 for a Msted movie.