Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Foreign

Someone once said that the Japanese are not simply weird; they're actually a different species to the rest of us. They are aliens who have descended to this Earth from space without really understanding enough to mimic us properly. This explains their bizarre but unswerving love of Hello Kitty, sadistic game shows and eating lobsters while they're still alive.


In light of this theory, MST3K's offering 'Fugitive Alien' actually makes a lot more sense. It's a documentary, not, as we were all lead to believe, a bad children's TV show from 1978.


Evil alien raiders, who with their whitened faces and permed blonde wigs look like the result of a union betwixt a kabuki actor and Cheryl Ladd, attack Earth and kill all who stand in their way. One of the raiders is Ken, who is a different colour to everyone else and therefore slightly less evil. When he encounters a little boy who shares his name, he finds he just can't shoot him. His partner has no problem with reducing squawking brats to faint scorch marks on the pavement, and tries to do it for him, but Ken turns mutinous and shoots his partner first.


Of course, once that happens, Ken becomes a Fugitive Alien, reviled by his own people and not entirely trusted by anyone else. Eventually he falls in with the crew of the Bacchus III, who have traditional Japanese names like Dan and Rocky, and wear matching tight vinyl jumpsuits in a shade of hot pink rarely used by anyone other than Barbie's decorator. Ken is understandably a little skittish about being trapped in a confined space with a bunch of grown men wearing form-fitting pink vinyl, but somehow they all learn to get along together. Well, except for the whole regrettable incident with Rocky trying to kill him with a forklift. Other than that, they're all super best friends!


And so off they go on adventures. They travel to exotic worlds, run about in exotic abandoned quarries, and get shot at by exotic extras wearing watermelons on their heads and firing talcum powder packets from their guns. Then, in the midst of rescuing an alien soldier, in the hopes of using him to negotiate a peace treaty between two warring planets, the action freezes and the words "To be continued" appear on the screen.


My cry of "What the HELL!?" is probably still echoing around the more reverberative suburbs.


Yep. The producers just knew that everyone would want to see more hot Ken action, so they already had 'Star Force: Fugitive Alien 2' in pre-production (ie being cobbled together by coke-snorting monkeys in an alley behind Sandy Frank's house). The MST3K boys covered it after the screaming caused by the first episode had died down.


Proof, as if it were still needed, that the Japanese are a strange and cruel people, and definitely not of this Earth.

2 Comments:

Blogger Laziest Girl said...

Betwixt is my new favourite word. Thank you Blandy.

7:58 AM  
Blogger French said...

Further proof of the absolute foreignness of the Japanese culture.

6:39 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home