Episode 1010- It
Lives By Night
Movie
Summary: A bat-loving
bat-ologist named Johnny is on his honeymoon and convinces
his fresh spouse to forget sex and go caving instead. In the
cave, the batologist gets bitten by a bat and goes, well,
bat-shit. (It's really the clearest, most concise
description.) Ignoring the fact that he was bitten by a
fruit bat, he becomes a vampire, eine nosferatu. Wampyre. The living dead. The hooch. The
freshy-freshy.
Concerned with his bout of battiness, the couple pause in
their ski holiday honeymoon to visit Doctor Groovy W.
Ski-Bum, the seventiest person of the entire 70s. He starts
the rabies series on Johnny but it just aggravates his
bat-shittiness. So poor Johnny goes on the obligatory
killing spree, as his wire-thin wife first denies he has a
problem then kind of accepts it.
Meanwhile, the town has a sheriff. And God is he annoying.
He makes Jackie Gleason in Smokey and the Bandit look nuanced. His voice can strip wallpaper,
and he's a perv. Ultimately, Johnny becomes some sort of
ape-dog, his wife kills the sheriff and the couple live
happily in a cave. There is no hero, no real plot to speak
of, and no need to think; just sit back and enjoy as the
stupidity rolls over you like the surf on a Mexican
beach.
Prologue: It's painting day on the SOL. They're gonna
spruce up the galley and the companionways and the can. Can
really needs it. Mike shows the bots giant paintchips to see
how they affect them. Crow just wants to date Lisa
Stansfield, no matter the color. Eggshell makes them panic.
The end.
Segment One: Pearl sprays Mike and the bots with certified
government poisons and refuses to admit it. Mike and the
bots whine until she sends antidotes. In short, they create
a little playlet about government security policy in the
Cold War era.
Segment
Two: Crow dresses like Mary
Tyler Moore in order to make the point that he looks more
(moore?) like Mary than the woman in the movie does. Crow is
so adamant that he makes Mike dress like Ted Baxter and
Servo like Lou Grant and they put on a lame "Mary" sketch.
Mike and Servo refuse to call Crow Mary, as they ought, and
Crow leaves in a huff, none the wiser. I like to call this
sketch "Mary Tyler MOORE'S Last Sigh." Heh.
Segment Three: The bots find Mike passed out with foamy
whiteness surrounding his mouth. The bots rashly assume he
was rabid, and stick him full of hypo's. Actually, Mike has
fallen asleep while eating a cream puff. They have a rich
laugh and continue the injections.
Segment Four: Mike puts on a mustache, a bushy one like Dr.
Groovy on the film. He calls Pearl to see how a woman might
like it. She says it's okay. Suddenly Crow appears with a
gigantic, ridiculously bushy mustache. Pearl goes wild for
him. Mike leaves in a tizzy, and Servo Appears in a Yosemite
Sam-size 'stache. He tips over and drops like a tree.
Segment Five: Inspired by the bum in the movie, Servo gets a
kit from the Buddy Ebsen Hat Distressing Corporation, making
nice hats suitable for bums for decades. Turns out he paid
twenty grand for a bag of dirt. Meanwhile Pearl has trapped
Bobo and Brain Guy in the castle showing them slides of the
various honeymoons she's had, with husbands who all died
under suspicious circumstances.
Stinger: Batty Johnny says "well?" and goes batty.
Reflections: For
those of us my age, and you know who you are, there is a
style of filming which is unmistakably TV Movie Style,
either from Universal or American International. Maybe it's
the irrepressibly bad acting, or the up-to-the minute
clothing and hair styles which date the film in an instant,
unwittingly providing us with a valuable service. Or maybe
it's the squat title graphics, the giant cars, the
Flockhartian thinness of the actresses, the lack of anyone
likable in the films, or the fact that they seem to have
been written and produced in about an hour. But they remind
me of those nights when my dad would fall asleep in front of
the TV with his chin tucked in his turtleneck, snoring with
apnea, waiting for Johnny to start. So a painful thing
evokes a rather fond memory, sort of like an infectious
disease or a broken limb can remind you of a gentler time.
So, bring me more David Hartman and Tony Musante films. I
can take 'em. -- Kevin Murphy.
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