Rating: 
Summary: Bay of Pigs is right!!
Review: This is the perfect starting place for those of you who are new to MST3K. The movie is putrid,and Mike and the 'bots do their usual brilliant riff.Coleman Frances is the really,really,really,really,really,destitute man's Orson Welles.
Yes,he has a deep,gravelly voice,but the fact that he looks like Curly doesn't help his credibility at all. Imagine: Seven guys invade Cuba.Seven. Not one of them is magnificent,either.
I absolutely love this Mistied movie,and you can't go wrong if you are just starting out collecting the shows that are available from Rhino.After you choke laughing at this one,check out:"Skydivers," my personal favorite.Another Coleman Frances extravaganza!!
Rating: 
Summary: Mediocre DVD ; Ok MST3K
Review: INTRO: To start off, I like MST3K a lot...so don't get the impression that I'm just bad-mouthing something that I have no idea what it is. MST3K has come up with some really funny skits over the years, but this isn't really one of them. The movie itself is stupid, yes...THAT'S WHY THEY HAVE IT!! To honestly rate this DVD based on the movie included is just plain dumb, but to rate how much "comedy" the MST3K trio comes up with is a step up. Unfortunately, this isn't Mike, Crow, and Servo's episode to shine. The funny stuff doesn't come until the end (and some sprinkled parts of the movie), but I guess I can forgive this since this show has a lot of episodes and it can only come up with so much. DVD: ... No extras, no original version of the movie like some of the other DVDs...no nothing really. The only thing this DVD has going for it is menus, and they aren't even bad...which goes to show you what a little effort would have achieved. OVERALL: Overall, with a little more extras, I could have forgave this DVD. Sadly, with only a bad movie, and some shredded comedy bits for this one, it wasn't enough to save it. Fortunately, there are better MST3K DVDs out there. I would only recommend this DVD if you are a hardcore fan (like me) of MST3K and you don't mind "no extras" on your DVD. Also, if you don't mind that Mike and Co. don't always come up with as good of comedy as their writers...err....they're capable of.
Rating:
Summary: The REAL story of the Bay of Pigs
Review: It's 1961. A secret mission to overthrow the Red regime in Havana has gone disastrously wrong ... AND YOU ARE THERE. This movie brings it all to life, from the spectacular scenes of people sitting around talking to the even more spectacular scenes of people staring into space. It's a must-own for historians (and ordinary citizens alike, plus their pets) eager to understand early-60s US-Cuba relations.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant commentary for a viciously bad film - Excellent!
Review: The MST3K crew really draw gold from misanthropic B&W slime in this venture. There have been episodes funnier, and faster-paced: ("The Pod People", "I Accuse my Parents", "Eegah" and "Wild World of Batwoman",) but "Red Zone Cuba" is one of my very favorites. The lively MST3K wit simply overpowers this sullen film, making this slow-burn hilarious. The actual film is astonishingly cheap & cynical exploitation, one of the most sorry dogs you'll ever see. It's ugly to even look at. In 1963, the USA tried to overthrow Fidel Castro's Cuban regime, with embarassing failure. Writer/"star"/ Director(!?!) Coleman Francis sniffed a quick buck. But Coleman's movie of historical events is really a springboard for the stories he REALLY wanted to tell. Firing squads, blind women, neck-snapping, infected wounds, plane-hijacks, line-cooks thrown down the backyard well, and assault by bike chain. Charming. MST3K get it right - using humor to deflate a seriously mean film. They do it well, you should see this one. Recommended for the strong, Jimmy Carter should be grateful Fidel Castro sent him "Scarface" gangsters and not this evil film.
Rating: 
Summary: Red Zone Confusion
Review: This episode of MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 opens with a short film before the main feature. The short in question is an instructional film about how to maintain proper posture while speaking in public. Without a doubt this is the funniest short feature that I have ever seen them tackle. Even if the heckling crew of the Satellite of Love had kept perfectly silent while this ran, I would still have been convulsed in laughter. I can't even describe how unbelievably goofy this is, so you're just going to have to watch it for yourself. The main feature, RED ZONE CUBA, is a bizarrely structured mess of a film. It starts off with a prison escape sequence where an outlaw manages to evade some cops, then it jumps straight into a unfathomable seven-man invasion of Cuba (complete with fake-bearded Castro!) and then tries to settle down into a wacky treasure hunt. There may have been some other genre jumps in there, but I couldn't follow enough of the film to be sure. If not for that fearless group of three shadows in the lower right corner of the screen, there would be nothing tying this movie together. All this incoherent madness gives our metallic and fleshy friends on the Satellite of Love quite a lot to make fun of. The main character looks like an evil cross between Leo McKern and Curly Howard, and the MST3K crew don't miss a single opportunity to let loose with Three Stooges sound effects. Not a single aspect of this woeful film escapes their attention, from the lame storyline to the hilarious reuse of extras. This is definitely a recommended episode of MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000. In fact, this DVD would be worth the price even if the posture short were the only thing on it. Unfortunately, the MST3k DVD releases are becoming less and less special as time goes on. The first batch had loads of features, including the option to jump back and forth between the regular version and the MST3k version of the film. Sadly, this release lacks that option, as well as the very animated menus of those first discs.
Rating: 
Summary: Mike and the Bots do their best, but...
Review: This has to be one of the very worst movies they've done on MST3K, even worse than "Manos,Hands of Fate." The main character is an unlikeable, hulking Curly Howard lookalike who is throwing inoffensive old men down wells and taking advantage of blind women when he isn't strangling people left and right. For some reason, he gets involved in a seven man invasion of Cuba in the middle of the movie (why? who knows?) but that plot thread peeters out soon enough, like many of the "action" sequences. There is nothing resembling acting throughout most of this movie, and the dialog is monotonous in tone (nevermind content) and indistinct. Like some of the funnier MST3K episodes, there isn't a lot of inherently funny stuff going on here like bad special effects, ridiculous costumes and dialog, so Mike and the Bots have to struggle to find the humor. And yes, there is some hilarious riffing, but this movie is so icky that you still wonder who the joke is on after you've watched this. Proves that bad does not always equal funny.
Rating:
Summary: Buy It.
Review: The people who are thinking about purchasing this don't really care what I have to say. Just know that this movie may very well be worse than "Manos". A great episode of MST, great for a Mike Nelson fan like myself.
Rating:
Summary: MST3K at the top of their game...
Review: ...Thanks to the creative gang that is Mystery Science Theater 3000, this dull, badly edited and basically stupid film gets the send-up it deserves. The bonus is we all get a very funny movie watching experience. Rhino DVD has been pretty slow in releasing MST3K titles to market, however when they do get released, I will say the transfers to this digital medium are fantastic! Very crisp clean video, excellent audio and not a lot of DVD nonsense(elaborate menus and silly actions when the icons are pushed). Keeping in mind that the movies that are featured are old and scratchy and DVD can't do much about that regardless.
"Red Zone Cuba" is one such movie. Shot on what must have been grade-F film stock, this movie is so lacking in quality...yet one cannot look away.
Take all of this and what you have is a darn funny DVD. Cheers MST3K!
Rating:
Summary: I'm Cherokee Jack!
Review: This film took several viewings to receive the full impact of its
awfulness. The immortal theme song, "Night Train to Mundo Fine", croaked by John Carradine, the tubby and begrimed Coleman Francis, the all-too-brief appearance of "Cherokee Jack", who surely has the oddest line delivery of any actor EVER! The hilarious training camp sequence (climb a rope, jump off a small sand dune, climb back up on the rope) and the tragic Bay Of Pigs invasion force, consisting of 7 guys.
A guy in a big fake beard playing Castro...the weird interlude where the blind woman plays the piano as they drop her daddy down a well(for what reason I never could figure out). The jolly hunt for uranium, or whatever, ending in the shooting of an innocent woman. The eventual manhunt and long, dull death of the men who "rode all the way to Hell", or at least as far as Barstow! Rent this movie and prepare to be dazzled.
Rating:
Summary: And the really frustrating thing is.....
Review: ....that the basic idea for Red Zone Cuba could have made for an exciting, hard-edged political thriller. Three drifters, one who is very much on the lam, join a military outfit to fight Castro simply so they can grab a payday and eat regular. They are captured and then escape being executed. Fleeing Cuba, they track down the widow of one of their fellow soldiers who died while being held captive. Along with the widow, the three men plan to make a big score but are killed during a gunfight with the police. Picture Robert Aldrich or Sam Peckinpah directing with Warren Oates, Strother Martin & Harry Dean Stanton as the three losers. Sounds like a pretty good flick, doesn't it? My advice to you is to imagine that film while you are transfixed by the awfulness of auteur Coleman Francis' vision. A previous reviewer correctly noted that those who cite Ed Wood as the epitome of bad really don't know what they are talking about. Red Zone Cuba & Skydivers, both directed by Mr. Francis, put Angora Boy to absolute shame. Ed Wood films tend to have a beginning, a middle and an end. We know who the good guys and bad guys are. We know what is happening and what each character wants. Granted, all of this is done very badly in his films. The acting is atrocious and the writing almost touches genius in its ineptitude. But, in spite of all that goes wrong in an Ed Wood film, they are entertaining. Plan 9 From Outer Space is fun. Glen or Glenda is fun. Bride of The Monster is a lot of fun. Coleman Francis doesn't even have Ed Wood's infectious exuberance. A hideous man with an equally hideous worldview. The pacing of his films wouldn't even qualify as glacial. Actors wander in and out of each take mumbling their lines with no commitment or idea what they are doing. The editing, as nearly every reviewer has noted, seems to actively TRY to make you hurt yourself while watching from one scene to the next. Already a pretty painful affair. Mike, Crow and Servo really fire on all cylinders in this episode. You can tell that they clearly have no desire to even attempt lobbing softballs at such a vile piece of garbage. Instead they are merciless and Coleman Francis, deservedly, takes a MST3K beating that surpasses even those of Joe Don Baker, Torgo and Arch Hall Jr. from Eegah! Unlike the film they are watching, the writing for this episode is top-flight Mystery Science Theater. I dock it one star simply because Red Zone Cuba is just that bad. Watch at your own risk.
|
