Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Mystery Island (1977): "Fate's Just a Dirty Trick"

This week on Mystery Island (1977), we get “Fate’s Just a Dirty Trick,” episode number eight, another in a series of generally atrocious stories. 

Specifically, Dr. Strange has managed to awaken both the fugitives and his own minions from the cave of the “sentinels of time.” 

But Chuck and Krieg have switched bodies upon awaking. 

Yes, Chuck is now in Krieg’s body (though with Chuck’s voice), and Krieg is in Chuck’s body (but with Krieg’s voice). 

Of course, this makes no sense whatsoever. Why would your voice change if you hopped into somebody else’s body?  

The human voice emanates from a physical source (not a spiritual one, like the soul), in this case, the larynx.

Once more, we get a lot of running around in this episode, some dumb quips, and little else.

Here, the ending makes no sense whatsoever.  Strange’s minions and the fugitives are all standing together in a clearing.  Chuck and Krieg suddenly switch back into their normal bodies, but Chuck pretends to be Krieg and engineers an escape for his friends.  

But Krieg is standing right there, back in his own body, and he doesn’t object, or interfere with Chuck’s plan! 

Why not?

Then, the episode ends with the three humans and P.O.P.s. jumping onto a raft and sailing downstream, towards a waterfall while a strange being watches from behind some bushes.  I will say this, the series' primary strength is its outdoor photography.  The scenes with the raft boast a nice, adventurous quality, true to the pulp origins of the series.

This is the last Mystery Island installment available on YouTube at the moment, so I hope the last few weeks have given you at least a flavor of this 1977 Saturday morning series. As I’ve noted before, I have watched many Saturday morning programs from the seventies, but none have been as consistently horrible as this one.  Not even Big John, Little John.

Next week, I start Valley of the Dinosaurs (1974),

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Mystery Island (1977): "Sentinels of Time"

In “Sentinels of Time,” the Mud-Men -- “people of darkness” -- return to claim their idol or God, P.O.P.S. 

The robot is taken to a cave on the island where none have ever returned from, and meets the “Sentinels of Time” there, small white, flying creatures, like insects, which can freeze people in time.

While Sue and the others are trapped in the cave with P.O.P.S. and the Sentinels, Dr. Strange reprimands Krieg for his failures (“you’re simply not up to dong the simplest tasks!”) and sends him into the caves to capture the robot.

As the story ends, Sue and her friends are trapped in the cave, asleep for “a thousand years,” and P.O.P.S. is powerless to help them without access to solar power.

The pulpy nonsense of Mystery Island (1977) continues in episode 6, which introduces strange little gnat like creatures which can suspend people in time.  The Sentinels are an interesting creation for sure.  What are they? How do they operate?  This episode doesn’t tell us anything about them, beyond specifying their cave habitat.  Hopefully upcoming stories will explain a little more fully about them.  But I don’t have my hopes up.  I think they're just the weird gimmick/danger of the week.

Meanwhile, the cliffhanger of the week on Mystery Island finds our heroes suspended in time by the Sentinels apparently not to awake for ten centuries.  Their only hope of escape and survival rests with the nefarious Dr. Strange.

The episode also features other typical “dangers” of 1930s-style chapter plays, including an attack by a black panther. Sue encounters one in the caves, and is relentlessly pursued by it until she is captured by Krieg.  Today, it's easy to see that the impressive-looking big cat was never in close-proximity to the damsel in distress.

There’s a lot of running around in this episode, and scenes of the bad guy, Dr. Strange, yelling at his underlings, but beyond the focus of action there’s not much to enjoy beyond the weird costumes (for the bush men) and the colorful sets. In particular, I like Strange’s subterranean, 1970s-tech laden underground base. 

Unlike Filmation programming, there is no focus here on delivering a message or moral commentary in Mystery Island.  Like Bigfoot and Wildboy, the stories tend towards phantasmagoria. But with cliffhangers in each tale, the stories tend to blend together, one pitfall after the other.  Of all the Saturday morning programs I've watched, this one is the most impenetrable.  But on the other hand, I was not able to see episodes 2, 3 or 4, and perhaps they offered more in terms of explanation.

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Mystery Island (1977): "Valley of Fire"

In episode five of Mystery Island (1977), titled “Valley of Fire,” the robot P.O.P.S. (voiced by Frank Welker) is a captive of the island’s indigenous mud-people. They believe him to be a deity.

Soon, however, P.O.P.S. is rescued by a Lava Man. The Lava Man is returning a favor since he was saved by P.O.P.S. and his friends in a previous episode.

Meanwhile, Dr. Strange’s (Michael Kermoyan) lead minion, Krieg, attempts to steal the much-sought after robot for his master…

Mystery Island -- a segment of The Skatebrids (1977 – 1978) -- plays best (meaning least painfully....) if you consider it a kind of campy 1930s pulp serial, only filmed in color. 

The focus of each fifteen-minute segment is action and some lame humor, but there is no depth whatsoever in terms of the storytelling or the characterization. Instead, it's all just a run-around with captures, rescues, captures, and rescues.

Dr. Strange, from his “Cave of Science,” is always trying to capture P.O.P.S. and the robot -- who notes here that it is “hard being a God” -- is always getting through one scrape after another with his trio of human friends.  

Here, a kind act (the rescue of the Lava Man) is rewarded, and the beat goes on.

Frankly, there’s not a whole lot more to say about “Valley of Fire,” beyond noting that it is pure, pulpy phantasmagoria.  

If the next few episodes don’t get better -- or at least more interesting -- I think I’m going to move on to the next 1970s Saturday morning series I’ve been wanting to re-visit (or at least the few episodes available on YouTube: Run, Joe Run).

Next week on Mystery Island, episode #6: “Sentinels of Time.”

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Mystery Island (1977): "Matter of Gravity"

Mystery Island (1977) is a sci-fi segment of the Hanna Barbera omnibus series called The Skatebirds (1977 – 1978).

It is a pulp sci-fi story about a mad scientist, Dr. Strange (Michael Kermoyan) who must acquire a robot called P.O.P.S. to complete his plans for world domination. 

To do so, Dr. Strange brings down a plane on the remote island where he is headquartered.

P.O.P.S. (voice of Frank Welker) and his human friends, pilot Chuck Kelly (Stephen Parr), computer expert Sue Corwin (Lynn Marie Johnston) and her brother Sandy (Larry Volk) attempt to escape Dr. Strange’s minions, while avoiding the locals, including Lava Men and strange Mud People.

The most memorable aspect of this obscure Saturday morning series (which was rebroadcast on Boomerang ten years ago in 2005) is no doubt P.O.P.S. himself, the Lost in Space (1965 – 1968) robot re-painted, re-built and modified from his time with the Robinsons. 

Now, the robot has bright blue accents, a new cake-tray like transparent dome, a bubble over his neck, and feet that allow humans to hitch a ride. Much of the first episode finds Sue and Sandy holding on to him as he scoots across the landscape.

In concept, Mystery Island isn’t very much different from Sid and Marty Krofft’s Doctor Shrinker (1976), a series which saw a trio of humans on a plane brought down to the island of a different mad-scientist.  There, the scientist's minion (played by Billy Barty) tried to capture them each week. 

What differentiates the two series, primarily, is visualization. Mystery Island heavily features exterior locations much of the time, whereas Dr. Shrinker was almost entirely studio-bound.

Mystery Island’s first episode is called “Matter of Gravity” and it begins with the humans and P.O.P.S. already on the island.  Dr. Strange, a “scientific genius” has already brought the plane (named Nimbus) down by projecting a “beam ray” from his headquarters, the “Cave of Science.”

The minions chase Chuck, Sue, Sandy and the Robot and lead them right to the Mud People, but they escape, and flee….

As the description above suggests, Mystery Island plays a lot like a 1930s movie serial.  Dr. Strange is the hissable, bearded, cape-wearing Ming the Merciless stand-in.  

The people of the mysterious island represent the weekly threats and allies, and Sue is our damsel-in-distress. Thus far, however, there is no overt Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers type hero, only the human trio and their robot friend.  

The big difference between Mystery Island and its cinematic chapter-play predecessors is not intent or sophistication, but rather color photography  Mystery Island is very colorful, very brash and vivid in palette, whereas the old serials were constrained by their black-and-white nature.

Not all episodes of Mystery Island are currently available, but “Matter of Gravity” is up on YouTube, as are later episodes.  So I’ll be skipping next week to Episode #5, “Valley of Fire!”

Saturday Morning Flashback: Mystery Island (1977)