Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Dr. Shrinker (1976): "The Sacred Idol"

In “The Sacred Idol,” the Shrinkies (Ted Eccles, Susan Lawrence and Jeff Mackay), take a raft downstream in the jungle and encounter a primitive tribe dwelling there.  The tribe worships a stone idol and statue.

Unfortunately, Dr. Shrinker (Jay Robinson) now controls the stone statue, and makes the natives do his evil bidding by pretending to be a God. His control is actually accomplished by Hugo (Billy Barty), who operates a remote control machine some distance from the village.

The Villagers come to believe that Gordy (Mackay) is a benevolent God, but to prove his worth, he must gain control of the same statue. 

And then, he must fulfill an ancient prophecy about retrieving an emerald from a serpent’s lair.

“The Sacred Idol” is the weakest Dr. Shrinker (1976) episode of the three I’ve watched so far. The ideas in the episode are incredibly hackneyed, not to mention culturally insensitive.  To wit: an indigenous population in the jungle is so superstitious that it can be manipulated by a super-villain with a remote control, and only three other white people can set things right for them.

Ah, the white man’s burden…

Now -- it’s true -- I teach Intercultural Communications at a college level, so perhaps I’m hyper-aware of this kind of thing (though I don't think so...), but the assumptions that underline this episode's narrative (about the inferiority, both mental and religious, of non-western cultures) are really pretty amazing and backwards. 

It’s hard to believe stories this hackneyed and culture-centric were still being produced in the 1970s. That was, after all, the great age of tolerance, before the push-back of the 1980s.

Next week, we move on to a different Saturday morning series.

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Doctor Shrinker (1976): "The Other Brad"

In this week’s episode of Dr. Shrinker (1976), “The Other Brad,” our titular mad scientist (Jay Robinson) and his minion Hugo (Billy Barty) attempt to capture the Shrinkies -- three shrunken young adults -- using a perfect robot replica of Brad (Ted Eccles).

When the real Brad is captured and taken to a cage in the laboratory, his mechanical replacement attempts to trick B.J. (Susa Lawrence) and Gordy (Jeff Mackay) into a trap.

But Brad is able to escape from captivity and warn his friends about the danger they face…

The Sid and Marty Krofft Saturday morning series Dr. Shrinker is always a lot of fun, and as a kid growing up in the 1970s, I loved it.

But as an adult, it’s funny to see how the series doesn’t really hold up to the scrutiny of logic.

Consider the following: Dr. Shrinker (Robinson) hopes to make a fortune by demonstrating that his shrinking machine works.  He must therefore re-capture the Shrinkies to prove this fact, though why he doesn’t just shrink Hugo, or Boris the chimp (seen last episode), is a question worth asking.

Yet okay, I’ll accept the premise.  The Shrinkies are proof-positive that the shrink ray works, and Dr. Shrinker is located on a remote island, so he doesn’t have a lot of choices. 

So this week, in “The Other Brad,” Dr. Shrinker invents a perfect robot duplicate of a human being to help him capture the Shrinkies.

But...if Doctor Shrinker can build a perfect robot that replicates a human being so well that even that human’s best friends don’t recognize the difference off the bat…why is he bothering with a shrink ray? 

Forget asking the highest bidder to pay for the bloomin’ shrink ray. Sell them the perfect robot technology instead. It may have more practical applications, anyway, especially in Dr. Shrinker’s villainous circles.

But of course, Dr. Shrinker doesn’t think of that…

In a way, this kind of logic-less plot is what really differentiates a show like Dr. Shrinker from something like Land of the Lost (1974 -1977), another Sid and Mart Krofft program. There, David Gerrold, a real science-fiction author, story-edited the series and brought in great genre writers to pen individual stories.  He paid attention, and made certain that stories like “The Other Brad” didn’t get through the creative process, at least not without some heavy rewriting.  He made sure that the universe of Altrusia had a consistent set of rules, and that they weren’t violated.

Dr. Shrinker is a fun show with a kind of one note premise, but clearly nobody was making certain 

that all the stories followed logically from point A to point Z.  “The Other Brad” is exhibit A.  If you think about the story for even a minute or two, you realize it’s absolutely ridiculous.

I can’t remember what I thought at age six when I likely saw this episode. But I do know my son, at age 8, would crack down on this kind of faulty plotting in a heart-beat.

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Dr. Shrinker (1976): "Pardon Me, King Kong"

Sid and Marty Krofft brought Saturday morning television some of its most memorable and unique programming in the 1970s.  Land of the Lost clearly stands at the top of that heap, but there are many others worth recalling, from ElectraWoman and DynaGirl (1976) to The Lost Saucer (1975) to this series, Dr. Shrinker (1976).

Like ElectraWoman and Dynagirl, Dr. Shrinker aired as a segment of the omnibus The Krofft Supershow for one season, and had a strong science fiction underpinnings.

In this case, the inspiration for the series seems to be the 1940 horror movie Dr. Cyclops.  There, Dr. Thorkel (Albert Dekker) lured three scientists to his jungle laboratory and miniaturized them. They then were endangered not just by the doctor, but the now colossal-seeming wild-life of the terrain.

Similarly, Dr. Shrinker tells the story of three young adults -- Brad (Ted Eccles), Gordy (Jeff Mackay) and B.J. (Susan Lawrence) -- who crash their plane on the island of a mad scientist, Dr. Shrinker (Jay Robinson) and his minion, Hugo (Billy Barty). He promptly miniaturizes them, and they escape from his laboratory, into the jungle biome.  There, they battle snakes, rats, and other wild-life.

Each week on the series, Shrinker and Hugo also concoct some plan to re-capture the “Shrinkies,” as they are known.  His shrink ray weapon often re-appears in the series too, and often breaks down too.  The Shrinkies hope to use it to be restored to normal.

In terms of visualization, Dr.Shrinker employs the same chroma-key techniques adopted by Land of the Lost. Actors are often matted onto backgrounds which pair them with colossal creatures, in this case the aforementioned wild-life.

Dr. Shrinker, uniquely, appears to have been ripped off to some degree for Hanna Barbera’s Mystery Island, which I reviewed here not long ago.

There, another plane crashes on a mysterious island, and three youngsters (two male; two female, and a brother/sister duo) are confronted by a mad scientist, in this case “Dr. Strange.”  In both series, the villains have minions, and in both cases, the game is always one of capture and escape. 

In the Dr. Shrinker episode “Pardon Me, King Kong,” Dr. Shrinker and Hugo call on Boris the Chimp to help them capture the Shrinkies.  Like Kong, Boris takes a liking to a golden haired girl, B.J. and captures her.  Shrinker then holds her captive in a cage in his laboratory, using her as bait.

Sure enough, Brad and Gordy soon arrive at his home, and use a fishing hook and line to climb up a chair and reach her.  They too are captured, but manage to escape before the episode is done.

A few things to note: King Kong (1976), obviously, was a major pop culture event of 1976, and so Dr. Shrinker attempts to exploit that here, in some sense, putting a regular sized chimp up against miniaturized humans. 

Secondly, the “Shrinkies” are not yet very well-defined or developed, but B.J. comes off as down-right cruel in her scenes with Brad and especially to her brother, Gordy.  She is a mean and unpleasant character, which is surprising given that she is one of the series' heroes. 

Finally, the best scenes in this episode belong to Jay Robinson and Bill Barty, who chew the scenery together like nobody’s business.