Link to review: 503 Swamp Diamonds
Story: Lady Cop goes undercover to find stolen diamonds
Stars: Beverly Garland
MJs Grade: C+

I'm watching this one right now and I couldn't help but notice what freakishly long arms Dr. F has.



:D Sorry the image isn't cleaner, the quality of my tape is not the best.

I tried to watch "Hangar 18" (KTMA) but couldn't get into it. So I'm going with this one, which I haven't seen in a while. The shorts begun and I roared during the reference to the movie, "Blue Velvet"

"Kay worked on the kill floor. She knew how to deliver the blow" - Joel (as Kay stands over Nick with a hammer)

MJ lent me this one today and I liked the short a lot. That's where the quote came from.

The main feature is really dull and I didn't think the riffing was all that good either. It was neat to see Beverly & Batman in the Turkey day segments that set this up.

A- for the short, C- for the movie, what does that average out too? B-

The boxset just came in from Amazon; I watched this one first because I'm showing the program at a co-worker's party on Thursday and most of the attendees will be women, so I didn't want to lead with a Roger Corman mud-wrestling featurette.

First, I also noticed that both Dr. F and Frank had unusally long arms in the opener. Either Mike or someone was crouched down in the middle wearing a one-black-sleeve-one-green-sleeve jacket, or Forrester hung on to the "Reed Richards" device from the Crawling Eye.

Next, I've always liked the dating short. Isn't great how in the '50's the definition of the ideal date was one with at least five other people. It has some excellent riffs (Our luggage is here! Woo!), but it's not among my favorites because it reminds me a little too much of myself in high school.

On to the movie. I'm guessing that this film and Gunslinger were filmed pretty close together since their film stock, opening sequences, credit font, and leading actress are all the same. Despite an energetic start at Mardi Gras and the prison, once they hit the bayou, the riffing really does become an endurance test. They trot out every swamp joke they already used in Giant Leeches (Do not bring your evil here, Hi I'm Curt Gowdy, As we left the clam flowage that day...) and reference the Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag about four times too many. Then there's our hero, Touch Connors. We have some fun coming up with "the names Touch had before he chose Touch" but Touch proved not to be a Bolt Vanderhuge in that department. Finally, the guy is like Mr. Stockholm Syndrome. He gets taken hostage by crazed escaped cons, watches his doting girlfriend drown in pond scum/an Olympic-sized pool right in front of him, and never even bats an eye. Sure, his captors all look like pinup models, but can anyone out there admit to being that calm in such a situation? Lastly, as scenes with a villainess being fatally impaled by a spear thrown at her by someone fifty feet below her go, Outlaw has this movie beat.

Not even all of the Daisy Duke shedding, cat-fighting, or skinny dipping scenes (ie. the real reason this movie was made) helped this one along for me. A C+.

PS. I did nail the stinger though. This makes a rare two-fer for me along with High School Big Shot. Woo!

Nice picture MJ, them was long arms lol

I gave this a C on my web site, so I guess I should be consistant and stick with that grade. I agree with the general consensus here. Decent short (and Beverly Garland in shorts!) and a good start on the movie. But :joel: "It stinks" in the swamp. Nice observation SnapZe on the the Giant Leech rehashed riffs. I didn't notice that at first, but your right.

I did like it when they had that old guy singing "Lick it up" :laughing:

Thank you for the complement, Farcy. I've seen Giant Leeches about five times now so making the connection wasn't too hard. I've only seen Outlaw twice, though, so I'm more impressed with myself for making the "hurling a spear at a woman" comparison.

Update: I was very bored over the weekend so I watched Leeches, this, and Gunslinger in a row, hoping to better tie the threads between them that I had mentioned. I was a little surprised that the "clam flowage" line was not used in Leeches at all. I know it's fairly common one, and I could have sworn that Leeches had it.

There were also some gags that didn't leave an impression on me the first time, but made me howl this time. I busted a gut when the gang faux-vomitted following the girls' drinking and short-shortening jag, and when Tom pointed out that Bev really should have badly scalded her groin when she nestled spent revolvers barrel-down in her lap. Wicked!

I'm bumping this one up to a B-. This is the only show that's so involved and stuffed with jokes that you can watch it for the first time for the first three times, if that makes any sense.

Second update: I watched Gunslinger with my Western-fan stepcousin last night and Crow makes this riff early on "So Corman shot Swamp Diamonds on Monday and this on Wednesday". I don't think I ever caught that joke before, and I was looking for direct comparisons between the two when I made my last update. Wild!

They made somewhat the same quips between "Viking Women" and "Teenage Caveman", (both also Corman movies) with the shots of the same tree branch that were shown in both movies as well as the same shag carpet clothing that made up both movie's wardrobes.

Agreed that this one is a tough sit, due to this being Corman at his MOST boring, but I did like Crow's line:

"Do not bring your padding here"

near the end of the movie as the gals interminably pull the boat through the Boggy Creek Creature's mucky swamp. An old riff gets a new life and it fit like a glove.

As for the cast, Beverly was at her hottest here, but I cannot get too worked about the others, although the Southern girlfriend was rather cute and Bleach Bottle Blonde was OK. However, Joan Crawford's Doppleganger and the undercover Cop/Tranny were a bit off-putting to say the least. Although Joan Crawford's Doppleganger was ironically enough the most likable character in the movie.

This is one that is scheduled for our weekly room Movie Nights soon, so I will let you know how the others who have not seen it yet react.

Overall grade: C

As a side note, Mark Eden was still around in the mid 1970's, usually advertising in the backs of women's magazines such as Cosmo, Redbook etc.

You might ask, how do I know this? Well, we used to have those magazines in my house all of the time, since my Mom subscribed to a lot of them for several years during that time. :lol:

I guess I shouldn't have used the word "soon", the wheels of justice spin slowly. ;)

I suppose so. Probably as slowly as it took for the Mark Eden to work. Which was never.

They also did a Mark Eden riff in "Girl's Town", when (I think) Crow says about Mamie Van Doren, "Mark Eden's greatest triumph." B)

I liked this one. Seems like they always have fun with Corman drudge.

I giggled darn near every time they mentioned Touch Connors. Especially when they were thinking up different names for him.

The riffing at Mardi Gras was probably the best part of the experiment. Rapid fire and precise.

Also like the continuing story-line during the host segments. It makes them less spotty and hit and miss. Seems like they did that more during the late Mike years. I like it.

I watched the Swamp Diamonds writers review disc. (thanks sky... http://mst3kvideos.com/) There wasn’t anything different here from the broadcast show -riff wise- that I could hear. We get some banter in between segments, including more names for Touch Conners (Trace suggests Klutz Conners, which Joel likes)

The most interesting bit comes after what would have been the Servo/Gypsy date skit. Originally it seems Tom was going to go into the theater with the others, but the guys decided to have Servo come in later. Joel mentions that he'll have to lose the "Quaker Oats and blankets" riff. I don't know what that specific riff would have been but it would have come before Servo's "Joe Namath" line.

I'm sorry MJ, but half of that message was incomprehensible because of those weirdo letters on there. :Servo:



Edit Note from MJ - Sorry, I'm looking but don't see any weirdo letters (I even looked using the editing feature)? I'll check it out on another computer and see if I can see what your seeing? It might be a forum bug as I've spotted what looks like squares, popping up out of the blue on some posts.

It looks like the character encoding type has changed, from Western to Unicode.

If there is anyway to change that in the forum's CP, change it to Western so that Firefox etc can render the punctuation marks like apostrophes properly.


Edit from MJ
Thanks, I checked and can't find any way to change it from the CP - But I put in a support ticket and hopefully will get an answer soon.

Well now it's gone, I can read your post. I don't know what was going on but it was weird. :Servo:

But anyway, on with the review. Not bad, not bad. Always nice to see them rip Corman a new one, especially with such paper-thin and stupid characters like these. Their stupidity brought on a lot of good laughs. The short, however, was probably the spotlight attraction in this episode. Seriously, with how dated the suggestions were, the comedy came out nice and clean. Then again, there were also some points of boredom and padding that the riffs didn't really help, but that's bound to happen in a Corman production.

:Servo: :Servo: :Servo: :Servo: out of 5 Red Toms for the Dating Craziness
:Servo: :Servo: :Servo: out of 5 Red Toms for Stupid Swamp girls

I guess this is Unicode but I got a meta tag to add to the board wrappers and it looks like it worked – Thanks for the help NC

Looks good.

Most likely, an update was applied and possibly the default character encoding type was changed.

Turned out to be a fairly good episode for a Corman. Nothing really sticks out, just hums along rather nicely with no noticeable lulls. The short was real swell, the Servo dating bits were cute enough, and the U-View was pretty darned funny.

B-

I've been thinking about watching this episode for awhile, just never got around to it until tonight.

This was a decent episode, man this Corman movie was a stinker. Dull with plenty of Corman Trademark Padding. When the director is making alot of panning shots of the swamp, you know he's trying to stretch out the running time. Thankfully the lovely Beverly Garland helped keep me entertained, the undercover female cop was nice looking too. Mr Mannix himself, Mike "Touch" Connors, played his character kinda smug. I mean his date gets killed by a alligator and a few scenes later he's putting the moves on the cop! The body count was surpisingly high on this flick too. Plus all the girl fights provided some entertainment.

Riffing had its good moments, but there were some scenes were the jokes just didn't work for me. When they naile it, they nailed it good.

The short was good, they got some really good riffing off of that one. I loved the weiner jokes, and Servo got off a killer line

Narrator "How does Jeff get ideas like that?"
Servo "From the voices inside his head." LOL

Favorite Movie Riffs:
Joel: "Okay, we need volunteers to get killed at this campsite."
Crow: "They're all doing a nickel at UPS!"
Crow: (During one of the girl fights) "You normally find this sort of thing on pay-per-view!"
Servo: 'These movies are on a collison course"

Host segments were fine, I liked how the short inspired Tom to ask Gypsy out for a date, and how Gypsy pulled the "lets just be friends" on Servo at the end. The U-Vision from the Mads was a weird but funny invention.

Overal, not oustanding but not a stinker. A decent episode

My Grade: B-

Ha, amazing, I'm watching this one tonight :P :Servo:

I liked both invention exchanges. I have always liked it when they use smoke or flames. I'd love to know how they make their smoke.
WEINIE ROAST.....nooooooo
Those credit paintings are weird and depressing.
Uh-oh Roger Corman. That means they had a budget of $500 and everyone had to provide their own costumes and transportation. And less then a few minutes into the film we have stock footage - padding, a Corman trade mark.
Mike Conners got knocked out by a girl? - more like no touch Conners.
Tom asks Gypsby out on a date - Hilarious!

TOUCH: What's for dessert?
:crow: Tuna wiggle. Oh man that's funny!

How about less swamp and more lady hinders?

:crow: Hey Beverly Garland bra - I've seen the promised land. Crow you're such a rascal.
Ummm Tom's date shirt sleeve are a little raggedy. A simple fold on the cut edge and some staples would have looked a lot better than they did. I thought the prop makers were a little better than that.
I don't think that snake lived...sad.
Not a bad episode..don't see how MigtyJack rated it so low I think it is a solid grade B material...it misses out on the plus for raggedy sleeves on Tom.