Mystery Science Theater 3000/Recap/S10/E12 Squirm

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Films watched: A Case of Spring Fever (short) and Squirm

The MST3K treatment of Squirm provides examples of:

"I just don't want you to be disappointed if he doesn't come."
Crow: Mother, that's private!

  • I Know You're Not Southern!
  • It's a Wonderful Plot: In a spoof of the educational film "A Case of Spring Fever", Mikey the Mike Sprite tries to show the Bots the horror of a world without Mike. It backfires - Tom and Crow enjoy life without Mike quite a bit.
    • Mike does care about his socks, though. "No Mike's socks!" (whistle)
  • Lethal Chef: Pearl's recipe for pickles involves cucumbers and Windex. Bobo's Ape Hair is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, battered and fried.
    • Subverted with Mike's electrically fried worms. The bots react with disgust as he tries one, but it turns out they are delicious.
  • Odd Job Gods: Apparently there's a sprite dedicated to Mike (or possibly Mikes in general), and another to Mike's socks.
  • Running Gag: "Mr. Beardsley?"
  • Shout-Out: When Alma and Mick are at the dentist's office looking thorough the records to identify a skull, a worm crawls out of it. Tom comments "Come on down to the snout. We got a pinochle game going!" This is a reference to a line in an old school yard jump rope chant. "The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle on your snout."
  • Small Name, Big Ego: Lots of directors were upset that their films wound up on Mystery Science Theater 3000, but Jeff Lieberman was particularly miffed, even peppering his DVD commentary on Squirm with limp Take Thats at the show.
    • Even more amusing, is he once wrote an angry e-mail for The Brains telling them how they were idiots for riffing his movie. That's bad enough, but he sent his e-mail to an MST3K fan site. The fans who received the e-mail had a field day with this.
  • The Un-Smile: "ANYWAY YOU CAN'T BOTHER ME TODAY BECAUSE I'M VERY HAPPY!"

The Mystery Science Theater 3000 presentation of A Case Of Spring Fever has examples of:

  • Call Back, Running Gag: Coily was the inspiration for Willy the Wonderful Waffle Guy way back in Season 3. Also, references to Coily (along with his spring sound) are imitated in a host segment ("Mikey the Mike Sprite, they call me") and even a riff in the movie Squirm.
    • Kevin even quotes the, "No springs!" after a goofy spring sound effect in the short "One Got Fat" released through Riff Trax.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Mystery_Science_Theater_3000/Recap/S10/E12_Squirm?oldid=1194138"