#I have something I want to sketch based on how I percieved that if only I had timeeeee

[fadedrainbowbookshelves]

"I don't know how someone who dislikes insects as much as you gets stung so often- have you seen Poppy for this?"

[mst3kproject]

1003: Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders – Part I

Before I sought it out to do this review, I had never seen Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders in any format but the MST3K episode, and even that I'd only seen once.  At some point in the planning stages of this blog I realized I was going to have to review it, and it actually gave me pause.  I seriously considered scuppering the whole project because I didn't want to watch this movie a second time.  In fact, I still haven't watched it again.  I'm writing this intro paragraph as a way of putting off watching the movie for a few minutes longer.

Why is a little hard to explain.  I don't hate this movie, but I sure as hell don't like it.  Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders isn't offensively bad like Attack of the The Eye Creatures, or even just plain offensive like Project Moon Base.  It is, however, intensely uncomfortable in its combination of cheery childlike imagery with what the Brains used to call 'good old-fashioned nightmare fuel', and something about it utterly repels me so deep in my gut it feels like appendicitis.  I use random.org to decide which movie I'm gonna watch next, and this one's number just came up... so after putting it off for a couple of weeks (thank heaven I have a buffer), I've decided the thing to do is just put on my Big Kid Pants and get it the hell over with so I never, ever have to watch it again.

Merlin the magician has used his powers to time-travel to modern California so that he can teach people to believe in magic again.  Among the first visitors to his Shop of Mystical Wonders are Madeline, a woman who can't have children, and her husband Jonathan, who announces his intention to give Merlin a bad review on Yelp or something.  At the urging of his own wife Zurella, Merlin gives Jonathan a book of magic to try to change his mind, and Jonathan tries it out that night in his basement.  Sure enough, the spells work, but after summoning Satan and breathing fire on his cat, Jonathan has expended so much of his life force that he has aged about forty years!  He tries to reverse the process but turns himself into a really ugly baby, granting Madeline's wish for a child to raise.

Now, this is all presented as if it's supposed to be very whimsical.  The interior of Merlin's shop looks like a cross between Galadriel's Glade in Lothlorien and the inside of a Rainforest Cafe.  Merlin himself is a Value Village Dumbledore and Zurella wears a brightly-coloured Renaissance-inspired outfit and gives out wishing stones.  This really ought to be a cheerful family film with a musical number sung by gnomes or something.  Instead, almost everything we see is straight out of a nightmare.  In fact, there is so much nightmare fuel in this movie that I quickly realized it wasn't all going to fit in a single review of my normal length.  That's why I've split both my summary and my analysis in two: if you want to hear about demonic cymbal monkeys, you're going to have to wait a bit.  For this session, let's stick to Jonathan's mercifully brief foray into wizardry.

Jonathan himself comes across as a person who should definitely not be given magical powers.  He mocks everything he sees in grating narration and laughs at the idea of driving small businesses into bankruptcy.  I think we all have a co-worker like him: one of those people who think everything they have to say is so very interesting, and cannot seem to take the hint that we want them to shut up and go away.  That person we would punch in the face if it weren't for the fact that everybody else would have to listen to him talking about it later.  He's a nightmare in himself, and his attitude, demanding that Merlin placate him or suffer the consequences, tells us that the power he wields through his newspaper column is already more than he can handle.

Sure enough, when Jonathan begins playing with Merlin's spellbook he doesn't even try to resist the corruption that this new form of power offers him.  He breathes fire, tortures his cat, and when a demon appears in his mirror it never seems to occur to him that Satan probably doesn't give very good advice.  By the time he finds the youth potion, he's gone all maniacal-eyed as he literally drinks his wife's blood.  The audience can only imagine that if he'd managed to master the powers of the book he would have become a modern-day Dark Lord and we'd all be forced to worship at his feet, as Mike and Crow kneel at Tom Servo's hoverskirt in the opening sketch.

Then there's the ending.  The idea of a man turning into a baby so that his child-less wife can raise him is a deeply uncomfortable one. Part of this is because the story never bothers to ask whether baby-Jonathan retains adult-Jonathan's mind.  Is he a blank slate for Madeline to mold into a less-offensive adult?  Or is he fully aware that he once had sex with the woman who is now changing his diaper?  What about Madeline herself?  She must know who the baby crawing out of her husband's clothing is.  Will she be able to be a good mother to him, or will her parenting always be coloured by remembering how Jonathan used to treat her?  And that's not even going into how twenty seconds of film here contains more Oedipal subtext than the entirety of Quest for the Mighty Sword. Just thinking about it makes me want a shower.

Also, that really is an ugly baby, and this is coming from somebody who's normally a big fan of babies.  Objectively I know that babies are nothing but immobile little loaf-shaped people with flailing limbs and no bowel control, and I don't want to have to change diapers or wipe snotty noses or listen to crying in the middle of the night – but when I see a baby, something in my hindbrain takes over and says adorable, must cuddle.  Big babies, small babies, fat babies, scrawny babies, bald babies, babies with hair... I love babies!  Except this one.  I find myself wondering if they did some makeup or something to try to make the kid look more like Jonathan... if they did, it didn't work.  If they didn't... then ew. That is one ugly baby.

Was this story meant to be nightmarish and uncomfortable?  The title Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders certainly doesn't sound like it belongs to a horror story.  The shop itself is whimsical enough, and there's sort of a happy ending in which I guess Madeline got what she wanted and Jonathan learned his lesson... kinda.  Some of the magical effects Jonathan produces, like the repelling spell, the diamonds, and the levitation, are treated as jokes.  But I think even if the TV show that this is so obviously a pilot for was meant to be relatively light-hearted, at least this episode was supposed to be a horror story.  The reason why has a lot to do with what Jonathan tries to do to his cat.

The narrator explains to us that the potion force-fed to the cat will turn it into a familiar – a helper animal so utterly loyal as to be willing to die for its master.  The audience will immediately notice that this description is diametrically opposed to the very nature of cats as we popularly percieve them.  Cats are thought of as aloof and self-serving creatures, with no interest in coming when they're called, never mind in doing what they're told. (People who own cats know, of course, that cats are actually clingy dumbasses who only like to pretend they think they're better than you – and contrary to popular belief, they're quite capable of learning to obey commands and even do tricks.  It's just that training isn't thought of as essential to the human-pet relationship like it is with dogs, and so most people don't bother.)

So here's Jonathan, trying to turn his cat into the opposite of what cats are 'supposed' to be, completely nullifying the animal's own will and personality.  That's a horrifying concept.  There also seems to be an element of spite in it, as Jonathan mockingly tells the cat, “you're about to learn the true meaning of obedience!” When Jonathan doesn't like a shop, he destroys its reputation.  When he doesn't like an animal, he destroys its mind.  If he'd managed to master the spells and make himself ruler of the universe or whatever, what does all this suggest he would have done to people? Then, when he is unable to enslave the cat (I think we’re meant to believe it attacks him because he got the potion wrong... but trying to rip its owner’s face off is the perfectly normal reaction of a cat having anything forced down its throat), he literally kills it with fire.  That's the kind of thing Nero did to the Christians!  So yeah, this much at least is supposed to give us nightmares.

At the end of this part of the story, I suppose Merlin has at least succeeded in getting Jonathan and Madeline to believe in magic, which he did say was his goal.  Maybe Jonathan will grow up again to understand that magic is not a power to mock or take lightly – and neither, I suppose, are shop reviews.  Maybe Madeline will be able to find hope knowing that miracles can happen as long as you don't get picky about how they happen.  Maybe magic is something we're supposed to believe in the way we believe in... oh, say, safe driving.  Those in command of something that could cause death or property damage need to learn to wield it with respect for it and for everybody around them.  That actually seems like a fairly plausible lesson for this part of the movie.

But then there's the 'evil monkey' sequence, which is actually a whole different movie.  See you next week. Fuck, I'm gonna have to watch this stupid movie again after all!