1952...When Scientists Fought Crime

So I don't know if other people were into this show, but since college I have been a big fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was a show on Comedy Central and then on SciFi that made fun of old bad movies. The show itself was hysterical.

Anyway, I was watching one of the old episodes (a substantial number of which are now on YouTube), and I saw this one where they made fun of a clip of Commander Cody -- a serial from the 50s about this scientist who flies around in a rocket suit fighting crime and the like.

The plots of these things are just ridiculous. Like in this one entitled Radar Men from the Moon some dude from the moon wearing a unitard is blowing up stuff with a atomic ray gun to wear down the Earth's resistance for eventual colonization. Commander Cody goes and steals their ray gun in a gun fight. (I don't know why they didn't just shoot him with the ray gun.)

Then Commander Cody comes back to examine the ray gun in his lab, and a bunch of hired thugs arrive to retrieve the ray gun. Thus ensues possibly the funniest thing I have ever seen: scientists fighting hired thugs in their lab to retain vital research materials. Because that happens every day in our lab...

You can view the video here.

Unfortunately it is unedited, so the scene I am talking about is about 9 minutes in. (I would actually recommend watching the whole thing. It is pretty funny.) More clips of Commander Cody can be obtained at the Internet Archive.

Second favorite part of this clip: the horizontal take off rocket ship.

Third favorite: that Commander Cody does not light himself on fire with his rocket suit and perish in a ball of flames.